More CanCon? More or less
More CanCon? More or less
Quill & Quire magazine
January 2009 issue
It was supposed to be a major step forward. Last summer, the B.C. Ministry of Education passed a new curriculum requirement mandating all Grade 8 to 12 language-arts courses to include at least one “significant” (i.e., full-length) Canadian text. The guideline was to take effect immediately. One fall school term later, though, B.C.’s CanLit quota looks to be largely symbolic: most B.C. teachers say their class work and reading lists have been modified little, if at all. “It’s not a tremendous change,” says Bal Panesar, English department head at Vancouver’s Eric Hamber Secondary. “At Hamber, we do teach Canadian literature. It’s part and parcel of what we do.”