To illustrate this, let us compare statements of adherents of the perspectives from each of the three periods. First, referring to the views of the school reformers of the mid-1800's Prentice states:

The alternatives to schooling and inculcating discipline in the poor, educators believed, were crime and its associated costs to society. They felt no qualms, therefore, in describing a school system as "a branch of the national police," designed not only to "occupy a large portion of the rising population," but also "to support and restrain many of the grownup. population. " As Edward Scarlett, from Northumberland County, put it in 1863, common schools were the "cheapest form of moral police" that could be established in any count".19

The theme of ideological incorporation of the poor is clear in these statements by 19th century schoolmen, as it is in a statement by Fitzpatrick in 1919:

There is no greater service that a young Canadian university man, undergraduate, professor, lecturer or demonstrator can render our country than that of working in our frontier camps and factories, side by side with both the native-and foreign workmen, for the purpose of convincing them that we are deeply interested in them, teaching them our ideas of citizenship and our ideals of life.20

In contrast to these openly ideological sentiments, the views of adherents of the liberal perspective on illiteracy stress seemingly 'neutral' themes of efficiency, technical skills and economic integration. For example, in his evaluation of individualized basic education programs in the Nova Scotia NewStart Corporation, Herzog writes:

If education is viewed as one element in a manpower adjustment system which includes the individual, the employers, educational and training institutions, facilitative organizations such as unions and manpower agencies, and resources for innovation and educational maintenance, then the appropriate approach to learning is not to compartmentalize the student in a rigid educational mold, but to bring the educational resources to the student in a way that makes it possible for him, through his own free choice, to optimize his career path.21

Herzog sounds one of the key themes of the liberal deficiency-remediation perspective--adjustment to the manpower needs of the economy. As presented, this would seem to be a non-partisan, non-political question. However, it must be recognized that in a class-divided society like Canada, the economy is not an undifferentiated 'thing' which is above political and ideological phenomena. In fact, it constitutes the basis of the class power of capitalists, and the question of economic control is central to class conflict. The reference to the need on the part of the poor to "adjust" to the manpower needs of the economy begs the question, "On whose terms?"