There has been a significant interest amongst immigrants in obtaining Canadian citizenship, dating all the way back to the end of World War Two in 1945. This thesis is particularly interested in what knowledge and skills these immigrants obtain as a result of their experiences in the citizenship education programs provided by the federal government prior to them becoming official citizens of Canada.<p>This thesis has a number of objectives. First, it intends to track the evolution of citizenship policy in Canada from 1945 to the present time, with a particular focus on the changes made to the citizenship education system. Secondly, an assessment of the adequacy of the changes made to the citizenship education system will be conducted, focusing primarily on whether or not those changes have provided newcomers to Canada with the knowledge and skills necessary to be active and informed citizens. Finally, suggestions will be offered as to how citizenship education programs can best provide new Canadians with a more well-rounded quality of citizenship. <p>The evolution of citizenship policy and the assessment of the changes made to citizenship education from 1945 to the present time reveal a number of findings, with many of them pointing to citizenship education policy and programming in Canada as being inadequate. The findings identify a lack of political leadership and financial resources provided for citizenship training initiatives, as well as a painfully basic citizenship education curriculum provided for newcomers to Canada. <p>The central contention of this thesis is that the federal government regards citizenship education as little more than a short-term goal. In other words, the priority is to speed up the processing of newcomers rather than to develop good citizens. Immigrants are provided with basic knowledge and language skills, but are largely left to fend for themselves once official citizenship has been attained. This short-term focus has resulted in a diminution of the quality and importance of Canadian citizenship and has impaired the ability of new citizens to feel comfortable participating in Canadian society. <p>The significance of these findings is that policy makers need to develop a long-term citizenship education strategy that focuses on providing long-term benefits to new citizens to Canada. Such a strategy will help to maximize the potential contributions of the growing immigrant population to Canadian society and will provide much needed clarity of roles and responsibilities to citizenship education service providers and instructors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-04302007-204958 |
| Date | 01 May 2007 |
| Creators | Richet, Evan |
| Contributors | Story, Donald C., Steeves, Jeffrey S., Garcea, Joseph |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-04302007-204958/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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