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Introduction

Year: 2006
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: During the Second World War, the federal and provincial governments made generous promises to Québec's poor children.In 1943, the prime minister of Québec, Liberal Adélard Godbout, recognized their right to a minimum level of education.Four years of power had allowed him to put an end to the half-century of quarrelling between the province's Catholic clergy and Liberal reformists over the State's role in education.Radio and newspapers informed parents, children, teachers, and school commissioners that, beginning in September 1943, school would be both free and compulsory until the age of fourteen or until grade seven, inclusively.This policy earned Godbout and his ministers the reputation of having been the precursors to the Quiet Revolution.With the aim of modernizing the province's economy, they effectively strove to extend the social grip over public institutions, a task that would be taken up by the "équipe du tonnerre" of another Liberal, Jean Lesage, in 1960.In 1944, a year after Québec's adoption of this law on compulsory education, Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King announced that all children aged sixteen and under would have the right to a "minimum of welfare" and, to this end, monthly family allowances in the amount of four to nine dollars would be disbursed to all mothers.The necessities of war production and the approaching general elections led Mackenzie King to establish the country's first universal social program, one of the foundations of the Canadian Welfare State.The two laws dictated that parents were responsible for their children's physical security at least until the age of fourteen, permitting these youths to acquire a minimum of intellectual development.It became illegal for children to work instead of attend school, and the State commit-Notes to introduction start on p. 195.ix
DOI: 10.51644/9781554580828-001
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4391978029
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