ARTICLE/ Marketing Nova Scotia with myths.
Scholars: Province’s public history ‘created’ for tourism promotion
The Sunday Herald. Sun, Jul 25, 2010
By PAUL W BENNETT
Nova Scotia is known far and wide as "Canada’s Ocean Playground." It’s emblazoned on the province’s licence plates, evoked in dreamy television commercials and trumpeted in colourful tourist guides. That popular image also comes packaged with an accessible, entertaining history for the consumption of tourists.
Scottish regalia, sourdough fishermen, sou’wester hats, rugged seascapes, Cape Breton fiddlers and the odd Acadian pastoral scene still populate the public, tourist-oriented version of Nova Scotia’s past. And these very images and symbols can be traced back to the 1930s when the province began developing its tourist promotion business.
Taking their cue from a rather hokey 1936 composite photograph, entitled Native Types, and intended to promote Nova Scotia tourism, Ian McKay and Robin Bates’s controversial new book, In the Province of History, contends that this iconology rests on an invented, largely fictional, historical tradition developed for the purpose of selling Nova Scotia to visitors. In the book, the authors demonstrate how the province’s public past was reconstructed and then turned into a marketable commodity.
The book is an impressive, if rather daunting, academic work, six years in the making, and it takes on the sacred cows of the Nova Scotian popular tradition. Back in 1992, McKay fired his first salvo at "Tartanism" or Nova Scotia’s supposed "Scottishness" in the regional academic journal Acadiensis, and he followed in 1994 with Quest of the Folk, a searing look at the cultural contradictions embedded in popular folk culture. He returns to the field with researcher Robin Bates to deliver a full-blown critique of Nova Scotia’s tourism-driven public history.
McKay and Bates contend that Nova Scotia’s popular history has been spun as "a story of progress, growth and liberty." In this "liberal order" interpretation, the province’s narrative history is presented and misrepresented to attract visitors in ways that highlight its "whiteness" and exclude aboriginals, ethnic minorities, women, and ordinary working people.
Based upon a mountain of evidence, drawn from archival records, artifacts, and tourist propaganda, the authors examine in minute detail how popular writers, tourism promoters and public figures each played their role. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, writer Thomas Head Raddall, and former premier Angus L. Macdonald all figure prominently in shaping the prevailing vision and ethos found in "tourism/history."
Nova Scotia’s public past, McKay and Bates argue, propagates pride in heritage, but blurs the distinctions between fact and fantasy and perpetuates a safe, stereotypical, romantic history. In the end, the province of history is really just the heritage promotion business and it is driven, like almost everything else, by the desire for profits.
The authors clearly relish taking on Nova Scotia’s recognized folk heroes and political titans. Longfellow is excoriated for his 1847 poem Evangeline, a popular tourist item which dramatizes the brutal British expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia. The revered former lion of Nova Scotia popular writing, Thomas Raddall, comes in for sharp, precise criticism as a Britannic popularizer with a penchant for literature sprinkled with crude racial and gender-based stereotypes. Premier Angus L. Macdonald is singled out as the leading purveyor of "Tartanism" who left a lasting legacy of parsimonious Highlander politics rooted in "mystic racialization" of Gaelic culture.
Much less convincing is the authors’ attempt to lump together Nova Scotia’s leading public intellectuals and political figures as defenders of the emerging liberal order. Popular Amherst-born writer Will Bird, author of the incomparable Ghosts Have Warm Hands, would have been most uncomfortable being paired with the thoroughly British and patrician Raddall. If, as McKay and Bates insist, Angus L. was so obsessed with promoting "Tartanism," one might have expected more reference to it in Stephen Henderson’s recent 2007 biography of the man. It’s also quite a stretch to imagine Liberals and Tories, or Protestants and Catholics, conspiring together when their shared history was so bitterly contested for much of the 20th century.
McKay and Bates’s In the Province of History is a profoundly important book, irrespective of its periodic excesses. The lead author is a formidable Canadian academic, a respected former editor of New Maritimes magazine, and now an influential historian based at Queen’s University. Much of what passes for Nova Scotia’s public history remains mired in touristy imagery and sentimentality. Historians like McKay and Bates who are genuine critical thinkers are effective in exposing fabrications and provoking much-needed rethinking. After all, many of us do cringe at the sight of Nova Scotia premiers playing the fiddle, see fissures in Nova Scotian society, and prefer to keep those provincial tartan ties safely in our closets.
The authors have produced a weighty volume that deserves to be taken seriously here in Nova Scotia. If the province’s tourism promoters ever discover McKay and Bates’s book, look out for big changes. Doers and dreamers frolicking on the scenic coastline of Canada’s ocean playground would certainly disappear, and perhaps the provincial guide book would be supplanted by a new version entitled Unsung Heroines and Ordinary Working Folk.
Dr. Paul W. Bennett is director of Schoolhouse Consulting, Halifax, and author of The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence in a Public School World (Formac, 2009).
ARTICLE/ The Halifax Chronicle Herald,
January 13, 2010.
A decade in education: What are the lessons?
By PAUL W BENNETT
Wed. Jan 13
Recent appraisals of the decade known as the "2000s" were certainly entertaining. Celebrity couples, rogues, fraudsters, pop culture, the social media and the new lexicon dominated the news. Yet few of the conventional end-of-decade reviews made any direct reference to the world of education, one inhabited in 2002-03 by some 294,000 Maritime schoolchildren and their families.
Although concern over the state of education consistently ranks high in Atlantic Canadian opinion polls, especially among the young adult (19 to 34) age group, it still remains a blind-spot on the larger public agenda.
Education in Canada is the preserve of the provinces and it?s not easy to take the pulse of the system, especially here in the Maritimes, where surprising differences exist from one province to another.
In spite of this challenge, here are my choices for the top 10 "tipping-point" events over the past 10 years, viewed from an Atlantic Canadian perspective:
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Advent of Google and Wikipedia
"Just Google it" became a routine response to most questions inside and outside the classroom. Online "Open Source" resources like Wikipedia replaced library encyclopedias and revolutionized the whole concept of student research. School libraries survived, but book loan circulation declined in retooled "library information centres."
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9-11 and school security
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoked public fear and anxiety, prompting schools to introduce stricter security policies, door buzzers and cameras. Growing numbers of parents in Halifax and other cities insisted their children go to school armed with cellphones, citing personal safety and security concerns.
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Public acceptance of school rankings
Standardized testing and school performance rankings gained grudging acceptance. Adopting the Provincial Report Card idea pioneered by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) in 2003 initiated the Atlantic Canadian high school rankings, exerting a major impact. In September 2009, the Halifax regional school board followed New Brunswick and P.E.I. in issuing its own individual school performance improvement reports to parents.
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The Harry Potter phenomenon
Schoolchildren were captivated by J.K. Rowling?s seven-book Harry Potter series, culminating in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). The series, The Globe and Mail noted, may not only have created a new generation of readers, but given the printed word a second chance with the rising generation.
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The SMART Board craze
Schools in the Maritime region took a cautious approach to introducing computers into the classroom. While laptop schools sprung up in Maine and Central Canada, "one-to-one" laptop systems were judged to be too expensive, even in Nova Scotia. With the introduction of SMART Boards in the early 2000s, Nova Scotia gradually came on board, attracted by the snazzy, teacher-directed technology and the much more affordable one-per-classroom model.
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Addiction to social networking
The 2000s saw the emergence of "digital teens" living much of their lives in an online world. Text messaging and Facebook began to drive students to distraction, even in schools. In November 2008, New Brunswick attempted to ban social networking in on-school computers, and Nova Scotia followed suit. Such "lockdown" policies were regularly circumvented by tech-savvy teens.
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The Africentric schools movement
Schools focused on African culture were again debated, fuelled by the Toronto district school board initiative and the opening in September 2009 of Canada?s first Africentric Alternative School. An earlier program pioneered in 1995 by Principal Ken Fells in North Preston had shown real potential for reducing the dropout rate among black students. While the concept enjoys African Nova Scotian community support, local leaders such as NDP cabinet minister Percy Paris remained cautious, claiming "Halifax isn?t quite ready yet."
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French immersion controversy
French immersion programs in 2000, according to Statistics Canada, were more popular in the Maritimes than anywhere else in English-speaking Canada. After a government commissioned report, New Brunswick Education Minister Kelly Lamrock sparked a tremendous controversy in mid-March 2008 by proposing the elimination of early French immersion before Grade 5 in the province?s English schools. Four months later, after a widespread public outcry, Premier Shawn Graham backtracked, making Grade 3 the new entry point for such programs.
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The homework backlash
Piling on the homework became more popular from the late 1990s onwards in response to rising parental expectations and student testing initiatives. A major parent backlash, sparked by Alfie Kohn?s The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999) and an influential 2008 OISE/University of Toronto research report, convinced many school boards in Nova Scotia to back off on homework demands, particularly in the early grades.
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School closures and consolidation
Declining enrolments and school consolidation plans made school closures a "hot button" local issue, without producing provincewide "Save our School" movements. The consolidation of Halifax?s two central high schools and the opening of Citadel High in September 2007 completely changed the secondary school landscape, creating a "powerhouse" in academics and athletics. Proposed school closings in Nova Scotia caused intense local school board skirmishes, most recently over Halifax?s Saint Mary?s Elementary School and in Bass River.
Confidence in public education continued to fall in the century?s first decade, according to a November 2007 Canadian Education Association survey, but there were hopeful signs. One recent positive step was the Halifax school board?s "Every School Can Improve" initiative and the release of student performance results on a school-by-school basis. Elsewhere in Canada, this has encouraged parent groups to expect more regular, cross-system "sunshine" rankings of schools and to seek measurable improvement results.
Dr. Paul W. Bennett is director of Schoolhouse Consulting, Halifax, and author of The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence in a Public School World (Formac, 2009).
BOOK REVIEW/ The Halifax Sunday Herald,
October 25, 2009.
Grammar School 'conscience of education' -- ex-headmaster
By DAWN HENWOOD
Sun. Oct 25 - 4:46 AM
In writing a history of the Halifax Grammar School, former headmaster Dr. Paul Bennett faced the problem of all institutional historians — how to make his work interesting to people having no direct connection to the institution.
He has risen to the challenge. The Grammar School: Striving for Excellence for 50 Years in a Public School World not only spins an engaging tale, but it also weaves that tale into the broader narrative of half a century of Canadian educational debates.
Readers used to seeing the Grammar School as a bastion of elitism will be surprised to learn of the school’s humble beginnings. In one of his most vivid descriptions, Bennett takes us back to the summer of 1958, when a group of parents is hunting desperately for a building to house the first classes.
At the 11th hour, the night before registration day, 15 members of the founding board of governors finally secure an old house by putting up $1,000 each. They then rapidly form a renovation crew, remodeling the house, installing fire escapes, and salvaging furniture. Such resourcefulness epitomized the early days of the Grammar School, and Bennett is at his most engaging when he depicts those times through anecdotes and personal details.
Some of the strongest description comes in the third chapter, Sticking to the Books, in which he gives us glimpses into the academic life of 10-year-old Tommy Meyerhof in the school’s first year. As part of his research, Bennett combed through a large cache of papers Meyerhof’s mother had preserved from his school days as well as the contents of the Grammar School archives.
This thorough archival work gives the book depth as well as colour. By analyzing the school’s enrollment statistics year by year, for instance, Bennett is able to dramatize the difficult walk a private school must perform between upholding standards and appealing to the market.
Formac has done an excellent job of making the book appealing to the eye. Hardly a page goes by without an image or two providing visual context for the narrative. The book mostly features photographs of teachers and students, interspersed with the occasional student cartoon. The early chapters also include images of Halifax in the ’50s and ’60s, political cartoons, and a photograph of a controversial book critiquing the Canadian education system.
Such visuals emphasize the broader tale that Bennett aims to tell — the story of how the Grammar School has challenged the lax academic standards of Canada’s public school system.
Bennett, who played a prominent role in the Ontario school reform movement in the 1990s, portrays the Grammar School’s rigorous approach as a beacon of hope in a world of educational darkness.
Chapter by chapter, he traces the progress of that beacon as it’s passed from headmaster to headmaster. We follow the torch as it travels through the hands of an array of eccentric characters whose various leadership styles drive the story forward. While internal struggles over pedagogy and policy form detailed subplots, Bennett’s overarching story pits Grammar School parents and educators against the people who control government schooling.
In an interview, Bennett has called the Grammar School "the conscience in education." The notion of conscience ascribes humane qualities to public education. In his book, however, Bennett tends to paint a one-sided portrait of the public system, stripping it of any virtue. In particular, he gives "progressive" notions of child-centred learning a very short hearing, even though the Grammar School has implemented some aspects of progressive pedagogy over the course of its history.
Bennett could reinforce his position by giving some more space to the enemy. Explaining why progressive educators felt they had to re-invent traditional education would allow him to refute their thinking in a more even-handed, compelling manner.
In the same way, acknowledging some of the challenges faced by the public system would help contradict the Grammar School’s long-standing reputation as a "snobocracy." Along the same lines, Bennett could fortify his case by more richly representing the Halifax independent school scene. To counter charges of elitism, he could portray the Grammar School as belonging to a group of several other Halifax schools started by determined parents in defiance of the public system.
Oddly, he seems to steer clear of the rhetoric of "school choice," which would emphasize the overall social benefits of creating diverse educational opportunities for different kinds of students. In most respects, though, the book’s narrow focus serves as a strength. Readers with an interest in local history will appreciate the in-depth view of a prestigious Halifax institution. Citizens who favour a conservative approach to education will relish the detailed description of the Grammar School’s achievements. And even readers who might wish for a broader perspective will admire Bennett’s quality work and his zeal for educational excellence.
