Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission
to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
Among the stated purposes of public (state supported) school systems is the development of educated citizens who possess the disposition to active citizenship. It is worth contemplating what it means to be an educated citizen or to be disposed to active citizenship.
You cannot exercise your obligations and rights as citizens if you do not know what those rights and obligations are. The behaviour and claims of members of the trucker convey clearly demonstrated that they failed to grasp both. The rights and responsibilities citizens enjoy are part of the social contract between citizens and their nation. However, knowing rights and responsibilities is not sufficient to being considered an educated citizen. It is important to know how the Canadian social contract came to be and how it has evolved.
Educated citizens understand how and why the rights and responsibilities of their citizenship developed and evolved. I have lamented in several blogs the absence of the subject of Citizenship from British Columbia’s curriculum and the neglect of that subject generally.
The Government of British Columbia announced that, beginning in 2023-2024, the education program of students in British Columbia must include coursework with an Indigenous focus. I hope that I am not being overly optimistic that this requirement is recognition that educated citizens cannot be ignorant of the factors that have shaped the development of one’s nation.
Canadians who are ignorant of those factors would not know or understand why they enjoy language or mobility rights or the right to equality before the law and the equal protection and benefit of the law. They would not know that the rights and freedoms granted to Aboriginal people of Canada by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 cannot be revoked or diminished by the Charter of Rights. Nor would they know that the Charter requires that it be interpreted in a manner consistent with “the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”
The Honourable Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Education, acknowledged that the requirement that students’ education programs must include an Indigenously focused course beginning in 2023-2024 addressed one of the knowledge gaps in the British Columbia curriculum. In essence, the Minister understands that citizens who do not understand the experiences, cultures, histories, and knowledges of Indigenous people are less well educated than those who do because those experiences, cultures, histories, and knowledges are part of the history of all Canadians.
I will be disappointed if the requirement for the inclusion of an Indigenously focused course is challenged in the way that efforts to give an honest account of the part that slavery played, and racism continues to play, in the United States is being challenged. That challenge will eventually fail because students in the United States seek the truth about their history.
Canadian students also seek the truth about the history and development of Canada.
I am optimistic that the BC requirement will be embraced as a first step in a much-needed social studies curriculum revision
because citizens who are knowledgeable in values, histories, cultures, rights,
and responsibilities that distinguish Canadians from the citizens of other
countries are better equipped to participate in effective, active citizenship.
I hope your Spring break provides the rest and relaxation you deserve. This blog will resume on March 30th.