Grade 12 Canadians Should Only Study Canadian Literature
Studying Literature in Grade 12
Graduating students in Ontario should only study Canadian literature in a Grade 12 English course. While good writers exist in all cultures, Ontario students should only study Canadian writers because we need to become more familiar with our literature. The reasons for this are the need to focus on our own Canadian culture despite being surrounded by other cultures, the need to promote and establish our own writers, and the need to encourage younger Canadian authors.
Students in Ontario taking English should only study Canadian literature because we are completely swamped by the American culture on a daily basis. This is a Canadian tradition because we have always been a “branch plant” of another country starting with England and France meaning that our own culture has never had the chance to develop; we have always been under the thumb of a more powerful foreign culture. So for years, a student in Ontario would study Shakespeare and other British writers: today they may also study American authors such as Fitzgerald. But many schools limit a student’s exposure to the Canadian novel to ISP reading lists. In this sense, Canada is an attic in which we have stored American and British literature without considering our own. No wonder a Canadian student has problems appreciating their culture.
Often the Canadian literature studied is very old such as Mordecai’s Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz or Lawrences Stone Angel. The novel Fifth Business, which was published in 1970 over 35 years ago, is still on many courses of study in Gr. 12 classrooms. Atwood’s Handmade’s Tale was published in 1985 over ten years ago. Again while most teachers allow and may even encourage a student to focus on more modern Canadian books for their ISP, their classroom experience is usually limited to studying these old works of literature.
There is a trending issue where these authors are primarily English Canadian, not reflecting our modern multicultural
Graduating students in Ontario should only study Canadian literature in a Grade 12 English course. While good writers exist in all cultures, Ontario students should only study Canadian writers because we need to become more familiar with our literature. The reasons for this are the need to focus on our own Canadian culture despite being surrounded by other cultures, the need to promote and establish our own writers, and the need to encourage younger Canadian authors.
Students in Ontario taking English should only study Canadian literature because we are completely swamped by the American culture on a daily basis. This is a Canadian tradition because we have always been a “branch plant” of another country starting with England and France meaning that our own culture has never had the chance to develop; we have always been under the thumb of a more powerful foreign culture. So for years, a student in Ontario would study Shakespeare and other British writers: today they may also study American authors such as Fitzgerald. But many schools limit a student’s exposure to the Canadian novel to ISP reading lists. In this sense, Canada is an attic in which we have stored American and British literature without considering our own. No wonder a Canadian student has problems appreciating their culture.
Often the Canadian literature studied is very old such as Mordecai’s Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz or Lawrences Stone Angel. The novel Fifth Business, which was published in 1970 over 35 years ago, is still on many courses of study in Gr. 12 classrooms. Atwood’s Handmade’s Tale was published in 1985 over ten years ago. Again while most teachers allow and may even encourage a student to focus on more modern Canadian books for their ISP, their classroom experience is usually limited to studying these old works of literature.
There is a trending issue where these authors are primarily English Canadian, not reflecting our modern multicultural
Cited: Davies, Robertson, Letters in Canada, Macmillan Press, Toronto, 1979 Atwood, Margaret, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. McLelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1972 Davies, Robertson, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. (Series IV, Volume XIII). “Canadian Nationalism in Art and Science.” The Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 1975 Corrections 1. I rewrote the introductory paragraph because I think its incorrect to state that this is an essay, you should only write down your thesis. Also instead of saying 3 reasons for this, I just stated my main 3 points that I was going to write about. We should assume that the reader has the capability of a list when you give them one. 2. I included words like, such as, to make the sentence have a flow to it. Also in some sentences I had to take out those kinds of words because it was a run on sentence. Especially in the first sentence of a paragraph you want it to be short and just state the point. You then go into further detail in the next sentence. 3. All the citations were done wrong. When you cite a book you need to write the authors name first, and then the title of the book, not the other way around. 4. In the conclusion, I changed the last sentence because it clears up the one word culturally left at the end, and puts it into a more appropriate way 5. As well In the paragraph where It refers to the end notes, I changed the 4 to a 3 so it correctly follows the endnotes and doesn’t confuse the reader. I also indented all the paragraphs.