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“HARDWORKING, TEMPERATE AND PEACE ABLE”-THE PORTRAYAL OF WORKERS IN CANADIAN HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Kenneth W. Osborne.

Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, c1980.
(Monographs in Education #4, ISSN 0709-6313).
90pp, paper, $6.00.


THE EDUCATION OF NATIVE PEOPLES

D. Bruce Sealey.

Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, c1980.
(Monographs in Education #3, ISSN 0709-6313).
88pp, paper, $6.00.


DANIEL MCINTYRE AND THE WINNIPEG SCHOOLS

William J. Wilson.

Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, c1981.
(Monographs in Education #6, ISSN 0709-6313).
88pp, paper, $6.00.


Professional.
Reviewed by Agnes L. Florence.

Volume 11 Number 4.
1983 July.


Since 1979, the Monographs in Education series has been published semi-annually by the faculty of education of the University of Manitoba as a means of encouraging and disseminating research and scholarly writing on varied topics in Canadian education. Edited by Keith Wilson and Alexander Gregor, these pocket-sized, eminently readable volumes bring to the practitioner in the field, and to those interested among the public at large, considered opinion and discussion of topics relevant to current educational trends that might otherwise be lost to us on the university shelves as "just another master's thesis."

The Osborne study, "Hard-working, Temperate and Peaceable "—The Portrayal of Workers in Canadian History Textbooks , investigates an issue that has attracted increasing attention in recent years: the biases both implicit and explicit in Canadian textbooks. Professor Osborne is concerned about the consideration, or lack of consideration, of the worker in Canadian society, about continued emphasis on political development with little perception of social or economic life of the nation. The emphasis seems always to be on "the view from the top" of the nation builders. Suppression of the story of conflict and the daily life of working people makes the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 appear to burst on the scene out of the blue. This neglect of social history is seen to limit student identification with Canadian historical events as "unreal."

The Sealey study, The Education of Native Peoples in Manitoba, makes a valuable contribution to the literature of cross-cultural education. In a thorough and lucid fashion, Bruce Sealey traces the education of both Indian and Métis people from the era before the earliest European settlement to the present day.

He analyses different approaches taken, the reasons underlying them, and their various consequences. In so doing, he makes more understandable the issues and alternatives with which we must come to grips today.

The Wilson monograph on Daniel McIntyre and the Winnipeg Schools provides a valuable addition to our understanding of the development of education in one major Canadian city. This study relates the tremendous influence of one Maritime educator who moulded the major school district of the province, establishing many of its responsibilities during the initial flood of immigration that was to form the basis for a cosmopolitan population. It further touches on the McIntyre influence on formulating the duties and sphere of influence for the new provincial department of education and a fledgling university.


Agnes L. Florence, Winnipeg, MB.
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