Posts com a Tag ‘CRUXTON J Bradley (Aut)’
Challenge of the West: A Canadian Retrospective from 1815-1914 – CRUXTON; WILSON (CSS)
CRUXTON, J. Bradley; WILSON, W. Douglas. Challenge of the West: A Canadian Retrospective from 1815-1914. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997. 182p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.1, p., 2004.
Ostensibly a social studies textbook for high school (back cover), Challenge of the West is written and presented in a style that makes it suitable for a number of grades from junior high up to and including high school. As well, the content corresponds with several social studies and history curricula across Canada including the strand entitled The Development of Western Canada found in the grade seven history curriculum of Ontario.
The front cover of the textbook is a reproduction of Adam Sherriff Scott’s The SS Beaver off Fort Victoria, 1846. The painting depicts two aboriginal persons in the foreground with their backs to the viewer. They are looking across the water to a British fort on the opposite shoreline. In the water between is a British ship and a smaller boat filled with, presumably, residents of the fort. As the two aboriginal persons are in the foreground, the viewer is encouraged to interpret the painting from their perspective. The dominant impression is one of watching from the sidelines. The aboriginal people are not participants but observers, surveying activities that will change their worlds.
Change is very much what this textbook is about. In the introduction, the authors encourage students to think about change, how it comes about in their worlds and how it has come about throughout Canadian history. As Cruxton and Wilson state in the Introduction, sometimes change just happens. Other times, we make a change happen. When we set out to make change, it can involve conflict or struggle (no page). These words are a foreshadowing of the conflict and struggle that has been a part of Canada’s historical development.
The textbook is divided into six chapters: 1) Rebellion and Change in Upper and Lower Canada; 2) The Road to Confederation; 3) Exploring and Opening the West; 4) Manitoba and British Columbia Enter Confederation; 5) Preparing the West for Settlement; 6) Settling the West. Though the content is never extensively detailed, the chapters do cover what are often considered the main events in Western Canadian history from 1815 to 1914. The building of the CPR is captured in chapter four, the Red River Rebellion, Northwest Rebellion and the trial of Louis Riel are highlighted in chapter five while the Gold Rush is explored in chapter six.
However, as the chapter titles suggest and as is the pattern of history textbooks designed to meet the requirements of history curricula, the content focuses on the changing West from the perspective of Europeans whether British soldiers, French politicians or Mennonite settlers. Even the notion of the West is a reference to territory west of earlier European settlements in Newfoundland, the Maritime colonies and the Canadas. Rarely is the history told from the perspective of aboriginal peoples. Their voices are silent and their histories, separate from those that are entwined with European colonists, are absent. This is not to suggest that aboriginal peoples are missing. They are very much present in the historical narratives and biographical inserts provided. Almost the entirety of chapter three is devoted to the First Canadians, who they are and where they live. Nevertheless, their histories remain distant and aloof from the perspective suggested-forever illustrated as the other, standing on the outside watching as their worlds are changed by the main event which is the development of a nation called Canada. The painting on the cover is indeed metaphoric.
Liberally peppered throughout the chapters are charts, maps, timelines, paintings, photographs, poems, songs, cartoons and reproductions of original documents. There are also a number of inserts that are separate from the main body of text. These inserts offer interesting biographies of people such as Qubec political reformer Louis-Joseph Papineau and author Susanna Moodie. All of these features combine to give the textbook a sense of variety and offer students different ways of learning the content. One problem to note is the serious dearth of passages which permit the historical actors to speak for themselves. Though there are a few, offering students more opportunities to read what William Lyon Mackenzie, Sir John A. Macdonald, Catherine Schubert or Crowfoot actually said would bring an increased impression of humanity to the historical narratives and elevate the textbook’s overall sense of credibility as a source of historical information.
Each chapter includes at least one developing skills section. The foci of the developing skills sections include creating a mind map, decision making, cause-and-effect relationships, interpreting political cartoons, interviewing, using maps as visual organizers, preparing a research report, debating, making oral presentations, and analyzing bias. These sections are divided into numbered steps that include easy-to-follow instructions and examples. The result should be the development of skills that are transferable to other courses of study.
Also included at the conclusion of each chapter are a series of activities. The activities sections are divided into three parts: Check Your Understanding; Confirm Your Learning; and Challenge Your Mind. The first part focuses on comprehension questions that refer to the chapter completed. The second part encourages the use of information in the answering of broader questions. The third part challenges students to analyze situations and consider questions and statements from a number of perspectives as well as synthesize information in the formulation of their own views. These parts are well written, progressive in complexity and offer teachers a range of choice to use in meeting the learning needs of students that have a range of abilities. One criticism of the developing skills and activities sections is that there needs to be better integration between them. Only occasionally are students expected to use the skills developed in one section to complete the activities in the other. Students need opportunities to refine the skills they learn. By explicitly and purposefully providing students with activities that encourage the use of newly developed skills there is greater possibility that the skills will be internalized and endure.
While the book may not be deemed adequate by some teachers as the sole text to use in their junior high or high school social studies or history courses, the authors must be given credit for hitting the high spots of the mainstream history narrative of the Canadian west, developing important skill sets and providing students with a number of interesting activities. Until the time when history curricula value aboriginal perspectives as much as they do Europeans, textbooks like this are meeting their mandate.
Todd Horton – Faculty of Education. Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
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Close-Up Canada – CRUXTON et al (CSS)
CRUXTON, J. Bradley; WILSON, W. Douglas; WALKER, Robert J. Close-Up Canada. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2001. 322p. Resenha de: ALLISON, Sam. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.3, p., 2004.
The Canadian market for school history textbooks is fragmented because we have no standard national curriculum or examinations. The grade level to study history varies widely as does course length. Arguably, Quebec’s French language Canadian history texts are the best in Canada because such texts are based upon standardized factors that create a market. In addition, schools divert money from books to computers, and school textbook writers are difficult to find. Provincial subsidy rules often favour poor textbooks printed inside a province, thus restricting the market even for the very best of books printed elsewhere.
Close-Up Canada displays some of the virtues and many of the vices found in French language school textbooks. There are thoughtful, stimulating illustrations and activities throughout the book. Care has been taken with reading levels, about grades 8 and 9, while there are sufficient vocabulary and computer activities to satisfy both traditional and progressive teaching methods. Materials on Black Canadians and Jewish Emancipation fill gaps all too present in Canadian schoolbooks. Every Canadian history teacher would benefit from reading the vast range of teaching and learning activities in this work.
This book has many eye-catching, colourful side-bars, appealing to the video generation, however, sections non-continuous to the main narrative are difficult to edit using modern, electronic printing. Sadly, editorial difficulties mar the book. An ambitious book such as this requires editorial and writing teams larger than the market can support. Be that as it may, basic pedagogy also requires accurate dates, numbers, and place names in a textbook. Close-Up Canada has some obvious typos and inaccuracies such as 1740s Louisbourg flourishing in the 1840s (p. 105) and the claim that James Wolfe arrived with 39 000 soldiers and 25 warships (p.114). One can imagine Freddy raising his hand to ask how big the ships were. In reality, Wolfe had approximately 9 000 soldiers and 225 ships. Another example has Ezekiel Hart contesting Trois Rivieres (p. 277) rather than Three Rivers, the official name of the riding and the town at that time. This illustrates a major difficulty in writing Canadian history textbooks. Various federally funded agencies and projects such as Heritage Canada, Canada Post, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography have taken to replacing official, historical English names such as Three Rivers in order to use more politically correct French ones. Does one write for historical accuracy or for political correctness in a Canadian textbook? Close-Up Canada encompasses a three hundred year period from 1539-1849 and is consequently not a good buy for provinces teaching all of Canadian history in one year. New France blends into Upper Canada in this version of history so it is probably designed for the Ontario market. There is a skewed distribution of space. Approximately 20% of the 322 page book is devoted to the 12 years from 1837-1849. Topics are also skewed. Western and Lower Canada are conspicuous by their absence and the fur trade stops at 1763. For example, William Lyon MacKenzie, the 1837 Rebel, has 7 pages whereas Alexander MacKenzie, the First across the Continent, and arguably one of the greatest explorers in North American history, is absent from this book. We Canadians complain that Americans glorify Lewis and Clarke yet ignore MacKenzie. So do we.
Skewed intellectual balance is the largest problem with the overall content of this book. As in French language books, by measurement of space distributed to him (7 pages), Papineau is now the most important figure in Canadian history. Canadians are no longer sturdy fur traders, we are sturdy rebels in this version of history. Our rebellions of 1837 are to be compared and contrasted to the American Revolution (p. 293). The Conflict and Change section (p. 247-300) has too much conflict and not enough change. While negative factors about Canada must be aired, positive factors such as the radical franchise rules for Lower Canada would throw a more balanced light upon Canadian democracy than is presented in this book.
This brings us to the necessity for balanced treatment. Children understand that issues have several sides. They actually like debating both sides of an issue and understand that history is not simple. Unfortunately, the often shallow, unbalanced, and anti-British tone so common in French language textbooks, is all too prevalent in Close-Up Canada. On page 283 we read, Papineau was not always a Reformer. In his early life he was an admirer of Britain. Tighter editing would have replaced Reformer with Rebel, a more intellectually accurate and defensible description. Rather than present a balanced account of the 1837 Rebellion (for instance, there are no biographies of Chateau Clique members such as Richardson: founder of Canadian banking; supporter of Jewish Emancipation; opponent of slavery); the book presents what can only be called a Quebec nationalist perspective. For instance, the book asserts that the British cut out Chenier’s heart and displayed it in a tavern for several days(p.293). There is little contemporary evidence that this took place. Rather than explain that this incident was probably Patriote propaganda, or, alternatively, balance the incident with the fact that the Patriotes murdered British prisoners such as Jack Weir, a one-sided viewpoint is stated as truth.
It is difficult to review a book such as this. Textbooks are important because they promote knowledge and literacy. While textbooks should be free to discuss any point of view they should not promote one, debatable point of view. We are losing, perhaps even have lost, the pool of talent needed to produce school history texts. The United States has a vast market, and teachers often choose from a range of books and adapt their curriculum to the book. The British have their National Curriculum and a range of history examinations for 16 and 18 year olds. British teachers can choose the exam and a textbook for that exam. Canada has neither the market size nor the standardization to create a history textbook industry. We produce the textbooks we deserve.
Sam Allison – Centennial Regional High School. Greenfield Park, Quebec.
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