Two solitudes? Canadian foreign policy / politique étrangere du Canada
In his 2002 article, "The ‘We’ Problem in Teaching International Studies", Michael P. Marks reports that his students all too frequently fall into the use of the first person plural when addressing the material he teaches in his international affairs courses. This "we" problem, as he characterizes it, is most prevalent in his American foreign policy course, where, "... [g]iven that the majority of students in the classroom are, in fact, American citizens, it seems reasonable, as far as they are concerned, to speak collectively, and from the first person, about the foreign policies of the country in which they reside". (Marks 2002: 26) His experience teaching American foreign policy at a university in the United States suggests to him that this creates specific obstacles to analytical reasoning, as the use of the first-person plural fuels the view among his students that "... American politics somehow are the standard against which the politics of all other countries must be measured." (Marks 2002: 29) Marks’ description of the "we" problem is an interesting place from which to begin an examination of the teaching of Canadian foreign policy at Canadian universities. For Marks, the US professor must teach students to set aside their passionate use of the word "we" when studying foreign policy. "The dictates of the discipline demand that responsible educators ensure that students first understand in a detached, neutral, scholarly, and unbiased manner, free of personal stakes in the subject, the nature of international affairs." (Marks 2002: 39) While it is certainly laudable to seek to teach students that they should not conflate deeply held personal convictions (or beliefs) about an issue with scholarly demonstration that a particular position is well-founded, Marks’ assessment of "... the dictates of the discipline" at least implicitly suggests that the professor plays no significant role in defining the "... detached, neutral, scholarly, and unbiased ... nature of international affairs" to which students are exposed. This view of the role of the educator is predicated on the assumption that there exists an uncontested scholarly canon, representing an accepted truth, to which all instructors will turn in the same manner in teaching a subject matter. Yet reports on the lack of coherence in international studies curricula, (Ishiyama and Breuning 2004; Brown, Pegg and Shively 2006) the parochialism of international relations teaching in the United States, (Alker and Biersteker 1984) or the issues left largely unaddressed in US international affairs courses, (Murphy 2001) speak of the extent to which educators do have a 101