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[3 Replies] From: Ted Smith [notlimey@yahoo.ca] A very old debate indeed .... Canadian history was considered boring in my day because it was clearly imitative of other national histories, a kind of bush-league version of U.S. or British stories. The Americans had a revolution, so we had to build 1837 into a simulacram of this .... we had the war of 1812, but were taught at the same time that it was after all, only a side-show to the struggle with Napoleon. Then war went out of fashion (with educational theorists and our intellectual elites, if not with students themselves) and we began to teach our new national religion of diversity. How to teach a history of country which has decided there is no there, there, or rather, here, here? The problem lies with our ambivalence to nationalism and to narrative history. History captures the imagination of non-scholars when it tells a riveting tale. We had a national 'tale', the old colony to nation story, but it was a bore compared to the kings, battles, wars and passions of our geographic and cultural neighbours - the Americans, the English and the French. We have some fascinating character studies in our past - but these tales were considered too incorrect to tell High School or elementary school pupils. What story do we have to tell now? Oh Canada. Ted Smith U of Guelph --- From: John Willis [John.Willis@civilisations.ca] Dear colleagues, As a rejoinder to the general topic of this discussion string. I was struck by the relatively detached pose of the Greer article, highlighting as it did a move, geographically in our direction on the part of American historians interested in exploring the wider Can-Am perspective. Greer also drove home the point that as students of Canadian history we are students of all history, there are attributes of humility and excitement behind this statement. With respect to the Granatstein piece I was struck by the shrillness of tone, and its avoidance of anything approaching the optimism behind Greer's propos: i.e. all we teach in high school history is the bad news. Having raised three school children through the Québec school system, I challenge the validity of this assertion. (Don't get me wrong I am not saying they do or did do a perfect job!) There is an undertone of either naiveté or good-ending-syndrome (as in Hollywood) that irks me. As if the author was saying, it is ok to be teaching good and bad news in history classroom, but it must be remembered that all turned out well in the end. Naturally the story is not yet over: we can still improve or ruin this piece of the earth we inhabit. And there are subjects that lend themselves but only with considerable difficulty to the positive spin. Consider "le grand dérangement" of 1755. I am not convinced that this can be construed as anything other than a bad news story et pas seulement pour les acadiens. Unless we were to take the tack that this was a happy calamity. Part of the ambivalence here may be that vis-à-vis History, Greer is speaking of an intellectual discipline and Granatstein is talking about a classroom activity. Do these two worlds have to be so separate? Is History a means or an ends to understanding the human condition? - John Willis Aylmer, Québec --- From: Wolfgang Hockbruck [wolfgang.hochbruck@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de] Alistair Sweeny's contention that "the problem with Canadian history teaching has been the failure to fascinate" I would like to disagree with, if only on entirely personal counts. I distinctly remember my German Academic Exchange Service scholarship year in Halifax, NS, where I took the Canadian History 1200 Survey with P. B. Waite. It was one of the highlights of my student years - fascinating, profound, to the point, humorous ... He insisted on wearing a gown, something i had never seen before (after weeks of wondering why he wouldn't take the shabby black raincoat off i finally asked my tutor, i think Nancy Colpitts was her name). And this was a lecture! Something education psychologists have been trying to tell us nobody ever learns anything from ... well, i loved it, and i got a pretty good survey of where i was, in terms of the history of the place. More so than anybody in my "home" department (English), Prof. Waite stirred my interest in Canadian Studies. just my 0.02 worth, Wolfgang Hochbruck Englisches Seminar / Nordamerikastudien Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
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