King Charles's coronation: How the place of Britain and the Crown has shifted in Canadian schooling

• Imagining and building nations is central to school systems, and began in Canada shortly after Confederation in 1867.
• Ironically perhaps, it may be the move toward reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and settler Canadians that could revive the focus of the Crown in Canadian schooling.

‘Agency for national unity’

• Following Confederation, Canada grew both by adding new provinces and territories and through immigration.
• This coincided with the push for universal public education which policymakers of the day saw as “an agency for national unity and social harmony.”

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  According to Canadian historian Desmond Morton, that purpose was achieved in English Canadian schools by focusing on “the historical myths of British nationalism … What mere Canadian citizenship could compete with the claims of an empire that spanned the known universe?” These myths, he notes, were conveyed by texts like adapted editions of the Irish National Reader, the first textbook used in Upper Canada.

1897 Royal celebrations

• The impetus for this focus on empire flourished during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897.
• These celebrations inspired an outpouring of patriotic sentiment, and a push to foster patriotism in English Canada’s schools.
• The first Empire Day was celebrated in 1899 and coincided with Queen Victoria’s 80th birthday, adding fervour to the event.

1940s and beyond

• Toward the end of the 1930s and into the 1940s there was a shift away from this focus on what some called “Anglo conformity” in Canadian schools and society more generally.
• Second, many educators and others began to see assimilationist approaches to schooling as morally wrong.
• They were beginning to recognize the injustice of what Mi'kmaw scholar Marie Battiste later called “cognitive imperialism” to extinguish alternative conceptions of society and nation.

1947 Canadian Citizenship Act

• A growing sense that Canadians needed to imagine themselves as an independent people was fostered by Canada’s participation as an independent and important part of the war effort against the axis powers.
• It found expression in the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1947.

Assumptions of citizenship

• In later decades, the assumptions of citizen education began to shift from a focus on conformity to broader ideas of cultural pluralism including affirming forms of gender, sexuality or racialized identity as goals for education.
• An example is the iconic painting “The Fathers of Confederation,” copies of which have adorned some textbooks or hung in schools.

Royal Proclamation of 1763

• Of significance for thinking about the role of the Crown in Canada is that The Constitution Act of 1982 grounds treaty and other Indigenous rights in Canada in the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
• Many Indigenous and other legal scholars recognize the proclamation “as an important first step toward the recognition of existing Aboriginal rights and title.” The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) notes the proclamation set an approach to treaty making based on mutual respect.