Right to learn

This September the usual back-to-school focus on new pencils and a different classroom sits on the surface of a boiling cauldron of controversial issues in education. From nursery schools to elite universities, education has become one of the biggest battlegrounds in the contest to control and shape social development in Canada and the U.S. In my view, it is a primary area where the trends toward authoritarian control and Christian nationalism that we see in the U.S. are creeping over the border and finding their own Canadian expressions. And children often end up paying the price for this ideological war between adults.

Control

Taking control over what is taught and what is not is widely recognized as a core strategy of authoritarian regimes. Sex ed has always been controversial, but now history and science join it as contested subject areas. Should children learn the history of residential schools or a nicer version of Canadian history? Should teachers trust attractive teaching materials on climate change offered by oil companies?

When social media platforms sponsor youth mental health campaigns, teachers need to be wary. Who is controlling the message? Cellphone use in schools is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issues involved in preparing digital children for a multiverse world, including the role of AI in education. The issues are multitude and each one is complex.

Beyond curriculum and phone use, other power struggles are happening behind the scenes. In Ontario, where provincial officials have taken control of several local school boards including Toronto and Ottawa, it is about more than budgets. It is about aligning priorities with the Ford government. In the U.S., the use of parent vouchers to replace some funding programs for public schools, and other thinly disguised attacks on the public school system, will lead to greater discrepancies in outcomes between children in highly privileged communities and children with fewer options. Increased enrollment in Christian schools because parents are unhappy with what is offered in public schools is celebrated as good news in many Christian Courier circles. At this moment in the history of education, however, those who work for more choice in education also need to be concerned about what is happening in public education for all children and the society we share.

Education as investment

Most current debates about education treat children as passive recipients of what they are given. It has been dubbed a “banking approach” to education. Adults focus on what to invest with hopes of getting back what parents want their children to become or what the future workforce requires. But children are not bank accounts, empty vessels to be filled, blank slates to write on, or pieces of clay to be shaped. Centering children as fully persons, who have their own relationship with God and their own moral agency and responsibility to God, upends this banking approach to education. Parents, teachers, and education systems should be supporters and guides, not owners or intermediaries between children and God. In my view, many debates about education, including church education, under-estimate the spiritual and moral capacities of children because they treat children as recipients instead of active moral agents in their developing relationships with God and the creation in which we all live and grow.

Right to learn

Every child’s right to learn goes far beyond the right to go to school. In the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28, which is about access to education, is followed by Article 29 about the purpose of education. The first over-riding principle is that “education of the child shall be directed to the development of the child’s personality, talents, and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.” That seems consistent with the Bible to me. Further purposes include preparing children for responsible life in a free society; respect for other persons, cultures and nations; and respect for the natural environment. Those purposes are what make “back to school” special.