EDITORIAL/AUTHORIAL CORRECTION
Robert Lanning’s "Awakening a Demand for Schooling"

We publish below corrections to Robert Lanning’s recent article, "Awakening a Demand for Schooling: Educational Inspection’s Impact on Rural Nova Scotia, 1855–74," HSE/HRE, vol.12 (1 & 2).

In dealing with the proofs of Dr Lanning’s article, the Editors somehow managed to skip a last, and important, stage in the treatment of the final galleys. For whatever reason, we came to think we had the author’s final word on his manuscript article when, in fact, we did not.

The result was the publication of a text that did not conform in every respect to the author’s final wishes. We regret this error, and wish to apologize for any inconvenience to which it may have led.

We thank Professor Lanning for providing needful corrections.

It is likely the journal has never previously fallen into this particular editorial abyss, and we hope not to do so again.

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To: William Bruneau, Editor
Historical Studies in Education

Further to our correspondence on my article, "Awakening a Demand for Schooling: Educational Inspection’s Impact on Rural Nova Scotia, 1855–74," HSE/HRE, vol.12 (1 & 2), I submit the following comments on the published version of the article.

Page 131, first full paragraph, line 1: the word "to" should be deleted prior to the words "rural poverty". Same paragraph, line 4: I suggest the added word, "inevitably" be deleted as too deterministic. After that first full paragraph, p. 131, material I consider important has been deleted; this provided context and meaning relevant to the discussion of class that follows in the published text. Part of the text edited-out reads as follows:

The encroachment of state power into rural life produced tension as the politically and culturally powerful sought to expand and sustain a "social character" relevant to their interests. Raymond Williams suggests that the social character of an historical place and period consists of the material bases of life: systems of communication, production, learning, decision-making, nurturing and maintenance—it is a "valued system of behaviour and attitudes—[that] is taught, formally and informally [as] both an ideal and a mode" of practical existence. A dominant social character of a period is defined by the social class that controls these material forces and is able to articulate its interests through them. Proof of a commanding class presence lies in the "characteristic legislation, the terms in which this was argued, the majority content of public writing and speaking, and the characters of the men most admired." (Footnote also edited out: Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (New York: Harper, 1961), 47–8, 61, 116–22.)

Further, because of the removal of that paragraph, footnote 9 appears to reference R.T. Naylor’s work cited in footnote 8. Instead, footnote 9 should reference pages 48 and 63 of Williams’ The Long Revolution.

In the final paragraph of page 131, beginning with "The rural working class," the third sentence has been altered so that working class "experiences of institutional relations and social power were merely those [emphasis added] of more powerful social classes." The original manuscript stated that, because of underdeveloped conditions, working class experiences "represented the interests of more powerful social classes." The editorial alteration suggests an identity of interests I do not wish to convey.

Page 140: immediately after footnote 57, I described the categories of persons mentioned therein as "Official Visitors". This was intended to introduce the term as it appears later in the printed version without clarification. Two important contextualizing sentences in the original ms. should be retained:

The register, therefore, was not merely an instrumental source of official knowledge but a set of practical categories of participation in the project of local schooling that teachers and Official Visitors were expected to assist in fulfilling. As Curtis notes, "one of the cultural prerogatives of men in the dominant classes was… entering into the lives of and informing themselves about those beneath them." (Reference: Bruce Curtis, True Government by Choice Men? 176–7.)

Robert Lanning
Dept. Of Sociology and Anthropology
Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax