The death of the good Canadian: teachers, national identities, and the social studies curriculum

George Richardson's thoughtfully conceived and written study The Death of the Good Canadian is timely. Dealing with questions that are--or should be--at the forefront of curricular and pedagogical practice, it serves in an exemplary way to invite the reader to engage in hermeneutic conversation, but as Benhabib suggests it should, in some unsettling ways. Unsettling because Richardson's announcement of the "death" of certain forms of cultural and national markers of identity signals a loss of innocence or naivete about questions of purposes for social studies in the schools. The "current present," to use Jameson's (2002, p. 214) phrase, with its seeming newness and complexity, challenges as well taken-for-granted representations of social and cultural realities. As Richardson suggests, claims of a coherent and unitary form of national identity are being challenged by "the claims of culture" (Benhabib, 2002) for legitimate recognition and for inclusion in the curriculum of public schools. How to begin to respond to such diversity is one of the questions that underlie Richardson's inquiry. However, it would be a mistake to read The Death of the Good Canadian as providing answers for curriculum writers, or for social studies teaching practice in the absence of a legitimate definition of what it means to be Canadian. Richardson does not provide a prescription for the social studies curriculum. Instead, he is interested in the question of how teachers' own "perceptions of national identity" influence their thinking and practice. How teachers' respond to both the realities of cultural diversity in their classrooms and interpret the problematic narratives of national identity, if any such narratives legitimately exist, is a central concern for Richardson. As he notes, "Social studies teachers cannot isolate themselves from these concerns. The debate over what our national identity is and how it should look in the future has direct implications for what we do in the classroom" (p. 85). Although Richardson does gesture toward the importance of some sense of community and association, he also, at least in my reading of his work, privileges ultimately a kind of individualist solution, suggested in conclusion to a chapter dealing with the "re-imagining of the Good Canadian": "As each reader brings his or her own meaning to the 'text' of national identity, it becomes increasingly apparent that there is no 'common imagining' and the Good Canadian cannot be reinvented" (