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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ColumnsVoices from the Past by Ken Osborne - Primary Sources: A New Old Method of Teaching History The Iconoclast by John McMurtry - Seeing Through The Corporate Agenda On Campus Quebec Report by Jon G. Bradley - History as Poetry | |||||||||||||||||
ArticlesHistory Teaching
in Alberta Schools: Perspectives and Prospects Reading Autobiographies,
Memoirs, and Fictional Accounts in the Classroom: Is it Social Studies? | |||||||||||||||||
Book ReviewsEllen Rose. 2000. Hyper
Texts: The Language and Culture of Educational Computing. Faye Reineberg Holt. 2000. Sharing
the Good Times: A History of Prairie Women's Joys and Pleasures. Edmund O'Sullivan. 1999.Transformative
Learning: Educational Vision for the 21st Century. Bobbie Kalman. 2002. Charles Foster. 2000.Stardust
and Shadows: Canadians in Early Hollywood. John Hagan. 2001.Northern
Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineberg. Editors.
(2000). Knowing Teaching
& Learning History. | |||||||||||||||||
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 EditorCasualties of War As this issue of Canadian Social Studies is posted online, the United States seems poised to lead a "coalition of the willing" into a war on Iraq, and the "new world order" that George Bush Sr. proclaimed in the early 1990's has taken on a much more menacing tone than could have been imagined a decade ago. In the face of the likelihood of an American-led invasion of Iraq, it is important to be mindful of US Senator Hiram Johnson's warning, issued in 1917, that " when it comes to war, the first casualty is truth." Of course in the last 86 years there has been a wealth of bitter experience to demonstrate how well Johnson understood conflict among states; in some senses, we are all "casualties of war"-as is informed public discourse. But given the probability of war and the campaign of disinformation that is its inevitable companion, key questions emerge about our collective and individual responsibilities as social studies educators. How will we encourage and maintain a vigorous and critical discussion about the war among our students? How will we find and make available a balanced range of source material about the conflict? How should we react to the concerns and fears our students express about the war? And finally, how should we respond to the war ourselves, and as a social studies community? These questions are all the more critical to ask because the terrain of social studies teaching has changed dramatically in the last decade-and not for the better. Results based education, high stakes testing and the rhetoric of "accountability" have significantly decreased the time and curricular space available to teachers in which to take up important issues of current concern. I think it is safe to say that this neo-liberal environment has led to the substantial disenfranchisement of the discipline. Ironically, at the same time that discourses of standardization have effectively narrowed the horizons of social studies to test preparation, social studies classrooms across the country have become much more diverse places and the range of world-views we see among students has never been greater. Unfortunately, the unremitting focus on results-based education has left many social studies teachers ill-prepared to take advantage of the possibilities increasing ethno-cultural diversity has for reengaging the discipline in an investigation of significant social issues such as war. It seems to me that the impending confrontation in Iraq offers us
an important choice as social studies educators. We can continue to
follow the dictates of standardization and results-based education-in
which case the Iraqi conflict will be a subject for teaching rather
than inquiry. Or we can respond to Johnson's implicit challenge to
inquire deeply and broadly into the nature of received truth at times
of great social upheaval. I think in this latter course of action
we return to the historical roots of social studies, open ourselves
to a rich and diverse discourse on the nature of the public good,
and rediscover our moral purpose. The Editor |
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