One Book In Four Pages..pdf

Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland once scorned the need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient to bolster its own collective ego, a phenomenon that may be at work in laments about the shallowness of historical knowledge among young generations in Quebec. Historian Jocelyn Létourneau investigated this by asking teenagers and young adults to describe Quebec history in one sentence, analyzing 3243 answers from 2003 to 2013. The study found that historical consciousness, or the active and reflexive grasp of the past, varies among young Quebecers, with a significant proportion holding a melancholic or sad vision of Quebec history. The research categorized answers into dramatic, mixed, positive, neutral, and other, with dramatic accounts being the most prevalent, especially among younger respondents. As respondents aged, their historical consciousness became keener and sharper, with a significant shift occurring around ages 16 or 17, and another between high school and college. The study also found that a large proportion of students shared a common pool of historical references, with all generations referring to the same repertoire of representations, including key events and figures such as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the Quiet Revolution, and historical figures like Samuel de Champlain and René Lévesque.