Posts com a Tag ‘HORTON Todd (Res)’
Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues – PLUMMER (CSS)
PLUMMER, Ken. Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003. 187p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.41, n.1, p., 2008.
Ken Plummer, a distinguished scholar of social interaction and human sexuality, has written a fine synoptical book (p. xi) that examines the realm of intimacy and the conflicts the intimate problems to which these changes constantly give rise (p. back cover). Citing turn of the millennium issues such as solo parenting, invitro ferlization, surrogate mothers, gay and lesbian families, cloning and the prospect of designer babies, Viagra and the morning-after pill, HIV/AIDS, the global porn industry, on-line dating services and virtual sex, Plummer argues that dramatic changes in our intimate lives have increasingly bound private decisions to public dialogues in law, medicine and the media. He further asserts this requires a notion of intimate citizenship (p. 50), a sensitizing, open and suggestive concept to be used in the provisional quest of exploring the nature of social change and intimacies (p. 15).
This book is a valuable addition to the growing list of books engaged in unpacking somewhat stodgy concepts like citizenship and identity and repackaging them in new, exciting and dynamic ways. While admittedly brief, Intimate Citizenship does offer a good quality synopsis of current perspectives and expertly crafts a paradigm for analysis that is sure to stimulate conversation about where to go next. Almost certainly written for students in post-secondary education and scholars in the fields of sociology, political theory and cultural studies, the book is readerly enough to be used in secondary school, albeit in excerpt form, to initiate discussion and extend perspectives.
The book is divided into nine chapters, written as an interconnected whole that builds an argument. This is followed by reference notes and an extensive bibliography. It should be stated that at the beginning of each chapter several quotes, often as many as five or six, from authors to activists, are used to foreshadow the discussion(s) to follow. While some may find the quotes distracting and perhaps a bit bombastic, they provide an indication of the perspectives that permeate the discourses within and across the vibrant field of citizenship.
Chapter One, Intimate Troubles, is an appropriate title as Plummer lays out a series of issues and choices facing people at the dawn of the 21st century. He frames the discussion around the question how do we live and how should we live our lives in an emerging late modern world? (p. 7) and offers a conceptualization of the Intimate Citizenship Project (p. 13) that uses zones of intimacies such as self, gender, identity and spirituality to explore: the decisions people have to make over the control (or not) over ones body, feelings, relationships; access (or not) to representations, relationships, public spaces, etc.; and social grounded choices (or not) about identities, gender experiences, erotic experiences (p. 14).
Chapter Two, titled Postmodern Intimacies: New Lives in a Late Modern World, expertly examines intimate troubles in more detail while chapter three, Culture Wars and Contested Intimacies delves into the ways that change brings with it dissent. It is in chapter four that Plummer outlines the core organizing concept of the book.
Entitled The New Theories of Citizenship, Chapter Four is designed to help us navigate our way through the tangled web of conflicts that now surround our personal lives (p. 49) and to a large degree it is successful, though it must be added that brevity does occasionally work against clear sailing toward his new conceptualization. Plummer begins by offering an overview of two concepts: citizenship and identity, which he believes are really about difference and unity. Moving on to new citizenships (p. 51), he focuses on the works of T. H. Marshall, the British sociologist who outlined three clusters of citizenship rights civil, political and social to which all members of a community are entitled. While Plummer does outline many of the criticisms that have been lodged against Marshalls post-WWII work, he rushes through these to get to the main point of the section that the post-structuralist approach is the most fruitful starting point in which to develop newer ideas of citizenship, including intimate citizenship. Indeed, the reader may be left with the feeling that dwelling a little longer with the myriad of authors working in the post-Marshallian field might have made arriving at the destination a little more compelling.
Chapter Four continues by outlining the issue of boundaries and exclusions (p. 53), suggesting that in any framework of citizenship runs the risk of being critiqued as to who is inside and who is outside, who is included and who is excluded, both within and across social worlds (p. 55). A proposed solution is to further develop Ruth Listers idea of a differentiated universalism (p. 55) whereby boundaries are present but shift and sway in addition to becoming more porous. After a brief but worthwhile examination of natural rights, the state, society and inequality, as well as obligations relative to rights, and identity, Plummer pauses to pay homage to the work of authors who have extended citizenship to include feminist and sexual citizenships before adeptly using all of the discussions that have come before to outline a workable, if tentative, account of the issues critical to a new intimate citizenship (pp. 65-66). Among the issues addressed is a key theme that Plummer returns to again and again that citizenship must always be sensitive to the whole panoply of inequalities – of the problem of just citizenship in an unjust society (p. 66).
Four themes provide the details of intimate citizenship in the next four chapters. Chapter Five examines Public Intimacies, Private Citizens and the ways the public sphere is being radically redrawn in the 21st century, while Chapter Six, Dialogic Citizenship, embraces the crucial role of pluralism and conflict along with the need for dialogue across opposing positions. Chapter Seven, Stories and the Grounded Moralities of Everyday Life, is particularly rich, peppered as it is with excerpts of arguments from writers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Carol Gilligan, Richard Rorty and Maria Pia Lara who support, in one form or another, Plummers belief in the importance of listening to the voices of citizens as we struggle to resolve ethical dilemmas in our daily lives. Chapter Eight, entitled Globalizing Intimate Citizenship, explores the ways many of these issues now figure on the global stage and within global fora.
The book concludes with Chapter Nines The Intimate Citizenship Project, an attempt to develop a paradigm for analysis. Having spent much of the book cataloguing issues around intimacies, Plummer does an admirable job of pulling the threads of many arguments together to present an eight-point series of concerns for an intimate citizenship (pp. 140-142) as it moves forward. These concerns are focused around questions that 21st century theorists in the area of citizenship must grapple if the field is to grow in a legally, politically and socially just manner.
The author also demonstrates the proper amount of humility when he states that his work tends to raise more questions than it answers (p. 142) and acknowledges that it can be criticized from a number of different directions including the creeping return of the meta-narrative, the need for further detail, a western bias in the conception of rights and a certain nave optimism or utopianism. Still, his closing section situates the intimate citizenship project within the ongoing effort to eliminate inequalities in the world suggesting a reasonableness and sense of proportion for the task at hand and the challenges ahead. As Plummer states: intimacies are lodged in worldwide inequalities of class, gender, age, race and the like. These inequalities structure on a daily basis the debasement and degradation, the patterns of exclusion and marginalization, the sense of powerlessness that, in one way or another, many people experience as the inevitable backdrop of ordinary intimacies. Cutting across my entire book is a persistent need to return to these issues (p. 145).
This positioning is elevated by the final section in the book, Moving On: Learning to Listen, where he entreats the reader to consider familiar words citizenship, identity, community, public sphere, morality and ethics not as tight words, defined, fixed, with established boundaries but as open, polyvocal, flexible, porous and interwoven (p. 145). This means accepting that there are no simple solutions to how to live life and embracing the permanently unsettled state (p. 145) which is our future. For those who can only envision anarchistic chaos, relativist vacuums or tribal wars emanating from his paradigmatic positioning, Plummer concludes on a note of hope, suggesting that we must listen to one anothers stories of how to make our way through the moral tangles of today (p. 145) because it is there that virtue is re/constructed, morality is debated, ethical dilemmas are re/solved and the common values that hold humanity together (p. 146) are re/discovered.
Todd Horton – Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
[IF]Stories of the Century: World History from 1900 to 2000 – GARDNER et al (CSS)
GARDNER, Robert; PARSONS, Jim; ZWICKY, Lynn. Stories of the Century: World History from 1900 to 2000. Edmonton AB: Duval House Publishing, 2003. 256p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.41, n.1, p., 2008.
According to the Duval House website, this textbook was written as a comprehensive history to fit the Alberta Social Studies 33 Global Interaction: The 20th Century and Today curriculum. Stories of the Century: World History from 1900 to 2000 does indeed cover the customary highlights expected of most 20th century social studies and history courses taught in Canadian schools, but it is not as comprehensive as it could be.
Authors Gardner, Parsons and Zwicky chose an interesting array of photographs to include on the cover of the book. A few are of people who have had an extraordinary impact on the 20th century N elson Mandela, Lester B. Pearson at the United Nations, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and Mahatma Ghandi in India. However most of the photographs are of ordinary people facing the challenges of their lives a group of aboriginal children playing orchestral instruments, soldiers in a World War I trench, a Vietnamese mother carrying a child on her back against the backdrop of a military tank, a crowd marching in support of Vicente Fox in Mexico and a weary Chilean woman with the picture of her missing son hanging from her neck. The juxtaposition of ordinary and extraordinary people illustrates how macro and micro events intertwine, each impacting the other. This is most clearly evident in the large cover photograph of a young man, probably from the former Soviet Union, holding a placard of Vladimir Lenin with an X through the image while a massive billboard of Lenin stands behind him. Lenins rise to prominence was one of the macro events that transpired during the early 20th century but this mans protest of his legacy is occurring on the street, at the micro event level, perhaps helping to precipitate the fall of the Soviet Union in the waning years of the century. Students historical understanding would benefit greatly from an examination of this combination of photographs.
Early in the textbook the authors attempt to establish the perspectives from which they have written this history. The first perspective is chronological. Though historians may quibble about when the century actually began and ended (see the discussion of Lukacks, Hobsbawms and Fukuyamas views on page 3), it is difficult to imagine a history textbook written for the school system completely ignoring chronology. The western understanding of linear time is simply too powerful in reader and publisher expectation.
The book is chaptered as follows: 1) 1900 to 1914 The World at the Turn of the Century, 2) 1914 to 1918 World War I, 3) 1919 to1929 Modern Attitudes, 4) 1929 to 1939 The Great Depression and the Road to War, 5) 1939 to1945 World War II, 6)1945 to 1950 The Postwar Agreements and the Beginning of the Cold War, 7) 1950 to 1960 The Cold War Heats Up, 8) 1960 to 1975 To the Brink of Nuclear War and Back, 9) 1975 to 1985 The New Arms Race, 10) 1985 to 1991 The End of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 11) 1991 to 2000 After the Cold War, 12) After 2000 Old Stories and New Stories in the 21st Century.
There is nothing wrong with a chronological format to a textbook, and some educators might argue that it is imperative for students growing understanding of history. However, a textbook needs to be more that a march through time. Piling names and dates one on top of the other does not, in and of itself, help students develop complex historical understanding, or engage students in a way that captures their imagination. Thankfully, the authors have included other angles to assist and interest students.
The other angles are evident in the second and third perspectives used in writing the textbook. The second perspective noted is a focus on the interaction among the powerful nations of the world (4) because this interaction provides the main themes that shaped the lives of people all over the world. This is a clear articulation of the fact that this textbook will not be comprehensive to the extent that all histories will be included. It limits what will be addressed, a necessary aspect of any written product, while highlighting a concept of enormous complexity, importance and interest power. I was prepared to accept this limited focus at face value and settle in for an exploration of the military battles, social movements and ideological standoffs suggested in the chapter titles. However, the authors seemed to want to have it all ways by introducing a third and final perspective.
The third perspective includes stories from other regions of the world which may or may not have been profoundly impacted by the interactions of the powerful nations, but because were a nation of people from other regions a multicultural country that needs a multihistorical understanding of the past (4) this was deemed prudent. There is nothing inherently wrong with writing a textbook from this perspective but it does set the authors up for criticism when a regional history deemed to be significant by a particular segment of the Canadian population is overlooked. As well, including stories from other regions of the world should go beyond their service to our cultural diversity or understanding of the present. Sometimes teachers simply want to illustrate a variety of ways of being in the world, different approaches to understanding family, school, work, leisure, friendship, conflict, and even power. In this sense, including a story of Australian aborigines or Tibetan monks may be for no other reason but to expose students to the multiplicity of possibilities that are part of our global experience. Still, the authors must be commended for attempting to explain their perspectives and establishing foci that are both interesting and important for students.
Gardner, Parsons and Zwicky wisely included a page outlining How to Use This Book (IV). It explains that each chapter is divided into two sections: a main section and a newspaper section. The main sections incorporate: a) focus questions at the beginning of each chapter, b) a chronological presentation of key events, c) terms in bold that appear in the glossary, d) feature columns that expand on important ideas, e) timelines and charts that summarize key information, f) photographs, cartoons, diagrams, and maps, g) notes about culture, science and technology, h) review questions at the end of each chapter, and i) a glossary at the back of the book to define key terms.
I had no difficulty with any parts of the main sections as they were well formatted, thoughtfully integrated into the chapter and no one part was over or under used. Indeed, I was particularly impressed with the review questions at the end of each chapter. While some questions such as what event triggered World War I, and where did it occur? (34), are of the knowledge variety, many ushered students into the upper levels of Blooms Taxonomy, encouraging application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. An example of this is the following question: Imagine that everyone in the world had enough food and money, no matter who they were and what they did. Would this be a good thing? Jot down a list of problems this would solve and a list of problems this would create. In one or two sentences, state your opinion at the bottom of your lists. Compare your opinion with the opinions of your classmates. Talk about why you agree or disagree. How does where you start from shape your opinion about this? (237).
This is a question expecting a level of thought too often absent from school textbooks. My main area of difficulty was related to the second or newspaper section. Here, headline stories from around the world, region by region (IV) are presented in newspaper format. At first glance this appears to be an interesting way to summarize information for students while introducing them to stories outside the focus of the main section. However, as is the criticism that the authors opened themselves up to, there are several glaring omissions. After a thorough examination of each chapters newspaper section, there is no mention whatsoever of Australia, New Zealand or the South Pacific region. If the index is any indication, this part of the world did not rate inclusion in the textbook at all save for a few maps! Australia and New Zealands contributions to the war effort of both World Wars, their challenges with aboriginal peoples and their influence in the southern hemisphere relative to Indonesia, Vietnam and East Timor might have warranted space, if only for appearances of being comprehensive.
I was also struck by the lack of any mention of Idi Amin, the brutal leader of Uganda during the 1970s; Muammar al-Qaddafi and the U.S. attack on Libya in 1986 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism; and the establishment of an Islamic state in Sudan in the late 1990s. These entries would not only expand the segments on Africa, an often neglected part of the globe, but they fit with the conceptual focus of power that the textbook is using as well.
These criticisms aside, the textbook is a worthwhile contribution to social studies education and the authors should be commended for prominently noting the assistance of Jane Samson, as an advisor on historical accuracy, and Murray Hoke, as bias reviewer.
Todd Horton – Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
[IF]
A Touch of the Zebras – SADU; TAYLOR (CSS)
SADU, Itah; TAYLOR, Stephen Taylor. A Touch of the Zebras. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2003. 32p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.2, p., 2005.
Another in a long line of issue books written for children, A Touch of the Zebras is the story of Chelsea, a grade two student who does not want to go to school anymore. Her mother, Ms. Rose, tries to find out what is the matter but Chelsea is not telling, preferring to hide in her bed under the guise of sickness. Ms. Rose talks to the school principal to no avail and wisely rules out medical problems by consulting doctors and naturopaths. Input from caring relatives does not solve Chelsea’s problem but a kindly visit from Dr. Tara Lorimer does. It seems that Chelsea has taken a dislike to school because she is biracial and feels she must choose between her black and white friends. In short, Chelsea has a touch of the zebras, the feeling of being caught between two worlds.
Itah Sadu adequately captures the intellectual and emotional struggle that can develop when young children are confronted with words and behaviours that indicate race matters and people understand it in very different ways. Though we are never quite sure what transpired to make Chelsea feel like she must choose between her black and white friends, we know that whatever it was, lines of distinction have been drawn. She has heard a message that says she cannot have it both ways. The days of kindergarten play where everyone played with everyone else have gone forever and Chelsea must realize that we are grouped into racial categories. She must now choose the group with which she truly belongs. Living in a state of limbo is not an option. Sadly, the child is forced to make sense of that which is senseless.
The book also adequately captures the intellectual and emotional struggle of parents trying to understand their children and the lives they lead on a day to day basis. Ms. Rose consults her support system, asks questions and tries to fit pieces of answers together in an effort to figure out what her daughter is unable to clearly articulate. She knows that something has changed in the life of her once happy child but feels helpless to make it better. Almost every parent can relate to this feeling.
Amidst these struggles are subtle touches which lift this book above the ordinary. Stephen Taylor’s beautiful illustrations provide the story with a sense of cultural authenticity. The clothing and hair styles shown throughout are suggestive of Ms. Rose’s Guyanese heritage demonstrating the importance of culture(s) for our senses of identity and influence they have on the choices we make. The story demonstrates cultural accuracy in the names of Chelsea’s aunts and uncle along with a sense of tradition in the home remedies they suggest to help Chelsea get better. Each suggestion reflects the relative’s upbringing, highlighting the point that when confronted with something we do not understand we feel off balance and many of us turn to past practices to re-establish a sense of equilibrium. Finally, Dr. Tara Lorimer’s character quietly but effectively signals to the reader that women are not only doctors but that being a doctor is as much about listening and sharing as it is about surgery and the prescribing of medication. These touches enhance the overall credibility of the book as a tool for dealing with the issue at hand.
My one criticism of the story is the simplistic resolution provided for Chelsea’s problem. Though I am sensitive to the brevity of picture books and the age level at which they are aimed, I cannot help but feel that a quick personal story from a kindly doctor and a few slogans like rainbows come in all colours are not going to bring about feelings of exuberance at being biracial. The concept of race is incredibly complex and how people understand and respond to it is even more so, not to mention often idiosyncratic. The resolution is incredibly frustrating especially for anyone who has experienced feelings of in-between-ness like Chelsea’s.
That point withstanding, the book never strays into anger, hatred or self-pity, feelings that are very plausible for people who experience the challenges of being biracial in a racialized world. Indeed, the book strives to honour and celebrate diversity while revealing the common bonds of humanity. From this standpoint the book succeeds admirably.
The many benefits of children’s literature have been well documented. They arouse reader interest and more personal responses than textbooks. Children’s literature engages students aesthetically and according to some researchers allows readers to experience and empathize with other people, cultures, places and times. While not technically literature, picture books like A Touch of the Zebras can be used with young children as an entry point into discussions of what it is like to live in a multi-raced and multi-ethnic family. As well, we can not discount the power of picture books for older children. They can be effectively used as a hook or opener into more complex discussions about race, how it privileges some and is used to diminish others, how it affects individual and community esteem, impacts on our senses of social justice and overall social cohesion, how it is celebrated by some as an aspect of individual and social identity and of course how it is often ignored.
Todd Horton – Faculty of Education. Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
[IF]Talking About Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity, and Language – JAMES; SHADD (CSS)
JAMES, Carl E.; SHADD, Adrienne. Editors. Talking About Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity, and Language. 2nd Edition. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001. 323p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.2, p., 2005.
As editors of a narrative anthology, James and Shadd have compiled a compelling series of stories exploring the complex perspectives of Canada’s racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities. Quotations are used to indicate that the term minorities can be considered by some to be marginalizing to the extent that it positions entire groups of people outside the mainstream majority, perpetuating their Otherness. However, as James states in the introduction, the term also indicate[s] the power relationships in our society: ‘majority’ represents not simply numbers, but the cultural group with political and economic power, as compared to the ‘minority,’ which does not have access to that power (p. 7). Using the work of Stuart Hall, James notes that in talking about ‘identity’ they view this core concept as a ‘production,’ which is never complete, always in process and always constituted within, not outside representation (p. 2). In this vein, James and Shadd have successfully created a book that makes explicit the complex ways personal exchanges and interactions influence and inform understandings of race, ethnic and language identities. It does this by focusing on the vicissitudes of people’s daily encounters and, with each powerfully written story, the reader comes to appreciate the contingent, contextual and relational nature of identities.
The stories are clustered into five themed parts: Who’s Canadian Anyway?; Growing Up Different; Roots to Identity, Routes to Knowing; Race, Privilege, and Challenges; and, Confronting Stereotypes and Racism. Each part provides a space for the contributing authors to voice their individual experiences and interpretations of living in a world that defines people by their race, ethnicity and language.
In a selection from Part I entitled Where Are You Really From?: Notes of an ‘Immigrant’ from North Buxton, Ontario co-editor turned author Adrienne Shadd deftly weaves a story of invisibility and marginalization based on the title question. Shadd illustrates how the four hundred year history of Blacks in Canada has been made invisible in both this country and throughout the world leading to the widespread belief that there is no such thing as a Black Canadian save for recently arrived immigrants. She also draws on her experiences growing up in North Buxton, Ontario a rural Black community near Chatham once famous as a settlement of ex-slaves who escaped from the United States on the Underground Railroad to explore her views on the overlap of caste and class in the public consciousness and the affirmation that can come from education in segregated schools. However, the crux of the story is found in the complexity of daily encounters when varying forms of the question where are you really from are asked. Shadd explains how displays of frustration and annoyance to her answer of Canada and the pursuit of an answer that more satisfies the inquisitor’s conception of a Canadian marginalizes her in her own country. As Shadd explains, you are unintentionally denying me what is rightfully mine my birthright, my heritage and my long-standing place in the Canadian mosaic (p. 15). Still, Shadd is not content to tie up the point in a neat little package. Instead, she ends with an encounter that blows open the discussion again as a Guatemalan Canadian tells her that except for the Native people, the rest of us are just immigrants anyway (p. 16).
While the stories in Part I focus on issues of Canadian-ness, the stories in Part II explore the experiences of growing up, that precarious time when being seen as different or viewing oneself as different can be most traumatic. Stan Isoki, a teacher living in Ontario, relates his encounters with race in a story entitled Present Company Excluded, Of CourseRevisited. Here, Isoki takes the unusual step of updating his first edition manuscript by interjecting more recent commentary and reflection. The effect for the reader is the feeling of a dialogue between who and what the author was and who and what they have become. Isoki, a Canadian of Japanese heritage, shares his feelings of being made to feel both visible and invisible, saving his most potent criticism for several teachers who taught him as a boy and those with whom he worked as a colleague. The criticism is not vitriolic or vituperative, though he has every right to heap mountains of scorn on these individuals given their charge of educating young minds. Instead, Isoki’s critique is a cry for awareness and sensitivity on the part of teachers (and governments) as well as a call to action to re-create a vision of Canada that is truly multicultural.
One of the most insightful stories appears in Part III. Written by Howard Ramos and entitled It Was Always There: Looking for Identity in All the (Not) So Obvious Places, a road side encounter in northeastern New Brunswick is the catalyst for an exploration of the author’s feelings about his father’s identification with Canada and lack of connection to his native Ecuador. This also leads to a period of self-reflection about the ways the author has positioned his father as not quite Canadian and himself as having little or no relationship to his Ecuadorian heritage. Drawing on the work of Ernest Renan and Benedict Anderson, Ramos comes to understand that identity, like nation-building, is a process of forgetting, misinterpreting and re-creating symbols and markers (p. 108). His father, in an effort to become Canadian, forgot his past while subtly sharing that past, that part of who he is, with his son. Ramos, in turn had to acknowledge his misinterpretation of what it means to be Canadian and the boundaries he has created that prevent his father from being who he wishes to be. He also had to recognize his connection to his Ecuadorian heritage as something that was always there, waiting to be embraced in the fullest sense of Canada’s yet to be achieved society based on multiculturalism and acceptance of diversity.
One of the most compelling contributions to the book occurs in Part V. Entitled I Didn’t Know You Were Jewishand Other Things Not To Say When You Find Out, Ivan Kalmar’s piece initially caused me a great deal of discomfort which, I believe, was his intent. Written in a quasi-advice column style, Kalmar refers to the reader as you fostering the feeling of being spoken and occasionally lectured to directly. My feelings of consternation stemmed from indignation at his assumption that I, an educated person, would ever be culturally insensitive. This is mixed with feelings of guilt as I secretly admit to myself that I may indeed have said things or acted in just the ways he describes. Once passed what at times felt like an assault on my enlightened self, I read and re-read his reasoning for offering such advice. In each case, Kalmar thoughtfully demonstrates the challenge of being culturally sensitive, noting that what is often intended as a compliment or search for common conversational ground can also be interpreted as intolerant and insulting. This duality can be frustrating, but just as you feel like you will never be able to get it right or that no matter what you do someone will take offense, Kalmar acknowledges that most people have purity of intent and exhorts that he simply wishes to encourage consideration of his points and reconsideration of our words and actions. The coda to the piece emphasizes a generosity of spirit toward people as they struggle to live in a world characterized by multiple perspectives on identity, saying that even if we occasionally slip up, not to worry as we mean well. As he says, I’m not only a Jew. I am a human being, like you (p. 240).
James and Shadd’s book was written as an effort to make explicit how identities related to race, ethnicity and language influence and inform individuals’ life experiences and relationships (p. 2) and in this regard it succeeds brilliantly. Highly readable, the book is applicable to any university course wishing to delve into the complex world of identities. While not written for secondary school, portions of this book could be used by teachers to introduce a concept, encourage discussion or address a relevant issue. Indeed, there are few more effective entry points into discussions of race, ethnicity and language than the daily encounter.
Todd Horton – Faculty of Education. Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
[IF]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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