The Most Important Story to Teach Children

The rich mythology of British Liberty

Magna Carta

By

James Pew

John Robson, author of Magna Carta: Our Shared Legacy of Liberty, wrote a great essay in a recent edited volume, The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should Be Cherished - Not Cancelled, that has inspired me to re-examine some of my assumptions around teaching my kids history. Specifically, the history of Canada, and the story of our national ancestors - those who brought to the new world a set of traditions and principles that became cornerstones of all Western nations thereafter, just as those traditions and principals had previously been foundational to the enlightened order of England, where the story I’m most interested in today began.

Before we dive in, it is worth mentioning that the type of historical teaching I’m referring to doubles as a mechanism by which to transfer relevant cultural heritage. The cultural heritage tied to the Canadian nation begins in a much earlier period, in an entirely different place. Where exactly is best to begin the story is likely to be hotly debated, however, I’m sure it is generally recognized that the time and place Robson chose to highlight  - the year 1215 in Runnymede, England (when King John reluctantly agreed to a charter of rights known as the Magna Carta) - is an extraordinarily consequential turning point in the history of humanity, and an eminently valid choice.

The process of transferring this important story, and the lessons it holds, cannot be relied upon solely by public institutions, nor can the general teaching of history. Parents must play an integral role and are in no way helpless victims against a cold and overly-bureaucratic education system that has decided to prioritize identity politics, with its diversity managerialism, over academic enrichment.

If our children had someone like Jim McMurtry to teach them history (without institutional constraints) we wouldn’t need to be as concerned. However, since Jim was essentially fired from a long and successful teaching career for transferring historically accurate facts about the Indian Residential School period to his students, parents have been waking up to the reality that something has gone terribly wrong in classrooms across the nation.

When teaching kids Canadian history, things like, John A. MacDonald’s vital contribution to Confederation, it is important to point out, that in MacDonald’s time, as Robson states, there was no “readily available superior alternative to the structure of liberties that had arisen from Magna Carta and the successive pieces of legislation which followed it in England.” Indeed. And no superior structure has arisen since. So it follows, you can’t teach Canada, or America for that matter, without also teaching England.

In a section of Robson’s essay under the heading, “A history of people who knew history,” Robson explains that MacDonald and other influential elites of his time, “knew history in ways contemporary politicians, citizens and pundits generally do not.” 

“Our founders could easily recall that William and Mary replaced King James II on condition that they accept the English Bill of Rights, exactly a century before the American one and full of similar constitutional protections…and they remembered, and appreciated, stirring tales of the heroic defense of this parliamentary system against a list of foreign tyrants; from Philip II of Spain and his Armada to Napoleon and his army, the latter defeated mere decades before Confederation.”

In addition to a general lack of historical knowledge, there is a tendency among modern Canadians and Americans to exclude or gloss over the Anglo-Saxon origins of the much revered founding ideals that make both nations so great. Even though the intent may be anti-racist, or to celebrate diversity, or to not be seen as too Euro-centric, the result has been to deny, misrepresent, or even cancel, the rich ethnic-traditions rooted in Anglo-Saxonism, imparted to the New World by our British founders. To be historically accurate, and there is no reason not to be in this case, is to point out that Western nations, like Canada and the United States, were settlement and nation-building projects overwhelmingly guided by Protestant Anglo-Saxon influence. 

The following quote from Robson’s essay illustrates both aspects of the observation above:

“Modern people generally assume any upholders of human rights before the 1960s…were lonely rebels against callous, hypocritical tradition. So it is especially hard for them to grasp that the specific ones listed in Magna Carta, from trial by jury to property rights to due process of law, really were, by and large, upheld in England many centuries ago. (Even Magna Carta began as a revision of the 1100 Coronation Oath of John’s great-grandfather Henry I, which in turn explicitly evoked the liberties of Anglo-Saxon England.)”

In 1867, the year of Canada’s Confederation, the specific historical details that John A. Macdonald would have known “in ways contemporary politicians, citizens and pundits generally do not,” included the components of Magna Carta - the Great Charter of 1215. Among other things still fundamental to a liberal society, Magna Carta includes making “courts accessible to the ordinary person,” freedom of religion, the “right of widows not to be forcibly remarried or heiresses deprived of their inheritance,” and the “pledge of no taxation without representation.” 

However, it was not just the contents of Magna Carta that MacDonald would have had such intimate familiarity with, but the history of its preservation and enhancement “over 800 years, often in the face of appalling danger, making possible the kind of society we enjoy today.” Robson also points out that other “embryonic legislative assemblies in France, Spain and various German principalities were reduced to insignificance by the Renaissance rise of Absolutism.” So what was it about the English that made them so dedicated to the development and preservation of Magna Carta and other innovative aspects of their Anglo-Saxon heritage? 

Some have described the English character as one of great curiosity and appetite for exploration, I think the historical record proves this beyond a doubt. We benefit as Canadians, no matter which ethnic background we belong to, to hold our national English ancestors in this regard, instead of as plundering colonialists. When we invoke their curious spirit and hone a deep historical literacy of our traditional Western ways, the type possessed by the illustrious statesman who guided the nation through its formative years, we overrule the cynical post colonial activists vying to dominate the discourse with their deliberately negative and ahistorical telling of an otherwise grand history.

And further, it only makes sense to be Euro-centric when connecting to the founding mythology of Canada, or when developing the type of historical awareness possessed by MacDonald et al. But even more so, Anglo-centric, unapologetically, if we are to properly credit and explore the group that latched on and wouldn’t let go of some the most revolutionary ideas and practices that forever altered the course of history, decisively, for the benefit of all. 

In Canada, perhaps the most important story to tell children about the founding of the nation concerns the transplantation of “British Liberty.” Indeed, this epic tale begins in a medieval English countryside, continues through the birth of a satellite dominion, and concludes with the development of a modern sovereign nation.

You don’t need to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to connect with this mythology, or for that matter, a Catholic Francophone when embracing the specific mythologies of Quebec. Canadian citizenship is not dependent on ethnic background, nor are the exhilarating benefits of that other great historical movement catalyzed by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors; the enlightenment.

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Thanks for reading. For more for this author read, Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids!

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