CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
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| Canadian Social Studies is an indexed, refereed
journal published quarterly on-line at the University of Alberta. It
is a journal of comment and criticism on social education and publishes
articles on curricular issues relating to history, geography, social
sciences, and social studies. Canadian Social Studies is under copyright. Unless otherwise designated, permission is granted to download and distribute individual student copies of anything in this journal as long as it is for non-profit educational use in the classroom. Copyright permission includes the requirement to include the following on the first page of any duplicated material: "Canadian Social Studies, www.quasar.ualberta.ca/css Canada's national social studies journal - by permission." All other duplication or distribution requires the editor's permission. |
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| George Richardson - Editor | |||||||||||||
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Editorial Board | Previous Issues | Indexing Services | Manuscript Guidelines |
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Columns Voices from the
Past by Ken Osborne - "New History for Old": Lorne Pierce
and the Teaching of Canadian History The Front Line
by David Kilgour - Younger Canadians and the Post-September 11th
World | |||||||||||||
ArticlesTeaching
Canadian National History Engaging the Field:
A Conversation with Mark Starowicz | |||||||||||||
Book ReviewsRoland Case and Penney Clark (eds). 1997. The
Canadian Anthology of Social Studies: Issues and Strategies for Teachers. Rod Petersun, Les Asselstine, Wendy Dubois, Norma Luks,
Judy Morrison and Bob Shields. 1996-97 Tapestry:
A Canadian Social Studies Program, Levels 4 - 6. Robert A. Stebbins. 2000. The
French Enigma: Survival and Development in Canada's Francophone Societies. Jeffrey Simpson. 2000. Star-Spangled
Canadians: Canadians Living the American Dream. Bob Davis. 2000. Skills
Mania: Snake Oil in Our Schools? Phyllis R. Freeman and Jan Zlotnik Schmidt (eds). 2000.
Wise Women - Reflections of Teachers
of Midlife.
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Editorial BoardEditor |
Features Editors |
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Indexing ServicesArticles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life and by the Canadian Education Association; Corpus Almanac & Canadian Sourcebook; Ulrich's lnt. Pedcs. Directory; ERIC; Canadian Education Index, Micromedia Limited; and H. W. Wilson Company. |
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From the EditorThe Uses of the Past: The Importance of Teaching History in Ahistorical Times In his novel, England, England, Julian Barnes raises the question of what history is and what the "uses" of the past are, observing
In Canada, questions about the content, methodology and purpose of history teaching remain very much at issue in the public domain. As Barnes suggests, we have a deeply felt need to find ways to live with ourselves, and history is placed in the service of that need. Unfortunately, if the criticisms leveled against history teaching in J. L. Granatstein's 1998 work, Who Killed Canadian History? or the (predictably) disastrous results of the Dominion Institute's annual Canada Day Quiz, are any reliable gauge of the success of education in meeting this need, it would seem that school teachers, academics, and public officials have generally failed to develop in students anything like the "common imagining" of the nation that Benedict Anderson (1991) describes as the mythic force binding a state together. The concerns Granatstein and the Dominion Institute—among others—raise certainly suggest the necessity to question the content, methodology, and intent of history teaching in Canada. But are these concerns new, and do they point to the existence of some kind of "crisis" in the teaching of Canadian history? In many ways it could be argued that concern over history teaching is, itself, a historically recurring phenomenon related to ongoing questions about what pedagogies are most appropriate to enliven the discipline, or responding to significant changes in the social fabric of the nation. As an example of the former, an Alberta public school inspector made the following observation in 1910, "the treatment of history by many teachers is faulty from the fact that they spend too much time on unimportant details and fail to impress the minds of their pupils with the main action of the drama of the past and its intimate connection with the present" (Embree, 1952, nd). The impact of the latter was well expressed by E. D. Hodgetts in his 1968 work What History, What Heritage? when he noted, "it is both futile and undesirable to search for it [some kind of consensus view of the nation's history] in a vast, multi-ethnic country like Canada" (1968, 119). But despite the obvious similarities between current and past concerns over history teaching, I think it is fair to say that today there is a crisis in history teaching. However, unlike Granatstein and supporters of the Dominion Institute, I see the crisis in broader terms. As we move further into the 21st Century, there are unique forces—among them a form of decontextualized individualism born of an unfortunate confluence of liberalism and globalization—at play in society that have combined to promote the growth of a kind of ahistoricism (Beiner, 1997; Giddens, 2000; Putnam, 2000). Among other things, this ahistoricism results in the perception that "the past is another country," somehow divorced from and irrelevant to the insistent demands of the present and the urgent need to cope with a future that is approaching all too quickly. However, as the philosopher Hans-georg Gadamer reminds us, the artificial division between self and world that characterizes this perception and suggests that individuals can somehow stand outside of history is false and dangerous:
For Gadamer, our identities are constructed in relation to others and realize themselves in communities. In the absence of community, society risks degeneration into what philosopher Albert Borgmann terms a "cancerous" form of individualism in which people live "in a state of narcissism and pursue loneliness" (1992, 3). But community is more than a contemporary social structure composed of interacting groups and individuals; it has a chronological dimension that is bound up with traditions and historically grounded understandings. As Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor notes,
What is more, history, or rather the study of history, serves as an important component of the infrastructure of civic society. As historians Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob remind us, "the effort to establish a historical truth itself fosters civility. Since no one can be certain that his or her explanations are definitively right, everyone must listen to other voices. All histories are provisional; none will have the last word" (Appleby, Hunt and Jacob, 1997, 217). Philosopher of education Eamonn Callan (1994) makes much the same point when he notes that a clear-eyed examination of the past produces what he terms the "emotional generosity" that allows diverse groups to live together in one society. Lacking such a predisposition, and without the benefit of the study of history, Callan warns, "politics in a society in which public emotions have largely atrophied will tend to become a matter of apathy and cynicism" (1994, 191). The question, then, is not so much why study history—the dangers of ahistoricism are far too apparent—but, instead, how to approach the study of history. Should it be in the context of public story telling held in service of the development of Anderson's "common imagining" of the nation, or should it be in the context of developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes deemed necessary for active and responsible participation in civic society? Taken together, many of the contributors to this issue focus on the important question of the "uses of the past" in contemporary education. Michael Bliss, arguably the preeminent Canadian historian in English-speaking Canada, suggests that it is critical that Canadians are made aware of the "public events of our common history." For Peter Seixas, whose work on historical consciousness has made important contributions to the field of history teaching in Canada, history teaching serves a double purpose: the development of a deep understanding of the past as well as an in-depth appreciation of the "processes" of knowledge making in history. Finally, Mark Starowicz, producer of the immensely successful and award winning series Canada: A People's History takes up the question of how popular history can become a vehicle through which Canadians of all ages can become engaged in their own history. References Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin
and spread of Appleby, J., Hunt, L., and Jacob, M. 1997. "Telling the truth
about history." In K. Jenkins Barnes, J. 1998. England, England. Toronto: Vintage. Beiner, R. 1997. Philosophy in a time of lost spirit: Essays on contemporary
theory. Borgmann, A. 1992. Crossing the postmodern divide. Chicago: University
of Callan, E. 1994. "Beyond sentimental civic education."
American Journal of Education Embree, D. 1952. The beginning and growth of instruction in social
studies provided by Gallagher, Shaun. 1992. Hermeneutics and education. Albany: State University of New York Press. Giddens, A. 2000. Runaway world: How globalization is reshaping our
lives. London: Granatstein, J. L. 1998. Who killed Canadian history. Toronto: HarperCollins. Hodgetts, A. B. 1968. What culture? What heritage? Toronto: OISE Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of self: The making of modern identity.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press. The Editor |
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