Ontario Teachers' Manuals: HistoryOntario. Department of Education
History
Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History
Ontario. Department of Education
History -- Study and teaching
Some parts of Ontario are much richer in material than others, but in
all historic spots may be found. On the St. Lawrence River, in the
Niagara peninsula, in the Talbot settlement district, in York county,
along the Ottawa River, in the Huron tract, there is no lack of useful
material. But it is not necessary to confine such local history to the
outstanding events of war or the larger happenings of civil progress. In
every locality there are remains of the earlier Indian inhabitants, in
the form of mounds, sites of villages, relics of war and the chase
(arrow-heads, stone implements, beads, etc.); relics of the early
settlers, in the form of roads and old log houses; relics of pioneer
life consisting of furniture, household and outdoor implements, etc.,
that will serve as a basis for comparison with present-day conditions,
and make real to the children the lives of the earlier inhabitants and
settlers of Ontario.
CIVICS
The teaching of civics has a threefold aim:
1. To instruct in the mechanism of government. (Descriptive)
2. To instruct in the history of national institutions so as to show the
line of development, and also to impress the fact that existing
institutions are capable of development, are not fixed. (Historical)
3. "To show the cost of each institution in the efforts and sacrifices
of past generations and to quicken and make permanent the children's
interest in public life and their sense of responsibility to their
fellows." (Patriotic and Ethical)
Two points stand out clearly--to teach the machinery of government and
to instil ideals of public conduct. Of these the second is by far the
more important and the more difficult to teach directly. The best way to
attempt it is by means of biography and personal references. There are
great men and women in history whose lives are worthy examples to the
young: Sir John Eliot, Pym, Hampden, who stood for freedom of speech and
debate; Gladstone, who helped to right historic wrongs in the East;
Lincoln, who stood for union and the freedom of the individual; many
eminent Canadians, such as Sir John Macdonald, George Brown, Alexander
Mackenzie, Egerton Ryerson, Sir Oliver Mowat, and Sir James Whitney;
women such as Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, Laura Secord and
Sarah Maxwell. Besides these eminent examples, there are in every
locality men and women who give unselfishly of their energy and time for
the good of the community.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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