CULTURE OR IDENTITY? ADDRESSING ETHNICITY IN CANADIAN EDUCATION

Abstract

Must recognition in schools of the ethnic pluralism of Canada involve exclaiming at each other's quaintness of custom and a good deal of performing of peculiar dances in rather too colourful costumes? The amount of embarrassment created by this kind of approach can only be equalled by its futility. Buchignani carefully teases out the differences between this cultural approach to recognising ethnicity - establishing what people do - and the approach to their identity - recognising what they think they are. The latter promises a genuine breakthrough to the achievement of a new national myth: a sense of Canadian identity that will be built on the realities of immigrant history and intention and will replace the absurd official historical image of a country occupied exclusively by Britons and Frenchmen. How schools may do this, and how in fact they do not, he illustrates at every step in terms that practising teachers and administrators will instantly recognise as making sense.