I certainly hope you all enjoyed your Canada Day holiday, which rather rudely fell on a Wednesday, too far away to take an extended long weekend. Canada Day, formerly known as Dominion Day, celebrates the anniversary of the founding of Canada in 1867. Sir John A. Macdonald — statesman, politician, world-class alcoholic — was Canada’s first prime minister.

But surely you know all this. These are elementary Canadian historical facts. But if you are a product of the Canadian education system, there’s a pretty good chance that Macdonald 1867 sounds like the name of an expensive brand of whisky rather than the name of our first PM and our birthdate.
It’s time we faced up to a painful fact of Canadian education: when it comes to teaching Canadian history, we suck. And Alberta sucks worse than any other province.

Last month, The Dominion Institute, those old fuddy-duddies who believe Canadians should have at least a passing knowledge of our history (history is so last year), issued a report card on the teaching of Canadian history in our high schools. Surprisingly, Quebec — the spoiled brat of Confederation, the cradle of separatism, the province that has done its best to alienate all other Canadians — received the highest grade, with a B+.

Yes, Quebec does a better job of teaching Canadian history than any other province. Zut alors!
The worst, with a grade of F? Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, PEI and ... Alberta.

As a father who has watched with dismay and anger as my three sons have complete high school with a barely rudimentary knowledge of Canadian history, this comes as no surprise. Disgraceful and appalling, yes. Surprising, no.

The Dominion Institute found that Alberta does not require students to take even one Canadian history course to graduate. Canadian history, such as it is, is taught under the social studies rubric, a catchall that includes units on Brazil, Russia, Japan, France, China, and the U.S. Shockingly, there is only one Canadian History option available, and only in Grade 11, which the institute describes as lacking in curriculum support and not particularly popular. (It wasn’t even offered as an option in my son’s school.) Twentieth-century Canadian history — which would include such trivial events as the two world wars — is only “minimally covered,” says the report.

In my opinion, high school education in Alberta is overly skewed towards science and math, much of it pointless exercises in mathematical mumbo jumbo. For example, my youngest son, who has been released from the school system after serving his 12-year sentence, learned about “conics” in math class. What, pray tell, are conics? Well, as he describes it, conics is about angles and shapes that occur when you put a plane through a cone. I’m going to assume he’s correct, because I’ve never heard of conics. I suppose conics is necessary to prepare some young Albertans for entry into the emerging putting-a-plane-through-a-cone industry (the Chinese are way ahead of us on this), but I think it’s safe to say that 99 per cent of students will flush their conic knowledge from their brains the minute they’ve taken their last math final. (Note to math and science teachers: save your angry e-mails about the value of mathematics and science. I’ve head it all before. As far as I’m concerned, everything you need to know about math — how to add, subtract, multiply and divide — you learn in elementary. All the rest is filler.)

I’m not sure why Canadian history gets the shaft in Alberta. I suspect there is an institutional bias against it because history is often portrayed as simply teaching dates and events, and because it has no “practical” purpose. Alberta schools, in my view, lean heavily towards training the workforce at the expense of expanding the mind. Also, nobody is interested in what a bunch of dead white males did a long time ago, even if what those dead white males did so long ago made the Canada we live in today.
Alberta is not alone in its disregard of where we came from. In 2007, the Dominion Institute found that 82 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 failed a simple 30-question test about Canadian history. Only 46 per cent knew the name of our first prime minister, and only 26 per cent knew the year of Confederation (see opening paragraph for the answers).

Is history important? Absolutely. Without a knowledge of history, we are mere tenants of our country, not residents. How are you supposed to instill a pride in your country if you leave your young people ignorant of its history, its accomplishments, its failures, its reason for being? Anybody in the world can learn mathematics or science. Only Canadians need to learn Canadian
history.

The teaching of Canadian history in Alberta schools is a disgrace, and Education Minister Dave Hancock and the entire Alberta Learning department should be forced to sit in a corner until they agree to change the whole screwed-up system.

Maurice Tougas is the former Liberal MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark.
mauricetougas@live.com