Monday, January 18, 2016

School textbooks

I remember the French textbook we were given in Grade 5.  The first dialogue started with the line, "Tu connais Marcel Martin?" Then in Grade 6 we got the same textbook, and again in Grade 7.  So we were basically learning the same thing year after year! 

This was the time of "natural learning," of course. (They only got serious about conjugation in Grade 8.) The same thing happened with our geography textbook This Land of Ours, which we used in Grades 5 through 8.  But at least it was Canadian geography.

On the other hand, we also had the older textbook Geography Has Made Us Neighbors, which definitely had an American viewpoint!  In every section they'd have a bar graph visual comparing the average income of an American to what a Canadian or Russian or Asian earned.  The American always earned more. (This must have been from the time of McCarthyism.) I recall some generalizations about Canada as a land of hunters and trappers.

I also remember how all the schools had maps of Canada furnished by a candy bar company, which displayed their product in the map's four corners. (I think Crispy Crunch was over Greenland.)


No comments:

Post a Comment