The current assessment of the state of political division in the United States is foreboding. Americans are more divided than any time since the Civil War, leaving some to opine that these differences may be irreconcilable. This speculative analysis takes seriously as its point of departure the position of a growing number of American commentators and policy experts who argue that the United States exhibits many of the risk factors that could lead down the path toward another civil war. Some of these commentators have advocated breaking up the union to pre-empt this outcome. The critical analysis within this article draws upon historical analogues from states partitioned during the 20th century such as such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Palestine, and India. These comparisons are used to evaluate proposals for a geographical sundering of the United States into Red and Blue Americas. My analysis highlights the ways in which any kind of national dissolution, though appealing to some at first glance, would be more politically complex, demographically fraught, and possibly no-less violent than the alternative of civil conflict. The most promising alternative appears to be that of learning to live and work together through difference.
To demonstrate how the history classroom could become an important site for addressing climate change, this article describes the piloting of three lessons. Our qualitative case study occurred in an elective environmental education course with teacher candidates who participated in the lessons and were invited to provide feedback. We describe the lessons and their development, and share results from surveys and an interview. Participants identified several educational benefits and expressed feeling better prepared to teach both history and critical thinking in general. Our findings suggest that these lessons may serve as useful examples for developing new resources to support educators in teaching climate change alongside critical and historical thinking.
The aim of this paper is to explore how the Alberta Social Studies 30-1 textbook, Perspectives on Ideology (Fielding et al., 2009) can contribute to orientalist discourse in its presentation of Islam, especially with respect to terrorism, extremism, and illiberalism—three concepts that appear in the Alberta Social Studies Program of Study. Using a content and discourse analysis, the study found three central findings that contributed to an orientalist framing of Islam: a lack of nuanced discussion of Islam; positioning Islam as a source of terrorism; and a lack of acknowledgement of wrongdoing following injustices perpetrated towards Muslims in Canada. This study concludes by offering ways in which social studies curricular support materials may interrogate to disrupt orientalist discourse, and challenges social studies educators to critically examine the limitations of some of the most common resource materials at their disposal.
Our paper examines the latest frontier of the “War on Terror,” countering violent extremism (CVE), non-coercive approaches that aim to prevent “radicalization” that may lead to “violent extremism” or terrorism. We look at the recent implementation of CVE in Québec’s education sector. Based on an analysis of key policy documents and interviews with CVE practitioners, we find that: (1) teachers are responsibilized to safeguard society from the risk of terrorism through being expected to “know the signs” of radicalization and to build “resilience,” (2) students are responsibilized as agents who can influence their peers against violent extremist messaging and toward “prosocial” behaviour, and (3) elements of school curriculum are responsibilized, especially social studies education, to provide students with “critical thinking” skills thought to be lacking among those at risk of radicalization. We highlight the inherent contradictions in CVE, which, in Québec, claims to foster pluralism and inclusivity to combat Islamophobia, but as a modality of the “War on Terror” also targets and stigmatizes Muslim communities. Critical discussion of CVE’s social implications are needed to initiate critical dialogue in Canada over the impact of CVE in social services provision and the risk of securitizing the education sector in Québec.
As those of us in the area of history education well know, though often find it convenient to forget, students-actually, most of us-learn just as much about the past from the arts than from sources normally used in the history classroom.Indeed, we probably learn more, and more powerfully, for example, about the French Rebellion of 1832 from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (or its contemporary musical or cinematic versions) or about the Spanish Civil War from Picasso's Guernica than what is taught in school.Similarly, the spirit of the Renaissance and its ideas are more viscerally conveyed-and are impressed upon us in more meaningful and evocative ways-through the paintings and frescoes of Michelangelo, Raphael, Ghirlandaio, and Gozzoli (especially his Procession of the Magi in Florence's Palazzo Medici Riccardi), in the statues of Donatello, or through the clean, rational lines of the architecture of Brunelleschi, than a textbook or classroom lecture ever could.And yet, as teachers, we still, too often, tend to ignore or devalue the significant pedagogical power of these artistic forms and their ability to invoke insight into the past and its people, ones that resonates with us, that invite us to understand, identify, empathize, and wonder.When we do include aesthetic texts in the curriculum, we often do so to highlight their otherness from history-their fictive nature and historical inaccuracy-and, thus, dismiss or "correct" them.There is, it seems, a prevailing assumption among many history educators, as Terrie Epstein (1994a) noted, "that when secondary students encounter the arts in historical contexts, they partake in educational activities that at worst represent a descent into frill or fantasy or at best promote the cultivation of creative, but not academically credible, thoughts or experiences" (p.174).Regrettably, as my own visits to history classrooms indicate, not much has changed in that regard since Epstein wrote this more than a quarter of a century ago.This is not to suggest that the role of the arts-and the promotion of using the arts in history classrooms-has not been explored in the academic literature.In fact, in the last three
