What is the point of this story?

The Kids are Alright, but the MLAs are idiots

It's happening again. Some bright MLA - in this case, Calgary P.C. Denis Herard - has decided that the province's children are deficient in some area, and that we need to rectify this deficiency by forcing them to take more of something in high school. In this case, it's fine arts. In past cases, it's been physical education, Canadian history, music, second languages, and, my personal favourite, math.

There are several problems with this. Can anybody identify one? Yes, you in the back row. "Opportunity cost", you say? You're right! If we teach more of subject X, we have to teach less of subject Y. Latin will come at the expense of literature, the recorder at the expense of redox reactions, and painting at the expense of politics. Simply put, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Mr. Herard doesn't seem to understand this. Perhaps we should teach more economics in high schools. Or common sense.

But there are more problems: I would invite any of my overweight or physically inactive readers to think back to their high school gym classes. Boy, those sure did inspire you to lead a healthy lifestyle, didn't they? No, actually, they totally didn't. Instead, they inspired you to dodge balls thrown at you by the more testosterally gifted of your classmates and, if you were smart, to "forget" your gym clothes so that you could spend gym class writing lines or something instead of being assaulted by your peers. Yeah, there's nothing like exposing your inability to do something to the ridicule of your fellow students to make you want to do that thing more often (perhaps I'm still bitter about getting zero out of twenty on my grade nine layup test in front of fifty other males, most of them with more pubic hair than me).

Fine, I admit it: this whole post is mostly an excuse to reprint one of my old Gazette articles.

In what is getting to be almost an annual event, there has been much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth among the Canadian chattering classes of late, owing to the fact that we know nothing about our history. Sixty per cent of respondents failed a quiz that asked Canadians to name their first Prime Minister, the Prime Minister who invoked the War Measures Act, and their first francophone Prime Minister. That's right: more than half of Canadians don't know that Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine was Canada's first Prime Minister (and a francophone, at that) and that it was Sir Robert Laird Borden who invoked the War Measures Act.

To clear up any confusion, I should point out that the War Measures Act has been invoked thrice: in 1914 by Borden, in 1939 by William Lyon Mackenzie King, and, most notoriously, by Pierre Trudeau in 1970. Monsieur Lafontaine, for his part, was the head of the first responsible government after the Union Act of 1841 effectively created Canada by uniting its Upper and Lower parts.

Now, I admit that I'm being flippant and anal-retentive here, but I wanted to wipe the smug looks off the faces of anybody who scored perfectly on the quiz (and for those who didn't, I should tell you that the "correct" answers are Sir John A. MacDonald, Pierre Trudeau, and Sir Wilfred Laurier, respectively) before I went on to explain why it is neither necessary not desirable to each more Canadian history in Alberta schools.

I have at times been very critical of Alberta Learning (and for an excellent reason: as a Ministry, it routinely demonstrates the same level of progressive thinking and vision as a seabed full of mildly retarded crustaceans), but it's doing as good a job of teaching Canadian history as can reasonably be expected. For example, the answers to all three of the above questions are covered in Social Studies 10, a mandatory course. That many students can't remember these answers past their final exams is hardly surprising; I defy any reader over thirty to remember more than half of what he/she learned in Grade 10 social studies (or math or chemistry, for that matter). You can teach children whatever you want, but unless it's reinforced at some point during their non-scholastic lives, the vast majority of students will view it as something to be regurgitated on exams and then forgotten. This isn't a symptom of declining character in today's youth, it's basic human nature.

Then there's the question of the desirability of teaching more Canadian history. The concept is very nice - teaching a nation about its past, and all that - but in order to teach more of one thing, it's necessary to teach less of something else. If we were to modify social studies curricula to focus more on Canadian history, something else would have to be axed, such as current events or world history. Unless we want to turn ourselves in a bunch of self-obsessed globophobes, this is not a good idea.

I suspect that a factor in the trauma that many Canadians experience upon reading this column's opening statistic is the suspicion that Americans would do substantially better on a comparable test about their history. This suspicion is probably well-founded. Americans venerate their history, even at the expense of the truth. For example, American Presidents are all considered Great Men by virtue of their station, even if they had illegitimate children with the slaves they owned (Thomas Jefferson), orchestrated crises to dupe their own people into supporting imperialist wars (William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson), or cheated on their wives (Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, any number of others). In Canada, meanwhile, we accept that MacDonald was an influence-peddling alcoholic, that Mackenzie King was a mother-obsessed sociopath who consorted with prostitutes, that John Diefenbaker may have been nuts, and that Joe Clark was, well, Joe Clark - on the whole, a much healthier attitude.

By all means, take the time to learn some Canadian history. It's a fascinating story with some memorable characters. But don't be bothered too much by the fact that most Canadians have more on their minds than the name of some long-dead Scotsman.