John Ibbitson: Studying Canada's past is parochial — not to mention divisive. And who really cares about Louis Riel anyway? Bring back the history of Western civilization
Your province's history curriculum is propaganda designed to brainwash children and stoke ancient resentments, and should be abolished.
A Canadian history curriculum, properly constructed, would focus primarily on the role that our nation has played in the ongoing advance of Western civilization — the most important fact of the human story. Paul Johnson splendidly defended this approach in his introduction to The Offshore Islanders, way back in 1972.
"What ideas has Soviet Russia produced?" he wrote. "Or Communist China? Or postwar Japan? Where is the surge of discovery in the Arab world? Or liberated Africa? Or, for that matter, from Latin America, independent now for more than 150 years? It is a thin harvest indeed, distinguished chiefly by infinite variations on the ancient themes of violence, cruelty, suppression of freedom and the destruction of the individual spirit."
Hope for humankind, Mr. Johnson declared, "lies in the ingenuity and the civilized standards of the West." When other civilizations have matched its political, economic and cultural achievements, "then will be the time to change the axis of our history."
Nothing that has happened since 1972 suggests that the axis needs to be changed.
Since Canada is, uniquely, a union of the English and French cultural and political traditions, a history curriculum based on Mr. Johnson's bracing premise would properly instill in both native-born and immigrant children the roots of Canada's Constitution, laws and customs, and our place in the progress of the world.
But history isn't taught that way any more. Today, all civilizations are viewed as equivalent, and if the West is currently on top, that's only because it excelled in rapacity and greed. This is rot, of course, but it's the sort of rot that fills too many teachers' heads. Since it's no longer possible to teach history properly, better that it not be taught at all.
Mind you, even if I could get the history curriculum reshaped to my satisfaction, I wouldn't, because I do believe in a liberal democratic and multicultural Canada, and the cornerstone of both is respect for the other. I may not agree with my friend Michael Valpy's approach to telling the Canadian story, but he has every right to it. Neither of us, though, has a right to force either of our potentially incompatible philosophies on the young.
One of us could earn that right, if we succeeded in making the teaching of history an election issue. What a fun election that would be, with Conservatives defending Eurocentrism, the Liberals promising a "balanced" approach, the NDP urging that Marx be given a second chance, and the Bloc Québécois constructing a chronology of humiliations. The winner of the "Whose History?" election would get to write the history curriculum, because winners always do.
Sadly, elections are invariably about more mundane things, and without the sanction of the ballot we're back to competing philosophies, none of which have political legitimacy.
Besides, studying Canadian history has arguably done the country more harm than good. Grave injustices were inflicted on Canada's native people, but their relentless obsession with those injustices prevents too many native leaders from getting on with the job of improving things.
Too many Westerners ignore their current blessings, preferring to dwell on Central Canada's historical colonial mentality toward the Prairies.
Too many Quebeckers continue to nurse ancient resentments, as if anyone cared a fig any more about the rebellions of 1837 or the hanging of Louis Riel.
None of the one million people who are arriving here every four years care, nor should they. Their ancestors didn't dishonour any treaties with first nations; they had nothing to do with interning the Japanese during the Second World War.
