This article explores how multicultural discourses impact the reception of Aboriginal teachers, and the Aboriginal knowledge, history, and experience they bring into Canadian public schools. The author argues that what happens to Aboriginal teachers in Canadian public schools as they attempt to include Aboriginal content and perspectives is a…

To speak about separatism as a Canadian is to use a loaded term, one that invokes a significant yet historically specific sociocultural moment. Winners and losers emerged, and in the process, the word "separatism" received a bad rap. Consequently, as a white Canadian who still believes in at least the optimism of the multiculturalist…

Terry Heinrichs's rejoinder (in this issue, p169) criticizes this author and the Canadian boards of education for firing Malcolm Ross and Paul Fromm. In essence, Heinrichs agrees that the firing of James Keegstra was justified, as Keegstra brought his hatred into his classroom. Heinrichs thinks the case is very different when hate mongers preach…

This article presents the author's response to Randy Garrison's article titled, "Implications of Online and Blended Learning for the Conceptual Development and Practice of Distance Education." Garrison's article seems to have missed many important developments relating to distance education and obscures the evolution of distance…

This essay is a critical reflection on educational standardization, particularly the standardization of assessment flowing down from major international assessment projects like the OECD's Project for International Student Assessment to national and sub-national school systems. I argue that the establishment of an increasingly uniform metric to…

Argues that adopting a metacritical stance and examining the dialogue between text and audience will result in a better understanding of how Canada's cultural and intellectual contexts shape the interpretive act, and how this dialogue constructs the public meaning of literary works. (RAE)

Claims that Quebec writers in the 1960s-80s, buoyed by nationalist and separatist aims, created alternative "Marias" who write out of their language, dreams, and bodies, and who are trying to effect a further liberation. Asks where future trajectories invented by Quebec writers will propel their readers next. (RAE)

Examines a book for children written by Farley Mowat, one of Canada's most popular and respected adult authors and a supporter of animal's and native's rights. (NKA)

The Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism raises questions about a social situation which involves claims to special status, principally in school curricula, for a number of languages spoken by Canadian subpopulations. This paper examines the specific circumstances and expression of these claims to the Commission. (Author)

Examines a high school literature censorship case, and challenges the assumption that values can be "absorbed" through emotional engagement with a "transparent" text. Concludes with guidelines for avoiding indoctrination by viewing literature as the construction of fictional worlds whose values are decoded by calculated acts of…

Reviews various methods of teaching literature and proposes that response to literature be an element in the teaching of literature. Considers the role of the teacher in a response-centered classroom and how to create a classroom environment that will encourage interpretation and response to literature. (SRT)

Parents want validation of the quality of education their children are receiving, but education is complex, non-linear, and to a great extent unquantifiable. This article discusses two current trends that are said to be indicative of educational quality: standardized tests and school rankings. This author argues that while standardized tests may…

A literary communication model cannot adjudicate the conflicting claims of transformation and enculturation: that literature is intrinsically educational, that it conduces to psychic growth as a process, irrespective of subject matter and free from the dangers of indoctrination, but that the imperative to make it instrumental to political ends…

Provides a background of response theory, two Canadian perspectives on response theory, a description of transactional response theory and response-centered curriculum, a discussion of the concepts of participant and spectator roles in literature and of the idea of narration and storying as literature, and a discussion of analysis and criticism.…

In this article, the author seeks to address the present function of Canadian criticism by undertaking a meditation on the contemporary Canadian university and stating his own position as a critic of Canadian literature in this institutional framework. The author asks: What are the connections between neoliberalism and cultural nationalism in…