La mise à l’agenda du « problème » de la sous-représentation des Autochtones dans l’enseignement de l’histoire nationale au Québec, 1960-2010
With the emergence of a territorially-based Quebec identity in the 1960s intellectuals and pressure groups began to construct the “problem” of aboriginal under-representation in Quebec’s national history program. We compare the importance of this “problem” on the agenda of the designers of the last two high school national history teaching programs in Quebec: History of Quebec and Canada (1982-2008) and History and Education Citizenship (2007/2008-). We show that this “problem” only gained prominence on the agenda of the second program’s designers.  To explain this difference between the agenda of the two programs’ designers, we use John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams approach.  We show that in the 1990s and 2000s, all the elements favouring the agenda setting of this “problem” were present: the problem stream, the policy stream, the politics stream, the political entrepreneur and the policy window. In contrast, we argue that in the late 1970s, one element was missing: the politics stream, more specifically the national mood. To make the concept of national mood less a-historical, we use Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith’s typology (1993) and distinguish three levels of beliefs constitutive of the national mood.  We assert that a change occurred at the deepest and most unalterable level of beliefs held by Quebec’s intellectual and political élite between the late 1970s and the 1990s in favour of the recognition of aboriginal peoples.
Agenda setting John W. Kingdon John W. Kingdon Hierarchy of beliefs Teaching of national history Aboriginal peoples Quebec identity