By Sean GrahamThe Importance of the Past | RSS.com For as long as people have been doing history, there have been debates over how to best share the stories of the past. In recent years, this has revolved around discussions over teaching history and ways to better engage people with the history that shapes our daily lives. In this episode,… Read more »
This is the second part of an essay that ran last Tuesday. Read Part 1 here. By Stéphane Lévesque I believe that every citizen of Canada, from students to adults (including political leaders), would gain from a progression towards more sophisticated forms of historical consciousness that encourage critical distance and informed opinions, and cultivate the capacity to “digest complexity” –… Read more »
By Stéphane Lévesque “One of the things we heard very clearly from the Indigenous family members” says recently re-elected Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps (2018), “is that coming to city hall… and walking past John A. Macdonald every time, feels contradictory. And if the city is serious about reconciliation, which I would say we are, then one important thing we do… Read more »
Andrew Nurse Last fall I had the good fortune to attend a regional workshop and conference on post-secondary teaching and learning, or as it now increasingly called: the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education (STLHE). For me, the highlight of my weekend was watching a fawn walk in front of my car — seemingly without a care in… Read more »
By Samantha Cutrara Should Canadian students be taught with the same history curriculum across the country? I often hear this question posed – sometimes in jest, sometimes in seriousness – at the end of a conference or symposium or in the comments section of an article. It is not currently a very active debate, but this question always seems to teeter on the… Read more »
By Krista McCracken Over the past few years one of the many hats I’ve worn at Algoma University has involved providing introduction to archives sessions and educational programming around our archival holdings. This work often leaves me thinking about archival literacy and the skills historians need to be successful at archival research. Archival research is a vital part of historical… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is on a two-week hiatus, but we’ll be back with new content in early September. During the hiatus, we’re featuring some of our favourite and most popular blog posts from this site over the past year. Thanks as always to our writers and readers! The following post was originally featured on June 20 2013. By Merle Massie “My tap… Read more »
By Merle Massie “My tap dancing just isn’t good enough,” she wrote. She: my daughter’s high school English teacher. Tap dancing: teaching (to pubescent, smartmouth, intelligent, tired kids at the end of June in rural Saskatchewan). “I remember a staff meeting conversation from some point where you were willing to come in and talk with students.” What’s the topic, Mrs…. Read more »
Rather than asking questions about who history education is for, perhaps we should inquire about what we mean by history education?
Budget cuts at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government across the country have targeted cultural and heritage institutions, threatening the integrity of the capacity of Canada to maintain an adequate understanding of its collective past. Just as Margaret Atwood helped mobilize opposition to proposed cuts to Toronto libraries, the challenge for active historians who oppose such measures is to make their opposition public.
