A response to Leah C. Fowler’s article “Why does reading Canadian literature in school matter?”

This article can be found in:

James, K., Dobson, T., Leggo, C., eds. English in Middle and Secondary Classrooms: Creative and Critical Advice from Canada’s Teacher Educators. Toronto: Pearson, 2012.

Fowler argues that reading Can Lit in the classroom prompts questions such as “Where are we?”, “Why are we here?” and “What shall we do together?” This kind of awareness promotes unity and serves as good opening questions to a class discussion on Can Lit.

As a future educator, I realize I know little about the field of Can Lit. I read Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel and Rohinton Mistry in high school without realizing that they were Canadian; I remember enjoying their works, and I guess if I had to write a lesson plan for a Can Lit unit I’d be able to do so. In university, I took more Can Lit, reading Michael Ondaatje, Marie-Claire Blais, Robert Kroetsch and Ann-Marie Macdonald, among others. I’m not quite sure if these works are secondary-level appropriate, however.

My goal over the next term is to read as many secondary-appropriate Can Lit novels as possible; I need to get back to pleasure reading anyway, and having more knowledge of the field will allow me to have more ammo as I dive into teaching. I was then thinking of doing a Prezi/mind map project to come up with some cross-literary themes and ideas for student projects.

In related matters, a student in my class today expressed her dislike of the idea of “force-feeding” students literature just because it falls under a certain category (she named CanLit specifically). I very much agree that works should be shared based on the value one finds in sharing it, not its external descriptors. Calling something “CanLit” does nothing to tell us what the book will be about, the value of the book, or how well it’s written. I find it important, however, to share Canadian Literature the same way I find it important to buy local produce from farmer’s markets. Sure, we can’t always get what we want locally, and sure, sometimes the quality of something imported is better, but that doesn’t mean that our local producers have nothing to offer. It’s this appreciation – the appreciation that the country we identify with has something valuable to share with us – that is the important part about CanLit (valuable CanLit), I think.