Branding the Classroom: Commercialism in Canadian Schools, 1920–1960

From the 1920s until the early 1960s, a number of commercial companies placed advertisements in teachers' professional magazines offering a variety of free, but branded, teaching aids. While the issue of commercialization in schools has become prominent in the last decade, contemporary debates have ignored the historical roots of this phenomenon. Similarly, despite the growth of youth and consumer culture in the first half of the twentieth century, historians have not examined schools as sites of commercialization. Advertisements in teachers' magazines capitalized on the social and educational concerns of the period, linking, for example, products to patriotism, their use in the school health movement, or their relevance to the methods and aims of progressive education. Intended both to enrich classroom resources and to promote products among teachers, pupils, and parents alike, commercial teaching aids offered needed resources to cash-strapped schools and in turn provided companies with a new market site. Des années 1920 jusqu’au début des années 1960, un certain nombre d’entreprises commerciales ont publié des annonces publicitaires dans les revues professionnelles à l’intention des enseignants, offrant à ceux-ci un éventail d’aides didactiques, mais associées à des marques. Bien qu’il soit beaucoup question de commercialisation dans les écoles depuis une décennie, les débats contemporains sur la question ne font nullement mention des racines historiques du phénomène. Dans le même ordre d’idées, malgré la croissance de la culture jeunesse et de consommation durant la première moitié du XXe siècle, les historiens n’ont pas étudié les écoles comme lieux de mise en marché. Les annonces qui paraissaient dans les revues destinées aux enseignants capitalisaient sur les préoccupations sociales et scolaires de l’époque, par exemple en liant les produits au patriotisme, à leur usage dans le mouvement pour la santé à l’école ou à leur pertinence pour les méthodes et les buts d’un enseignement progressiste. Les aides didactiques commerciales, qui avaient pour but tant d’enrichir les ressources pédagogiques que de promouvoir les produits auprès des enseignants, des élèves et des parents, offraient aux écoles à court d’argent des ressources dont elles avaient besoin et ouvraient aux entreprises la porte à un nouveau marché

Poisoning the Student Mind?: The Student Christian Movement at the University of Toronto, 1920-1965

Historians have documented the interlocking nature of student culture and religious life in nineteenth-century higher education; in contrast, after World War I religion has generally been ignored, or portrayed as disappearing from the academy and broader life. An investigation of the Student Christian Movement, however, suggests that by combining liberal theology with left-wing politics it became an influential religious force on campus well into the twentieth century. Reflecting a fairly homogeneous student population, supported by faculty and the administration, and articulating the temper of the times, the SCM served as the public voice of religion on campus. Only in the 1950s, as new social phenomena emerged, such as divisions among Protestants, the rise of agnosticism, and the creation of secular political organisations, did the SCM begin to lose its cultural authority on campus.La complémentarité de la culture étudiante et de la vie religieuse dans l'enseignement supérieur au XIXe siècle a été bien démontrée par les historiens. Par contre, très peu d'études ont été consacrées à la religion après la Première Guerre mondiale et celles qui s'y intéressent soulignent son rôle déclinant dans le cadre universitaire et dans la vie de la population en général. Toutefois, en examinant le Student Christian Movement, on s'aperçoit que ce mouvement, en alliant théologie libérale et politiques de gauche, devint une force religieuse influente sur les campus pendant une bonne partie du XXe siècle. Traduisant les valeurs d'une population étudiante relativement homogène, approuvé par le corps enseignant et l'administration, et exprimant l'atmosphère de l'époque, le SCM se fit la voix publique de la religion sur les campus. Ce n 'est que vers les années 1950 qu'il commença à perdre son ascendant culturel, alors qu'émergeaient de nouveaux phénomènes sociaux, tels que les divisions entre Protestants, la montée de l'agnosticisme et la création d'organisations politiques laïques

“The students swarm to these peaceful shores in droves”: An Historical Overview of the Postwar Spring Break Phenomenon

AbstractDespite the cultural and economic influence of Spring Break, and the fact that it has become asignificant area of study in other fields of research such as psychology, sociology, college health,and business and marketing, historians have largely overlooked the phenomenon. This articleprovides an overview of Spring Break’s postwar history by focusing primarily upon developmentsin the American Southeast, especially Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach and Atlanta. Inbridging the histories of higher education and tourism we focus on three key developments:tensions between visiting students and host communities, commercialization and corporatization,and the racial dynamics of Spring Break. In our conclusion we briefly examine the phenomenonof “alternative” Spring Breaks and offer reflections on Spring Break’s overall historicalsignificance.RésuméMalgré l’influence culturelle et économique de la semaine de relâche universitaire, le « SpringBreak » et le fait que de nombreux chercheurs en psychologie, sociologie, santé des étudiantsuniversitaires, commerce et publicité s’y soient intéressés, les historiens ont négligé ce phénomène.Cet article fournit une vue d’ensemble de l’histoire de la semaine de relâche dans lapériode d’après-guerre, centrée sur le déroulement des activités dans le sud-est des États-Uniset, en particulier, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach et Atlanta. Nous effectuons un rapprochemententre l’histoire de l’enseignement supérieur et celle du tourisme et nous mettonsl’accent sur trois aspects clés de l’événement : les tensions entre les étudiants en vacances et lescommunautés hôtes, la commercialisation et le corporatisme et enfin la dynamique raciale dela semaine de relâche. Dans notre conclusion, nous considérons le phénomène des semaines derelâche « alternatives » et nous réfléchissons sur l’importance historique du « Spring Break »

Overcoming leakage in scalable quantum error correction

Leakage of quantum information out of computational states into higher energy states represents a major challenge in the pursuit of quantum error correction (QEC). In a QEC circuit, leakage builds over time and spreads through multi-qubit interactions. This leads to correlated errors that degrade the exponential suppression of logical error with scale, challenging the feasibility of QEC as a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we demonstrate the execution of a distance-3 surface code and distance-21 bit-flip code on a Sycamore quantum processor where leakage is removed from all qubits in each cycle. This shortens the lifetime of leakage and curtails its ability to spread and induce correlated errors. We report a ten-fold reduction in steady-state leakage population on the data qubits encoding the logical state and an average leakage population of less than $1 \times 10^{-3}$ throughout the entire device. The leakage removal process itself efficiently returns leakage population back to the computational basis, and adding it to a code circuit prevents leakage from inducing correlated error across cycles, restoring a fundamental assumption of QEC. With this demonstration that leakage can be contained, we resolve a key challenge for practical QEC at scale.Comment: Main text: 7 pages, 5 figure

Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit

Practical quantum computing will require error rates that are well below what is achievable with physical qubits. Quantum error correction offers a path to algorithmically-relevant error rates by encoding logical qubits within many physical qubits, where increasing the number of physical qubits enhances protection against physical errors. However, introducing more qubits also increases the number of error sources, so the density of errors must be sufficiently low in order for logical performance to improve with increasing code size. Here, we report the measurement of logical qubit performance scaling across multiple code sizes, and demonstrate that our system of superconducting qubits has sufficient performance to overcome the additional errors from increasing qubit number. We find our distance-5 surface code logical qubit modestly outperforms an ensemble of distance-3 logical qubits on average, both in terms of logical error probability over 25 cycles and logical error per cycle ($2.914\%\pm 0.016\%$ compared to $3.028\%\pm 0.023\%$). To investigate damaging, low-probability error sources, we run a distance-25 repetition code and observe a $1.7\times10^{-6}$ logical error per round floor set by a single high-energy event ($1.6\times10^{-7}$ when excluding this event). We are able to accurately model our experiment, and from this model we can extract error budgets that highlight the biggest challenges for future systems. These results mark the first experimental demonstration where quantum error correction begins to improve performance with increasing qubit number, illuminating the path to reaching the logical error rates required for computation.Comment: Main text: 6 pages, 4 figures. v2: Update author list, references, Fig. S12, Table I

Measurement-induced entanglement and teleportation on a noisy quantum processor

Measurement has a special role in quantum theory: by collapsing the wavefunction it can enable phenomena such as teleportation and thereby alter the "arrow of time" that constrains unitary evolution. When integrated in many-body dynamics, measurements can lead to emergent patterns of quantum information in space-time that go beyond established paradigms for characterizing phases, either in or out of equilibrium. On present-day NISQ processors, the experimental realization of this physics is challenging due to noise, hardware limitations, and the stochastic nature of quantum measurement. Here we address each of these experimental challenges and investigate measurement-induced quantum information phases on up to 70 superconducting qubits. By leveraging the interchangeability of space and time, we use a duality mapping, to avoid mid-circuit measurement and access different manifestations of the underlying phases -- from entanglement scaling to measurement-induced teleportation -- in a unified way. We obtain finite-size signatures of a phase transition with a decoding protocol that correlates the experimental measurement record with classical simulation data. The phases display sharply different sensitivity to noise, which we exploit to turn an inherent hardware limitation into a useful diagnostic. Our work demonstrates an approach to realize measurement-induced physics at scales that are at the limits of current NISQ processors

Non-Abelian braiding of graph vertices in a superconducting processor

Indistinguishability of particles is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. For all elementary and quasiparticles observed to date - including fermions, bosons, and Abelian anyons - this principle guarantees that the braiding of identical particles leaves the system unchanged. However, in two spatial dimensions, an intriguing possibility exists: braiding of non-Abelian anyons causes rotations in a space of topologically degenerate wavefunctions. Hence, it can change the observables of the system without violating the principle of indistinguishability. Despite the well developed mathematical description of non-Abelian anyons and numerous theoretical proposals, the experimental observation of their exchange statistics has remained elusive for decades. Controllable many-body quantum states generated on quantum processors offer another path for exploring these fundamental phenomena. While efforts on conventional solid-state platforms typically involve Hamiltonian dynamics of quasi-particles, superconducting quantum processors allow for directly manipulating the many-body wavefunction via unitary gates. Building on predictions that stabilizer codes can host projective non-Abelian Ising anyons, we implement a generalized stabilizer code and unitary protocol to create and braid them. This allows us to experimentally verify the fusion rules of the anyons and braid them to realize their statistics. We then study the prospect of employing the anyons for quantum computation and utilize braiding to create an entangled state of anyons encoding three logical qubits. Our work provides new insights about non-Abelian braiding and - through the future inclusion of error correction to achieve topological protection - could open a path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing

« Inspirez… Expirez » : Contextualiser la montée de la « pleine conscience » dans les écoles canadiennes

Mindfulness practices have exploded onto the mainstream North American cultural landscape. Not surprisingly, proponents of mindfulness can also be found within education systems in North America and the western world more generally. In Canada, mindfulness-based programs have filtered into faculties of education as well as public school classrooms. Yet, despite the rapid spread of the mindfulness movement, relatively little is known about it historically. This article pieces together some of the key intellectual and cultural developments that have enabled the growth of this phenomenon: North Americans’ encounters with Buddhist perspectives since the 1950s and 1960s, the intersection of psychology and Buddhist practice, the flourishing of progressive educational ideals, and the growth of school psychology. It then briefly explores the kinds of citizenship ideals promoted by mindfulness practices as well as educators’ rationales for their implementation. Tracing this history demonstrates that, despite its relatively recent entry into schools and its promotion as a scientifically-based physiological practice, mindfulness is a phenomenon with deep historical roots within a particular British and North American social and cultural context. Exploring this context and the reasons for educators’ turn to mindfulness will help us better understand our modern education system and the kinds of students it aims to produce.  Les pratiques de méditations de pleine conscience ont explosé dans le paysage culturel nord-américain. C’est donc sans surprise que l’on retrouve également des partisans de la pleine conscience dans les systèmes éducatifs d’Amérique du Nord et du monde occidental en général. Au Canada, les programmes axés sur la pleine conscience se sont introduits dans les facultés d’éducation ainsi que dans les salles de classe des écoles publiques. Toutefois, malgré la propagation rapide du mouvement de pleine conscience, on en connait relativement peu d’un point de vue historique. Cet article rassemble quelques-unes des évolutions intellectuelles et culturelles qui ont permis l’essor d’un tel phénomène : les rencontres nord-américaines avec les perspectives bouddhistes depuis les années 1950 et 1960, le croisement de la psychologie et de la pratique bouddhiste, le développement d’idéaux éducatifs progressistes et la croissance de la psychologie scolaire. Il explore ensuite brièvement les types d’idéaux de citoyenneté que les pratiques de pleine conscience promeuvent, ainsi que les raisons qui motivent les éducateurs pour la mise en œuvre de ces dernières. Retracer cette histoire permet de démontrer que, malgré son arrivée relativement récente dans les écoles et sa promotion au rang de pratique physiologique scientifiquement fondée, la pleine conscience est un phénomène aux racines historiques profondément ancrées dans un contexte social et culturel britannique et nord-américain particulier. Dès lors, explorer ce contexte et les raisons pour lesquelles les éducateurs adoptent la pleine conscience permet de mieux comprendre le système d’éducation moderne et les types d’élèves qu’il tend à forger