NewStart

The innovations which were introduced were directly based on research and development work in adult basic education carried out by the federally-funded Canada NewStart program, which had been in formal operation since 1967.28 Its history is of interest here because of the involvement of adult educators.

In 1965, Prime Minister Pearson had proposed the selection of several areas for "special pilot projects" to "determine the best methods of meeting the training needs of adults in designated areas".29 This constituted an acknowledgment that existing manpower policies were not helping the most impoverished in Canada. These initial projects were superseded in 1967 by the Canada NewStart Program, a broad research and development program formed through the cooperation of the federal government and six provinces. According to a federal government publication describing the program:

The Canada NewStart program was established as an experiment in federal-provincial co-operation to find ways of alleviating chronic poverty and disadvantage 30

The emphasis of the program was to be on educational strategies to attack poverty:

Education and employability have long been associated with one another and assumed to be positively correlated. It was to be expected, then, that when the Canada NewStart program was launched in 1967 it would contain substantial emphasis on adult basic education 31

Six autonomous "corporations" were to operate for a period of four years, until 1971, and then be dissolved. Each contained ABE programs, some type of life skills training, occupational training, individual and family counseling, and a community development program. 32

Adult basic educators were prominent in the staffs of the new programs. For example, it was under the directorship of the well-known Canadian adult educator, Stuart Conger, that Saskatchewan NewStart developed the basic theory and methods of life skills training, the BLADE program (a basic literacy program for grades 0 through 4) and LINC (a program for grades 5 through 10). The two basic education "packages" were designed to make use of individualized instruction, as coordinated by "resource persons" rather than traditional teachers, with input from learners and utilizing materials keyed to the life situations of impoverished adults 33

In 1971 these and other innovations began to be introduced into the Canada Manpower Training Program, marking the zenith of the influence of the Canadian adult education profession on the course of the development of the federal government intervention in adult basic education.