DR. KENT DEN HEYER

University of Alberta

Hegel’s helping hand: Multiculturalism and the National Geographic gaze in education

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Less concerned with the history or varied intents behind Canada’s adoption of Multiculturalism (MC) as public policy, I explore in this presentation what orientations such a policy in education reinforces. By National Geographic gaze (NGG), I reference a voyeuristic and consumptive orientation towards others who become ‘other-not us’ or “orientalized” (via E Said). Connecting such to Hegel’s philosophy of history as creating those inside and those outside the “Spirit of History” offers one reading of historical context for MC. 

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Kent den Heyer earned his Ph.D in Curriculum Studies from the University of British Columbia, MA from The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, B.Ed from Mount Allison University, and BA (history and philosophy) from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. At UBC, he worked in Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness dedicated to research into the intersections of collective memory, history education, social psychology, and media studies, and, at the Canadian federally funded Public Knowledge Project seeking to enhance the scholarly and public quality of academic research through innovative online environments. Dr. den Heyer has taught a range of subjects and grades in schools in Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and Colombia, prospective social studies teachers in Canada and the United States, and has developed workshops on citizenship and democratic education for international scholars. He presently serves as editor of Canadian Social Studies and is a former Co-chair on the Governing Council for the Curriculum and Pedagogy conference. He has published and presented research internationally on student and teacher interpretations of the conditions necessary for social change, psychoanalytic approaches to anti-racist education, and curriculum theory. His future work now in progress examines possible educational implications in the work of the French philosopher Alain Badiou, the role of literature in historical consciousness, investigating and initiating mechanism to contest the commercialization of public education, dis/utopian visions of education, and the life work of R. Buckminster Fuller.