ERIC Number: EJ818153
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Mar
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1740-0201
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Available Date: N/A
Racialized Hegemony and Nationalist Mythologies: Representations of War and Peace in High School History Textbooks, 1945-2005
Montgomery, Ken
Journal of Peace Education, v3 n1 p19-37 Mar 2006
This paper examines the ways in which high school Canadian history textbooks authorized from 1945 to the present have represented national participation in wars and peace-making/keeping operations. I explore how national mythologies of Canada as a kinder, more tolerant, or less violent national body permeate the narratives of national history textbooks, but also position Canada, in racialized terms, as a nation superior to all others and thus burdened with the fantasized responsibility to uplift implicitly inferior spaces, nations and peoples elsewhere on the planet. I illustrate that these textbooks do not simply tell the history of the modern state of Canada and its relationship to war and war-related issues (i.e., peace-making/keeping), but rather redundantly disseminate racialized representations of Canada as a glorious and exceptional "living organism" that matures through the development of such redeeming qualities as respect for humanity, morality, compassion, heroism and tolerance. I argue that these patriotic and presumably benign representations of war and peace assist in the hegemonic maintenance of white power, privilege and governance.
Descriptors: Altruism, Textbooks, Foreign Countries, History Instruction, War, Peace, Content Analysis, Foreign Policy, Racial Bias, Moral Values, Civil Rights, Patriotism, Power Structure, Governance, Whites, Social Attitudes, Advantaged, High Schools
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
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Author Affiliations: N/A