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‘Our History Syllabus Has Us Gasping’: History in Canadian Schools B Past, Present, and Future
Abstract
This essay addresses recent criticisms of the teaching of history in Canadian schools by placing them in their historical context. It surveys history teaching since the early 1900s and argues that the current crisis that some commentators see in the teaching of history is the fifth such crisis to have occurred over the last one hundred years. All five crises made much the same point, shared many common features, and arose from fears for the future of Canada which originated outside the schools. The essay also examines the concepts of national identity and citizenship which traditionally have provided the justification for the teaching of history in schools. It argues that suggestions currently being offered to strengthen school history are unlikely to achieve very much and calls for the creation of national links between teachers and historians.
Abstract: Cet article se penche sur les critiques recentes de ľenseignement de ľhistoire dans les ecoles canadiennes en les replacant au sein de leur contexte historique. Il passe en revue ľenseignement de ľhistoire dans les ecoles depuis les tout debuts du vingtieme siecle et soutient que la crise actuelle que certains commentateurs voient dans ľenseignement de ľhistoire est la cinquieme du genre a se produire au cours des cent dernieres annees. Les cinq crises ont toutes tire a peu pres les memes conclusions, avaient de nombreuses caracteristiques en commun et decoulaient de craintes pour ľavenir du Canada, qui avaient leur origine a ľexterieur des ecoles. Ľarticle examine aussi les concepts ďidentite nationale et de citoyennete qui ont traditionnellement justifie ľenseignement de ľhistoire dans les ecoles. Il soutient que les suggestions offertes actuellement en vue de renforcer ľhistoire a ľecole ont peu de chance de donner des resultats notables et il recommande la creation de liens nationaux entre les enseignants et les historiens.
... They also draw on a popular discourse that Canadians do not know their Canadian history, thus constructing a double crisis of identity and citizenship (Sears & Hyslop-Marginson, 2007). 3 Osborne (2000b) points out that throughout Canadian history there have been moments of crisis around how the past is taught. ...
... It is important to point out that the perceived crisis in history education was also a concern of the previous Liberal government, particularly after the publication of a provocative book by historian JackGranatstein, Who Killed Canadian History (1998).Osborne (2000b) points out that in 1990, then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declared that if Canadian history were taught better, "the nation would be healthier" (p. 6). Since then, the Conservative government under Steven Harper has interpreted this crisis in specifically neoconservative terms. ...
In Canada, cultural diversity has always been a contested cornerstone of citizenship and of citizenship education. In the last decade, a number of provinces, including Alberta and Ontario, have published citizenship and character education documents and social studies curricula in which ideas of cultural diversity are central and shape dominant understandings of nationhood. Meanwhile, the federal government produced its own citizenship education text: a study handbook for adult immigrants taking the citizenship test. Recognizing an interesting opportunity to compare how citizenship and diversity are presented to youth and to adult immigrants, we offer a critical analysis of the extent to which current discourses reflect, revise, or reassert those that were prominent in the past. We find that within educational curricula, liberal social justice discourses are taking a background to those that promote social cohesion and a narrow vision of Canadian identity and history and that de-emphasize progressive ideals of engaging with difference and committing to social action policies. At the provincial K-12 level, a neoliberal understanding of individual development and economic rationales is dominant, while at the federal level, there is also a shift toward neoconservatism that recovers the imperial roots of Canadian citizenship ideals while covering up the strong history of equity, diversity, and civic action.
... They also draw on a popular discourse that Canadians do not know their Canadian history, thus constructing a double crisis of identity and citizenship (Sears & Hyslop-Marginson, 2007). 3 Osborne (2000b) points out that throughout Canadian history there have been moments of crisis around how the past is taught. ...
... It is important to point out that the perceived crisis in history education was also a concern of the previous Liberal government, particularly after the publication of a provocative book by historian JackGranatstein, Who Killed Canadian History (1998).Osborne (2000b) points out that in 1990, then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declared that if Canadian history were taught better, "the nation would be healthier" (p. 6). Since then, the Conservative government under Steven Harper has interpreted this crisis in specifically neoconservative terms. ...
This paper presents a multi-voiced examination of educating for global citizenship from critical, interdisciplinary perspectives. The paper explores how insights from theoretical work on multiculturalism, race, religion, gender, language and literacy, and eco-justice can contribute to a critical global citizenship education practice. It reports the learning of a group of six Canadian PhD Candidates, who engaged in a year-long collaborative process to explore critical approaches to global citizenship education by focusing on key intersecting concerns, particularly critically understanding globalization. Drawing on theoretical considerations and discussions, the authors consider pedagogical implications for classroom teaching and learning.
... In the domain of academia, debate has focused on whether political, military, or social history should provide the predominant framework for historical accounts (Bliss, 1991-92;Dummitt, 2009;Granatstein;1998). In education, curriculum (Cardin, 2010;Éthier and Lefrançois, 2011;Granatstein, 1998;Létourneau, 2011;Neatby, 1953;Osborne, 2000;Osborne, 2003;Osborne, 2004;Osborne, 2006;Osborne, 2011) and textbooks (Conrad and Finkel, 2003;Clark, 2006;Clark, 2008;Clark, 2014;Helyar, 2014;Humphries, 1968) have been at the center of the storms. ...
Este artículo profundiza en los debates históricos y actuales en Canadá sobre la historia nacional y la enseñanza de la historia en el complicado escenario de trece jurisdicciones educativas de Canadá. En este trabajo se analizan los debates sobre los contenidos en la enseñanza de la historia y en los libros de texto, así como los enfoques en la escuela. Se analizan las formas en que un enfoque de pensamiento histórico está consolidándose en todo el país en el período actual, con una mayor atención a la investigación en la enseñanza de la historia y su difusión y su mayor presencia en los planes provinciales. Se considera el papel del gobierno federal en estos cambios, las organizaciones privadas sin fines de lucro, y los proyectos financiados por el gobierno nacional, tales como el Historical Thinking Project y The History Education Network.
... In this sense, schooling is an instrument in the enterprise of citizenship, providing an institutional implementation of modernist notions of equality and universality of opportunity, and is consequently criticized for enabling and propagating a status quo that benefits those who enjoy a degree of capital. However, while Isin and Wood's reminder of Marshall's exposure of the reproduction of inequities systemic in public education raises important alarm bells and Olssen's recognition of the unequal distribution of power within state sponsored school systems is significant, according to Osborne (2000), the process of creating national citizens has and will continue to be fraught with divergent and competing interpretations as schooling has never been a simple matter of imposing and reinforcing the hegemony of the dominant class. Yet, as identifies, there is a key paradox inherent to schooling. ...
This is complete issue compiled in one downloadable file.
... History is wrought by violent events, including wars and genocides. We would benefit from asking how teaching history can both face up to these difficult pasts while maintaining a sense of present-future efficacy (Osborne, 2000). Dissecting students and teachers' conceptualizations of evil opens up the potential to affect historical thinking and avoid fatalism, fostering agency and hope. ...
(with Kent den Heyer as co-author). We all have a sense of evil, but many of us do not ponder its nature or the ways in which our beliefs about evil shape what we teach and learn about the actions of citizens in historical or contemporary times. We argue that the word and concept of evil can be detrimental to the development of good citizens when it is used as a political and educational shibboleth to shut down critical thought about traumatic historical and contemporary events. Read through the work of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou, however, a pedagogical engagement with our understandings of evil offers an opportunity to learn from difficult events in a way that might inform contemporary action towards a less violent future. Full text available at: http://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/9166/7035
... In this sense, schooling is an instrument in the enterprise of citizenship, providing an institutional implementation of modernist notions of equality and universality of opportunity, and is consequently criticized for enabling and propagating a status quo that benefits those who enjoy a degree of capital. However, while Isin and Wood's reminder of Marshall's exposure of the reproduction of inequities systemic in public education raises important alarm bells and Olssen's recognition of the unequal distribution of power within state sponsored school systems is significant, according to Osborne (2000), the process of creating national citizens has and will continue to be fraught with divergent and competing interpretations as schooling has never been a simple matter of imposing and reinforcing the hegemony of the dominant class. Yet, as Glass (2000) identifies, there is a key paradox inherent to schooling. ...
Important and challenging theoretical debates and questions arising from considerations of the role of citizenship education in the current “global era” are evident in academic literature. Ultimately, our scholarly work must also engage with what happens in our elementary, secondary, and post-secondary classrooms. Much important scholarly attention is being directed to debates about the nature of globalization, and about national and, increasingly, global concepts of citizenship, multiculturalism, and social movements of global resistance. However, much of this work is done outside of a direct engagement with teachers, students, and classroom practices and is consequently left at a level of abstraction that appears disconnected from the day-to-day work of public schooling. Indeed, when working through significant theoretical interjections and conversations that engage with the complexities and possibilities to which we are drawn, we can never forget that the “what” and “how” of teaching and learning, and the values that circulate within classrooms, reflect the global movements of contemporary history and are shaped by a sense that we must take-up global issues. We must, therefore, recognize what Pashby (this issue) refers to as the global imperative that exerts particular pressure on educational theory, practice, policy, and politics. To do this we must struggle with questions of theory that inform our scholarly and our practical work as educators, be that practice in faculties of education or in K to 12 classrooms. This special themed issue presents important questions, concerns, and possibilities that mark both theoretical discourses and classroom practice.
... In this sense, schooling is an instrument in the enterprise of citizenship, providing an institutional implementation of modernist notions of equality and universality of opportunity, and is consequently criticized for enabling and propagating a status quo that benefits those who enjoy a degree of capital. However, while Isin and Wood's reminder of Marshall's exposure of the reproduction of inequities systemic in public education raises important alarm bells and Olssen's recognition of the unequal distribution of power within state sponsored school systems is significant, according to Osborne (2000), the process of creating national citizens has and will continue to be fraught with divergent and competing interpretations as schooling has never been a simple matter of imposing and reinforcing the hegemony of the dominant class. Yet, as Glass (2000) identifies, there is a key paradox inherent to schooling. ...
Educational theory and practice are contending with a sense that it is impera-tive to take-up "the global" in schools so as to promote a sense of global responsibility and global consciousness. A review of contemporary academic literature reveals particular tensions marking the mutually reinforcing rela-tionships between citizenship, diversity, and schooling. A main theme of this paper is the increasingly complex notion of "belonging" integral to demo-cratic citizenship and the related questions of inclusion and exclusion inher-ent to citizenship and schooling. By demonstrating that, despite particular paradoxes, citizenship continues to be called on as an ideal through which to push for social justice on local and global levels, the paper contends that a great deal is demanded of citizenship and citizenship education. This paper argues for a new, flexible theory of citizenship that interrogates the assump-tions on which a "neutral" notion of citizenship is based. In examining what is demanded of citizenship, the paper looks at what demands must be made of a notion of citizenship. The paper ends with a strong consideration of global citizenship education as an educational response to the global imperative.
Recent theories of historical consciousness focus on the role narration plays in contemporary people’s attempts to give meaning to the past and orient their practical life as citizens. This article examines the need for probing students’ historical ideas and for developing narrative competence as a way to engage them critically in contested memories of the collective past so as to expand their historical consciousness beyond memory and cultural traditions. Relying on a narrative approach, this study surveyed 635 French Canadian students from different regions of Canada. Canada, a multicultural state made up of nations-within (French, English, Indigenous), represents an interesting case for studying young citizens’ representations of the collective past in a highly diversified society. This study offers new results on how these learners think about national history in the 21st century, and it discusses the implications for the development of narrative competence as a way to bridge the divide between the “cultural curriculum” and “historical thinking.” We argue that history educators need to take more seriously students’ narrative ideas if they truly want to have a lasting impact on their historical learning.
There is significant evidence that artistic representations of the past are both popular and influential in shaping people’s sense of history. Artistic representations such as fiction, commemorative art, and historical visual art surround our students and convey historical information to them. They are historical sources, but they are also constructed accounts designed to convey particular messages, and they should be treated as both. There are many reasons for including the arts in the teaching of history. First, the arts are powerfully engaging. They spark a sense of wonder about lives lived in the past. Second, they help us probe below the surface of events in order to thoroughly explore human agency. They help students see the connections between history and contemporary concerns and broaden their understandings of, and empathy with, historical agents’ circumstances, including motives, desires, ambitions, limitations, and opportunities. Third, the arts can shape collective memory and historical consciousness.
The lovely image at the beginning of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners (1974) introduces the narrative by evoking the classic image of the river of time. As the main character Morag’s search for personal independence moves forward by looking back in time, remembering and reconstructing her life, the story travels across the land and circles back from the Red River of her childhood to the narrative present’s “River of Now and Then” in Ontario. The cultural significance derived from the role of rivers in the colonization, settlement, and eventual creation of Canada, as depicted in Donald Creighton’s Seven Rivers that Made Canada, is captured in Morag’s analogy: “Land. A river. Log house nearly a century old, built by great pioneering couple, Simon and Sarah Cooper. History. Ancestors.”2
This article highlights the contested nature of public commemoration in Canada. Vigorous grassroots enthusiasm for commemoration is compared with the evolving commitment of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, one of Canada's senior players in national commemoration. The article begins by pointing to the ongoing attention to history that pervades contemporary movement politics among the First Nations, ethnocultural groups, women, and workers. It next considers recent popular efforts at commemoration, with a particular focus on those targeting ethnic and racial injustice, violence against women, and the invisibility of workers. It then considers the role of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada from its founding in 1919 to the present. Ultimately, it asks what grassroots and official actors in historical commemoration contribute to the maintenance of public memory. © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History. All rights reserved.
Donalda Dickie's name is synonymous with the development of progressive education in English Canada, yet little has been written about her life and work. This biography reclaims Dickie's life from the scattered sources she left behind, suggesting that her career illustrates how women provided leadership in education in the first half of the twentieth century, when they were largely excluded from positions of formal authority. Through normal school teaching, textbook writing, curriculum and program development, and other strategies, Dickie promulgated her views on learning and teaching to a wide audience to make a significant contribution to Canadian education. Le nom de Donalda Dickie est synonyme d'enseignement progressif au Canada anglais, mais rares sont les écrits sur sa vie et son œuvre. Cette biographie, qui reconstitue la vie de Mme Dickie à partir de sources éparses, semble indiquer que sa carrière illustre comment les femmes ont fait preuve de leadership en éducation au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle, période durant laquelle elles étaient néanmoins exclues des postes d'autorité. À travers son enseignement, les manuels qu'elle a rédigé, les programmes scolaires qu'elle a élaboré et d'autres stratégies, Donalda Dickie a fait connaître sa vision de l'apprentissage et de l'enseignement à un vaste auditoire, apportant ainsi une importante contribution à l'éducation au Canada. Mots clés : biographie, pédagogues chargés de la formation à l'enseignement, enseignement progressif, éducation en Alberta.
This paper examines the debate over the teaching of Canadian history that has been in progress in Canada since the early 1990s. It considers four criticisms: schools do not teach enough Canadian history and students, therefore, do not know it; the history that is taught is no longer sufficiently national; social history has destroyed the old nation-building narrative and dwells on the negative rather than the positive aspects of Canada's past; and child-centred teaching and other pedagogical fashions have led teachers to devalue factual knowledge. Finally, it examines the proposals that have been advanced for the reform of history teaching in Canada.
The purpose of this article is to discuss three ideas which seem to have had a profound influence in making the social studies curriculum what it is: the belief that one must begin all teaching and learning from the child's everyday experience, the distinction between natural and formal education, and the distinction between socializing and educating. The best-known exposition of these ideas can be found in the writings of John Dewey, particularly Education and Democracy; the author focuses on those parts of Dewey's overall thesis which provide some fundamental ideas on which the present social studies curriculum stands, with the intention of showing the frailty of those foundations.
At a 1998 Education Industry Summit, Charles Ivey was perplexed that so little of his dream of privatizing Canadian education had come to pass. A high school dance, with the boys on one side of the gym and the girls on the other, was his metaphor of choice. But, as Ms. Robertson points out, the partners have already found each other, and the music's getting faster.
In his book Who Killed Canadian History ? (1998), J.L. Granatstein accuses Canadian academic historians of having abandoned the writing of a national past in favour of overspenalized and ideologically driven forms of history. This article contends that in the interests of polemic, he miscasts the role of the scholar as citizen, misrepresents the purpose of scholarship, and distorts the nature and quality of academic historical writing. In doing so, he puts forward a conception of Canada’s ‘national’ history that is no better suited to serve national self-understanding than the scholarship he dismisses. His narrow and traditional view of national history ignores the impact of geopolitical conditions on the world of scholarly interpretation. Nominally without ideological purpose, it can be viewed instead as part of the process of political legitimation. His construction of the important ‘facts’ of Canadian history ignores the way event-driven facts arc inseparable from considerations of value and therefore from the realm of the interpretive. Finally, by ignoring contemporary works of international historiography and structural determinants of professionalization, his polemic is largely written in an intellectual and contextual vacuum.
Abstract: Dans son livre Who Killed Canadian History? (Qui a tue ľhistoire canadienne?) [1998]. J.L. Granatslein accuse les historiens universitaires canadiens de ne plus ecrire sur le passe national mais sur des formes ďhistoire tres specialisees et fondees sur une ideologie. Cet article sourient que, dans le but ďalimenter la polemique. Granatstein attribue a tort au chercheur le role de citoyen, qu’il represente faussement le but de la recherche universitaire et qu’il deforme la nature et la qualite des ouvrages historiques ecrits par les universitaires. Ce faisant, il met de l’avant une conception de ľhistoire «nationale» du Canada qui ne convient pas mieux a la promotion ďune autocomprehension nationale que la recherche universitaire qu’il rejette. Sa vision etroite et traditionnelle de ľhistoire nationale ignore ľimpact des conditions geopolitiques sur le monde de ľinterpretation universitaire. Cette derniere etant essentiellement depourvue de but ideologique, on peut au contraire la voir comme faisant partie du processus de legitimation politique. La construction que fait Granatstein des «faits» importants est inseparable de considerations fondees sur la valeur et appartient donc au domaine de l’interpretation. Enfin, en ignorant des ouvrages contemporains ďhistoriographie internationale et des determinants structuraux de la professionnalisation, sa polemique s’inscrit largement dans un vide intellectuel et contextuel.
Social studies in North America has most often been defined as being fundamentally concerned with preparing students for participation in civic life. Much of the research on citizenship education, however, has been conducted in the United States. Many of the findings of this research have often been applied to Canadian situations despite different political structures and understandings of citizenship in the two nations. In this article, I review the research on citizenship education in English Canada that has been conducted since Hodgett’s landmark 1988 study What Culture? What Heritage? A summary of research findings and suggestions for further research are provided.