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The following are excerpts from newspapers throughout Alberta. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the ATA.
U.S. sets example for teaching Canadian history
Alberta Education’s recently revised high school social studies curriculum has relegated Canadian history to the margins. Yet, the department’s consultation with parents, teachers and historians revealed a strong desire to include a full measure of Canadian history (local, provincial and national) in the new curriculum. To be fair, including Aboriginal and French Canadian perspectives is a positive development but the approach is cut and paste, selective case studies with little context or understanding. This “post-hole” approach to Canadian history is more “miss than hit”; no Sir John A. MacDonald, no Vimy Ridge. Surprisingly, Canadian history is now being taught in the U.S. and each year more young Americans are studying George Washington and Sir John A MacDonald, Gettysburg and Vimy Ridge. … So here’s the rub: For too long, we smugly sneered at U.S. indifference to studying Canada but the indifference now seems to be ours. Maybe it’s time we followed the U.S. example and start teaching Canadian history to our kids.
—Tom Leppard, “Up for Debate,” Calgary Herald, April 3, 2012
Mom and dad trump Lady Gaga
Bullying is fast becoming the celebrity cause de jour. … Just a few weeks ago culture icon Oprah joined Lady Gaga to launch Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation—a whole organization dedicated to combating bullying. They’re doing what celebrities do best—getting attention. That’s not a bad thing. The first step to beating a problem is making people aware there is a problem. … If we’re serious about stopping bullying, it has to start in the home. There are ways parents can blindside bullies long before they reach the schoolyard. … Parents can show their children how to express their feelings by doing it themselves. Share the highs and lows in your day. If you are facing a moral dilemma, talk about it with your kids. … If you make a mistake, apologize. Not only is it the right thing to do, it shows your kids how it’s done. … You don’t have to be Lady Gaga to make a difference against bullying. Each and every mom and dad has as much power as a hundred celebrity YouTube videos.
—Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger, Edmonton Journal, March 26, 2012
Homeschoolers, human rights and dinosaurs
There may be any number of flaws in Bill 2, but fearing human rights legislation shouldn’t be one of them … People opposed to the wording of Section 16 and the preamble of Bill 2 speak of the “stealth language” that might put family conversation into the public domain of a tribunal. Paul Faris, chair of Home School Legal Defence Association of Canada, says with all sincerity that he’s “hearing from people saying ‘I don’t really want my children being taught to respect religions that I don’t like.’” … In Canada’s most libertarian province, homeschoolers in Alberta get more government funding and have more freedom of conscience than in almost any part of North America. … If you want to teach that modern humans and dinosaurs once walked the Earth together, you can mark that correct on your history exams. … Barring 11th-hour heroics, Bill 2 looks like it will only return (in significantly amended form) after the next election—if at all. We are all free to judge the wisdom of that.
—Greg Neiman, Red Deer Advocate, March 26, 2012
