Media, Colonial-Mindedness, and the Culture of Canada (Part Two: Education)

The woman in Ottawa found, first, that her grade ten son is to study no Canadian literature in the coming term. The materials for study are American and British. Disturbed at the dearth of Canadian materials, she visited the Ontario Ministry of Education website. There she read stated objectives that we could have guessed. “Exemplary literary and informational material” is required “to nourish the imagination, promote intellectual growth, contribute to a sense of aesthetic appreciation,” and to provide models for writing. The literary works should “reflect the diversity of Canada and the world”. After that she found a fairly long list of writers, placed there to give guidance as to kinds and levels, but not to be a prescribed list for reading and study. Of the names on the list, Canadian names register – as far as I can determine – slightly more than one-third. Of non-Canadian writers, besides British and U.S. ones, are named (translated, obviously) writers from Chile, Russia, and France, though no francophone writer from Canada is named. The Ontario grade 9 and 10 English academic curriculum outline suggests a list of the kind of writers to be used which contains slightly more, as I say, than a third of whom are Canadian. A grade ten teacher at her son’s school includes no Canadian works on the syllabus. So much for the “diversity of Canada and the world”. I cite a single case. Sadly, however, from her inquiries and from my own long experience working on the matter, I know it is by no means unique. Is that strange? It is strange. To begin, most industrialized countries in the world fix upon their own literature as central in the formative years of education. Canada is more internationally-minded than many and would not want to be overly restrictive. But, in Canada, a very fine line has to be drawn between those who are internationally-minded and those who are colonial-minded. That would mean that when literature courses of the kind referred to here are taught, they should always contain a meaningful representation of Canadian works. The practice of other countries doesn’t arise simply from chauvinism and narrow-mindedness. It arises because policy makers know that most of the children being educated will remain in their country of education. They know their country has a long history, a complex culture, a literature especially significant to that history and culture, and that the people of the country need to understand its history and culture if they are to function in it fully and effectively. They make as sure as they can that the young in the country read literature that will “nourish the imagination, promote intellectual growth, contribute to a sense of aesthetic appreciation,” provide models for writing, AND reveal the imaginative issues, experiences, and approaches peculiarly characteristic of their own complex history and culture. That is neither chauvinistic nor narrow-minded. Besides, young people very often relate more quickly to characters and circumstances they recognize as “their own” than they do to foreign ones. They then move with greater facility from the familiar to the less familiar. Canada’s history and culture involve and embrace the life and experience of the native peoples, the francophone culture and the anglophone culture, and of the many less numerous immigrant groups who have made Canada their home. Canada is the second largest country in the world, producing literature of Newfoundland outports, urban high-rise complexes, native communities, working class neighbourhoods, old anglo-saxon and francophone families and shiny new immigrant families from all over the world – and much, much, much more. It is neither parochial nor narrow-minded to say that a significant weight of literary reading for students from K to 12 should be devoted to experiencing that diversity. Two painful points must be made. The first is that many educated Canadians and many Canadian teachers have been taught to be colonial-minded. They have been taught to believe that the very ordinary daily experience of people outside of Canada – especially in powerful foreign countries – is superior to the ordinary daily experience of people in Canada. So why would anyone want to read Canadian literature? Or to seriously study Canada? Secondly, the educational administrators and policy makers show their colonial-mindedness particularly in relation to the U.S.A. Instead of fashioning teacher-training texts and programs with particular relation to the unique qualities of Canada, they go on and on and on training Canadian teachers with texts and other materials that come overwhelmingly from the U.S.A., that are fitted to U.S. society and U.S. culture Those administrators and policy makers, moreover, should react to the huge U.S. corporate and media reach into Canada by building a balance into the educational system. Young Canadians need Canadian materials in school. They need them badly enough to displace U.S. materials. U.S. materials stuff our magazine racks, our bookstores, our newspapers and TV and internet, our movie houses, our video and music stores. U.S. materials might well be removed from Canadian schools and our young would still experience more U.S. materials per day in those areas mentioned than Canadian materials. But in a wholly false, colonial-minded (not internationalist) position, education administrators and policy makers push U.S. materials not only at the Canadian young but also at students training to be teachers in Canada. The education administrators and policy makers do not have the courage or the self-respect to do anything else. As to the teacher who avoids teaching Canadian materials – even when they are a part of the academic curriculum – what can one say? One can say he or she is very probably both a victim and a victimizer. We can see (from the grade 10 students who get no Canadian materials) how he/she is a victimizer. But less visibly, he/she is also a victim because of the level of colonial-mindedness in education, a bit of which I have described here. I will describe a good deal more in another column to come: “Media, Colonial-Mindedness, and the Culture of Canada (Part Three, Higher Education). [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 5, 2005]

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Media, Colonial-Mindedness, And The Culture Of Canada (Part Two: Education)

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