FAQ
Below are some of the most frequently asked questions about Canadian Mockingbird.
Canadian Mockingbird
Frequently Asked Questions
The new book explores how and why Ontario’s Ministry of Education came to run a systemic, covert program censoring Canada’s elementary and high school textbooks from 1960. Beginning with a brief history of instructional media coursing from the early British colonial era, Canadian Mockingbird zooms in on textbooks withheld from cohorts of Baby Boomer and Generation X children – after the ministry invited publishers to submit their catalogues for panel review. Readers will be surprised by the large number of censored texts already majority recommended. The book considers the consequences of the censorship program in the social programming of Canadian and Indigenous children attending government schools.
1. Why was Canadian Mockingbird written?
Following publication of NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS: Textbooks, political censorship and mind control in a democracy, my first book on censorship, still more censored textbooks were discovered. Canadian Mockingbird discusses these new finds and offers more insights on the system itself. The book compares textbook-based indoctrination with the social engineering applied to comparable media forms such as print news and broadcast.
2. How does this new book differ from NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS?
Canadian Mockingbird offers a mature and practical story. The presentation of the censored texts themselves is accomplished with detailed subject tables:
- History
- Environmental Studies
- Biology & Health
- Law & Politics
- Indigenous Studies
- Geography
- Social Studies
- Criticism
- Quebec
Examples of archived government-publisher correspondence are reprinted in an appendix for illustrative purposes.
3. How is Canadian Mockingbird organized?
Part I, British Invasion, reviews the development of educational publishing in Canada prior to the Ontario government’s introduction of what was billed as open textbook competition in 1960.
The textbooks covertly censored by the Ministry of Education censored are discussed in Part II, Textbook Racket: 1960s-1980s.
Part III, Sneaky Media, compares the printed textbook medium with other forms such as newspapers and broadcast.
4. How many people did Ontario’s censorship program impact?
Millions. In the case of English speakers, Ontario’s influence on Canadian kindergarten to grade 12 textbooks is national. The province’s catalogue of authorized textbooks, Circular 14, was distributed across Canada to education ministries and school boards for decades.
Approximately five percept of Ontario’s student population attended private schools during the study period. Catholic and other Christian schools are essentially public schools in Ontario, as were the schools that segregated Black Canadians, the residential and day schools for Indigenous children, and education programs for Canada’s inmates. Curriculum expectations and authorized textbook catalogues were government-authored. School administration and teachers were directed to select textbooks from the catalogue.
5. Is this book self-published?
Canadian Mockingbird has been prepared by my company (13052206 Canada Inc.) with the help of the professionals who edited, designed, proofread, reviewed and indexed the book. I’m pleased with the team and the interactions I have experienced as a result. Powerful online marketplaces exist today enabling independent publishers to locate and hire publishing veterans.
Individuals comprising what I think of as Canadian Mockingbird’s core participants include:
- Counsel and inspiration: — Professors (Emeriti) Stephen Regoczei and Laura Pinto
- Copy editing: — Eric Mills Editing and Design
- Proofing: — Maggie Lyons
- Indexing: — Index Busters
6. What do you mean by censorship, covert and fraud?
These terms are used in the conventional sense. The Collins Canadian English Dictionary & Thesaurus (2011) defines the verb to censor as to ban or cut “parts of (a film, book, etc.) considered obscene or otherwise unacceptable.” Most censored books discussed were recommended by the official government process. Ontario’s Ministry of Education paid panels of subject experts to review books and recommended whether to list them or not. How they voted could be discerned from the archived paperwork for each review. Most censored books featured in Canadian Mockingbird were previously recommended by a panel majority, in some cases unanimously. After panel recommendation the books were then rejected nonetheless by bureaucrats, sometimes with the involvement of the minister. Another class of books were withheld from panel review after a briefer initial check by an assigned officer.
These two different classes of censored books correspond to two different Archives of Ontario fonds:
- RG 2-243-3, “Textbooks rejected as ineligible” – referred to as first-pass censorship
- RG 2-243-4, “Circular 14 files on text books rejected after evaluation” – panel majority censorship
The terms covert and concealed convey secrecy. Not only did the Ontario government refuse to authorize and distribute panel-recommended textbooks, but it deceived the Canadian public and publishers by covering up its decisions. Canadians couldn’t have learned of Ontario’s textbook censorship program until decades later. While pretending to act in the average Canadian’s interests, Ontario was delivering up Canadians with an intentionally shrunken grasp of reality. For a government that claims to be of the people and democratic, this is fraud.
Until the Ontario legislature passed the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) in 1988, the remaining documents which forms the basis of this story, were publicly unavailable. According to the Archives of Ontario privacy analyst who processed my research applications and approved drafts of my two books, the files remained untouched in their bankers’ boxes until 2007 when I began examining them. While I have tried to be thorough in searching for censored books, it’s my belief that remaining records of censored books are only a fraction of what was produced.
With Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party administration, Ontario began outsourcing textbook evaluation. The transition occurred mostly under Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative government. Liberal governments from 2003 and Dalton McGuinty to 2018 and Kathleen Wynne didn’t change course. My Education Ministry contact suggested to me that their private contractor was also required to provide access upon request. But I found them evasive. At first the contractor offered an interview, but then called back to refuse. That contractor, Curriculum Services Canada, expanded into other services before eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2018 and emerging as Curriculum Matters Incorporated. That company is partially staffed by the same employees.
7. What do you mean by mind control?
English-language textbooks circulating in Ontario and across Canada weren’t really selected by panels of subject experts, as was long suggested. Panels provided input and helped with appearances, but they weren’t empowered. Each panel included one or two government representatives. Officers and contractors were aware of the government’s political agenda and sensitivities, even if they weren’t working directly from script. During the era up to the late 1980s that I studied, if an officer made a decision the government didn’t like, another level of supervision would review it. In time, officers’ decisions typically came to resemble what supervisors wanted. If a government employee’s moral, historical or political sophistication made the required decisions too difficult, somebody more trainable could take their place.
Since Canada signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, freedom of thought and of conscience have been part of the country’s international obligations. Constitutional confirmation came with Canada’s 1960 Bill of Rights and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the Supreme Court was again explaining Canadians’ constitutional protections in Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36 in 2002.
And now? We are in an era of increasing censorship. Either Canada has freedoms of thought, conscience, religion and belief or it has propaganda and tyranny. If Canadians believe they have these freedoms but in fact don’t, then what the Ministry of Education is delivering is mind control.
When Egerton Ryerson was organizing Upper Canadians’ education in the mid nineteenth century, the superintendent found the diverse books that children brought from home libraries to be problematic. He borrowed Britain’s solution for its Irish colony, the Irish Readers. The same textbooks also made their way to Australia – homogenization across the white colonies.
Ontario’s texts continued to be selected by the Ministry of Education for the next century, for white and Asian kids, for Black kids in negro schools, for Indigenous children in both residential and day schools, for Catholics and Protestants. In 1951 publishers were told that as of 1960 panels of experts would consider books submitted from market participants. Toronto’s publishing industry staffed up. They prepared larger catalogues. Before long hundreds of books were being submitted each year. Parents and teachers had every reason to think their texts had been recommended by Canada’s scholars. And they were. Submissions were reviewed by panels of up to seven subject matter experts. But panel recommended books that government didn’t want were secretly set aside. Publishers were misinformed about panelists’ choices. Rejection letters were fraudulent. Ontario’s propaganda model remained confidential.
Mind control doesn’t refer only to sessional hypnosis (Mesmer’s trance) in a psychologist’s office. Ontario established a long-term generational project that shapes young people without their or their parents’ knowledge. This mind control program resembled the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird literary conditioning more than its pharmacological MKUltra. Ontario’s graduates were just what the economy required. As the economy evolved, the curriculum and textbooks adjusted. If business owners didn’t require graduates with deep knowledge for finance, law or government, the public curriculum could prepare them for a contented life on the line.
Dangerous social drama led to books about those events being kept from the classroom. During 1970’s October Crisis, for example, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau suspended civil liberties. But his censorship order lasted just a few months. English-speaking children continued to learn about Quebec sans citizen empowerment. Knowledgeable experts were consulted on what textbooks to make available to young people, and were then ignored.
8. This collection of censored textbooks is unusual. How did you come to locate these books?
After work one Friday evening in 2007 exploring the Archives of Ontario’s online Archives Descriptive Database I hit on the textbooks fonds. Shortly afterwards I applied for access to these restricted files and briefly examined some records. A more complete examination had to wait more than a year as I was working full time and completing a graduate degree while living far from the archives. Later, having finished my MBA and living downtown, I was able to begin examining the records after work.
9. How did the education discipline respond to your work on covert censorship?
Prior to the release of NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS, I met a publisher at a festival who had previously worked as a teacher and had participated in textbook evaluation herself. She was surprised and bothered by the descriptions of what I’d found. She thought there was relevance.
At least three PhDs in education reviewed my first book. Two of these reviews were positive while the third claimed that I was selling a conspiracy theory. My first publisher Stephen Regoczei encountered scandalized educators when he approached them to discuss the book. There was pushback.
I shared a copy of NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS with one former Ontario Minister of Education who I knew of through an associate. She had no comment for me.
10. What perspective does a librarian bring to this subject?
A librarian locates and organizes information, provides access to clients. For me, having the opportunity to work with archives documenting how textbook knowledge comes to be was a privilege. It’s been exciting to learn about, describe and bring the public’s attention back to these secretly censored books. It’s overdue that the reading public be able see and utilize those books wrongfully withheld from their educational experience. including the Baby Boomer and Generation X cohorts whose school media Canadian Mockingbird primarily features.
Librarians are employed in different settings. There are public librarians, librarians in schools and post secondary institutions helping students, faculty and administrators to locate and understand information resources. Governments and industries employ librarians. Early in my career as a corporate (or business) librarian, I worked for a pair of industry associations producing education collateral on their members’ behalf. As an employee I experienced this first hand, helping to design secondary materials and personally delivering drafts to the Ministry on Toronto’s Bay Street. Reading about government’s relationship with industry during this project meant gaining additional perspective.
11. NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS was criticized, in at least one public comment, for being partisan. Is this project an attack on conservatism?
Ontario’s Conservative government modernized the province’s system for textbook evaluation by inviting subject experts to participate in textbook evaluation. When the new process debuted in 1960, the Conservative party was only partway through a long forty-two year dynasty. The primary documents I studied were created from the 1960s to the 1980s. The vast majority of subject material was created during under Conservative governments.
Research for Canadian Mockingbird confirmed that covert censorship of Canada’s textbooks, in conflict with its responsibilities for civic freedoms, continued under David Peterson’s Liberal government. Years later, outsourcing of textbook evaluation to the private sector, began in 1994 with Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party government. It may be argued this outsourcing was a management trend of the era. In my experience, private evaluation made public investigation more challenging.
12. What are your hopes for Canadian Mockingbird?
My hope is that a larger segment of Canadians become aware of and involved in the selection of textbooks for Canadian elementary and secondary schools. Educational media plays an extraordinarily large role in the formation and evolution of Canadian identity and knowledge. If educational publishers witness greater interest in educational media, domestic reinvestment in the market is possible even after foreign acquisition, consolidation and homogenization. Keep in mind that according to today’s textbook submission guidelines for publishers, the 2008 Guidelines for Approval of Textbooks (Lignes directrices sur l’approbation des manuels scolaires), content…must support at least 85 per cent of the expectations for a Kindergarten learning area, an elementary subject in a specific grade, or a secondary course (i.e., a course in a specific grade in a secondary subject/discipline).
From the beginning of the new era of publisher submission and competition after 1960, the government issued updates that further restricted publishers. No congruency restrictions at the start. Ten per cent in 1979. Then increased restrictions over time. These are complex unnecessary hurdles that need to be broadly appreciated for Ontario to build a more informed population.
There is concern for Canadian nonfiction writing and its connection to identity. Most recently author and historian Charlotte Gray discussed this concern for the Globe & Mail newspaper. Another hope I have for Canadian Mockingbird is that discussion of censored texts and subjects will cause the reading public to seek the “banned Canada” from publishers. Even if the titles have fallen out of print, it won’t be long after the interest is declared that availability will return.
13. Which previously published sources informed Canadian Mockingbird’s perspective?
Canadian Mockingbird includes more than 400 references. Some authors and monographs greatly shaped this book’s arguments and factual basis, including:
- Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith (eds.), The Politics of the Textbook
- Mark Cohen, Censorship in Canadian Literature
- Joan DelFattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbook Censorship in America
- Bob Davis, Whatever Happened to High School History? Burying the Political Memory of Youth, Ontario: 1945-1995
- J.L. Granatstein, Who Killed Canadian History?
- Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
- Susan E. Houston and Alison Prentice, Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
- Harold A. Innis, Empire and Communication
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion
- James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
- Viola Parvin, Authorization of Textbooks for the Schools of Ontario, 1846-1950
- Laura E. Pinto, Curriculum reform in Ontario: ‘Common sense’ policy processes and democratic possibilities
- Alison Prentice, The School Promoters: Education and Social Class in Mid-nineteenth Century Upper Canada
- Robert M. Stamp, The Schools of Ontario, 1876-1976
- Leslie A. White, The Concept of Cultural Systems: A Key to Understanding Tribes and Nations
- Rosemarie A. Hoey’s 1989 doctoral thesis (University of Ottawa) “Curriculum Policy for the Public Elementary and Secondary Schools in Ontario, 1945-1965” was influential.
- Former New York City schoolteacher John Taylor Gatto’s 2003 “Against School” for Harper’s Magazine was an initial spark for me. The same article undoubtedly sparked many people’s interest in curriculum studies.
14. Who were your main academic influences?
Professor Stephen Regoczei, formerly of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and Professor Laura Pinto, previously at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in Toronto and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s (“Ontario Tech University”) in Oshawa both provided welcome guidance to me and Canadian Mockingbird. During my undergraduate studies at Trent, I enrolled in several courses with Professor Regoczei, a computer studies professor focused on conceptual analysis. After discovering and examining the censored textbook archives, I consulted Stephen, who ended up publishing my first book, NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS. Professor Pinto, who also offered postsecondary courses in education at Niagara University, reviewed NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS in the journal Leadership and Policy in Schools (14:380–383) in 2015. Having previously read and enjoyed her early publishing on education and democracy, I subsequently contacted Dr. Pinto. She generously suggested additional sources and discussed the subject with me from time to time.
Three more educators, former officers employed with the education bureaucracy during the Conservative dynasty from George Drew to Bill Davis, agreed to discuss their work and experiences. These were Keith Lickers of the Six Nations of the Grand River, residing in Ohsweken, Ontario, as well as Alec McCuaig and Wally Coulthard of Toronto.
Though grateful to professors Regoczei and Pinto, and to other contributors, the opinions and perspectives presented in Canadian Mockingbird are my own.
15. How does textbook evaluation compare today?
Circular 14, debuting in 1887, organized Ontario’s authorized textbooks by subject and grade and was distributed across Canada until the end of the 20th century. In its place is the Trillium List, an Internet-accessible database seeming to have the same function but managed by an external private-sector consultant.
Far fewer publications are authorized for school use today than in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – maybe 20%, if that. Criteria for authorization is more restrictive. Evaluation, previously provided as a service to publishers by the province, is now an added business expense. The price dampens enthusiasm among smaller publishers. Fewer subject matter specialists are involved in evaluation and authorization than in previous decades. We’ve been “dumbed down,” so to speak.
16. Do other Canadian provinces covertly censor textbooks?
It’s my belief that they likely do, although I have not investigated that question yet.
Ontario is home to nearly half of English-speaking Canadians. In the United States, that’s the equivalent of California, Texas, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania combined. During the period under investigation, Ontario understood its role to be evaluation for English Canada. Canada’s education publishers designed their publications to meet Ontario’s specifications.
The Archives of Ontario fonds contained some notes from Alberta. One explained how that province dealt with texts not listed on Circular 14, including: “[W]hen an experimental course is offered,” or “[W]hen the special aims of a course that is within guidelines cannot adequately be met from approved texts. Instances of the latter approval are relatively rare.” County and municipal boards of education censor textbooks and library books as well, also without publicly sharing those decisions. But Ontario is the most powerful entity in Canadian English textbook evaluation.
17. How can Canadians make sure their government does not use the curriculum and textbooks against their interests?
Increased public oversight and awareness of government, executive and bureaucracy.