Researching history education in Canada: plus ça change?

National Council of Education, Observations on the Teaching of History and Civics in Primary and Secondary Schools of Canada, 1923

This 1923 report, (hereafter, Observations) was commissioned by the now defunct National Council of Education (NCE). Established in 1919 by a group of businessmen, government officials, religious leaders, professors and educators, the NCE was a private organisation intent on establishing a national body to oversee and channel schooling to support conservative imperialist values and create a unified national citizenry (Chaiton 1974). The NCE emerged in part out of the Anglophone elite’s increasing anxieties about socialism, the threat of American influence, and the increasingly diverse population of new immigrants arriving in Canada. It saw public education as a means to promote Canadian nation-building goals, and it determined that advocating for a new vision of character education was essential for fostering and maintaining a new national sentiment (Chaiton 1974, 1977; Lyons 1980; Tomkins 1983).

To this end, in 1920 the NCE commissioned the history department at the University of Toronto to write a report on history textbooks in schools. This study eventually expanded to focus on history education beyond textbooks, and it was published in 1923. Observations was credited to eight historians led by William S. Milner and Charles N. Cochrane. The authors also included influential figures such as William S. Wallace, the founder of the Canadian Historical Review. Milner, a firm believer in strengthening Canada’s bond with the British Empire (Radforth and Sangster 1981), wrote the review of civics, while Cochrane was the primary author of the history report (NCE 1923). Observations reflects the ambition of these historians to influence and shape what was happening in schools, in part out of a self-interested desire to increase the quality of students entering universities, which is noted several times. The report was also driven by a belief that historians had a duty to help safeguard national civic values. Like the American Historical Association’s (1898) Committee of Seven, the University of Toronto historians sought to provide general recommendations and suggestions for improving curriculum, textbooks and purposes for teaching history in schools, and also to set examinations for students entering the universities. The motivations behind Observations can be seen as a direct intervention from the discipline to influence K–12 history education at the behest of a lay organisation interested in promoting a new national Canadian sentiment based in British values and moral training, although, as I will show, its outcomes were far more complicated.

The report provides scant information on how the research was conducted. We know little of what interviews were carried out and what documents were consulted, although from the publication it is clear that both occurred. From the evidence provided, it is clear the authors reviewed each province’s ‘programme of study’, or its official curriculum, alongside available textbooks. The booklet itself ends with an extensive review of available resources and suggested texts for school use. The report’s organisation shows us that the authors were interested in evaluating the aims of history teaching, the resources used, the methods of instruction, and the relationship between teachers and students.

In their evaluation of the overall state of history education in Canada, the authors identify a general lack of historical knowledge among university students and the ‘man in the street’. Responsibility for this ignorance is placed both on the schools, and on a general devaluing of historical knowledge in ‘advanced countries’ such as Canada. The historians argue that Canada has a large number of people who simply ‘do not possess the historical sense’ (NCE 1923: 3). Interestingly, the report suggests that this is not necessarily a fault of teachers or schools, but a natural deficiency in students in their ability to learn history. The historians write that:

much of the material of history is permanently beyond the comprehension of any school child ... it is absurd to expect that they can be made to realize as school-boys what they fail to realize as men and citizens.

(NCE 1923: 3)

Despite this imagined incompetence, the historians suggest that it is still worthwhile teaching history, because ‘some number of students may profit from the instruction given’, while also pondering how incompetent the students must be who do not go to university.

The authors place much blame on poorly designed history examinations, for which students need to memorise large portions of text they do not understand. The historians are both sympathetic and dismissive of the role of history teachers, stating they are underpaid, poorly trained, under-resourced and ‘expected to perform a hopeless task’ (NCE 1923: 16). Furthermore, the report suggests that teachers in high schools have ‘little idea of what writing history implies’, and that having students undertake their own research before university is ‘absurd’ (NCE 1923: 16). From today’s vantage point, it is not a particularly sensitive depiction of the work teachers do, nor of what students are capable of.

In their discussion of each province’s curricular aims for history education, the historians first articulate what they believe to be the true purposes of studying history. They argue that the aims of learning history should not be romance, patriotism, internationalism or antiquarianism, but ‘a reconstruction of the past with a view of understanding the present’ (NCE 1923: 11). Further, they argue that the study of history is not about ‘inculcating morals, and though it does provide the material for moral judgments, this is an indirect result’ (NCE 1923: 12). The authors were clear that teaching history should not be in the service of offering simplistic moral lessons, inspiring love of the country, or as a repository of interesting facts and romantic stories. In their view, historical knowledge is for living in and understanding the present. This position taken by the historians was fundamentally at odds with the aims they found in the curriculum, in which patriotism and moral instruction were at the forefront. In taking this critical perspective, the historians were also rejecting the goals of their funders, the NCE, and its mission to cultivate patriotic, empire-minded, morally virtuous citizens through civic education, which was evident in how the report was received by the NCE, who were generally unimpressed by its stance. As John Lyons (1980: 191) noted, ‘by denouncing the use of history for purposes of moral education, the [report] brought into question the very basis on which the National Council was founded … and was unlikely to have won many friends in that body’.

In their reflections on the teacher–student relationship, the historians wrote that children’s ‘sense of cause and effect appears so late in some cases that it may hardly be said to appear at all’, adding that ‘historical mindedness is a state to be cultivated’ (NCE 1923: 13). While we might be somewhat horrified today to see a view of children as having no possibility of developing a sense of cause and effect, the idea here that historical mindedness is a state to be cultivated is an important one that still resonates today in the historical thinking literature. Observations also contains notable contradictions, as seen in the authors’ suggestion that most children are incapable of learning history, followed by a claim that can be read as supportive of enquiry-based education: ‘Each pupil derives most benefit from work he does for himself, the teacher must therefore be capable of guiding him in his pursuit of knowledge’ (NCE 1923: 16). Ultimately, the historians’ report argues that teachers need to be brought into contact with ‘leaders of thought in their branches of work’ (NCE 1923: 17) or, said otherwise, history teachers need to learn from the approaches of historians. Despite a fairly bleak portrayal of the state of K–12 history in schools, the report concludes that ‘the position of history is certainly not bad and that its prospects are by no means hopeless’ (NCE 1923: 17).

Joseph Katz, The Teaching of History in Canada: A survey study of the teaching of Canadian history in junior and senior high schools, 1953

This study, published by the University of Manitoba Press, was conducted and written by the professor of education Joseph Katz (1953). Previously a teacher in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, before getting a PhD in education from the University of Chicago in 1941, Katz taught at the University of Manitoba before moving to the University of British Columbia in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the field of comparative education. Unlike the 1923 report, Katz’s study represents the significant shift away from the dominance of history departments to the influence of faculties of education in shaping conversations about history education in Canada, although it should be noted that the preface of the study was written by renowned Canadian historian W.L. Morton (1953). In the post-Second World War era, empirical educational research drastically grew in size and scope in Canada as many new faculties of education were established. This was not to say that historians were no longer relevant to history education, but that in this new era, historians took a step back from their direct involvement in schools as educational researchers, and faculties of education grew in influence. Simultaneously, many Canadian historians began to view what was happening in the schools as outside of their interest, responsibility or concern (Osborne 2000; Tomkins 1983).

Like the 1923 report, Katz’s (1953) study was conducted and written at a time of significant debate over Canadian identity and, in particular, a concern over growing American influence, which had led to the Massey Commission, whose report on the state of Canadian culture was published in 1951, setting the stage for new funding and support for Canadian arts and culture. More generally, there was a push at the time for a more cohesive and unique Canadian identity in which a meaningful history education played an important role. Katz was also writing during heightened debate over the state of Canadian education, in particular over the merits and flaws of progressive education. Most notably, the historian Hilda Neatby’s (1953) polemic So Little for the Mind, which condemned progressive education, and in particular the subject of social studies, was published in the same year. Interestingly, Neatby (1957) later also harshly critiqued a book that Katz edited, Canadian Education Today: A Symposium, for lacking precision and rigour.

Unlike the 1923 Observations study, Katz provided a detailed description of his methods, including his survey instrument. The study itself included a teacher questionnaire and an analysis of courses of study and related textbooks of all provinces. In total, 163 teachers completed Katz’s survey, representing all 10 provinces (no information was provided on the territories). Katz’s survey focused on the academic training of teachers, their length of experience in classrooms, their purposes, their views on history teaching, and the number of hours and minutes they spend teaching 81 different topics in Canadian history. Katz noted that the number of teachers included in the study is not necessarily generalisable, but that it does provide a large sample of teachers and that it ‘is large enough to be indicative’ (Katz 1953: 7). While Katz’s methods may not hold up to contemporary scrutiny by quantitative social scientists, they do provide us with important insights into the thinking of a significant amount of history teachers across the country at the time.

Katz’s (1953: 6) goals for history education are reflected in his statement that studying and teaching history is ‘not important for facts which students may memorize but the kinds of citizens which it helps shape’. Here we see an important shift from the 1923 premise for the teaching and learning of history, with the citizenship and civic function of teaching history made more explicit and raised in importance. While the historians’ 1923 observations (NCE 1923) were aware that history must be relevant to the present, they did not explicitly name ‘shaping citizens’ as a direct function of learning history. Katz’s (1953) study also found that the surveyed teachers believed that the most important aim of teaching history was developing students’ civic responsibility, followed by promoting loyalty and patriotism, and understanding the importance of the past for the present.

Katz’s (1953) findings, however, like the 1923 report, also portrayed a fairly bleak picture of what is happening in Canada’s history classrooms. While he points out that among his participants, ‘96% of teachers like teaching history, 94% indicate they emphasise critical thinking, and 99% relate current events to historical background’ (Katz 1953: 7), he also notes that few teachers have training in history, geography or other related subjects, and that 52 per cent do not approve of the curriculum in their province. In his review of instructional practices, Katz found that traditional teaching methods dominated, and that an emphasis on the memorisation of dates, names and events was central. He argued that ‘this desiccated form of treatment is quite sufficient to remove from the Canadian story any kind of interest or glamour which it may have possessed’, and that this supports his main contention that Canadian history as it is generally taught in schools has been ‘factualized to the point of boredom’ (Katz 1953: 31).

Katz believed that history teachers ought to spend more time on fewer topics to avoid a superficial fact-focused approach. Again, as in 1923, we see the larger purpose of developing historical mindedness that comes through in Katz’s argument. He states that, ‘only those students who have managed to weather the storm of detail and who have been able to see the power and force of the elements are able to develop what is known as a sense of history’ (Katz 1953: 33). Katz also argues for a present-centred history, one in which the current and future problems of students are addressed to increase both the relevance and significance of historical study. He writes that ‘the future is always present in the form of the student. He it is who will be bearing the teaching of the past into the future’ (Katz 1953: 33). While perhaps more explicit than in 1923, history for the present and future are parallel themes running through all three studies, as does a general disconnect between what each report’s authors want history education to look like and what the reality is, based on their findings, with a desire across all three reports for a more progressive, enquiry-based approach to replace fact-focused, content-heavy traditional approaches.

A.B. Hodgetts and the National History Project, What Culture? What Heritage? A study of civic education in Canada, 1968

The final study I consider is by far the most well known. As far as educational research goes, Birnie Hodgetts’s 1968 study was something of a national sensation. It garnered much attention in the press, comments from members of various governments, and multiple reviews in the Canadian Historical Review (Tomkins 1977). Similar to the 1923 report, What Culture? What Heritage? (Hodgetts 1968) did not emerge from the university system, but came from private interests. The study was initiated and funded by the Governing Body of the Trinity College School, an affluent independent boys’ school outside of Toronto described by Tomkins (1977: 5) as ‘a major training ground of Canada’s corporate elite’. Hodgetts, who had been the history master at Trinity College School for nearly 30 years, directed the $150,000 two-year study, which was undertaken under the name of the National History Project.

Part of the attention given to this publication can be credited to the broad and ambitious scope of the research. The researchers led by Hodgetts observed 847 teachers in 237 schools in all 10 provinces, interviewed 500 teachers, surveyed 10,000 students, analysed 1,000 student essays, interviewed 72 students, conducted surveys with student teachers in 14 faculties of education, interviewed administrators, and reviewed textbooks and materials from all provincial departments of education (Hodgetts 1968: 2–3). It was, and likely still is, the largest and most thorough educational study of any subject area in Canada’s school system (Tomkins 1983). The comprehensive scope was responsible for some of the attention, but ultimately it was the devastating picture of history education that was drawn by Hodgetts which caused so much controversy.

Hodgetts (1968: 24) described the history taught in Canada’s schools as ‘dry as dust’, ‘lifeless’ and a ‘bland consensus version of history’. While he did point out exceptions, Hodgetts also did not hold back on his assessment of history teachers, concluding that the vast majority of teaching practices the researchers witnessed were ‘not good enough’. Most often, the teachers observed relied on dry lectures and the ‘assignment method’, in which students would read sections of the textbook and answer questions (Hodgetts 1968: 45). In an acerbic manner, Hodgetts (1968: 44) described many teachers as ‘talking textbooks’ regurgitating facts to ‘bench bound listeners’ who simply ‘endure’ history class. While Hodgetts did highlight examples of what he saw as effective teaching practice, such as teachers who had adopted an enquiry-focused and student-centred approach, he noted that these teachers are by far in the minority (about 7 per cent, from their observations). As a result, the researchers found that many students in history classrooms were either actively bored (18 per cent), passively bored (17 per cent) or deemed ‘mechanistic’ (41 per cent), behaving appropriately and completing the work, but mechanistically going through the motions (Hodgetts 1968: 57).

Of importance is Hodgetts’s (1968) finding that history teaching was remarkably similar across English Canada, with the same content being taught and common methods employed to comparable and depressing results. With so much discussion of provincial control over education in Canada, this finding of national consistency was striking. The one exception to this was in the Catholic French-speaking schools in Québec, where Hodgetts (1968) found students who were much more interested in their own history and its relationship to their lives. However, the vast majority of students interviewed and surveyed in this study related that they found Canadian history boring, unrelatable and worthless, while also finding American history and other subjects of greater interest and value

Hodgetts’s (1968) assessment is also devastating in its evaluation of attempts at reform to history teaching, noting that during the data collection, many commenters to the project mentioned that surely the researchers must be noticing the large-scale changes happening in Canadian education, with new courses and fresh ideas entering the schools. Hodgetts (1968: 60) agreed that these changes were happening, but declared that they were not happening in history classrooms, which remained stubbornly conservative, writing that: ‘the winds of change in Canadian studies classes are at best gentle Chinooks warming up old ground; at worst they are destructive cyclones, going in circles and leaving very little of value in their wake’. For Hodgetts (1968), the blame did not belong in one place, and it was certainly not all placed at the foot of teachers. He was strong in his critique of the historical discipline for abandoning interest in schools, and also in his critique of faculties of education for continuing to promote problematic teaching practices, and for the general lack of communication between education professors and historians.

What are we to make of Hodgetts’s (1968) damming assessment today? Is it the work of one well-funded and disgruntled teacher from an elite school? Or is it a fair reflection of what was happening in Canada’s history classrooms? Some scholars immediately took issue with Hodgetts’s methods, declaring that they lacked the rigour of current social science (Stamp 1969); however, all of the numerous academic reviews which appeared following the study noted its significance for the nation. The key outcome of the What Culture? What Heritage? report was the creation of the Canada Studies Foundation (CSF), which was incorporated in 1970 with full support from Canada’s Council of Education Ministers, and with much funding from private interests. Tomkins (1977) gives a full discussion of this process, noting that Hodgetts himself was central to the success of the CSF and its work, which lasted until funding ran out in 1986. In retrospect, the CSF was one of the most influential organisations to shape history education in Canada, with the creation of new courses on Canadian Studies in schools, a large number of teaching materials and numerous professional development opportunities for teachers. Today, it is easy to point to the long-term failures of the Canadian Studies project initiated by Hodgetts and his collaborators, however its success in building a national programme and shifting curricula and teaching is remarkable in comparison to other attempts at reform.