Thus, a variety of factors stemming from uneven regional development in Canada caused educational attainment levels of hinterland workers to stagnate, particularly among members of subordinate class engaged in primary resource occupations. This is indicated in figures showing substantial inequalities in attainment across Canada. By 1951, 7.2% of all workers in Canada had grade 4 education or less, while 43.5% had 5 to 8 years of schooling. Overall, primary sector workers had much lower level of attainment--14.3% had grade 4 or less, and 6.2.5% had 5 to 8 grades. By contrast, among workers in urbanbased manufacturing, 6% had grades 4 or less, and 52.1% had grades 5 to 8. White collar workers showed much higher levels of attainment, with only 1.6% in the category of 0 to 4 years of education, and only 18.6% in the category of 5 to 8 years.22 Hinterlands showed low rates of attainment relative to metropolitan--i.e. central Canadian --areas in the 1951 period. For example, while 48.7% of Ontario adults had an elementary education or less in 1951, the figures for hinterland provinces, included Saskatchewan 58.2%, Newfoundland, 70.7%, and Quebec, 63.1%.23

To summarize, it has been suggested that the uneven course of capitalist economic development in the pre-1950's period produced unusually low rates of educational attainment in hinterland areas relative to central Canada, and in Canada relative to the U.S. These low levels of attainment prompted Canadian sociologist John Porter to remark that Canada was poorly prepared in terms of education for the rapid economic changes that were to come after 1950.24 We will now explore these changes, and examine evidence for the liberal view that the low educational attainment of the workforce was the main cause of unemployment and poverty in the 1950's and 1960's period.

The Capitalist Economic Structure and Poverty

We saw earlier that the economic changes of the 1950's and 1960's period were accompanied by acute levels of poverty and unemployment. Adherents of the liberal perspective have tended to view these economic changes as part of an inevitable process of technological advance and economic modernization, and have located the cause of the accompanying hardship in the inability of undereducated workers to adapt to them. However, adherents of the critical perspective would offer a quite different analysis. They would point out that under the guidance of Canadian and U.S. economic elites, the accumulation process developed in a particularly distorted and uneven way during this period. The same economic structure which had economically and socially (particularly educationally) underdeveloped the hinterland workforce prior to 1950, proceeded after 1950 to subject it to extreme economic dislocation. From this point of view, the low level of education of hinterland workers cannot be said to be the primary cause of the resulting poverty and unemployment--this distinction belongs to the capitalist economic structure alone. Let us examine evidence on this question.