How to Decolonize Curriculum
Difficult conversations will make civic education relevant again.
Originally published August 19th, 2020 (Blogger)
Civic education in Ontario is flawed. Schools give perfunctory lip service to FNMI treaty rights by starting each day with a “land acknowledgment” so banal it is mocked on the CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster. Our civics curriculum is written so that the Indigenous perspective is disenfranchised. “Political equality” is mouthed, but meaningful economic redistribution and cultural recognition are not enshrined within our institutions or public life. Without equal distribution of power, equal opportunity cannot be achieved.
So, as a critical educator, it is my task to identify, critique, and speak back to those cultural and institutional apparatuses that implicitly or explicitly silence marginalized communities.
Here’s how.
When you’re photographing or filming something, if you’re not getting the result you want, you change the lens. You need to change the way your apparatus views your subject. Education policy is no different. Our view is distorted, so our lens — the way our institutions shape that view — has to change.
For years, researchers and advocates have been calling for Canadian citizenship education to adopt the lens of treaty education. According to Dr. Jennifer Tupper, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, treaty education “requires all students to consider how their own lives and privileges are connected to and may be traced through, treaties and the treaty relationship”. Beyond that, it challenges us to recognize that structural and symbolic forms of violence against FNMI peoples are built into a curriculum that is based on colonial discourse:
- Structural violence occurs when social structures, like education, are built with unequal power. Those who have power can advance; those who have not, do not. Structural violence against FNMI peoples is built into the Ontario Civics curriculum because there is no visible evidence of FNMI consultation. This denies FNMI people the ability to build their own stories.
- Symbolic violence is the result of harmful social hierarchies that establish “haves” and “have-nots”, a tiered system of marginalization and dominance. Symbolic violence against FNMI peoples exists in the Civics curriculum vis-à-vis how they are addressed. The document warns that FNMI students may have limited schooling; that they need special accommodations; and that FNMI parents need to be taught how traditional models of schooling operate. While some of this may be true, it frames FNMI people as different, othered, abnormal.
According to Dr. Tupper, using treaty education to re-examine education policy will work towards students and teachers “engaging with the traumatic content that constitutes historical and contemporary relationships with First Nations people”, by “doing the difficult and uncomfortable work of coming to understand the significance of being a treaty person”.
The lens we’re using isn’t working. Treat education has to be our new way of seeing civic education.
My proposal is that treaty education be used to compare and contrast FNMI land use protests with municipal protests against unwanted facilities in local neighbourhoods. This is known as NIMBYism, or “not in my backyard”-ism— “an attitude ascribed to persons who object to the siting of something they regard as detrimental or hazardous in their own neighbourhood, while by implication raising no such objections to similar developments elsewhere.” Why is it that FNMI pipeline protests are seen as “un-Canadian”, while protests about condos going up in Toronto are embraced? Aren’t they both protesting the same issue: use of land? Research out of the University of Amsterdam calls these issues locally unwanted land use, or LULUs. Both FNMI and NIMBY protestors are working against LULUs; the difference is that NIMBYs are more effective, “pushing pollution-intensive activities (…) in areas populated by social groups that lack the economic and political resources to resist such activities”.
So urban whites protest a pipeline, and it gets moved into FNMI land. Then FNMI groups protest it for the same reasons, but they’re vilified. This is the result of civics education; this is how we are teaching people to think about land. Treaty education can change this.
I remain keenly aware that, as a heterosexual white male settler, it is not my voice that needs to take precedence in this examination. Any changes to policy must be made for, with, and by FNMI peoples. My goal is to begin a conversation that can lead towards Tupper’s concept of “curriculum as intervention”. A powerful example of this is in Saskatchewan’s civics curriculum, which has been built on the “foundational entrenchment of First Nations and Metis ways of knowing, content and perspectives” since 2008.
Here’s how we can use treaty education to change the language of the Ontario Civics curriculum:
By the end of this course, students will…
- B.1. — Describe some civic issues of local, national, and/or global significance, including treaty obligations in Ontario
- B1.2 — Describe fundamental beliefs and values associated with democratic citizenship in Canada, including how the Canadian government and First Nations meet their respective treaty obligations
- B.14 — Communicate their own position on self-governance and its relation to treaty obligations
- B2.4 — Explain the role of the Indian Act of 1876, the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, and one or more local tribal bands in advocating government
- B3.3 — Explain how the judicial system protects the rights of individuals and the public good, and what structures have been developed for treaty implementation
- C1.2 — Understand their position as settlers or settled peoples in the local history of colonization and decolonization, and how that impacts their civic contributions
- C2.1 — Analyze ways in which treaty-making recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all peoples
The goal here is twofold: first, critical examine the curriculum language; then, suggest alternatives that work towards “curriculum as intervention”.
Research out of the Spencer Foundation suggests that harmony between disparate groups is achieved when working with authentic and powerful issues, of which controversial land use is certainly one. Groups should engage in conversations about ideological diversity; thus, the new curriculum expectations should include prompts to engage in the difficult knowledge of teachers and students recognizing their settlerhood.
This work cannot be done without anticolonial civic education. Leilani Sabzalian, Co-Director of the Sapsik’wałá Education Program at the University of Oregon, outlines five ways to achieve this:
- Place: Ontario has started by using land acknowledgments read during morning announcements. In many ways, Ontario has also ended here.
- Presence and Perspectives: We see this in field trips, guest speakers, and so on; however, more is needed.
- Political Nationhood: Treaty education and anti-colonialism needs to be explicitly addressed and taught; FNMI peoples must be recognized in curriculum as a political nation.
- Power: Colonialism and racism must be directly challenged in curriculum, lessons, hiring practices, and school climates.
- Partnerships: FNMI people must be brought in as equals, not as consultants.
Most of Ontario schools are stuck at the second point, and happy there. It’s not enough.
All of this is how I feel as an educator. But what about the students? How do they feel about their own civic education? Would they be receptive to this new model?
Research indicates that “young Canadians are less knowledgeable about politics than any other age group in the country” and that “many young people that they possess neither sufficient knowledge of the political process, nor sufficient political information”. It appears that Ontario educators and students are grappling with a deficit in basic civic competencies. One reason for this may be that students simply aren’t engaging with a curriculum that refuses to ask the hard questions or challenge accepted power structure. Particularly with the Ontario Civics curriculum, engagement with controversial issues is not encouraged; instead, the focus is on “accepted” Canadian values.
So students are tuning out of classes, and the key to getting them back is to engage in difficult conversations. Treaty education gives us that opportunity. However, we need to make the connections clear and the stakes real. We also need to be aware of the inherent paradox of colonial power — the Western school system — teaching Indigenous values. Trauma-informed practices will help support this challenge, particularly when teaching FNMI students.
Embedding treaty education into the civics curriculum reinforces the idea that Ontario teachers and students are also treaty peoples. This helps us do the hard work of democratic peacebuilding; challenging philosophies of ignorance that deny FNMI people’s very existence.
White colonial settlers have used their — my — language to define FNMI people for too long. Now is the time to change that language, change the frame, and acknowledge the violence we have perpetuated against our Indigenous sisters and brothers. We can change policy and curriculum. We can change teaching strategies. We can change our approach; we can, and must, move beyond rote knowledge into the heart of political debate.
Mario Mabrucco is a educator with almost 20 years experience teaching literacy, arts, and social sciences to youth in Canada, Greece, France, Italy, and Monaco. He has a M.Ed in Curriculum and Education Policy from the University of Toronto, and designs curriculum for the National Film Board of Canada. Read more of Mario’s work on Medium or follow him on Twitter: @mr_mabruc
WORKS CITED
Kahne, Joseph, Hodgin, Erica, & Eidman-Aadahl, Elyse. (2016). Redesigning Civic Education for the Digital Age: Participatory Politics and the Pursuit of Democratic Engagement. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44(1), 1–35.
Livsey, Stephanie, and Paglia, Remo. (2010). Toronto Municipal Elections: Grade 10 Civics Supplementary Activities. City of Toronto.
Llewellyn, Kristina R., Cook, Sharon Anne, & Molina, Alison. (2010). Civic learning: moving from the apolitical to the socially just. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 42 (6), 791–812.
McAvoy, Paula, & Hess, Diana (2013). Classroom deliberation in an era of political polarization. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 14–47.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2013). The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10. Canadian and World Studies: Geography, History, Civics (Politics). Queen’s Printer for Ontario.
Sabzalian, Leilani. (2019). The tensions between Indigenous sovereignty and multicultural citizenship education: Toward an anticolonial approach to civic education. Theory & Research in Social Education, 47(3), 311–346.
Sant, Edda. (2019). Democratic Education: A Theoretical Review (2006–2017). Review of Educational Research, 89(5), 655–696.
Tupper, Jennifer (2012). Treaty education for ethically engaged citizenship: Settler identities, historical consciousness and the need for reconciliation. Citizenship Teaching and Learning, 7(2), 143–156.
Tupper, Jennifer (2014). The possibilities for reconciliation through difficult dialogues: Treaty education as peacebuilding. Curriculum Inquiry — Theme Issue: Peacebuilding (in) Education: Democratic Approaches to Conflict in Schools and Classrooms, 44 (4), 469–485
Wolsink, M. (2006) Invalid theory impedes our understanding: A critique on the persistence of the language of NIMBY. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31 (1), new series, 85–91.
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