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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

O Canada

The NYT ran a funny piece in honor of Canada Day, wherein they asked Canadians exiled to the U.S. what they miss most about their native country. Malcolm Gladwell offered this:

In history class, in seventh grade (or as we like to say in Canada, grade seven) we learned the story of the American Revolution — from the British perspective. Turns out you were all a bunch of ungrateful tax cheats. And you weren’t very nice to the Loyalists. What I miss most about Canada is getting the truth about the United States.

Of course, learning about America from the American perspective can also be problematic. For instance, until about 4th grade, I was under the impression that America invented the idea of democracy, and was the first place to have people vote on anything, ever.

1 comment:

gastropodblue said...

Silly Teague. Of course we Americans invented freedom and democracy - that's why we're so good at spreading it around the globe!

I went to school in Toronto from Kindergarten to 3rd grade and remember learning about Canadian history (boring) and how to sing the national anthem in French (love the bi-lingual education!). But, I will never forgive my 3rd grade teacher for marking me off on a spelling test for missing out the 'u' in 'color'.