Revitalizing democracy starts in school

Opinion

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This article was published 27/01/2022 (1065 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WE have a crisis in democratic citizenship. Smug in our own contents, or mired in our discontents, we tend to take democracy and its benefits for granted. While this may not be conscious or deliberate indifference, we might be reminded that the affluence and advantages most of us enjoy result from our democratic inheritance, passed on to us by previous generations.

However, the last two generations have not done their part in appreciating, nurturing and reaffirming democracy for our children and grandchildren. It may be dying a quiet death in the face of our negligence and neglect, starkly evident in our collective antipathy toward duly elected governments and public schools — the institutions we set up to protect and sustain democracy.

Democratic citizenship has the following characteristics:

First, a sense that we’re all in this together — our concerns are not ours alone. Second, a societal memory that acknowledges past missteps and attempts to correct them. Third, the ability and skills to honestly engage and openly reason together with others.

Fourth, the willingness to sacrifice what we see as our own entitlements for the greater good. And fifth, the imagination to dream of better ways and better times for everyone. Public schools are the only educational institutions that embrace all of these features, and the ideals and values that anchor them.

Nevertheless, for at least the last three decades and with little thought of the consequences, governments of all stripes in the U.S. and Canada have systematically been undercutting public schools through underfunding and promotion of various forms of private schooling. Predictably, repeated assaults have eroded public confidence in schools, resulting in an increase in private and home-schooling.

Our current politicians of all stripes tend to emphasize, and defer to, private goods — parental rights, religion, good jobs and personal gain and advantage; while important, these things sometimes come at a cost to public life. Private schooling and home-schooling cater first to private choice.

Consciously or not, private schools present and represent an incomplete view of society’s makeup. For some, entry requirements eliminate some children’s eligibility based upon religious affiliations, prior academic achievement records, or financial limitations. Some claim rightfully that they do not have the resources to properly accept more needy children.

In public schools, no one is turned away for any reason, and their populations resemble as much as possible the entire diversity of community citizens.

For home-schoolers, teaching for citizenship is even more controversial and difficult. Many home-schoolers deliberately wish to shield their children from society — for religious reasons, for medical reasons, owing to political mistrust, or related to unwanted curricular content. In Manitoba, there is minimal monitoring of home-schooling, and even less checking on curriculum, which is sometimes purchased from fundamentalist American religious groups as opposed to following provincial curricula.

This is a recipe for indoctrination, negating state-church separation and creating further alienation from society.

In fairness, teaching academics may work well in both private and home-school settings, but citizenship education is more than an intellectual exercise. And some schools and parents try to ensure their children engage with the larger community through sports, recreation, the arts or local social events. Nevertheless, it is the experiences not offered children that are at issue.

Our public schools are not perfect and, to some extent, we are all to blame for not taking the ideals that animate them seriously. When we weaken our acceptance of and obligation to all others, avoid historical wrongs we need to address, don’t teach children how to practise kindness and get along with others, and fail to promote the skills and desires to enter the public dialogue concerning how to make things better for everyone, we adults are part of the problem.

A humble proposition for public consideration, in keeping with our government’s proposal in Bill 64 to control education centrally while maintaining parental choice and student engagement: let’s debate openly, current high schoolers included, how best to educate for democratic citizenship.

Should all high school education be compulsory and take place in public schools open to everyone? Or should private schooling include compulsory public components? By choice, parents could shield their children from the world in the early years, and influence them in their private preferences before they enter public schooling, where everyone has a place and worth, and where public responsibilities are experienced.

Re-imagining together our high schools as sites of democratic renewal could present a wonderful opportunity for, and model of, citizen engagement, one anticipating a brighter future for everyone — a new, better democracy.

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. A lifelong educator, he has served as a teacher, counsellor, work education co-ordinator, principal, school superintendent and university professor.