Article Analysis The Purposes Of Teaching Canadian History

Article Analysis:
“The Purposes of Teaching
Canadian History”
Peter Seixas, Canada Research Chair in Education,
University of British Columbia
Canadian Social Studies, Volume 36, Number 2, Winter 2002

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 1

Introduction
Quote Meaning

pg 1 - “Deﬁning the purposes -we have to make the aims,
or goals or objectives of any intentions, and expectations
enterprise is a crucial task. of our program clear - it’s
without knowing our ends, essential, because if we don’t
choosing our means, know what we want to
becomes impossible... What achieve, we won’t know how
are our purposes - what to get it
should our purposes be - in
teaching Canadian history?” -what is the point - or should
be the point - of teaching
Canadian History?


Introduction
Quote Meaning

pg 1 - “Neither historians nor -job of the school shouldn’t
school history teachers be to keep promoting stories
should think of their job as from our past which cannot
making more of (myths). be objected to, or protested
Distinguishing between myth against
and history can help to clarify
what the job should be.” -need to be able to tell the
difference between myth &
history, really spell out the
task


Introduction
Quote Meaning

pg 1 - “Myths evoke strong -we tend to protect our
feelings. They do...reinforce myths, because they tell us
collective identities, social who we are - as a community,
values, and moral as a nation - and what we
orientations... The whole think is important
point of myths is to pass
them on unchanged to the -entire purpose of myths: pass
next generation. Heritage is them on without change to
similar. It involves myth-like our children
narratives in which people
can believe deeply and -heritage (tradition, culture)
faithfully.” requires myth-like records or
stories that everyone can buy
into


Introduction
Quote Meaning

pg 1-2 - “In our own 21st -current modern problem: in
century predicament, with a nation with so many
different pasts, different different cultures, all with
cultures butting up against their own myths & histories,
one another, traditional the established / usual
practices are no longer methods of teaching history
adequate for supplying aren’t good enough to help
meaning, largely for this us understand what
reason: they provide no way something means or why it is
of reconciling different important - the old, standard
stories, different accounts in a history lessons don’t allow us
multicultural society.” to ﬁnd a balance between the
different points of view and
histories


Introduction
Quote Meaning

pg 2 - “This is the promise of -what we’ll certainly get from
critical historical discourse: analyzing, while discussing /
that it provides a rational studying / debating history, is
way, on the basis of evidence a logical method using proof
and argument, to discuss the and reasoning to look at the
differing accounts that jostle various stories & records that
with, or contradict each collide with or go against
other.” each other


Intensiﬁed historical consciousness...
Quote Meaning

pg 2 - “All around us, there -there are lots of signals and
are signs of intense and clues that more and more
intensifying interest in the people want to know about
past... Interpretations of the the past
past in museums, movies and
monuments - as well as in -the ways that people have
schools - have recently tried to understand the past,
aroused bitter and think about it - how they
controversies...” have presented their
understanding to the world -
have caused arguments


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 2-3 - “1. ...interest in the -people seem to pay more
past - in the form of history - attention to history when
emerges, paradoxically at customs, practices, and social
exactly the moment when values that everyone has
tradition falls apart... A been used to are changing
society that lives comfortably dramatically - it doesn’t seem
and unconsciously with a to make sense
traditional past does not
expend the effort on -people who are happy with a
constructing... ‘heritage’...” time-honoured past don’t
worry about putting together
a cultural history


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “2. ...the migration and -increasingly less separation
mixing of peoples and between groups of people
cultures... [P]eople come with from different nations and
different histories, and thus, in communities - this has a
some ways, different visions bearing on whether people
of the present and the are happy or comfortable with
future.” the past, when different
stories and perspectives rub
up against each other

-having different histories can
mean having a different way of
seeing the present, different
expectations for the future


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “3. ...in many areas of -changes in leadership or
the world, old regimes have government cause us to see
toppled... Writing history history differently, because
always involves hindsight. someone else is in charge
Hindsight from 1999 in with a different idea of what
Khabarovsk, was very is important or ‘real truth’ in
different from hindsight in the past
1989.”
-we always see events more
clearly after they happen


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “4. ...the empowerment -groups who used to be
of previously disempowered heavily controlled and treated
groups. Thus, in those world disrespectfully are more free
regions, as well as throughout to be themselves and demand
North America...the new respect (e.g. women, ethnic
position of women and ethnic groups)
minorities, even in regimes
that have not undergone -people in these groups are
radical political changes, has using their new power to
forced a re-examination of look into the past from their
the stories of the past.” perspectives - rather than
just stopping at the ofﬁcial,
time-honoured, or standard
version


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “5. ...globalization and -businesses, organizations, and
its technologies have brought corporations that are
different peoples of the world expanding world-wide in part
into communication with because of the Internet and
each other in new ways, even telecommunications have
when they are not physically created new opportunities
closer to each other.” for contact, socializing,
conversation, and
relationships, even when
there are great distances
between peoples


Why now?
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “These changes -changes making us more
intensify historical aware of our history:
consciousness. People now 1) less interest in tradition
puzzle over and stumble over 2) mixing of peoples & cultures in
questions that used to have communities
easy answers supplied by 3) changing government
authorities
myth:”
4) empowerment of previously
powerless groups
5) globalization & technology
bringing peoples into contact

-solutions to historical
questions aren’t as easy to
ﬁnd


Questions of Historical Consciousness
Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “ ‘historical -awareness of history centers
consciousness’...revolves on basic questions that are
around some very basic, but implied - suggested, hinted at,
often implicit and taken for granted - and
unarticulated questions, difﬁcult to express
which all memory practices -
that is, both history and myth -history and myth are both
- attempt to answer.” ways that we try to answer
these questions


Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “1. How did things get -what features or
to be as we see them today? characteristics of society
Which aspects are signs of suggest that certain things
continuity over time, and continue without interruption,
which, signs of change?... These and others are changing?
questions, and the accounts
they demand, are not morally -these questions, & the
neutral or disinterested. They explanations we’re looking for,
ask for accounts of the past to have to do with right & wrong
explain the present, and their (ethics) - how we answer these
answers have implications for questions will inﬂuence or have
the future.” an effect on the future


Quote Meaning

pg 3 - “ 2. What group or -who do I belong to?
groups am I a part of, and
what are its origins? In fact, -where did this / these
my identity has various group(s) come from? Why?
aspects which take me to
various different points of -no-one can be judged as a
origin.” single stereotype - each
person has multiple
characteristics or features
that come from many
different places and
communities


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “3. How should we -how do we decide or ﬁgure
judge each other’s past out whether each other did
actions, and therefore, what the right thing in the past?
debts does my group owe to
others and/or others to -how do we determine our
mine?” obligations to others, to make
up for wrongs that were
done?

-how do we determine what
others need to do for us, to
make up for mistakes?


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “4. Are things basically -is this as good as it will get
getting better or are they for us - our society, our
getting worse? This is the country, for humanity in
question of progress and general?
decline. Should we have
believed...that ‘the worse is -what’s going to happen next?
yet to come?’”


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “5. What stories about -how do I know what’s real,
the past should I believe? On and what’s been made-up
what grounds?...What counts after the real thing happened?
as evidence?”
-how can I ﬁnd out what’s
real - how can I learn the
truth?


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “6. What stories shall -what parts of our history
we tell? What - about the are more important than
past - is signiﬁcant enough to others?
pass on to others, and
particularly to the next -what should our young
generation?” people (YOU) be learning,
that you’ll pass on to your
own children?


From myth and heritage to history
Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “Though asking these -we only recently started
questions is natural in the asking these questions -
Canada of 2001, formulating once, nobody argued with
good answers to them is historians at all
anything but. To answer them
well, people have to move -putting together good
beyond the simplicity and faith of
answers to these questions is
myth...to the complexity of
difﬁcult... we have to
history...to understand the
distance between the present remember that history isn’t
and the past, and the difﬁculty of simple or perfect, and that we
representing the past in the will never completely ‘get’
present.” what it was like in the past -
its reality is too far from
where we are today


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “Good answers have to... -understand that there can be
different ways to see and ‘read’
1. Comprehend the interpretive evidence from the past; there are
choices and constraints involved also limits to what we can do
in using traces from the past to with historical evidence
construct historical accounts.
-remember that it was a very
2. Understand the pastness of different world in the past - we
the past... can’t just overlay the way we live
and think now on people back
3. Acknowledge complexity and then, like in Hollywood movies
uncertainty; deal with multiple
causes, conﬂicting belief -accept the twists, turns, and
systems, and historical actors’ unreliability of history; cope with
differing perspectives many causes, opposing ideals, and
multiple points of view in the past


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “These criteria allow a -these standards (for
distinction here between answering historical
intensifying historical questions) permit us to show
consciousness and... advancing the difference between
it. Films, historical sites, creating interest and
historical ﬁction are excellent involvement in the awareness
at intensifying historical of history & its importance,
consciousness...Schools are in and moving it forward
the best position to advance
it.” -Hollywood, tourist
attractions, and romance
novels promote history

-schools are best to help it


Quote Meaning

pg 4 - “example of what it might -people have tried to put
mean to advance historical together a common story or
consciousness. It has always tradition about the beginning
been a challenge to construct a of our country using the
mythology of Canadian origins Fathers of Confederation, but
around the Fathers of the trouble is that these men
Confederation. The late were not perfect or heroes -
nineteenth century was simply
no-one was, at that time
not a heroic moment for
politicians in Canada or
elsewhere.” (see example
provided)


re: John A. Macdonald’s speech (1885)
• In what ways has there been change between 1885 and
now?

• Does the change represent progress in racial attitudes?

• How should we judge Macdonald?

★condemning Macdonald as a racist villain is too
simple... instead, we should look at the way we use
language differently now, and how it affects our reading
of this speech... we should look at the reasons why he
was making this speech, the political games he was
playing, and the social values of the period


re: John A. Macdonald’s speech (1885)
★a well-thought analysis of this speech would also question
how the attitudes revealed in his words affect(ed) the way
we see ourselves, as a nation

-it is difficult for us to see his reality - the world he
was living in, speaking to, and reflecting - because
our world is so different

“Students should also come to understand that one
document - or one excerpt from one document - can
contribute to historical understanding, but is insufficient for
reaching a robust historical judgement.”

-you cannot make a complete or significant analysis
of an historic event by looking at just one account
or one piece of evidence


So what should schools teach?
• teaching “one coherent story” (heritage & myth) as
“‘what happened in the past’” (pg 5) will not help you
when you leave school

• creating new, more progressive myths won’t work either;
“[s]tudents are exposed to too many competing claims
and narratives outside of school - in their families, ﬁlms,
community commemorations, and popular music. These -
like the successful Heritage Minutes - are excellent
vehicles for intensifying historical consciousness, but not
for advancing it.” (pg 5)


Schools have an important advantage...

• taking history courses over ten years or so could enable
students to become increasingly good at, and committed
to, the problem of looking critically at the past

★ you can learn to look at history thoughtfully
and in complex ways

★discussions about school history could start with
questions like, “which story should we tell?” and
“how can we make it interesting?” (pg 6)


Therefore...
• “...the goal of history in schools should be both

a) a deep understanding of the past [the variety, the
difference, the strangeness of life in the past, the interplay of
continuity and change, the multiple causes and consequences
of events and trends, the role of individuals, collectivities and
states, etc.] and

b) a deep understanding of history [the processes of
knowledge-making, the construction of a historical narrative
or argument, the uses of evidence, and the nature of
conﬂicting historical accounts]

This second level of understanding acts as the best insurance
against dogmatic transmission of a single version of the past, a
practice which violates the core tenets of the discipline.” (pg 6)


conclusion
• once you realize that knowledge, truth, and morality exist
in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and
are not absolute - that history isn’t ‘just the facts’ - will
you lose interest?

• you’ve already met with conﬂicting historical
interpretations, whether you’re aware of it or not - you
need to be able to judge and consider the myths you
encounter all around you, to explore the layers and
complexities, and the school should help you do it better


Article Analysis The Purposes Of Teaching Canadian History

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