Faculty of Education Professor applauds mandatory indigenous course
Proposal by University of Winnipeg a positive step, Director of Indigenous Initiatives writes in Free Press
Frank Deer, Director of Indigenous Initiatives in the U of M’s Faculty of Education, recently penned an opinion piece in the Winnipeg Free Press following the proposal at the University of Winnipeg to introduce a mandatory indigenous content course for all undergraduate students.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition, Feb. 19, 2015.
An excerpt:
History is important. Not just for the sake of filling some time in school. Not just for giving historians something to do. It’s important for us all in our shared journey of discovering moral truth in our world.
Knowing events of the past can guide, inspire, and give us pause to consider and reconsider how we think, feel and act.
Perhaps most important for me is how history allows me to better understand the people with whom I share this world. As Benjamin Disraeli once intimated, history is principally biography — it is the stories of people.