In the absence of a vigorous manufacturing sector, and without gradual "industrialization", i.e. mechanization, of the resource sector, there was little pressure on the Canadian state to modernize education, and educational attainment levels in Canada stagnated relative to more industrialized nations like the U.S. (As well, because of the extraordinary reliance of Canada on labour-intensive techniques in its primary resource sector, an even larger number of immigrant labourers--largely unschooled--were drawn to Canada than to the U.S. in the pre-1950's period, further lowering the average attainment level of Canadians relative to Americans.) By 1965, 42.4% of adult Canadians had only an elementary education or less, while 'just' 28.8% of Americans had this level of attainment.19 As an economically underdeveloped resource hinterland of the U.S., Canada was socially--including educationally--underdeveloped as well.

The same relationship obtained within Canada as well. That is, the economic underdevelopment of Canadian hinterland are as by capitalists located in central Canada was paralleled by the social underdevelopment of those areas relative to central Canada. One of the most important manifestations of this has been the slow development of schools and educational attainment levels in eastern, western and northern hinterlands.

For example, without stable and self-sufficient economic patterns, Canadian hinterlands have lacked a provincial and local tax base sufficient to support the construction of a proper social infrastructure, including schools.20 This has meant that schools have been less numerous and of inferior quality in comparison with metropolitan (particularly central Canadian) areas. As well, owing to the nature of hinterland occupations., children in these areas have not been able to attend as regularly and as long. That is, without recourse to stable year-around employment that local manufacturing would have supplied, hinterland workers have been disproportionately dependent on resource sector employment-fishing, farming, logging, mining, etc.--which is characterized by seasonal and "boom and bust" patterns of cyclical unemployment and economic hardship. Owing to this pattern, children in hinterlands have more often lacked school clothes, lunches, materials, etc. needed in school, have had to help at home and interrupt their attendance at school, and have had to leave home and school earlier than normal to engage in productive labour.

The content of schooling in hinterland areas was also affected by the pattern of underdevelopment. That is, members of subordinate classes in hinterland areas received little benefit from the educational reforms that were introduced between 1900 and 1950. These were designed less to increase the quality of education than to increase the level of social control over future resource sector workers in view of the threats to the existing pattern of class domination posed by Prairie radicalism and events like the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. An example was the effort to direct education to the "Canadianization" of the immigrant--i.e. the Inculcation of dominant attitudes and values. 21