Posts com a Tag ‘University of Toronto Press (E)’
The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices | Martyn Lyns
Martyn Lyons | Imagem: Thames & Hudson
Martyn Lyons claims that the role of the typewriter in modernization has been taken for granted by cultural historians, a state he aims to correct in The Typewriter Century. Subtitled A Cultural History of Writing Practices, Lyons notes how the introduction of typewriters changed everyday office procedures, but most of his attention is on celebrity writers and their often uneasy relationship with the machine.
Touching on writers from a wide range of genres, including philosophy, social commentary, canonical literature, pulp fiction, children’s stories, crime, and romance, the book provides an entertaining look at how authors made peace — or not — with the typewriter by examining writers’ correspondence, media interviews, advertisements, websites, and blogs. The Typewriter Century provides a feast of anecdotes and interesting facts about writers familiar to bibliophiles; Gustav Flaubert, Jacques Derrida, Jackie Collins, Jack Kerouac, J. K. Rowling, Ezra Pound, and many more names appear in these pages. Leia Mais
Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship | Allyson Stevenson
Allyson Stevenson | Imagem: Eagle feather News
Social workers, like teachers, played a significant if unintentional role in the colonization of First Nations and Métis peoples in Canada by engaging in approaches to providing services where “assimilation took the guise of benign and de-racialized technologies of helping” (109). Métis scholar and historian Allyson Stevenson reveals this truth in her detailed and critical account of Sixties Scoop when there was a sudden escalation in the apprehension and transracial adoption of Indigenous children.
While Stevenson, an adoptee herself, focuses her account on Métis experiences in Saskatchewan, she provides an examination of broader historical contexts and regional, national, and even international policies and laws that sustained the “colonial intrusion into the intimate realm of Indigenous families” (4). Leia Mais
Colour Matters: Essays on the Experiences/ Education/ and Pursuits of Black Youth | Carl E. James
Carl E. James | Imagem: Tweeter
Dr. Carl E. James (FRSC) is currently the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education at York University. Over the past three decades, his scholarship has focused on the intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, language, and identity in the Canadian context. Dr. James’ essay collection entitled Colour Matters: Essays on the Experiences, Education, and Pursuits of Black Youth is a culmination of his research about Black Canadian youth.
A key feature of this collection is that James structures the chapters with a “Call and Response” style, a linguistic form originating in sub-Saharan Africa. James describes this as a conversation that is meant to provoke larger critical dialogues. Each chapter begins with a “Call” that is, an essay drawn on primary and secondary research conducted by James over the past two decades. The second part of the chapter is a “Response” from one of ten internationally recognized scholars from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. This structure allows the reader to integrate new perspectives about each topic. Leia Mais
Jacob Burckhardt´s social & political thought – SIGURDSON (HP)
SIGURDSON, Richard. Jacob Burckhardt´s social & political thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Resenha de: CALDAS, Pedro Spinola Pereira. A crítica conservadora de Jacob Burkcardt: uma leitura política da História da cultura. Histórias & Perspectivas, Uberlândia, v.1 n.40 – jan./jun. 2009.
É bem sabido que o percurso da história da historiografia é diferente das ciências exatas, porquanto não se deixa medir pela eficiência de seus resultados. Por outro lado, há uma marca deixada pelo tempo em cada página clássica da tradição historiográfica. Podemos considerar que o lugar da grande obra de história se situa entre as novas descobertas e a manutenção de questões ainda não esgotadas. É como disse certa vez um grande escritor italiano: “um clássico é um livro que nunca terminou de dizer aquilo que tinha para dizer”.2 Ao enfatizar a dimensão política e as concepções sociais inerentes à história cultural em seu momento de fundação, o notável estudo de Richard Sigurdson, Jacob Burckhardt´s social & political thought [“O pensamento social e político de Jacob Burckhardt”], interpreta a obra do grande historiador suíço a partir deste lugar ambíguo, entre seu tempo e para além dele, determinado e premido por questões de sua época (que em parte são as nossas questões) e ainda bastante provocador. O retrato que sai da obra é de um Burckhardt polêmico, arguto e atual, em que o fundador da hoje quase hegemônica história da cultura se funde com a do anti-semita. O livro de Sigurdson, portanto, contribui bastante para a história da historiografia, e pode ser aproveitado não somente pelos interessados na obra do grande historiador suíço e nas origens da história da cultura, mas, também, por todos que, porventura, tenham vontade de conhecer um pouco melhor as críticas da modernidade feitas no século XIX por autores de filiação conservadora – caso de Burckhardt – que, assim, pode ser visto como um sucessor de Edmund Burke e um perfeito contemporâneo de Dostoievski. Trata-se, pois, de um belo volume de história da historiografia, história intelectual e história política. Como diz seu autor, os temas clássicos de Burckhardt permanecem bastante atuais: “(…) a relação entre o indivíduo e as massas; a tensão entre os ideais de igualdade e de excelência humana; a qualidade e a natureza da cultura na sua era massificada; e o papel do intelectual no Estado moderno – tais temas têm sido calorosamente debatidos pelos teóricos da política”. (SIGURDSON, 2004, p.7) Professor na Universidade de Manitoba (Canadá), Richard Sigurdson dividiu seu livro em duas grandes partes, cada qual com três capítulos. Na primeira parte, “Burckhardt e o nascimento da história cultural”, Sigurdson demonstra que a prevalência dada por Burckhardt à cultura, em detrimento do Estado e da Religião (conforme ele deixaria claro em suas preleções de 1868 sobre o estudo da história), não significa que seus comentários políticos sejam frívolos ou irrelevantes. Reconstruindo a trajetória formativa de Burckhardt, Sigurdson demonstra que a busca pela cultura como objeto privilegiado da história explica-se por uma dupla renúncia, a saber: a desistência em obter uma formação teológica (iniciada entre 1837 e 1839 na Universidade da Basiléia) trocada pelos estudos de História em Berlim, onde aprendeu com o já eminente Leopold von Ranke o rigor do método. Mas as aulas de Ranke o levaram à segunda recusa: o estudo da história política, preterida em relação ao seu projeto de vida, a saber, dar os primeiros passos para construção da história cultural. A opção de Burckhardt é percebida com muita argúcia por Sigurdson: tratase mais do que fundar mais uma área de estudos, mas, sobretudo, de ver qual a função da história cultural. Para ele, ao contrário da tendência providencialista dos argumentos de Ranke, nos quais o Estado aparece como amálgama de ordem providencialmente estruturada, para Burckhardt a cultura, o Estado e a religião eram essencialmente heterogêneos e conflituosos (cf. SIGURDSON, p.77).
O grande mérito do estudo de Sigurdson reside, portanto, em mostrar que a motivação de um historiador do porte de Burckhardt ultrapassa a do mero especialista laboriosamente interessado em fazer pequenos avanços em um campo seguro e bem estabelecido. Na segunda parte (homônima ao título do livro), torna-se mais clara a intenção de Sigurdson, qual seja, a de demonstrar que a obra de Burckhardt é uma crítica cultural politicamente conservadora O argumento do autor se baseia no ceticismo de Burckhardt em relação à natureza humana, para ele essencialmente imperfeita no que diz respeito às ações e à capacidade de conhecimento. Sem tal ceticismo, não se compreendem as críticas à democracia igualitária, aos movimentos revolucionários da Europa e à massificação da cultura que, lamentava-se Burckhardt, destruiriam toda a tradição cultural sedimentada desde a Grécia antiga. A concepção de continuidade histórica é fundamental para o autor da Cultura do Renascimento na Itália: afinal, se é a continuidade que pauta a escrita da história, também ela há de ser norma política e social.
O desenho geral do livro de Sigurdson, porém, não deve esconder outros motivos que motivam o leitor a abri-lo. Identifico pelo menos três razões que justifiquem a dedicação proveitosa do tempo do estudioso interessado nos temas abordados na obra.
Uma primeira discussão de peso decorre justamente do conservadorismo de Burckhardt, aqui entendido como uma posição do historiador perante o fluxo do tempo, isto é, de sua situação hermenêutica. Assim como Friedrich Nietzsche, o historiador suíço pode ser considerado “extemporâneo”, ou seja, um autor fora do compasso de seu tempo. Não devemos confundir tal posição com a pretensão de isenção e neutralidade.
Burckhardt, por mais que tenha se decidido por uma vida pacata na sua Basiléia natal e se recusado a participar da azáfama de Berlim, em momento algum se encastelou em uma torre de marfim. Sua obra, desde “A Era de Constantino Magno” (1852), é uma incansável reflexão sobre as crises históricas. Como vivesse no meio de uma Europa conturbada, Burckhardt lamentava a massificação da cultura, a politização da vida por meio de grandes unificações nacionais (Alemanha e Itália, por exemplo), e procurava se situar no meio das turbulências e da crise de orientação instaurada.
Um dos grandes problemas de sua época convulsionada era justamente o excesso de “egoísmo”, termo bastante utilizado em suas Reflexões sobre a história universal (datadas inicialmente de 1868, porém publicadas postumamente em 1905). O egoísmo do homem moderno, para Burckhardt, se expressa tanto no excesso de paixão política, que tenta amoldar o mundo de acordo com seus dogmas revolucionários, bem como no excesso de utilitarismo, que tenta se servir do mundo de acordo com necessidades fugazes e cambiantes. A relação do historiador do mundo não há de ser utilitária nem dogmática, mas antes contemplativa. Entenda-se contemplação aqui como a visão desinteressada e estética que, por sê-la, é capaz de perceber as formas em sua mutação histórica. É um problema hermenêutico: ao interpretar o passado, devo assumir os pressupostos de meu presente, ou devo calçar os sapatos alheios e buscar a empatia com uma outra época? É interessantíssima a abordagem de Sigurdson, mais ampla que a de Thomas Albert Howard, por exemplo, que, em seu livro Religion and the rise of historicism (Religião e o advento do historicismo) entende o fascínio de Burckhardt como fruto do reflexo de crises pessoais e exclusivamente pela secularização do mundo contemporâneo.
O estudo de Sigurdson contribui, portanto, para as discussões hermenêuticas, sobretudo, quando lembramos que Hans-Georg Gadamer, em 1960, haverá de colocar a tradição como eixo de sua filosofia hermenêutica em “Verdade e Método”, sem, todavia, sequer citar Burckhardt entre outros historiadores por ele abordados, como Ranke e Johann Gustav Droysen. Mais ainda: ao destacar a postura contemplativa de Burckhardt, o historiador ganha a chance de compreender uma forma de interpretação histórica de cunho estético sem cair nas conseqüências apressadas e hipersubjetivas do pós-modernismo de nossos dias. Nas mãos de Sigurdson, a aparentemente mofada e anacrônica contemplação burckhardtiana torna-se, portanto, tema atual de discussão.
E o autor tem razão ao considerar Burckhardt um historiador “extemporâneo”, porquanto praticamente irredutível às classificações habituais. É já conhecido o debate sobre a procedência em rotular Burckhardt como “historicista”, e o fato de trazê-lo a tona constitui uma segunda boa razão para ler a obra de Sigurdson, que faz um belo exercício ao tomar como parâmetro a definição de historicismo proposta por Pietro Rossi, segundo a qual o historicismo significa (a) a ênfase na individualidade das épocas históricas; (b) o caráter dinâmico da verdade, ao invés de estático e metafísico, e (c) a crítica a valores absolutos. Com tais parâmetros em tela, inserir Burckhardt no âmbito historicista é uma interpretação problemática, porquanto, de fato, ele destaca as individualidades, mas em momento algum (a) perde de vista a importância da continuidade histórica, (b) analisa as crises, mas elabora uma interessante teoria de relações estruturais entre Cultura, Estado e Religião, na qual estabelece constantes antropológicas, e (c) se de fato ele desconfiava das visões por vezes anti-históricas do iluminismo, Burckhardt preferia apresentar sua crítica de maneira cética, e jamais afirmativa.
Tal exame proposto por Sigurdson tem dois méritos. O primeiro deles consiste em ver aspectos historicistas na obra de Burckhardt, sem, todavia, deixar de ignorar as incongruências da obra do historiador suíço com tais parâmetros, e, assim, a posição ponderada de Sigurdson se destaca no debate em torno ao assunto. Não vemos nele a tentativa algo forçada de Jörn Rüsen3 em inserir Burckhardt, mesmo que marginalmente, na tradição historicista, uma vez que, diz Rüsen, a sensibilidade de Burckhardt pelas crises expressaria um sintoma clássico do historicismo. Mas também Sigurdson não pende para o outro lado, formado por autores como Alfred von Martin e Edgar Salins, para quem o apreço de Burckhardt pela cultura clássica4 e seu esforço em elaborar constantes antropológicas retirariam do cerne de seu pensamento a tendência historicista em equivaler as épocas e enfatizar as mudanças.
Neste sentido, o exame de Richard Sigurdson serve para solidificar uma hipótese que considero forte: o conceito de historicismo não explica a elaboração da consciência histórica no século XIX, sendo a idéia de Bildung (formação) bem mais eficaz. É digno da maior admiração o destaque dado por Sigurdson à idéia de formação, ou seja, de proporção e equilíbrio na construção da personalidade individual e nos contornos de uma cultura, virtudes ameaçadas em uma época de especialização crescente do trabalho industrial e intelectual. O mais notável é que tal idéia de Bildung não fica como valor abstrato e esfumaçado. Ela se fez presente no conceito de “estilo de época”, ou seja, nos traços uniformes identificáveis em realizações culturais de um determinado período, algo que Heinrich Wöllflin, discípulo de Burckhardt, realizou muito bem em obras como Conceitos fundamentais da história da arte5, na qual identificou os traços do Barroco e do Renascimento. Ao refletir através do conceito de Bildung sobre as possibilidades formativas da historiografia, toda a obra de Burckhardt mantém-se ainda interessante e digna de estudo. Mas tal faceta só se revela porque Sigurdson filia Burckhardt ao humanismo clássico alemão, dando aos estudos ao estudo da história da historiografia uma base mais ampla, que permite a interseção com outras áreas do conhecimento, sobretudo, a filosofia e a literatura.
Uma terceira razão para estudar atentamente a obra de Sigurdson provém justamente da anterior: uma análise da história da historiografia deverá ser feita em um campo interdisciplinar.
Desde finais do XVIII, o embate entre o saber empírico dos historiadores e o saber especulativo dos filósofos se trava com sutilezas e matizes. Se Kant criticara Herder por ser perder no mundo das aparências, e se Droysen tentava fundar filosoficamente a historiografia sem cair nas malhas da filosofia da história de Hegel, agora a situação se altera: Nietzsche era um grande admirador de Burckhardt, e este correspondia com reticências ao interesse demonstrado pelo autor de Zaratustra.
Mas a comparação entre estes dois grandes intelectuais do século XIX nos permite ir mais além. Ambos eram críticos da modernidade, conforme diz Sigurdson, o que indica algo bastante saudável em tempos “pós-modernos”: criticar a modernidade não implica abandoná-la ou enfrentá-la. Na base do confronto entre Burckhardt e Nietzsche encontra-se algo de mais substancial, a saber, os rumos da história da cultura, que oscila entre a necessidade de estabelecimento de sentido pela memória, de um lado, e pela crítica feroz aos rumos da cultura moderna, do outro. Portanto, até onde deve ir a reflexão do historiador sobre seu ofício e sua época? Ao tentar justificar sua tarefa, ele não se perderia na teia da epistemologia, da metafísica e da filosofia da história? O que pode somente ser explicado historicamente, e, mais ainda, o que adquire sentido somente a partir do texto historiográfico? O embate é antigo – pois vem desde Herder e Kant, tendo passado por Droysen, Marx e Hegel – e ainda precisa ser enfrentado. A questão é: no caso de Burckhardt, as reflexões são sempre sustentadas de um ponto de vista conservador, que procura, por um viés pessimista, estabelecer a continuidade na história.
A obra de Sigurdson, portanto, ao contribuir para o debate sobre a hermenêutica (o historiador como intérprete), sobre os limites do historicismo, e sobre a relação da teoria da história com a filosofia, torna-se uma referência importantíssima para os interessados em discussões de alto nível para os assuntos em tela.
Notas
2 CALVINO, Italo. Por que ler os clássicos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007, p.11.
3 Cf. RÜSEN, Jörn. Der ästhetische Glanz der historischen Erinnerung – Jacob Burckhardt. In: ______. Konfigurationen des Historismus: Studien zur deutschen Wissenschaftskultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993, p.282.
4 Cf. MARTIN, Alfred Von. Nietzsche und Burckhardt: Zwei Geistige Welten im Dialog. Basel: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, 1945, 3a.ed., p.43; SALIN, Edgar. Vom deutschen Verhängnis: Gespräch an der Zeitwende: Burckhardt – Nietzsche. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959, p.50.
5 V. WÖLFFLIN, Heinrich. Conceitos fundamentais da história da arte. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1989.
Pedro Spinola Pereira Caldas – Professor Adjunto do Instituto de História da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. Doutor em História Social da Cultura pela PUC-Rio.
Canada’s Founding Debates – AJZENSTAT et al (CSS)
AJZENSTAT, Janet; ROMNEY, Paul; GENTLES, Ian; GAIRDNER, William D. Editors. Canada’s Founding Debates. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 380p. Resenha de: LeVOS, Ernest. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.2, p., 2005.
Here is a book that will interest Canadianists, and those high school and university students interested in constitutional and political developments. Students wanting to do some reading and research on Confederation, and who may not have the luxury of time to read the original legislative records on Confederation, will find Canada’s Founding Debates a valuable source. There is an enormous amount of material packaged into this one volume. Do not skip reading the introduction, since it explains very succinctly that this book is about Confederation. But more specifically, it is a book of excerpts from official reports of the debates in the different colonies (p. 7), that is, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada, Red River and British Columbia, on whether they should join a more viable union. One will read the views of less familiar names such as Robert Carrall, Francis Barnard, and James Ross, along with those more familiar figures like George Brown, George Etienne Cartier, John A. Macdonald and Louis Riel.
The authors have neatly divided the book into five parts covering what was said by the politicians of the seven British North American colonies on liberty (constitutional liberty, responsible government, parliamentary government, the Upper House, equality of representation); individual as well as collective economic opportunity; American, British and Canadian identity; the new nationality(federal union, majority and minority rights), and how to make a constitution (consulting the people and the issue of direct democracy). The book is a convenient source for the views of Macdonald and Brown as well as other lesser known figures. The reader will detect not only individual perspectives and tones, but also the anxieties, enthusiasm and urgency these politicians shared in establishing a new union.
The conservative and liberal views held by the supporters and opponents of Confederation are included in this volume. They were very much like us today, concerned about the future of their country and the well being of future generations. Indeed, they were very concerned about the purpose and form of a new government that would work properly. One will observe that these politicians, at the crossroads of change, brought about by such events as the Civil War in the United States, did not hesitate to study other constitutional models and political systems seeking the best pragmatic insights from these models and systems. As a group of legislators, they were a reservoir of experience and knowledge, men who illustrated their arguments with references to European history through the centuries, the great poets and the Bible, and men who subscribed to the belief that good arguments lead to good resolutions (p. 2).
But the legislators from each colony had their respective concerns. Those from Prince Edward Island did not think they would gain anything from being in the new union. The delegates from Newfoundland worried about their fisheries and the starving population, and feared that they would lose control over their properties, liberties and lives (p. 61). In the Red River Colony, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, there was the concern that their respective colonies would be overwhelmed by Upper Canada and swamped by newcomers. Above all, they feared the lost of their individual identities.
A large book such as this one can be viewed as a book filled with a lot of details and speeches, but is can prove to be a valuable source. It can be a useful reference source to high school students interested in what the fathers of Confederation had to say on issues such as liberty and identity, and it can be a valuable source to college and university students who wish to compare and contrast the views of either Macdonald and Brown, or another set of politicians, on topics such as responsible government, representation by population, whether the vote should be given to householders, or on other related issues that were debated in their respective legislatures.
While some readers may not bother reading footnotes, it would be a disservice to themselves to ignore them since there are many valuable explanations. The footnotes provide the reader with an understanding of the historical context in which political developments such as responsible government, developed. One example is John A. Macdonald’s view on the debate, in the parliament of the province of Canada, on responsible government: I speak of representation by population, the house will of course understand that universal suffrage is not in any way sanctioned, or admitted by these resolutions, as the basis on which the constitution of the popular branch should rest and in the footnote, William D. Gairdiner, one of the authors, offers this explanation: Macdonald is giving his assurance that the house need not fear the spectre of mob rule, which is what many informed people at the time would have expected from universal suffrage in a democratic system (p. 70-71). These are more than footnotes, they are explanatory notes. Read and reflect on these notes for a fuller understanding of the developments on the road to Confederation.
The book offers much potential for assignments and research topics on the internal aspects of Confederation, as well as on the external influences. It is interesting to learn, as William Ross from Nova Scotia noted, that the Quebec scheme is largely copied from the Constitution of New Zealand (p. 268). Bear in mind, however, that the book is a compilation and, as such, critics of the book may accuse the authors of not portraying the complete views of certain politicians. In this case, one should read the entire speech of that politician in the legislative records. This book, however, is a very good reference source.
Ernest LeVos – Grant MacEwan College. Edmonton, Alberta.
[IF]From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools – GIDNEY (CSS)
GIDNEY, R. D. From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 362p. Resenha de: BREI, Margaret E. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.2, p., 2004.
Why is it expedient to re-visit a book written in 1999? Because the information it contains remains valuable for clarifying common issues surrounding change within an education system. Moreover, controversy over educational change is not limited to one province or any single time, in this case Ontario in the second half of the twentieth century. Educational change is fast becoming a decisive issue over which political wars are fought provincially, nationally and internationally. My various roles as an educator have, until recently, been played out on the Alberta stage. As I witnessed the latest educational policy changes under the Klein Conservative government, in both structure and curriculum, it was impossible not to make a comparison of that journey with the one on which From Hope to Harris takes the reader. Finding myself on yet another stage, this time in the United States, where once again the complexities of major educational policy and curriculum restructuring are being played out, I can only ask: Is there nothing new? Therefore, it was with deliberate resolve that I revisited Gidney’s work, this time using the context of comparative decision-making in matters of educational policy. Larry Cuban remarked that the loci of impetus for any educational change are often to be found in the current malaise of society. His one liner When society has an itch, the schools scratch (1992, p. 216) underscores the acute vulnerability of educational change to social change. Gidney’s work is a case study of Cuban’s critical theory. The historical examination of the process of decision-making involved in developing the present system in Ontario provides valuable insights and serves as a Rosetta Stone for those wishing to contribute to an understanding of educational change in their own jurisdictions.
The volume provides possible answers to a series of relevant questions using Ontario as an example. It identifies the thematic strands of the theoretical framework of policy formation. These strands are imbedded in the 15 chapters and can be identified as: the steps of the decision making process; the classification of the agents of the decision making process; the aims of policy; the methods of legitimization of policy decisions; the competing views of the process; the models or styles of policy formation, and the decision making process as a factor of innovation. When applied to the upheaval within Ontario’s education from the Hope commission, 1945-1950, to the changes implemented by the Harris government, the volume provides a skillful, fifty year historical sweep in an attempt to answer: who made what decisions, how were they making them and why were they making them? From Hope to Harris, however, involves more than a chronological story of the events or even a blueprint for other studies of this nature. It aims to understand the processes of policy making and to offer it as a guide to present practices and thereby provide implications for the present decision makers. Employing the research strategy of the descriptive case study and using the documentary content analysis technique of the historiographer, Gidney is well qualified. As an educational historian and Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, he has spent his career examining primary source documents, and gained a reputation as a scholar of educational history in Ontario with volumes such as Elementary Education in Upper Canada: A Reassessment and Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. He demonstrates a delightfully subtle sense of humor with statements such as: In 1943 Ontario’s voters put the Conservatives in power, and, in a fit of absent-mindedness left them there for just over forty years (p.43). The reader is challenged to reflect on the information by choosing the context in which to use the information and thereby make it meaningful and useful on a personal level.
The volume has become required reading on campuses for courses in such diverse areas as: Sociology of Education, Educational Policy and Program Evaluation, Topics in Comparative Politics, Ontario Government and Politics, and The Economic Development of Ontario. It is my hope that it would also appear on the required reading list for all members of the various levels of government. The volume is profusely documented with bibliographic notes, an extensive index, and an appendix filled with statistical charts all testimony to the quality of research that is the foundation of this volume.
In each chapter, the focus is on a different era in policy, pedagogy, curriculum, and political change. The topics record changes in fiscal policy, educational professionalism, growing teacher militancy, union action, the structure of education, the government’s role, administration/supervision of schools and school districts, movements for equality in education, and the progress toward university trained elementary and secondary teachers. Although extensively using edu-speak, Gidney heroically attempts to make the story of Ontario’s education restructuring into a suspenseful who-done-it, as he unfolds the plot and chronicles the move toward a centralized policy but a decentralized curriculum. He clearly describes the actions of the Ontario government that moved from sharing administrative power with local educational authorities to stripping school boards of their power. In doing so, the Conservative government’s decisions, made by powerful individuals, weakened public education and badly eroded teacher morale. Gidney examines Ontario’s experiment with universal education, including secondary education for all, and seems to indicate that the experiment was not as radical as it could have been.
The final impression I take away is that educational decision-making, and the resulting changes, is a political process closely tied to the social and political milieu. The government reacted to internal and external pressures and intervened in structuring. For the average teacher this resulted in a loss of autonomy. Gidney demonstrates that any form of change is enlivened by the political interaction that took place between individuals and groups as they sought to influence the decision making process. Re-reading the work in this context, calls to attention the process of contending with competing interests, agendas and preferences in attempting to create educational policy and administer its implementation. Society changes over time, legislative power changes over time, educational philosophy and pedagogy change over time and the development of a jurisdiction’s educational policy is a lengthy process.
In re-visiting this volume, I can only suggest that a new edition is in order with added chapters bringing the reader up to date on the issues in Ontario’s education system. Issues such as corporate donors and their involvement in the curriculum, the two tiered system, the restructuring of the high school, the present level of local control of education, the existing teacher morale and the overall current state of the teaching profession should be addressed.
References
Cuban, L. (1992). Curriculum stability and change. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.). Handbook of Research on Curriculum.
Margaret E. Brci – City University of New York. New York, New York.
[IF]
Tropics of Teaching: Productivity, Warfare and Priesthood – TOCHON (CSS)
TOCHON, Françoi. Tropics of Teaching: Productivity, Warfare and Priesthood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 163p. Resenha de: GRIFFITH, Bryant. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.3, p., 2004.
The Tropics of Teaching is not an easy book to read. In fact, it is a difficult text, full of intricate philosophical language and argument. It is not a book that I would recommend for recreational reading neither for teachers nor for students. However, is it important to the social studies education community? The answer is absolutely yes, and this is why. Tochon argues that educators have constructed a culture of niceness around the act of teaching that negates the ethical nature of what happens in good classrooms with experienced and caring teachers. This culture of niceness prevents teachers and students from understanding the problems associated with teaching and learning as they try to make meaning of the world of education.
In order to understand why Tochon believes this I’m going to take you on a brief, and I hope clear, description of what I understand to be his philosophical position. Tochon employs a semiotic analysis to teaching. Semiotics is, I think, another one of the inexact ‘sciences’. It is inexact because there are many interpretations of what semiotics is; yet it is a science because it does have a definite set of precepts, or sets of precepts. The shortest definition of semiotics is that it is the study of signs and its most notable practitioner is Umberto Eco, who is probably most widely remembered for writing The Name of the Rose. Eco describes semiotics as being concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign (Eco, 1976, p. 7). I take this to mean that semiotics not only studies signs of everyday life, like language, but also anything which stands for something else, namely words, images, sounds, gestures and objects.
Another major figure in the field of semiotics is the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss. I think it may be easier to understand how semiotics relates to teaching and learning if one thinks about how an anthropologist tries to make meaning of the world he or she happens upon. In each case understanding is constructed by making sense of signs presented to them in various textual forms.
Let me illustrate, Lvi- Strauss creates a dialogue with his materials and how best to use them. He asks how the process of discovery leads to making meaning, and then he tracks that process. What he does not do is lay down the path of what that meaning will be beforehand. So semiotics calls for teachers, anthropologists and students to construct personal meaning from actions. This is a reversal of the traditional curriculum process, and of traditional teaching and learning practices. In semiotics learning becomes a creative act shaped by the intentions of the learner and also by language and social and psychological factors. In Tropics of Teaching, Tochon describes semiotics as the ethical element of teaching. It is what good, experienced teachers do when they care for their students. They become flexible in their pedagogical practice. This ethical quality is highly prized by our society but for the most part it has not been addressed in faculties of education or in school classrooms. The reason for the split between theory and practice, Tochon says, is that we have forgotten that teaching is the mirror to the soul and not based upon the rational reflection of how to make things fit (p. 132).
Tochon says that we have further confused the meaning of such key concepts as word and actions, ideology and change, economics and education, and that we have lost touch with what is most important: contact. Contact occurs during a conversation between teacher and student when it is based upon a bottom-up discovery of the learning process. It is not a prescribed path to defined ends. Tochon is telling us is that teaching is the art of translating signs from art to poetry and beyond. This world is not just found in books, computers or audio-video material.
In the same way meaning is not simply transmitted to us. We actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes, of which we are unaware. I think this point is vital. University education, in particular, is often accused of not preparing students for the real world. Given my description above I think we could say that too often teaching does not touch base in order for us to understand signs. In many cases if signs are learned they are not made explicit and therefore no real meaning is made. Too often students pick up meanings implicitly and the pedagogical moment has been lost.
Tochon calls the process I have outlined Humanist reflection. So that we can understand how this differs from much of what we traditionally do in our schools, he has organized the book around three metaphors: ‘productivity’ or output and standardization, ‘warfare’ or strategy and expertise, and finally ‘priesthood’ or the enlightened subject. He argues that we can by-pass these three concepts by employing a semiotic methodology he calls his counter- methodology. This counter-methodology would be learning activities based upon lived experiences as opposed to top-down, plan oriented activities.
Tochon gives us an example of such an activity in action poetry. Tochon believed that the city of Geneva had lost touch with its soul and this was exhibited by the lack of public interest in poetry. He took advantage of a local grant and had students write original poems about matters of personal interest to them. Each of the twenty-seven original poems was then inscribed by hand in acrylic by a professional painter and then mounted on billboards all over the city. The reaction was just what Tochon had hoped for: a public conversation in all the media about the poems. This initiated new and giant poems on billboards; many are still visible in Geneva. Thus action poetry became a process whereby the people of Geneva made meaning from the poetry in acrylic on the public billboards. It began a shared public discussion of the value of poetry, art, civic pride and much more. This is how Franois Tochon conceives of the school curriculum and of the nature of teaching and learning.
Let me leave the last words to him: In action poetry, performance produces a metaphoric message, which may take a narrative dimension. Action, which before all else is abstract, erects a set of values into a set of metaphoric symbols. These values cannot be separated from the context and the field of action, and yet they present the poetic sign as a means of reaching beyond the symbolic connections usually promoted by the city. Through poetry, the city appears to be
refigured and rejuvenated (p. 113).
It would be nice to think that educators could present such an argument about the nature of teaching and learning when asked for it by those who pay our way. Take some time and read this book. It is well worth the effort.
References Eco, E. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Lvi-Strauss, C. (1972). Structural anthropology. Hammondsworth: Penguin.
Dr. Bryant Griffith – Texas A University. Corpus Christi, Texas, USA.
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Citizenship in Transformation in Canada – HÉRBERT (CSS)
HÉRBERT, Yvonne M. ed. Citizenship in Transformation in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 289p. Resenha de: GLASFORD, Larry A. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.1, p., 2004.
Ideologically, the editor and contributing authors of this collection of thirteen essays on citizenship and citizenship education have written from the perspective of democratic pluralism. In this vision of utopia, equality trumps liberty and group rights take precedence over individual prerogatives. Equality itself is re-engineered as equity, a measured equality which seeks to factor in the negative effects of historic and systemic inequality, and then to alter the balance from the top down to ensure fairness. The intended result is harmony and social justice for all, and especially for new Canadians.
Implicitly understood as the antithesis of the authors’ democratic pluralism is classic liberalism, variously described in our time as neo-liberalism (in Europe), or neo-conservatism (in America). Individual freedom is sacrosanct, and the ideal role for the community, as embodied in the coercive state, is simply to ensure that personal liberty is maximized. Equality is understood to mean equality of rights, and equality before the law. As much as possible of human endeavour is kept beyond the realm of state intervention. Individual citizens are free to sink or swim, to prosper or suffer, as their own merits dictate.
Somewhere in the middle of these two poles is a third position: democratic liberalism. Proponents of this perspective seek to harmonize liberty with equality, and likewise to balance the competing claims of individuals and groups. Rather than an either-or proposition, they see democratic citizenship as a both-and challenge. Freedom and equality are important; people are unique individuals and they belong to, as well as self-identify with, a series of groups The book begins well. Inside the front cover, an abstract identifies two key questions as being the focus of the author team. First, what constitutes a ‘good’ citizen in today’s liberal democracy? And second, what social and educational policies are needed to sustain the lives of these citizens, while not impinging on liberal democratic principles? (p. i). Had the book concentrated on these two questions, had the editor imposed a disciplined structure on her own and her colleagues’ contributions, this volume would indeed be a valued addition to the shelf.
Although the essays seem to have been written over several years, the book in its final form still appears to be a rushed job. On page 4 we read Much of the citizenship debate is concern [sic] with four dimensions of citizenship. A few pages later we are told only within this century [sic] have women gained the federal vote (1918) (p. 7) despite the fact the book was published in 2002, well into the ‘next’ century. The appendix, a well-intended chart purporting to display a breakdown of key models of democratic citizenship, is flawed, almost worse than useless. In the first place, it analyzes fourteen historic governmental arrangements, far too many to be meaningful, without providing any rationale for their inclusion. Why was Machiavellian Florence analyzed, for example? More seriously, factual and conceptual errors abound. The prerogatives of the Emperor are discussed under the heading of Roman republican model (p. 250). Yet the institution of Emperors signalled the death of the quasi-democratic republic. Et tu Brut? Edmond Burke, famous for his liberal-conservative response to the French Revolution of 1789, is mysteriously identified with 17th-Century England (p. 252).
In too many places, the book’s language is excessively turgid and jargon-ridden, serving to exclude from understanding all but the ‘inside’ experts – ironic, given the sincerely inclusionary aims of the authoring team. Here are two examples. From the opening essay, we read that policy and institutional goals are marked by a range of conceptual possibilities and affect lived Canadian realities (p. 14). The authors appear to be saying that, with the best of intentions, government policy can sure mess up the lives of ordinary Canadians. Half-way through the book, we are informed that teachers mediated the curriculum and could challenge official views and even generate a political space in the classroom by using a critical alternative perspective (p. 122). Presumably, the author is saying that conscientious teachers closed the classroom doors and taught their students what they needed to learn.
Still, the verdict on this book is only partly negative. Yvonne Hbert and a co-author, Michel Pag, nicely capture the overlap of history and citizenship, in their concluding chapter. across Canada, the teaching of history is controversial as soon as it touches upon the face of national identity, which is still under construction (p. 245). So true, despite the mixed metaphor. A very useful feature of the book is the collective (appropriate for democratic pluralists) bibliography at the back, which draws upon the combined sources of each author, as cited in their individual chapter Notes.
Predictably, the quality of the specific chapters is uneven. For example, Veronica Strong-Bag’s contribution on the struggles of women, aboriginals and blue-collar workers is passionate, but vastly under-estimates the significance of multiple over-lapping identities. Romulo Magsino provides a very useful overview of three approaches to citizenship, which he classifies as liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism, but how does critical pedagogy fit in? The article by Marie Battiste and Helen Semaganis is a fascinating, if one-sided, presentation of the hard-line First Nation perspective on treaties, culture and citizenship. The piece by Roberta J. Russel drones on in careful bureaucratese, piously informing us that The focus of citizenship education in a pluralistic society should be inclusive and should empower everyone to participate (p. 146). What else could an employee of the Department of Justice say? Nevertheless, her paper rewards a second reading, with good material on civics and citizenship, and insightful hints as to the federal government’s role in promoting citizenship.
Harold Troper’s article provides a sound historical overview of Canadian attitudes toward, and public policy about, the ideal of population diversity. For something completely different, try to follow the thread of Celia Haig-Brown’s meandering post-modern musings on appropriate democratic educational research, written as an unedited stream-of-consciousness flow. Or not. Cecille de Pass and Shazia Qureshi capture our attention by interspersing dramatic first-person narratives of blatant racial discrimination into their essay, then throw it all away with a dated, almost obscenely careless, stereotyping of the 21st -century Canadian upper middle class as the sectors of the population who share an attachment to historic Anglo symbols like the Union Jack and who became [sic] misty eyed when they hear the anthems and songs associated with the British Empire (p. 180). Hello! Did you miss the great flag debate of 1964? Only in the concluding chapter do we learn the underlying rationale for this book. These essays represent the work of a group of interested researchers, decision makers and practitioners who met in 1998 and developed a consensus around a pan-Canadian research agenda in citizenship education (p. 229). Known as the Citizenship Education Research Network (CERN), its primary task is the coordination of the research efforts of the founding members as well as of all others who wish to participate in the process (p. 232). In 1999, an elite national team of researchers was formed with responsibility for securing funding (p. 243). The mention of money brings us back to the conundrum of the democratic state. Is it (a) the likeliest threat to our freedom (classic liberal view), (b) the benevolent source of both our influence and our funds (democratic pluralist position), or (c) a two-edged sword to be watched, but wielded with cautious purpose in the interests of liberty and equality (democratic liberal perspective)? As every university student knows, the odds in a multiple-choice question ride with response (c).
Larry A. Glassford – University of Windsor. Windsor, Ontario.
[IF]Transformative Learning: Educational Vision for the 21st Century – O’SULLIVAN (CSS)
O’SULLIVAN, Edmund. Transformative Learning: Educational Vision for the 21st Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 304p. Resenha de: LEMISKO, Lynn Speer. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
In his book Transformative Learning, Edmund O’Sullivan has brought a deeply moving and deeply thoughtful vision to the discourse of educational reform. Rather than simply offering a critique of the modernist meta-narratives that have shaped education since the Enlightenment, O’Sullivan offers up a new grand narrative, or mythic vision, which he argues is necessary if we are to educate for the survival and sustainability of our planet. In so doing, he bravely ventures along a pathway that many postmodern and critical theorist angels fear to tread.
Drawing upon scholarship from an exceptional variety of disciplines including history, metaphysics, anthropology, biology, eco-philosophy, cosmology, political theory, feminist theory, psychology, chaos theory, and physics, O’Sullivan describes and critiques modernity and the current mantras of globalization. He then shapes a narrative vision which he hopes will be of sufficient power and complexity to orient people for effective action to overcome environmental problems, to address the multiple problems presented by environmental destruction, to reveal what the possibilities are for transforming these and to reveal to people the role that they can play in this project (p. 182). In shaping this comprehensive cosmology, O’Sullivan does not offer particular and specific suggestions for educational practice. Instead he invites readers to reflect deeply upon the personal and cultural perspectives that have and are driving educational efforts and to envision the shape of education if the cosmology he elucidates were to become our guiding narrative.
While postmodernist critiques are typically deconstructive and express grave concerns about the construction of new grand narratives to replace the old, O’Sullivan posits that without a comprehensive reconstructive cosmology humans are left without a positive transformative vision to guide future action. In his narrative, the universe story, O’Sullivan proposes that three interrelated basic tendencies operate in the universe at all levels and all the time. These tendencies are: differentiation, which is a creative force that brings with it the burden of being and becoming, different from everything else in the universe (p. 223); subjectivity, which includes the idea that all things in the universe have, at least in latent form, the capacity for sentience and, therefore, should be considered as living, spontaneous and sentient [entities] that can be addressed in intimate terms (p. 192); and, communion, which embraces the notion of the deep and relational quality of all reality (p. 192). O’Sullivan’s grand narrative, then, encompasses a vision that not only includes all humans in all their wonderful diversity and uniqueness but also includes all of the natural world and universe. This is a compelling narrative because it is framed by ideas that enable us to honour and encourage both the individual and the collective, the human and not human.
Although O’Sullivan’s tracing of the historical roots of the present age is somewhat linear and simplistic, his analysis of present trends and dominant ways of thinking is both comprehensive and insightful. Using a plethora of recent scholarly studies he develops a well-documented and fascinating synthesis of ideas. Although the density and abstractness of the metaphysical ideas is challenging, this rich and complex work should be on the reading list of all educators, including practising teachers, administrators, graduate students, and university professors. In fact, this book offers intriguing insights for all who ponder the future of humanity and our planet.
Lynn Speer Lemisko – Faculty of Education. University of Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
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The Infinite Bonds of Family Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940 – COMACCHIO (CSS)
COMACCHIO, Cynthia R. The Infinite Bonds of Family Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 180p. Resenha de: SPEER, Lynn. Canadian Social Studies, v.35, n.3, 2001.
As another book in the Themes in Canadian Social History series, this volume explores the history of Canadian families during a time period which saw an industrial revolution, World War I, and the Great Depression. Comacchio uses these larger historical events to trace and explain continuity and change in the lives of Canadian families, arguing that these events were punctuation points (p. 149) that effected the ways in which families constructed and reconstructed themselves. However, the author acknowledges that the historical path of family life cannot be examined in a linear fashion because there has never been one ‘kind’ of family. She claims that while family is universal in that all cultures have constructs known as ‘family’, families are also unique in that they emerge out of a mix of factors, including: …class, gender, region, race, ethnicity, religion and age…(p. 5). Hence, in tracing continuity and change in families, the author takes into consideration all of the kinds of families found within Canadian society, including: working and middle class families, French Canadian families, Aboriginal families, Anglo-Celtic families, African Canadian families, long-settled families and recently immigrated families.
Though Comacchio has made a solid effort to affirm the complexity of domestic life, she was unable to resist imposing a type of unity on her work. In formulating a focus for the book, she claims that: … if there is one thread that winds unbroken through this era of rapid and intensive change, it is a widespread public perception that ‘the family’ was in a state of crisis (p. 4). With this focus, the author is able to demonstrate how the notion ‘families in crisis’ helped to shape Canadian social policy, proving her claim that families both effect and are effected by society. However, because this idea actually emerged out of the middle class, the ‘families in crisis’ thesis creates difficulties for Comacchio. This social group constructed and promoted the notion of the ‘ideal’ family and then perceived that families were in crisis because of the dissonance between real families and the idealized family, a dissonance which became most extreme when real families were impacted by events like economic change and warfare. Comacchio indicates that she will trace continuity and change among all kinds of Canadian families, as well as tracing the impact of the perceptions of the middle classes on families belonging to other social groups. Hence, in attempting to create a unified focus or thesis, the author compounds her already complicated task.
While this type of complex examination is laudable, the length, depth, and breadth of this book is limited by restrictions placed upon it because it is designed to provide an overview of a particular theme in Canadian social history for undergraduate and graduate students. In creating this overview, the author did not engage in original research, but rather created a synthesis of the scholarly studies investigating the history of Canadian families undertaken over the last two decades. The main purpose in compiling this book, as stated on the back cover, was to …pull together a large body of research and lay out the main themes and interpretations…, rather than to explore complexities. It is from the imposition of this main purpose that the main criticisms arise.
The attempt to create a synopsis of important themes, while trying to acknowledge the complexity of the lives of families, leaves the reader with a sense of frustration. This arises from the lack of in-depth discussion of important and enticing information. For example, the discussion of the impact of industrialization on Canadian families is disjointed. Over the space of only a few pages, such topics as housing, income levels, poverty, racism, widows, orphans, health, disease, and old age are given coverage, with only a paragraph or part of a paragraph devoted to each (pp. 28- 30) . This lack of depth is an irritation.
Added to this, is that fact that the reader is rarely taken ‘inside’ the lives of Canadian families. While there are occasions where the author includes a direct quote from a family member, allowing some insight into how a family viewed the world, the book generally examines domestic life from an ‘outside’ viewpoint. We receive a variety of statistics, for example, describing aspects of the changing role of women: in 1860, one in five middle-class housewives had regular paid help, while in 1921 only one in twenty housewives had this kind of help (p. 81). However, we do not hear the voices of women themselves discussing their personal views about housework, children, or husbands. In taking the ‘observer’ point of view, the book is able to point out major themes, but it lacks intimate, personal insights which seem especially important in understanding the histories of families.
Finally, there are no citations indicating the specific sources from which statistical information or direct quotations were extracted. This is not only irritating, but is poor scholarship as well. Without appropriate citations the reader is unable to identify the particular historical study the author consulted when creating statements of fact and arguments. While there is a reference section listing the titles of the sources used for each chapter, the lack of citations makes this book a bad example for use with undergraduate and graduate students, who should be learning to indicate the sources from which information and evidence is derived.
The main criticisms arise from what appears to be the format required of books that are part of the Themes in Canadian Social History series. The author is attempting to accomplish an extremely complex task, but seems to be required to do this using an undocumented, overview approach. This being said, Comacchio must be given credit for attempting to tell an inclusive, multilayered story about Canadian families who lived between 1850 and 1940. While the book does not have practical value for classroom teachers, it is accessible to both secondary and post-secondary readers providing insight into topics and issues that could spark an interest to further explore the historical lives of Canadian families.
Lynn Speer Lemisko – Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
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