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This essay appeared in the 1999 edition of Great Questions of Canada.
Article Two by Jack Granatstein - How We Teach History Matters Most
One of the unintended joys of writing is that no matter how clear a writer tries to be, no matter how explicitly he sets out his position, readers will see in his text whatever they want. Thus, according to Michael Ignatieff last week, it seems I want history to be "a civics lesson, a bracing lesson in patriotism, with little room for tales of suffering or dissent."
What kind of history of Canada would it be "that would exclude the bitterly divisive debates about conscription ?", he asks. The answer, of course, is bad history. Any history that sets out simply to pound patriotism into children's heads is by definition biased, twisted, and dreadful. No professional historian wants to see this happen.
The history taught in the schools should be history, warts and all. And yes, conscription, an issue that tore French and English Canadians apart in 1917, 1942, and again in 1944, should be in the curriculum, as Mr. Ignatieff suggests. As the author who has unquestionably written more on the subject than anyone else, as the co-author of textbooks that cover the subject at length, I could scarcely say anything else. (After all, I want my books to sell!)
Mr. Ignatieff and I also agree that while institutional history must be "the core of any national history," institutional history is not enough. The history we teach has to include immigrants, workers, aboriginal peoples, and orphans, exactly as he says.
But what my counterpart does not seem to realize is that the core --"the politics, diplomacy and warfare which led to the creation of British North America and the Canadian political system"-- has been largely excised from our schools and universities. So, too, has the political, diplomatic, and military history of post-Confederation Canada. One professor in Ottawa brags that he teaches on post-Confederation Canada without ever mentioning Mackenzie King, to cite but one example of the energetic editing of our past.
The social historians whom Mr. Ignatieff rightly praises for putting the ordinary people into our history are, regrettably, the same historians who simultaneously removed the political leaders, diplomats, and generals.
And the bureaucrats who set the curricula for our schools have cheerfully gone along with this for their own social engineering purposes: the elimination of any controversy that might offend students and parents, and an emphasis on the sins of Canadians so they can create a mythical city on the hill.
In those provinces where Canadian history is still a compulsory course in high school, scant attention is paid to anything but social history. And much of the teaching focuses on the maltreatment of aboriginals and immigrants, the abuse of women, and the evils of capitalism. I agree all these issues must be studied, but I oppose the blatant indoctrination our schools practice. Far from teaching patriotism, our schools now focus almost exclusively on historical ills.
"What kind of history would it be that talked only of [the] darker and more difficult sides of our past?," Mr. Ignatieff asks. Bad history, of course, political correctness carried to ludicrous extremes. It would be — and is — history that teaches Canadians, native-born and recent arrivals, their country is an abomination.
Unfortunately, that is the history that is today being taught to Canadian children. Yet, to anyone with eyes to see, Canada is not a failure, but an overwhelming success. What is happening in our schools is political indoctrination, grounded in unbalanced historical nonsense.
All I have ever wanted for Canadian history is that it be presented to students in a balanced way. It is certainly true that when Mr. Ignatieff first taught in university twenty years ago, and when I first taught more than thirty years ago, the teaching of Canadian history was mired in the mud. It was the boring old tale of "colony to nation", and heavy on the central Canadian story. I can understand why his British Columbian students (and mine in Ontario) found this unengaging.
Nevertheless, unlike Mr. Ignatieff, I think Canadians should know this story whether they live in BC or Newfoundland. Americans certainly seem to think it important to teach children about the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies in the long-dead eighteenth century, even if they live in fin de millennium Arizona or Oregon. British schools teach Scottish children about the Magna Charta, though it may not help them "make sense of the photographs in their family albums," to borrow Mr. Ignatieff's phrase. Why shouldn't BC schools teach about William Lyon Mackenzie and William Lyon Mackenzie King, or Ontario schools teach about Amor de Cosmos and W. A. C. Bennett?
If history is to be "a lesson in truth," as Mr. Ignatieff proposes, then Canadian schools must teach about Canada, all of Canada. The story of the workers and women must be taught, as well as the history of Mike Pearson, the world wars, conscription, and Canadian-American relations. And, yes, just as Mr. Ignatieff says, balance demands that differing interpretations be presented to students for them to argue about. That is how we learn and that is how we strive to uncover the truth. History is indeed "the story of our arguments", and the difficulty of discovering the truth about those arguments.
But let us never pretend that history is the high road to reconciliation -- the past is contentious, full of crimes and betrayals. We study it to learn how our predecessors lived and erred and, if we can, to learn from their mistakes in the (often vain) hope we will not repeat them.
No one wants schools to teach the pabulum of an authorized version of the Canadian past. Indeed, there is no authorized version, and there never will be, so long as we are a democracy. There is, for example, no single interpretation of the history of French-English relations in Canada, and I know of no historian who would suggest there ought to be. The history I teach and write --much of which deals with French-English relations -- is usually (sanely!) revisionist, arguing a strong thesis and positing (or trying to) an argument that challenges conventional wisdom. By suggesting that I want schools to teach one-sided patriotic mush, Michael Ignatieff has set up a straw man and demolished it. But this bears no relation to the history that I maintain must be taught in our schools.
Let me be as clear as I can. History happened, and it must not be twisted out of shape for present-day purposes. Our schools need to teach the history of Canada and they need to teach more of it. Canadian history must not be used for indoctrination, but must be presented warts and all. Teachers should strive to show where we failed -- our treatment of the aboriginal peoples, for example -- and where we succeeded -- for example, the peaceful integration of millions of immigrants. They should teach social history and political history. They should teach about the regions and about Canada as a whole. In other words, they should be balanced.
That is the kind of history any sensible politician, educator, or parent would want. The real mystery is why we Canadians do not teach history this way.