Quebec’s high school history textbooks offer ‘skewed, one-sided view of the past’ and should be replaced: report

The report says the cource focuses on French Quebecois while largely or completely ignoring other immigrants, and presents Aboriginals as ‘antagonists’

MONTREAL — Quebec high school history textbooks are “fundamentally flawed” and should be removed from all schools across Quebec, an expert committee formed by the province’s largest English school board has concluded.

Students in the Grade 9 and 10 Canadian and Quebec history classes are being taught a “skewed, one-sided view of the past that distorts the historical record,” according to the committee report, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.

The report is the result of work by three historians commissioned by the English Montreal School Board last June to review the controversial history program, which has been criticized by Quebec‘s Indigenous, anglophone and other cultural communities.

The program, compulsory in all high schools across the province since September 2017, “focuses narrowly on the experience of and events pertaining to the ethnic/linguistic/cultural group of French Quebecois from contact until present day,” the report says.

It says Indigenous peoples are presented throughout the course as “other and antagonists, rather than human beings whose place was colonized by outsiders.”

Source: Quebec’s high school history textbooks offer ‘skewed, one-sided view of the past’ and should be replaced: report | National Post