This is the fourth in a
series of interviews with Canadians who are influential in the teaching
of history. The first interviewee was Peter Seixas, who discussed
the establishment of the Center for the Study of Historical Consciousness
in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia
(Spring, 2001). Dr. Seixas talked about the importance of helping
students view historical knowledge as a dynamic and often conflicting
set of stories which must be carefully interpreted and critically
examined in order to answer questions that are relevant to contemporary
issues.
The second interviewee
was Mark Starowicz, the Executive Producer of the CBC/Radio Canada
series, Canada: A People's History, which is being used extensively
in schools (Winter, 2002). Mr. Starowicz discussed the use of a narrative
approach in promoting our "epic past." His aim is to draw
students into the past through the power of compelling stories.
The third interviewee
was Rudyard Griffiths, the Executive Director of the Dominion Institute,
an organization that promotes the teaching of Canadian history in
Canadian schools (Fall, 2002). Mr. Griffiths discussed the three-pronged
efforts of the institute: the Memory Project, which encourages contact
between war veterans and students; lobbying activities aimed at the
development of national standards for school history curricula; and
creation of projects which popularize Canadian history.
In this issue I interview
Barry Lindahl, a secondary school social studies teacher in British
Columbia and recent recipient of the Prime Minister's Award of Teaching
Excellence.
You are the recipient
of the Prime Minister's Award of Teaching Excellence (2000). Could
you tell me what this award is?
The award, which was presented
on Parliament Hill in 2001, was for recognition of teaching excellence.
It can be for a body of work or as recognition of a particular year.
I'm not certain that ANYONE deserves this kind of recognition. I know
I have left classes since thinking THAT WAS NOT AWARD WINNING… My
award came as a result of a wonderful parent, Carol Ann Jackson, who
spearheaded the gathering and collation of the data necessary to prove
that I was worthy of such an honour. Parents, fellow staff members,
students and administrative personnel wrote recommendations and that
was the "real win." Every teacher should receive a booklet
like this from the people they serve. I never expected to win. I had
heard that it was one teacher from a province in each year. However,
in 2000, three teachers won from British Columbia. The phone call
from Ottawa one morning in April made my career!
Where, and what courses
do you teach?
Lately I have taught Social
Studies 10, 11 and History 12. As well, I mentor new teachers of Social
Studies. I find that if I give them the gems of the courses, their
classes come up to speed in a very short timeframe. I was also responsible
to train the school staff and run district workshops in the new technology.
(Almost everyone in my department has and uses a large screen television
in the classroom.) I HAVE taught Art, Reading, English, Asia Pacific
Studies and Economics. I teach at West Vancouver Secondary School
but I have taught the educably mentally retarded in Penticton as well
as English and Social Studies in North Vancouver. As well, the federal
government has offered to subsidize the costs of all Prime Minister
Award of Teaching Excellence winners to talk to any school district
in Canada. This is something I plan to do in the near future.
How long have you taught
secondary school social studies?
I have taught for a little
over 30 years and with the exception of six months in Penticton High
School and six months at Balmoral in North Vancouver, it has all been
at West Vancouver Secondary.
What, in your opinion,
are crucial qualities for an effective history teacher?
The qualities that are
crucial for a history teacher are very similar to the qualities necessary
for any teacher. I was a principal of summer school for a while and
in that capacity I was able to walk into the classrooms of the teachers
I had hired. The commonality between the different departments was
amazing! You have to love your subject. You have to be knowledgeable
about your subject. You also have to like and respect students. You
have to be enthusiastic about your subject. You have to want students
to feel the same way about your course. Lastly, it has to be enjoyable
for the teacher. If a teacher is indifferent to what he is doing,
the year is very long and his career is very embittering.
In your opinion, should
history be part of a social studies curriculum or a separate subject?
I teach in the best of
all worlds. History 12 is a separate subject and that is great! Social
studies is a combination of a number of components and it gives the
students a survey of information. Both work. Not every student takes
a whole history course. All students are required to take Social Studies
1-11 [in British Columbia]. This gives students who have no interest
a "smattering" before other faculties whisk them away.
I fear more tampering
by individuals who seemingly have little or no understanding of the
courses they dismember. History 12, "Twentieth Century History,"
had World War One removed! What events during the twentieth century
are more important? Who would remove it? By decree a teacher of twentieth
century history should omit the first twenty percent of the century!
I must admit that I haven't. I still teach it. Every history teacher
I know still teaches it even though it is not part of the provincial
curriculum. How can you understand "the world of 1919" if
you don't know the circumstances that led to 1919? What historian
made the decision? Will the Great Depression or World War Two be next?
Yes, it is difficult
to understand that decision. I once asked someone from the Ministry
of Education why that particular decision was made. His response was
that the latest curriculum had to include events from the latter part
of the twentieth century, and therefore there was no longer time to
include World War One. To answer your question, it seems logical to
conclude from that reasoning that, yes, indeed, the Great Depression
and World War Two could be next!
How do you make history
engaging for your students?
How do I make history
engaging? History IS engaging. I have history to work with. It has
poignant stories, colossal mistakes or wonderful irony. It is engaging!
I've got John A. Macdonald or General Haig or Isaac Brock to work
with. I have a man who has just lost his best friend, writing "In
Flanders Fields." I've got Trudeau! It's life! If I do it right,
it's magic…
The material has also
been enhanced with a great number of PowerPoint presentations that
go along with these vignettes. I've hunted around and found photographs
and audio or video clips that tell the events as well. It's been a
few thousand hours but now the whole department is using them. Teachers
as far away as Australia are using the PowerPoints. They make it possible
for students who could not normally take history because of its high
reading and writing components to be successful in the class. Students
can get a hard copy of the outline of notes - complete with pictures,
from the school server. The History 12 course at West Vancouver Secondary
has consistently had the highest participation rates of any history
course in the province. The examination results even with the high
participation rate are still well above the provincial average.
My job is to make people
long-dead walk around the classroom for the period. For the 77-minute
class, ideally these historic characters will visit each student and
reveal a time in history. I consciously try to inject emotion into
that period. That emotion can be sadness, laughter, or anything that
will spark their memories to remember the time or event and its importance.
I know that a class on the battle of the Somme or Vietnam has been
good if a few of the students are crying as they leave the room. They
are now a part of the past. They now understand and feel the past.
I will use dialogues between characters, complete with horrible accents
and exaggerated body movements - occasionally I put on a period costume.
You mentioned photographs
and audio or video clips that you have located and incorporated into
PowerPoint presentations. Do you have students examine other primary
source documents?
Many of the primary source documents are embedded into the PowerPoint
presentations. They include 19th and 20th century political cartoons
and excerpts of documents. Other documents are simply distributed
in class. My classroom is also a bit of a museum - military medals,
helmets, historic posters, artillery shells and assorted historic
bric-a-brac. There's even a Nazi German savings bond with unclipped
certificates!
Where do authorized
textbooks fit within your approach?
Authorized textbooks play
an important role. We don't use a textbook in class. It is used at
home. Students are expected to use secondary resources in their studying
and their research.
Have you used the new
CBC/Radio Canada series, Canada: A People's History?
I'm afraid my opinion
of Canada: A People's History is not completely positive. I
waited for months for the series to start. It was politically correct.
They missed many of the best stories but those they did were always
politically correct... I haven't used it. I never realized that history
had to be politically correct even if events were omitted to illustrate
an incorrect overview. I've worked with Roy Hayter at Shadow Films
and I keep hoping that the series we've drafted will go. It involves
the 49th parallel and the effect of Americans coming across the border
throughout the centuries.
Could you elaborate
on your comments about Canada: A People's History? How is it
politically correct? What are some "of the best stories"
that they missed?
There could be a number
of examples but I guess I could mention Jacques Cartier. Cartier was
portrayed as a hero and he was. He was a hero who was, with reason,
frightened of the First Nations peoples. He had taken Verrazano's
position after Verrazano was eaten by the Carib Indians. If you watch
the Cartier segments his hostage taking and ultimate desertion of
Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval when he believed he found
gold and diamonds was downplayed or omitted. Cartier was human and
was portrayed as perfect... This was a trend that perpetuated itself
throughout the series. I have not viewed the series since it appeared
originally on TV. At the time I was disappointed; there were only
fragments that I could use in my class. I sat my two daughters down
in front of the TV sure that they would witness a masterpiece. Ken
Burns had illustrated the Civil War in the United States, surely this
would be even better. After three hours I would have had to use duct
tape to keep my girls in a chair. That said, it is probably the best
of what is out there. What is that saying? Perhaps Roy Hayter will
be given a shot to add to what is available some day. It's a big responsibility
to do the entire history of a country - too big.
Why is it important
for students to learn about history?
Why is history important?
It is the communal knowledge of history that welds a country together.
We as a species have refused to learn history. We watch Schindler's
List and then allow a Rwanda or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
Our dual histories in Canada seem to be splitting us apart. Why is
history important? I guess it all can be brought down to Bill Murray
and George Santayana. Both have dealt with the same theme. Bill Murray
starred in the film Groundhog Day; he was forced to repeat
a single day until he got it right - perfected it. Santayana said
if man didn't learn from the past, he was condemned to repeat it.
History is important so that man can finally move on to day two of
our Groundhog Day. We've been very slow in catching on... The teaching
of history may one day allow us to move ahead. There is little more
important than history.
It is important, then,
for history teachers to help students make connections to present
events and dilemmas?
Teaching history IS bringing
up dilemmas and making connections. . . It is important for students
to be put into the shoes of the past. How could a nation fall for
a Hitler? How could they be so stupid? When you walk them through
the time and allow them to see the time, they know that all societies
have to guard against the perils of leaders given absolute power.
Historian Veronica
Boix-Mansilla has cautioned against making simplistic
linkages between past and present; that is, using the past as a blueprint
for interpreting the present. Rather, we need to encourage students
to develop
working hypotheses which can guide their examination of contemporary
events
and issues. Comments?
Simplicity is not the
answer, it is a means of observing some clarity in a sea of intricacy.
Boix-Mansilla has a point in her fear of simplistic linkages. Unfortunately,
without SOME of those linkages, we will have nothing to base or to
weigh our future. Caution is the key to any link.
Historian J.L. Granatstein
and others have argued for the inclusion of more
Canadian history in the school curriculum as a way of promoting a
stronger
sense of national identity. Do you agree?
I could not agree more!
We have had problems in Canada. When you ask students about our national
identity, they are hard pressed to give examples. Granatstein is on
the right track. The step that has to precede Granatstein's is the
training of social studies teachers. Too often, social studies
is seen as a course that anyone can teach. ANYONE can teach social
studies or history badly. More bad history or more boring history
would defeat the whole concept. Canada's history is alive. Our cast
of characters is second to none. Madeline de Vercheres! Dollard des
Ormeaux! Walsh! Piapot! Awcheewan! Sam Hughes! Curry! The lessons
they teach are timeless. They are our lessons - a part of our national
identity and heritage.
What can the universities
do to better prepare teachers of history and social studies?
Hire me! The university
does a great job giving the student teacher methods of instruction.
They come with a whole arsenal of different ways of reaching students
through shared learning. History courses at university give overviews
in many cases. Have you ever fallen asleep reading a university textbook?
The information doesn't improve when you transfer it into a lesson.
You don't really learn what a teenager will eat up until you happen
upon that beautifully visual history of some event. Pierre Berton
is a teacher's saviour for that. (In fact I got a chance to thank
him for his contribution to my career a few years back.) Hannon and
his book The Discoverers is marvelous. Student teachers ideally
would come into the schools already up to speed. Look at high school
textbooks; they are worse. In their first years of working teachers
may be a only a few pages ahead of the students when they teach. This
is unnecessary. I've been mentoring the new members of my department.
I can give them the vignettes that are powerful enough to capture
students. We work at noon or after school and within weeks classes
can be turned around. Give me a class of prospective social studies
teachers and they would be equipped with the information they
need to be successful.
There is one method that
is not taught and in the past decades it has been receiving a bad
name - the lecture. It is powerful. It is extremely powerful. Done
poorly, students watching can quickly lose their collective wills
to live. At university I can remember only a few good lecturers. The
good ones were wonderful. Listen to Paul Byron at West Van High and
then tell me that the lecture is boring. These are skills that can
and should be taught.
We can teach students
about the connections between the past and the present, but how do
we encourage them to actually want to make a difference?
Hopelessness is a fantastic
anchor. At West Vancouver Secondary we have been blessed recently
with a student who proved the power of one. This student reaffirmed
a belief that had grown rather dim in me over the years. When he was
in grade 12 Simon Jackson managed to save a species (The Spirit Bear).
He didn't know that what he was doing was impossible. After graduation
from school, he put his life on hold to continue to save the bear.
If that white bear still exists in the next century, it can thank
a little boy who originally got his elementary school class to write
letters to the government. This student was named by Time magazine
as a "saviour of the planet." Simon still comes in to talk
to our student body. We use him as an example of the power of one.
Our job is to destroy the idea of "I can't." There are a
thousand examples in history of those who said "I MUST."
Our job is to let loose the anchor.
"Let loose the
anchor." That is a striking metaphor. Perhaps, on that note,
we will stop. I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts
with me, and with the readers of Canadian Social Studies.
Your questions were wonderful.
I'm not certain that I've given them justice. Thanks for the experience.
It was fun.
Penney Clark is an Associate
Professor (Social Studies Education) in the Department of Curriculum
Studies at the University of British Columbia