Historical Consciousness and the Structuring of Group Boundaries: A Look at Two Francophone School History Teachers Regarding Quebec’s Anglophone Minority

Abstract

This article looks at the impact of historical consciousness on the structuring of group boundaries among national history teachers within Quebec’s context of group duality between Francophones and Anglophones. By using an “open‐ended interpretation key” for taking into account how teachers interact with temporal change for negotiating their ethno‐cultural agency toward the Other, this article specifically focuses on the different understandings that two teachers of the Franco‐Québécois majority develop from the past for knowing and engaging with the Anglo‐Québécois. By grasping whether they recognize the latter’s moral and historical agency in time, the degree of both educators’ sensitivity to Anglophone social realities and historical experiences become clear, as do their willingness to transmit such information to their students. On the whole, despite demonstrating a more or less equal capacity to develop plausible‐like understandings of the past, both teachers offer two diverging attitudes for dealing with the Other, which ultimately reflect two main opposing social discourses over how to properly confront memories of the “French–English Conflict.” Given the potential burden of these debates on how teachers (and students) historicize inter‐group realities, the article ends with proposing a means of teaching history that fosters the development of autonomous and conscientious engagements with the past. Not only does this approach entail respecting differences in opinions and choices, but also highlights the potentials of embracing change for improving the quality of common future life.