The Death of the Good Canadian: Teachers, National Identities, and the Social Studies Curriculum

by George H. Richardson

Overview

This book documents the failed attempt of successive social studies curriculum to create a sustainable mythic structure of Canadian identity, and it situates teachers in the uneasy space between the modernist concepts of national identity prescribed in the curriculum and the lived world of the classrooms they experience daily. In The Death of the Good Canadian, George H. Richardson endeavors to represent the ambivalence of curriculum delivery in an era when there is frequently a striking dissonance between the rigid boundaries that the modernist curriculum creates between national self and other, and the more hybrid and problematic sense of national identity formation as an ongoing process of the articulation of cultural difference, which is suggested by the plural classrooms of the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820455358
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	05/22/2002
Series:	Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality , #197
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

The Author: George H. Richardson teaches in the University of Alberta's Department of Secondary Education. He has taught in northern Canadian schools and in Ukraine. Dr. Richardson's research interests focus on national identity formation and citizenship education.

Editorial Reviews

There has been an explosion of academic interest in the field of citizenship in the past several years. In this context, George H. Richardson's book is particularly important in that it provides links between that work and citizenship education in two important ways. First, it situates citizenship education in the context of important work in the field of political theory, particularly work related to postmodern conceptions of nation and nationalism; and second, through the use of action research, Richardson links that theoretical work to the world of teachers and classrooms. Both of those connections are sorely lacking in the field and to find them here is significant and refreshing. (Alan Sears, Associate Dean, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick)
'The Death of the Good Canadian' is a marvelous book, chock full of original insights of great theoretical, methodological, and practical value. George H. Richardson deals with the often vexing issues of poststructuralism's relationship to contemporary educational dilemmas with a welcome clarity and intellectual force. (Cameron McCarthy, Research Professor, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois)

From the Publisher

The ways that nationalism and national identity are presented in the Canadian curriculum put teachers in a position of absurdist ambiguity between modernist mythic structure and a postmodern classroom reality that contradicts that structure argues Richardson (secondary education, U. of Alberta, Canada). This absurdist position places teachers on the margins of discourse over curricula and is responsible for the sterile representations of national identity presented in Canadian schools. He argues that postmodernism and hermeneutics offer more dynamic and democratic approaches to teaching national identity. This approach would recognize different narratives, refusing to portray minority cultures simply in terms of their contributions to the development of the dominant culture. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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