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Citation: 

Osborne, Ken. “Teaching Canadian History: A Century of Debate.” In New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada, edited by Penney Clark, 55-80. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

Abstract/Summary: 

Ken Osborne’s chapter traces the teaching of Canadian history from the 1890s to present. Until the 1950s most provinces taught British or European history in addition to Canadian history. The author argues that from the 1890s to the 1970s history teaching in Canada largely focused on nation building designed to develop youth’s identity. However, the history taught in Quebec largely focused on Quebec history and was not a pan Canadian study. The chapter moves through each of the decades focusing on nation building and its criticisms, which led to a ‘bottom-up’ social historical telling of Canadian history in the 1960s. In the 1970s the focus was on the intellectual facets of history education and not the rote memorization of facts. In the 1990s history educators focused on halting the erosion of history education that had begun in the 1980s and assumed a different national focus, democratic citizenship. Present day history education is focused on historical knowledge and historical thinking.

Source/Credit: 
Erika Smith