A curriculum that seeks to indoctrinate students with a simplistic ideologically driven narrative is an insult to the intelligence of students and a disservice to society as a whole. To be clear, we are not asking to replace one narrow ideological vision of history with another. This is not about replacing a sovereignist narrative with a federalist one or a conservative narrative with a liberal one. Conservative nationalist perspectives have a place in the telling of Quebec’s history. But they, like other important currents of thought, should be presented as that, perspectives, not the defining narrative.

The current reform has ignored these recommendations. We also want a curriculum that reflects the current scholarship on Indigenous history which reveals the active role of Indigenous people in shaping North American history in every historical period, rather than portraying them merely as hapless and passive victims of colonization. Achieving these goals will require extensive consultation with Indigenous communities and scholars at every step of the curriculum development process.

Students need to learn about the over 4,000 Black and Indigenous people enslaved in Quebec during the French regime, about the struggles against discrimination faced by Jewish, Italian and Greek immigrants during the early waves of immigration, about the more recent efforts to welcome refugees fleeing war and oppression in places like Vietnam, Lebanon, Chile, Haiti or Syria. The history of Quebec’s Black community also needs to be integrated into the curriculum rather than leaving it to be taught at the discretion of individual teachers. The current curriculum has completely omitted the historical contributions of its minority communities. No community that has contributed to the development of Quebec society should be rendered invisible or demonized.

Students need to know that the majority of Quebec Anglophones were not elites living in the Golden Square Mile. Many were working class Irish who suffered untold indignities at the hands of the British merchant class. Some, as in the 1837 rebellions, even worked hand in hand with Francophones resisting British authority. Still others, such as the Anglophone women who participated in the beginnings of Quebec’s feminist movement made significant positive contributions to making Quebec a more egalitarian society. The current curriculum reduces Quebec’s Anglophone community to a monolithic block of elites intent on impeding the society’s progress at every turn.

Students need to learn about the Parent Report, the resistance to Duplessis led by individuals like Georges-Henri Levesque and institutions like the Cité Libre journal and the inclusive nationalism of Réné Levesque. The current curriculum omits this progressive history and instead offers a very conservative vision of Quebec’s history where, for example, even widely reviled figures like Maurice Duplessis are recast as defenders of Quebec’s autonomy.