This well-documented book, which is part of the Britain and the World series, uses the lens of education to examine a significant post-Second World War shift in the nature of national identity that took place in the Canadian province of Ontario and the Australian state of Victoria. Stephen Jackson traces officially mandated history, geography, and social studies curricula and approved textbooks for primary and secondary schools, as well as the rhetoric surrounding those materials, in the two jurisdictions from the 1930s through to the 1970s. The core of Jackson's argument is that the nature of national identity as a central defining theme in both nations evolved from one rooted in Britishness to one that relied on multiculturalism. He views this change as a defensive move in response to the reality that immigration was rapidly making Canada and Australia increasingly culturally diverse.

Jackson identifies four major conclusions applicable to both nations. First, an identity centered on Britishness was alive and well up to the mid-twentieth century. The idealized citizen was white, of British background, Protestant, “civilized,” and male, and a major goal of the education system was the assimilation of Indigenous people and immigrants. Second, by the 1960s, the place of Britishness at the core of national identity was being seriously challenged, with non-British immigration a major impetus for this challenge. As Jackson correctly points out, “Britishness as an organizing principle only worked when there was a presumption of cultural homogeneity, and this presumption gradually broke down in the face of large-scale immigration” (p. 242). The external collapse of the British Empire was an important factor in this. If Britain had lost its important position in the world, what was the point of claiming Britishness?

The third point relates to religious education. In the late 1960s, both Victoria and Ontario formed commissions to investigate the nature of religious education. The author concludes that “religious education was an important transnational tool used to both define and protect Britishness in the settlement empire” (p. 244). The fourth point was that multiculturalism served to fill the vacuum left by the diminution of Britishness. However, this “nebulous idea” (p. 244) did not prove to be a unifying panacea and did not aid educators in articulating a consensus national identity.

This study is well argued and draws from a wide range of primary sources, including Royal Commission and other government reports; Departments of Education documents such as meeting minutes and memoranda, annual reports, policy statements, and mandated curricula; and samples of the approved textbooks in both jurisdictions. Jackson mentions that textbooks are “notoriously difficult to access” (p. 199), but most major universities with faculties of education, at least in Canada, have a historical textbook collection. In fact, the author used the Australian Schools Textbook Collection and the historical textbook collection at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and therefore had access to most of the textbooks authorized over time in the two jurisdictions. Also, many textbooks have been digitized, are readily available through archival collections, and are easier to access than many other archival materials. They can also be purchased online from various depositories.

Another strength of this work is that it pays attention to the influence of textbook publishers and the publishing process on textbook content, a factor that is often overlooked in the analysis of curriculum and textbooks. However, the failure to examine the findings and recommendations of the Ontario Royal Commission on Book Publishing, reported in Canadian Publishers & Canadian Publishing (1973), is a significant oversight since it has a comprehensive section on educational publishing that is oft-quoted and relevant to all of Canada. (Jackson mentions it only in regard to a brief submitted by the director of the Australian Book Publishers Association.) It would have been useful as well to consult the growing canon of secondary literature on educational publishing in Canada, much of which is concerned with publishing and national identity.

I will focus now on the title because this allows me to make two key points. First, it is always a temptation to enlarge one's conclusions, but this study was neither pan-Canadian nor pan-Australian, although the reference to Canadian and Australian classrooms in the title implies this. Rather, it looked at one particular jurisdiction within each nation. In both Canada and Australia, individual jurisdictions have autonomy over educational matters. This includes Canada's ten provinces and three territories and Australia's six states and two territories. Each jurisdiction is, therefore, unique. In the case of Canada, Ontario has always been influential, largely because textbook publishers have catered to its large student population, and some of the textbooks authorized in Ontario have also been authorized elsewhere. However, this became less true with time. Ontario does not speak for Canada, as people in other provinces will attest, and I suspect that Victoria does not speak for all of Australia. (I note that the author acknowledges this limitation and refers to his research in the two jurisdictions as case studies. Why then did he not do several case studies in each nation?)

Second, when it comes to classrooms, the author's reach exceeds his grasp. It is a challenge to access data about what has gone on in classrooms in the past. Historians must be cautious about assuming a direct connection between the rhetoric found in official curriculum documents and authorized textbooks and the reality of the classroom. In fact, without evidence, we cannot assume that specific textbooks were used at all. Even when the textbooks were used, teachers both mediated and supplemented their content in various ways. As an example, historian Amy von Heyking has shown that rural teachers in Alberta, even in the depths of the Great Depression, had access to pamphlets and other materials from federal and provincial government departments that they used to increase their students’ access to information.Footnote ¹ In order to get a good sense of whether textbooks were used in classrooms, and how, historians need to consult pertinent primary sources such as provincial examinations (often based directly on the prescribed textbook in the earlier years of this period), teacher daybooks, and teacher and student memoirs and oral histories.Footnote ² Finally, I am unclear regarding the precise relevance of the subtitle, The Crown of Education, other than as a reference to Britishness.

Several other minor points warrant mention. Throughout the book, Davies is given as the surname for William Davis, Minister of Education and Premier of Ontario. Ontario is referred to as the “second most populous territory” (p. 4), but it is the most populous province in Canada. René Lévesque—journalist, Parti Québécois leader, and Premier of Quebec—is identified as a scholar (p. 10).

Constructing National Identity in Canadian and Australian Classrooms is a comprehensive account, buttressed by a solid array of primary sources, of two educational jurisdictions and how the curriculum and textbooks in each demonstrate a move away from Britishness to a new reality dominated by diversity created by immigration from countries other than the United Kingdom.