Ken Osborne
"New History for Old":
Lorne Pierce and the Teaching of Canadian History
The purpose of this column is to revisit episodes in the history of history teaching in Canada. It is intended as a contribution to the creation of a craft tradition in the teaching of history so that newcomers to the trade can see what their predecessors have done, while veterans can locate themselves as part of a continuing practice stretching back for over a century, and longer if we look beyond Canada. This awareness of the roots of our craft, of its debates and arguments, it failures and achievements, can help us locate ourselves in today's running controversies surrounding the teaching of history. Armed with knowledge of what has happened in the past, we will begetter placed to cope with the demands of the present and to prepare for those of the future. Unless and until we can locate ourselves as history teachers in time in this way, we are all too likely to be at the mercy of any vociferous critic who happens to command public attention.
The subject of today's column is a person largely forgotten, if indeed ever known, by most history teachers, but who in his lifetime had a considerable influence on their teaching — he textbook publisher, Lorne Pierce (1890-1961). Ontario-born, trained for the Methodist ministry, working as a student minister and teacher in Saskatchewan before the First World War, Pierce served as book editor of Ryerson Press from 1920 to 1960 and, in this capacity, was responsible for the design of history textbooks and other teaching resources. For example, he produced a series of 102 historical booklets, designed for school use in the 1920s,as well as very influential and long-lived anthologies and readers of Canadian literature, which, though intended for use in English classes, contained significant amounts of historical material. In addition, he was largely responsible for introducing the historical illustrator, C.W. Jeffery's, to a Canada-wide audience and for providing a continuing outlet for his work. More generally, he was well connected with a Canada-wide network of authors, historians, and other intellectuals who collectively sought to encourage the production and dissemination of Canadian literary and historical material, designed to give Canada its own voice and to free it from undue subservience to American, French or British models. This column, however will deal only with a series of lectures he gave at Mount Allison University in 1930 and published under the title New History for Old (Pierce, 1931; all page references in what follows are to this volume unless otherwise indicated).
Pierce was a Canadian nationalist, though not in any sense a chest-beating chauvinist of the kind so familiar in Europe and the United States between the Wars. He described himself in 1945 as having "dedicated myself to Canada with an affection which some have thought bordered upon fanaticism" (Pierce, 1945: vii). For Pierce, however, nationalism and internationalism were perfectly compatible. Indeed, in his view, true internationalism could flourish only on the basis of a sane and outward-looking nationalism. He had no doubts that Canada was a nation, albeit one whose "national selfhood is in the process of becoming" (20). He was not so certain that Canadians were ready to accept the obligations and responsibilities that national selfhood conferred, especially at a time when what he saw as the seductions of materialism and purposeless hedonism loomed so large, when "life's not only increasingly more complex, but the enemies of rational living more insidious, — vulgarity, standardized thinking, emotional chaos, blatant irreverence" (33). This washy he saw education as so important, for only through education could Canadians become fully aware of the commitments that national citizenship demanded of them: "In the warfare between science and religion, the dilemmas of radical democracy, the increase of insolent wealth and futile use of leisure, the depressing weight of material things, and the general noise, bluster and vulgarity, the little red school house is still our best defense against shallow sentiment, flabby ideas and bad taste" (25-6).
The little red schoolhouse should be the seedbed of a "fervent and intelligent national sentiment" (26) and protect it from the pressures of larger, more assertive cultures. Pierce's nationalism was not overly defensive. He readily acknowledged the debt that Canada owed to French and British civilization. Indeed, he saw one of Canada's great contributions to the world at large as its demonstration of how two nationalities, French-speaking and English-speaking, could combine in a greater whole: "No country in the world has anything like it to show, in the number and importance of peaceful unions, between political areas as well as organic unions among the religious denominations, as we have in Canada" (Pierce, 1960:7). He worried, however, lest the vulnerable plant of Canadian national distinctiveness should be crushed by more assertive rivals. In his view, the study of things Canadian was "an actor self-preservation…. The insistent pressure of old and mighty civilizations tends to reduce so small and scattered a people to spiritual and aesthetic vassalage. Internationalism is a fine sentiment, but our greatest contribution will come through the development and expression of our own unique selves" (18).
Within education, literature and history were subjects of special importance. They were the "the cement which binds uses a people one to another" (31), and, above all others carried the burden of teaching young Canadians about their country and the demands of citizenship. For Pierce, the national spirit of any country was embodied in its creative minority, and especially in the arts and literature. As he put it towards the end of his life: "All great art and great literature are in the best sense national, for they speak with authority of time anyplace, milieu and tradition…. The arts and letters are the proudest and most potent symbols of separate national existence and ambition" (Pierce, 1960: 8). They were especially important in Canada since Canadians were divided by two languages and, in effect, two separate histories. Piece's nationalism was never of the unitary variety. Though he promoted the ideal of a united _Canadian nationality, he saw it as an amalgam of French and English traditions, with contributions from other cultures. He rejected the "type of Canadianizing which would iron out the last wrinkle of national individuality" and considered that "We have much to learn from the French, and they from us" (20). In this process, literature and history had much to offer: "This work of confederation will not be accomplished by fine figures of speech or sentimentalizing, but by knowing each other's past, the social, political, aesthetic and religious elements which have composed it, and by a fine sense of mutual sympathy and mutual responsibility" (21).
At the same time, Pierce believed that Canada had to be more than the sum of its parts. Though he was committed to local and regional diversity, and determined to build "a covered bridge" to connect French and English-speaking Canadians, he also was dedicated to the idea that something newly Canadian had to emerge out of the aggregation of local traditions and identities: "A congeries of Provinces and powers only becomes a political union when it has a common constitution, but this union remains formless and futile until it achieves a unified living spirit, a civilization, a personality. Only out of this will evolve some day a conscious will and purpose, in other words, a destiny" (Pierce, 1945: 13). In this spirit, he rejected the idea that Switzerland offered a way for Canada to follow. Switzerland, he dismissively declared, was "not a nation in the true sense. It is a compromise, a truce, an incorporated company…. It survives as a curiosity, and is permitted to survive because the world apparently requires an international postal address, first-aid station, rest house, no-man's land" (Pierce, 1945: 79). He did not go on consider the obvious objection that Switzerland had done a lot less damage to the world than many countries that were nations "in the true sense," with their distinguished national literatures, internationally recognized artists, imposing national histories, and the rest.
For Pierce, "Our writers, as well as our artists and sculptors, are our best interpreters. They not only reveal what we are to ourselves as a people, but they also explain us to others" (16). Moreover, literature was important as a form of history, which for Pierce had to be freed from its traditional preoccupations: "We have frequently stressed the social, economic and constitutional elements in Canadian history, when the real evolution of our country is phrased in those pages which record the uneven yet earnest quest for truth and beauty" (16). For its part, history, as conventionally written and taught, lacked "method, unity, coherence":
Our courses in history and literature frequently resemble nothing so much as button bags, little unrelated things, useful in their way, but lacking coherence or any integrating principle…. Instead of seeing the steady progress of the idea of beauty through all the ages, or the romance of man's quest for freedom, you become lost in a congeries of dates, dynasties, treaties, meaningless wars and so on. Instead of seeing Magna Carta, Lord Durham's Report, or the Declaration of Independence as parts of a movement, you see them separately as revolts, agitations, ungratefulness, ignorance, or what you will (36).
Pierce found his coherent "integrating principle" in the idea of what he called "quests." For him, history was "a series of sublime quests" which should be taught as "great movements and ideas evolving through long periods of time in broad outline" (36). In espousing this approach, Pierce was perfectly willing to abandon many topics that had traditionally been the staple of the history curriculum. Nor did he support the idea of detailed study of a limited number of topics. This, he argued, was the way to train historians, not citizens who need to think in terms of humanity's long struggle for understanding and improvement:
The end of it all is, that the student shall understand clearly as never before the great highroads along which humanity has moved, that he shall participate in the world movements, and return enriched as a citizen. It is more important that we should see the broad sweep of the currents of time than that we should memorize endless snippets about this and that (38).
He went on to identify the great highroads, the broad sweep of the currents of time, the "quests", that he saw as central to the teaching and learning of history in schools. "The great historic quests of mankind" included "the quest for happiness and adventure; for power as seen in the story of science in its conquest over the material world and in government in the rule of the people; the quest for freedom; the joy of work and play; the quest for truth in the story of education; the quest for beauty in the story of literature and the arts; the quest for the fullness of life in the story of the world's religious prophets" (37).
These are obviously ambitious themes for both students and teachers but Pierce insisted that they could be taught in ways that students understood. He was convinced that they would also do much to make history much more interesting to students than it currently was. "It is," he wrote, "nothing short of a tragedy that such a large percentage of our boys and girls heartily dislike the story of their country as it is now largely written" (39). Moreover, to learn this kind of history was to acquire the foundation and the motivation to contribute to history in one's turn. Pierce followed H.G. Wells, whom he quoted supportively, in believing that the study of history must make students aware of their place in "the epic of man's progress" so that they would go on to" enrich the narrative" as best they could (31).
Like most textbook publishers, then and since, Pierce was well aware of developments in educational theory and of the thinking of curriculum developers around the country. In his view, educational psychology and progressive pedagogy were on his side:
Psychology has added its blessing to what we had already discovered through actual experience: there are certain permanent interests and ideals alive in the minds of children. Around these dreams and enthusiasms we must build our texts on literature, history and science…. In this way, the best of all that we have produced may be related, at the proper time and in the right manner, and find its beautiful flowering in a higher national citizenship. (26)
Although he did not put in these terms, Pierce was arguing that abstract ideas could be taught to even young children, provided that teachers presented their materials in terms that students found appealing. Subject matter, he suggested, must be "built around the chief interests, and quests, of the child in topical form" (31). And these interests, he implied, were the striving of children and adolescents to explore and pursue, in their own ways, the same quests that engaged humanity throughout human history. In effect, although he never said it explicitly, Pierce was pursuing a version of the recapitulations theory familiar a generation earlier, as popularized by G. Stanley Hall and others (and recently updated by Kieran Egan (1997), that each of us in our individual development retraces the evolution of the species. This did not mean teaching down to students. By the 1940s, after some twenty years in the publishing business, Pierce had become critical of what he saws ill-advised pedagogical trends designed to match the curriculum to students' supposed levels of ability or interest: "We must choose the best and build up to that, not water down the content to match the jaded interests and tastes of today's children. Children do not know what they want, and whatever they want it will not be for long" (Pierce, 1945: 23).
Pierce argued for an approach to teaching that would translate the abstractions of the quest into terms that children could concretely understand: "The young boy will discover in the society of Athens, in the Golden Age of Greece, only what he knows of beauty and truth in his own home environment, or in Charlemagne only what he recognizes as civic nobility in the town fathers of his own community" (32). Here, though, Pierce seems to be selling himself short. Putting on one side the objection that any comparison between Charlemagne and a modern town fathers likely to be extremely unhistorical, and the obvious point that children necessarily interpret the world in terms of their own experience and environment, Pierce here misses one of history's major strengths: its power to stretch the imagination, to extend the boundaries of experience, to rethink what we think we already know by contrasting the familiarity of the present with the otherness of the past.
Indeed, in his emphasis on the concreteness of children's thinking, Pierce at times came close to endorsing the expanding horizons approach of the newly emerging social studies which were beginning to make their appearance in Canada in the 1920s:
Take the idea of democracy, for example. We meet the very young child upon his own ground, in the simple social experiences of the home, school and playground, the common delights of the everyday world around him. Ultimately we trace the social structure outward through the community, the township, to the nation and the world (32).
This is the closest that Pierce comes, however, and then only by implication, to the social studies. Everywhere else he makes clear his commitment to the discipline of history, albeit a history reinforced by music, art and literature and purged of what he saw as the anti-educational encumbrances of traditional approaches to the subject, so that students would "delve into the accumulated experiences of our forebears, and return from these vicarious experiences, kindled, balanced and newly directed" (34).
For this to occur history obviously had to be made interesting to students, and Pierce repeatedly made clear his conviction that the subject had to be presented, not just as story, but as a story of adventure, heroism, romance and excitement. As he put it, "Research students have mined a vast hoard of new gold for the writers of school histories, and this story must be told in the elementary grades, in the intermediate grades, until our boys and girls are thrilled by it" (Pierce, 1945: 19). He took it as self-evident that much of the conventional history curriculum was beyond the grasp of most students, especially below the high school grades. "There is little justification for constitutional history at all in our schools," he wrote, "certainly not until the story of Canada has first been learned by heart" (Pierce, 1945: 19). Such topics as "the evolution of constitutional government, the cause and conduct of wars or rebellions with their treaties, the struggle for democratic principles in church and state, these and other questions," he believed, "are beyond the range of 'teen age boys and girls" (39). To teach them would simply destroy students' interest in the past by condemning teachers to rely on drill and memory-work. The result would be bad for students, bad for history, and worse for the country at large: "It is impossible that an alert and intelligent national self-consciousness can be built upon the old elaborated note-book style of history text" (40). Such texts, with their catalogues of unintelligible facts and their determination to cover all of history, failed to speak to the quests that students were pursuing as they grew up.
To make his point, Pierce turned once again to psychology: "It is taken for granted that the results of psychological research must be applied with increasing fidelity to the teaching of history. No educational subject can be of the slightest use which doesn't build upon the mental, emotional and social experiences of the pupil" (40). To this end, Pierce asked rhetorically why textbook writers persisted in "cluttering up the story with prince lings, little busybodies, inept office holders, wars, bills, acts and the cross word puzzle of constitutional development?" (40) He dismissed such topics as the Aroostook War, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the Oregon and San Juan disputes, despite the part they played in establishing the Canadian-U.S. border. What were needed instead, he insisted, were excitement, romance, and heroism:
The boy wants adventure, and he should have it for we have plenty of the best sort. Out of it will be born a contagious love for his country at a time when permanent enthusiasms are being aroused. By challenging an interest in the noble men and women of our country's history, in the thrilling quests which have marked every page of our story, we shall make better men and women, and for that matter better historians to boot (40).
Thus, Pierce dismissed coverage history, arguing instead for the treatment of history thematically, according to his concept of the quests, and with enough time for students to read outside the textbook and to think about what they were reading, "not snatches of notes, but a lesson theme, long enough to tell something and interesting enough to whet the appetite for more" (40). Pierce did not see these themes as inconsistent with chronology. By and large he favoured treating history chronologically, and hoped that teachers would be able to weave the quests into their narrative. Along the way, he endorsed the use of such teaching strategies to add variety and interest to lessons as local studies, the creation of classroom museums, the use of pictures and artefacts, the production of student-written booklets, and the like.
Along with some extended discussion of resources for teaching literature and history, Pierce ended his lectures by describing what he saw as the purposes of teaching history. First, he saw history as providing a sense of perspective and proportion, "an adequate background to our thinking," so that citizens could cut through propaganda and crisis-mongering to see things as they really were. Second, he praised the virtues of what he called "historical-mindedness," which today we might better call empathy. For Pierce, it consisted of the ability "to stand in the shoes of the best men of the best ages," to see their world "vividly and entirely," and "recognize it as a part oaf continuous process" (47). Third, he saw history as enabling people to look forwards as well as back, "to become seers" who understood and built upon the traditional quests of humanity, "the eternal moated granges toward which the minds and hearts of the best among men aspire" (47). Finally, Canadian history, in particular, provided those who study it with self-knowledge, with a spirit of citizenship that leads to "a fine, sympathetic cohesion among all our component parts" (47).
In short, history was a crucially important educational subject in its ability to lead boys and girls to think about what they wanted to do with their lives. Equally important, it was a vital national instrument: "No nation ever yet made a contribution of any worth that did not feel itself a united, self-conscious, and independent people" (47). It was this belief in the importance of education as a tool of national policy that led Pierce to end his lectures with a surprising tribute to Soviet education. He did so by praising a "remarkable" book by John Dewey describing the impressions of education head formed on a recent visit to the Soviet Union. What attracted Pierce was Dewey's description of the Soviet conviction that education had a vital role to play in building a desired form of social life, so that, as they saw it, education formed a coherent whole, with all its component parts serving a consistent purpose. Pierce conceded that the Soviets had largely turned education into ideological propaganda and disclaimed any intention of wanting to do the same in Canada, though he added the observation that education could never be free from propaganda "in the best sense" (71; and, indeed, his own vision of history and literature education was nothing if not propagandistic). The1920s were years of extensive educational experiment in the Soviet Union, before Stalinist collectivization dragged schools intuits deadening grasp (Fitzpatrick, 1970 & 1979), and Pierce was impressed by what Dewey wrote of the variety and spirit of Soviet education, of its experimental nature, and of its attention tithe local conditions of schools and students.
This last point gave him an opportunity to emphasize that his belief in a Canadian "national selfhood" wasn't at all intended to stifle local attachments and identities:
I can fancy few experiments more pregnant with interest and good results than that of putting these subjects (i.e. history and literature — KO) in closer contact with what I call the magic of the soil. There are many areas in our country where the soil is fertile in romance and warm with the throbbing life of the spirit. From Annapolis Royal and the Tantramar, tithe shores mapped by Cook, three hundred years have left their rich deposit. Surely we would do well to plant our teaching of history and literature in these, sure in the confidence that our boys and girls will kindle at the remembrance of those high deeds and sweet songs, and keep alive the fires upon the altars of remembrance…. We have spoken at length of the sources of national solidarity, of the aims and methods of education as applied to history, of the contributions of the spirit to the enrichment of our national epic, but it all simmers down to this. The effectiveness with which we teach the story of our country, and inspire a lively and intelligent pride in it, will depend upon our success in building the community, its needs, its achievements, its spirit, into the fabric of the whole nation. (71-2)
Pierce's extravagant prose can sound a little exotic, even mystical, to a modern ear. It is certainly light years removed from the bureaucratic language of today's discussions of education, but it is still refreshing to read someone whose faith in history's educational value was so passionately felt. Pierce was more than orator. When he delivered his lectures at Mount Allison he had just overseen the publication of a history textbook, written by three of Canada's leading historians, designed precisely to put into teachers' hands the kind of history he espoused (Wrong, Martin & Sage, 1929). The books old well in English-speaking Canada, and was still in use in the late 1940s, but it does not seem to have sparked the educational revolution that Pierce saw as so necessary and history teaching continued to be criticized for its obsession with the memorization of facts and its overriding dullness.
Writing during the Second World War, Pierce expressed profound despair with what he saw taking place around him. His attempts to unite English-speaking and French-speaking Canada seemed to have been for naught. The tensions of the War had created a dangerous gap between the two national communities. Even civil war couldn't be ruled out, though it was more likely that Canada would take its place among "those bankrupt states, decadent and reactionary, the very refuse of the world, too petty to hate, too trivial to scorn" (Pierce, 1945: viii). In such circumstances, the need for the ennobling and inspirational education, centred on history and literature, that Pierce believed in was more urgent than ever. When he turned to education, however, he found that "the precisionists and pedants" were in charge. His beloved literature had been degraded:
It is all simplified into a matter of measurements, vocabulary burden, word recognition, frequency of repetition, first level types and so on…. Readers in literature and social studies are almost interchangeable. Fine prose is rewritten; poetry's altered and edited; taste and the sense of style are ironed out of them, and all to bring the readers within the reach of the mediocre child, and of those with an impoverished vocabulary. The result is not literature; it is not even education (Pierce, 1945: 22).
As the War drew to a close, Pierce took stock of his work: "For a quarter of a century, both as writer and editor, I have endeavoured to interpret Canada honestly to itself and explain it candidly to others…. And I have implored our people, year in and year out, to grow up, to have the courage to be themselves. Looking back, it often seems quite futile" (Pierce, 1945: vii). Perhaps so, but it is difficult to resist someone who could write: "We must teach history better in order that we shall make better history to teach" (69).
References
Campbell, Sandra. "From Romantic History to Communications Theory: Lorne Pierce as Publisher of C.W. Jefferys and Harold Innis." Journal of Canadian Studies, 30 (3), 1995: 91-117.
Campbell, Sandra. "Nationalism, Morality and Gender: Lorne Pierce and the Canadian Literary Canon, 1920-1960." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, 32 (2), 1994: 135-160.
Dickinson, Clarence H. Lorne Pierce: A Profile. Toronto: Ryerson, 1965.
Egan, Kieran. The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Fee, Margery. "Lorne Pierce, Ryerson Press and the Makers of Canada Literature Series." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, XXIV, 1985: 51-71.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Pierce, Lorne. New History for Old. Toronto: Ryerson, 1931.
Pierce, Lorne. A Canadian People. Toronto: Ryerson, 1945.
Pierce, Lorne. A Canadian Nation. Toronto: Ryerson, 1960.
Wrong, George, Walter Sage, Chester Martin. The Story of Canada. Toronto: Ryerson, 1929.