In January of this year, a minor kerfuffle arose down south over a Virginia state bill intended to ban the discussion of “divisive concepts” in schools. Naturally, these included material about civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and the like. The prohibited topics are par for the course for a certain stripe of Republican in the U.S.; what was remarkable was a section of the bill that described acceptable subjects of discussion in classrooms. Among these was a reference to the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Most people with a passing knowledge of U.S. history will recognize that the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and the former slave turned abolitionist – while friendly acquaintances – never formally debated one another. (In the run-up to the 1858 Illinois Senate elections, Lincoln did debate Stephen Douglas.) That such an egregious error could make it all the way into the final draft of a bill (it has since been amended) indicates that there is something seriously wrong with some lawmakers’ knowledge of history. If this is true of the people who write the laws, how much more true must it be for the general public? And how pervasive is this malady north of the 49th parallel?

For Trilby Kent, author of the manifesto The Vanishing Past: Making the Case for the Future of History, it is a highly prevalent issue in this country, where “only four of Canada’s thirteen provinces and territories mandate the teaching of history in high school.” And when history is taught, Kent argues, it is reduced to a soft kind of social studies curriculum that privileges the development of cognitive skills over content.

In her polemic, Kent bemoans the lack of breadth and continuity in the way the subject is taught, arguing that a coherent picture of the past has been jettisoned in favour of a focus on the present; learning about the past is not, Kent argues, seen as an end in itself but rather as a way to explain current systems of oppression and marginalization. The politicization and polarization that both feeds into this approach and flows out of it do damage to an understanding of the facts of history and the processes by which global events unfold and progress.

While maintaining an admirable balance in her analysis – Kent argues for the importance of decolonization instruction in Canadian schools – she also finds fault with the postmodern notions that arise from French critical theory (Foucault is identified as one of the key troublemakers in this regard) that suggest the work of studying the past must involve deconstructing narratives about events and people in favour of individual experience. She positions those who talk of my truth in opposition to those who search for the truth.

This seems highly relevant during an era in which social media algorithms promote rampant disinformation and even highly placed members of some U.S. administrations speak with a straight face about “alternative facts.” Kent acknowledges that history is a narrative that has been formed by people with biases and that perfect objectivity is impossible. She is also adamant about the importance of recognizing certain basic, shared facts: six million Jews killed in the Holocaust is not something open to interpretation or revisionism. Similarly, it is impossible to understand the Second World War without some knowledge of the First World War.

In the end, Kent’s greatest criticism is focused on activist pedagogues who argue that their function is not to educate students about the past but to mould them into changemakers in the present. “If you’re not doing history to make change,” she quotes one such “education strategist” as writing, “then what the [fuck] are you doing it for?” Against this, she contraposes Sam Wineburg, professor emeritus at Stanford University, who argues that “in viewing the past as usable, something that speaks to us without intermediary or translation, we end up turning it into yet another commodity for instant consumption.”

After finishing this brief and bracing polemic, there will be little doubt in a reader’s mind on which side of this dichotomy Kent falls.