Canadian History Untold: Assessing the K–12 Curriculum Guides in British Columbia and Ontario

— Published on April 25, 2024

Over twenty-five years ago, Canadian historian J. L. Granatstein claimed that most Canadian students were receiving an inadequate education in Canadian history. This study provides a snapshot into two of the largest Canadian provinces–Ontario and British Columbia–assessing whether the same is true today.
A good Canadian history curriculum guide should cover key people, places, and events and present these topics in chronological order.
Manitoba’s Grade 11 Canadian history curriculum guide provides a reasonably comprehensive overview of Canadian history.
K-12 curriculum guides in both Ontario and British Columbia are vague, confusing, and do a poor job of covering Canadian history. This leaves social studies lessons in both Ontario and BC largely to the discretion of teachers–guaranteeing that different classrooms of students are learning different things, depending on the teacher.
The only concrete historical fact covered repeatedly in the British Columbia curriculum is that past Canadian governments had discriminatory policies.
Neither Ontario nor British Columbia requires students to take a Canadian history course that covers the full history of Canada.
Helping students acquire content knowledge about Canadian history will have the added benefit of boosting reading comprehension.
To restore Canadian history in our schools, we need to provide teachers with more comprehensive and balanced curriculum guides.