Opinion on the Dominion Institute

This is a letter to the editors I submitted in response to today's Editorial "Manitoba among best of a bad lot at teaching history." The Dominion Institute is an organization that believes Canadian History should be a mandatory subject in Canadian high schools; every year it publishes a report grading the provinces on their curriculum based on a very loose set of standards.

I'm not sure that by not teaching Canadian History in high schools we are "putting our country's future in jeopardy." It is an assumption made by this report without any substantial quantification. Clearly it is important to know some of the details of how Canada came to be, but it is equally, if not more, important is to know where it is going. I think a province that chooses to teach civics, and/or courses that take World History into as much consideration as Canadian History is probably as well off (if not better) than one that only mandates secondary instruction in Canadian History.

The methodology of this survey is flawed, and its annual, almost universally unchallenged presence in the Canadian media is regrettable. Does it really matter if people can identify the year of our confederation or Canada's first PM? Is it not more important for example that they have an understanding of our charter and the historical movements and ideas that gave birth to it rather than the dates and personalities of Confederacy?