H.C. Pentland and Continuing Education at the University of Manitoba

HISTORY TEACHERS in Canadian universities spend very little time at professional meetings discussing die design of their courses. This is true of most disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Scholars in these subjects rarely investigate formally why one course seems to have considerable impact upon students and another does not. Nor do they debate the long-term contributions of various types of course and program to a student's development. At the University of Manitoba, where numerous workshops consider techniques of teaching, the content and scope of the courses are rarely addressed. The conventional approach to course design stems from a discipline-centred concern to explain a field rather than from an attempt to fulfill some other definition of a student's needs. Is this appropriate? In order to consider this question, I have organized this paper around three subjects: the first concerns the Manitoba Federation of Labour-University of Manitoba certificate program and the students who participate in it; the second reports on some interviews I conducted with several graduates as a means of assessing the program and its distinctive labour history course designed by the late Clare Pentland; third, in view of the striking response of the students to my questions, I would like to comment on the content and purpose of such a labour history course within the broader context of continuing education and Canadian labour history. The Manitoba Federation of Labour — University of Manitoba Three-Year Certificate Program is now 30 years old. Each year, a diverse group of about twelve new students commences its studies, one three-hour session per week at Winnipeg's Union Centre, two classes per year, mree years to completion, with the

Continuing education · Medical education · Political science · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Medicine