![]() ![]() Students read literary and historical accounts of brave warriors and epic battles, and they also learned about such Canadian chapters in the imperial story as Loyalism and Dominion participation in the recent South African War. Even before the war, much of what they learned in History, Geography, and English classes focused on the British Empire and its military triumphs. While the demands of work and family meant that not all Canadian youngsters attended school all of the time, by 1914 over 80% of Canadian five to fourteen-year-olds (that’s 1.4 million young people) were attending public day schools. The chief instrument in this process of assimilation is the public school.” For many Canadian teachers and politicians, formal education was the perfect way to assimilate students whose origins weren’t British (a group that included included both Aboriginal youngsters and the children of immigrants from Asia, the United States, and central and eastern Europe).Īs one English-Canadian Manitoba school inspector wrote, “these incongruous elements have to be assimilated, have to be welded into one harmonious whole if Canada is to attain the position that we, who belong here by right of birth and blood, claim for her. Formal education, which was compulsory in every province but Quebec, taught young Canadians to read, write, and calculate, but was also an attempt to teach a growing nation’s diverse young population about the ideals and practices of Anglo-Protestant citizenship. Before the war, most schoolchildren across the country were taught lessons that focused on patriotism, obedience, and loyalty to the British Empire. It would have made perfect sense, however, to early twentieth-century Canadian youths, most of whose educational experiences were profoundly shaped by their nation’s imperial ties. The fact that Canada, as part of the British Empire, was automatically at war following Britain’s declaration of war in August 1914 confounds many twenty-first century students. While this paper will reflect the existing scholarship’s focus on English-Canadian children and education, it will also remain attentive to the ways in which young people’s experiences of wartime were determined by issues of gender, class, ethnicity, and community. Aboriginal youngsters, meanwhile, had to contend with assimilatory education policies and the often divisive effects of the war in their own communities. The meanings and experiences of wartime therefore differed considerably for the children of enlisted men, German immigrants, interned Ukrainians, conscientious objectors, and the many French Canadians who opposed conscription. But in a population characterized more by diversity than uniformity, these feelings of hope and national unity were often paralleled by contestation, prejudice and fear. On the one hand, the war years were a time of unity and patriotism which many understood as proof of Canada’s importance to the British Empire and the world. Drawing on the primary sources found on this website and the small but growing body of scholarship on Canadian children, education, and war, this essay will ask how children and adolescents from across the country learned about the conflict between 19. Yet despite the ubiquity of these references to youthfulness and national maturation in Canadian narratives of the war, most histories of the conflict have ignored its effects on actual young people. Canada’s participation in the First World War has often been described as a coming-of-age – a trial by fire that transformed an immature colonial polity into an independent adult nation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |