With this collection, the editor, and the contributors of the thirteen essays, undertake the ambitious task of canvassing key debates in contemporary research and literature on citizenship education in Canada. Not surprisingly, their substantive focus proves both challenging and fruitful, and as a whole, the collection raises fundamental issues of much broader application. The book should be contextualized within the work of the Citizenship Education Research Network (CERN), in which many of the contributors participate. The introductory and concluding chapters summarize the Network vision of the key themes and research questions in the area of citizenship education. The project lends its own stamp to the collection, providing an impressive theoretical scaffold on which to drape a panoramic collection of essays, along with a detailed research agenda that lends a sense of direction rare among edited collections in this area. In common with the conceptual framework underpinning the CERN project, Citizenship in Transformation in Canada is organized around a set of well-articulated issues – conceptual foundations, institutional policies, social and cultural realities, and education.
In the collection’s introduction, Yvonne Hébert and Lori Wilkinson weave some of the key dilemmas and tensions in the citizenship literature with the unique Canadian experience. They also deftly sketch the relative positions of many of the contributors, providing a useful road map to which readers can return should the "deep diversity" of the collection lead to any disorientation. Equally useful in this regard is the tabular analysis of citizenship models, which is included as an appendix. It is sure to prove immensely useful to students of this diverse literature, whatever their level of experience. In light of the authors’ explicit efforts to organize and articulate key themes uniting the diverse contributions, the decision to forgo subsections within the collection initially struck me as odd, but the chapters are evidently placed with some care, and one can discern a number of tacit groupings.
One of the collection’s more conceptual chapters, contributed by Romulo Magsino, usefully summarizes the major attempts to theorize citizenship in Canada. Surveying the basic principles of liberalism, communitarianism, republicanism, and critical approaches, he builds on Galton's eclectic model of citizenship virtues to highlight areas of substantive agreement between the various approaches. The resultant inventory of character traits is presented as the first step in the development of an encompassing curriculum of citizenship education.
In her survey of federal government policy and a variety of conceptual models of the citizenship construct, Roberta J. Russell highlights the challenges confronting Canada’s nominally inclusive model of citizenship. Concern with the impact of federal government policies also shapes Harold Troper’s more explicitly historical chapter. Troper analyzes the evolution of mind which accompanied the shift from the fundamentally xenophobic immigration policies and practices predating the Second World War, to the country’s official multiculturalist stance, well established by the early 1970s. This evolution is traced through three significant policy shifts – the establishment of Canadian citizenship in 1947, various affirmations of human rights (in provincial, federal, and international contexts) during the 1950s and 1960s, and official articulation of a federal policy of multiculturalism in 1971. They are also mapped upon the increasing urbanization of the country as a whole, and the increasing presence of new Canadians within urban centres and their environs.
Rosa Bruno-Jofré’s work provides another historical account of the impact of official policies of Canadianization, focusing on the Manitoba public school system during the interwar period. She begins by outlining official discourse on the subject, drawing on materials produced by the Department of Education in Manitoba and on articles from the Western School Journal. The most intriguing material in her chapter flows from the narrative and case studies that illustrate the myriad ways in which Franco-Manitobans, Jews, Ukrainians, Mennonites, and other minority groups resisted and subverted the most overt attempts at Canadianization, forging identities shaped both by their experiences in Canada and by their respective cultural and linguistic heritages.
Any comprehensive collection of essays addressing contemporary issues in citizenship and education must include a critical appraisal of the xenophobic and androcentric roots from which present-day conceptions of Canadian citizenship have sprung. The present collection offers a number of such investigations. Veronica Strong-Boag’s analysis of the exclusionary nature of Canadian citizenship outlines how Natives, women, and workers fought for inclusion in a broadened vision of Canadian citizenship in which their distinctive experiences and contributions would enrich the nascent country. Her chapter adroitly summarizes a number of key arguments that united these "anti-hegemonic" groups, while remaining sensitive to their unique voices.
Marie Battiste and Helen Semaganis contrast First Nations conceptions of citizenship with those characterizing post-colonial, liberal democracies. They trace the spreading ontagion of modern liberal theory among Aboriginal peoples, and note the telling exclusion of treaty relationships from most public school curricula.
Celia Haig-Brown provides a critical lens on the citizenship construct by combining personal experience and popular iconology. She notes that neither democracy nor citizenship have been devoid of critics and objectors, both among those who regard the rule of the multitudes as a "perverted form of government," and among those who find little attraction in what Canadian citizenship offers. Just as active democratic citizenship ought to involve more than periodic visits to the polling booth, democratic research must move beyond abstract indicators of educational "success," incorporating democratic principles to ensure that students and communities are active in the design, execution, and implementation of research and reforms that reflect their needs and benefit them.
In "Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Ironies of Democratic Citizenship Education," Cecille DePass and Shazia Qureshi highlight the paradoxical relationship between inclusion and exclusion at the heart of various perspectives on citizenship. Effectively blending accessible discussions of key issues in the mobilization of citizenship with personal experiences, they highlight the manifest and latent effects of exclusion and forced assimilation in "multicultural" Canada.
The final chapters in the collection move in a more empirical direction. Utilizing a range of primary and secondary data sources (most notably the 1991 census microfile data on individuals), Fernando Mata captures, in quantitative fashion, dimensions of the lived experiences outlined more subjectively by other contributors. Disaggregating several groups of visible and non-visible minorities by their citizenship status, he correlates these characteristics to their integration into the Canadian labour force. Visible minority status is found in general to be a more powerful predictor of performance in labour markets than is citizenship status.
Labour force involvement also infuses Linda Phillips’ and Stephen Norris’s survey research examining the role of literacy in the cultural and economic lives of 625 households across Newfoundland and Labrador. Their findings support previous research indicating that the value ascribed to literacy varies widely among different cultural settings and life circumstances. Literacy, not surprisingly, is more aspired to among those who see value in it, although not simply in terms of job acquisition. They suggest that literacy policy might be most effective if literacy was promoted not as a means to better employment prospects, but as a vehicle for greater immersion in social, civic, and political life.
Readers of this collection will be left with a comprehensive sense of the ongoing debate over what constitutes a "good citizen" in today’s Canada. They will also have occasion to consider the means by which educational systems can support the development of that type of citizen. The contributors should take pride in this thoroughgoing survey of citizenship issues and in its focus on the complexities and specificities of Canadian experiences. The challenges faced by readers working through the varied contributions gathered here parallel, in many senses, those inherent in citizenship education itself. Visions of the good citizen are diverse and contradictory, and any attempt to simplify the terrain immediately brushes awkwardly against the liberal democratic principles and inclusivity that many regard as definitive of the contemporary Canadian experience. Similarly, resort to any static conceptualization of citizenship is perilous, and doubly so given the tremulous status of nation-states in the emerging world order.
Like its subject matter, this collection is not by nature particularly tidy or comforting. However, Hébert and her colleagues in the Citizenship Education Research Network have attempted to distil the field into a manageable "pan-Canadian research agenda" intended to lend co-ordination and focus to citizenship education research in this country. The final chapter outlines a series of research questions and summarizes recent and continuing research that will contribute to this ambitious project. Experienced wanderers in the citizenship field will likely find some respite (however fleeting) in the air of structure and direction with which this collection closes.
Robert Adamoski
Kwantlen University College