Creating Citizens: History & Identity in Alberta’s Schools, 1905 to 1980 (review)

I lived in Alberta during the early and mid-1980s, when there was a flurry of feverish activity surrounding the implementation of a new provincial social studies curriculum and the development of teaching materials with the ostensible purpose of promoting a sense of Canadian identity. At the time, I was struck by the extent to which these materials, in contrast to their stated national purpose, actively instead promoted a distinct regional/provincial identity. I also wondered how it was that a conservative provincial government had endorsed a social studies curriculum that was decidedly progressive. Amy von Heyking’s carefully crafted examination of citizenship education in the province of Alberta offers insights into questions like these from the time of the establishment of the Alberta public school system to 1980.

In the book, von Heyking describes how Albertans interpreted themselves and their world over time through the school curriculum and its classroom conduit, the authorized textbook. Her discussion is organized according to five major history and social studies curriculum revisions. From 1905 to 1920, the history curriculum was aimed at the intellectual elite, and citizenship was defined by Canada’s role within the British Empire. From 1920 to 1935, schooling was viewed as a tool to create good citizens out of large numbers of young people, and citizenship was defined through virtues and character traits. From 1935 to 1945, a new progressive curriculum was intended to create responsible citizens committed to social change. In the elementary grades it was organized around a series of ‘Enterprises,’ or activity-oriented group investigations, intended to promote academic, social, communication, and democratic decision-making skills. In the secondary grades, the new interdisciplinary subject of social studies incorporated history, geography, civics, and the social sciences. Post-war to 1970, the social studies curriculum cultivated a sense of individualism, and emphasized the potential for every student to participate in Alberta’s material success, while attempting to define a sense of Canadian identity. In the 1970s, the curriculum emphasized social problems and defined good citizenship as a process of self-actualization. Common to the history and social studies curriculum over time has been a lack of sustained inquiry into the nature of the past, resulting in limited historical consciousness. Ultimately, students ‘were left with a limited understanding of their place in a changing community; they were left with an inadequate sense of themselves’ (154).

Von Heyking examines each curriculum in the context of public discourse, scholarly debates, political changes, economic realities, and technological improvements, as well as the classroom context in which the curriculum changes were intended to be actualized. In taking a nuanced and contextualized approach to curriculum change, von Heyking acknowledges the complexity of both curriculum development and implementation. In addition, by including curriculum interpretation, she is acknowledging that teachers have always had the opportunity to exercise their autonomy by supporting, negotiating, challenging, or undermining official curriculum changes.

She provides useful insights into her historiography, laying out her sources and the particular purposes for which they were used in a way that will provide a valuable map for anyone interested in conducting a similar study in another province. Although the core of her research is official programs of study and curriculum guides, von Heyking examines both programs and guides in the context of a myriad of other sources. In order to capture the nature of public and political discussions about curriculum, she consulted articles, editorials, and letters to the editor in regional newspapers; articles in popular magazines such as Maclean’s; debates in the Alberta Legislature; royal commission reports; and publications which provoked public controversy, such as Hilda Neatby’s So Little for the Mind. She has derived an understanding of the intellectual milieu in which the curricula were developed from collected papers of educational luminaries, as well as published interviews and biographies. Finally, she has made an admirable attempt to catch a glimpse of what actually went on in classrooms, where teachers interpreted and students...