Bill No. 100 - Education Act - Second Reading
MS. CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : First of all, Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Dartmouth East for bringing this legislation forward. I honour the experience he brings as an educator. I'm in broad agreement. As I think I voiced last week on Opposition Day, my own view is that I'm not 100 per cent sure it makes sense for us to legislate pedagogy, but if it does, I think civics is something we should legislate. I think it makes absolute sense that we ensure that students moving through the public education system are equipped with all the information, knowledge, and critical thinking that's required to become an active and engaged member of society, and that includes exercising the right to vote and understanding how to cast that vote.
For myself, I would say that there were two formative things that happened in my high school and junior high school life that set me on the path to being able to do that myself. One was when Alexa McDonough visited my Grade 9 class and spoke in the library to a group of only young women, as I recall. I remember being so inspired by Alexa and by hearing her first-hand story - and of course, Alexa's story at that time was very different than the story of myself or any of my colleagues in this Legislature. I just found it tremendously inspiring.
Teenagers are extremely self-involved, so it was definitely - for me, I remember having this experience of "Oh, wait, what? Politics?" I didn't even know that existed, literally. It was outside the frame of my very small sphere of reference. It really did open my eyes.
The second was a Grade 12 political science course I took. It was taught by a retired member of the SAS, a crusty old South African who walked with a cane and yelled at students in Swahili. It was the most amazing course I ever took, bar none. It was amazing because it was clear, it was rigorous, and it introduced students, as my colleague spoke about, to the theoretical and the moral underpinnings of the history of political thought, at least in the Western world. It made you want to understand and engage.
As part of that course, I was selected as part of a Rotary trip called Adventure in Citizenship, where I went to Ottawa. I met the current Speaker of the House in Ottawa, who I believe was then in his first term, as well as a number of other MPs.
All of that is just to say that I do believe that young people - especially now, in an age that is so much more distracted than it was even 25 years ago, when I was in that situation - I think young people need to be coaxed a little bit into understanding that this is part of the roles and responsibilities of being a citizen. I am very, very grateful that I was. I think it's wonderful to think about how to do that for other young people in this province.
That being said, I would say that a course dedicated to this is necessary but not at all sufficient. I think there is much more than a course that needs to be done.
In terms of the timing of a course, if it's Grade 9 or Grade 12, I don't feel like I can speak to that with utmost certainty, other than to say, as I reflect on my own experience, that I do give a lot of credence to what the member for Dartmouth East says, which is that you're at a particular precipice when you're in that last year of high school.
I think many of us would think back to that period of our lives now and sort of chuckle at how our younger selves felt about what a momentous moment that was, but of course it is a momentous moment. You're looking at the first day of the rest of your life as soon as you get out of high school, and for many people, they have not necessarily any idea of what that will be.
I think that we need to be consciously - I don't want to say "arming people," but equipping people with the skills that they need to move out into the world. I think we talk a lot about keeping young people here in Nova Scotia. I think engaging people with the political process is another way to do that. People can understand what's happening. People can engage with what's happening. So I certainly support the idea that it should be in Grade 12. Maybe it should be in Grade 12 and Grade 9. I'm not clear on that.
I do think, though, that there's more that could also be done. One of the things I think about, which I think the member for Hammonds Plains-Lucasville referenced, is an organization called Student Vote. It's run through the CIVIX organization in Toronto, which my sister actually worked for for years. Many of you will be familiar with Student Vote because it will have taken place in your riding. It's a mock election that happens for young people across Canada. It's run in tandem with provincial, federal, and sometimes municipal elections.
I know for myself, when I went door to door during the election, on at least two occasions the parent sort of tried to usher me out and up popped a kid behind them, who said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, I have questions, I have questions. My Student Vote is coming up next week." It was awesome. It was just so refreshing and exciting, frankly, to be able to have a real conversation with these kids about what they cared about and what they were interested in.
When I went to my kids' Spring fair at their elementary school, which I think happened to be about two weeks before the election, I got quizzed walking down the hall by different kids asking me questions. I thought that that was wonderful.
I think it's very important. It's important that we support initiatives like Student Vote, that we encourage that. I think it's important for all of us to encourage youth to engage with the political process in any number of ways. I mean, all of the Parties have youth wings, and that's great. We have the Legislative Page Program, which is great, here in the Legislature, which is great, but I'm sure that there is in fact even more we could do. So, I think yes, let's look to the education, the formal education system, and I'm glad that my colleague has brought this to the floor of the House, but beyond that let's have conversations at home around the dinner table, and let's encourage our friends and colleagues, and families, to be doing the same thing.
You know, I worry that we sometimes feel like children don't understand what we are talking about - and I know I'm guilty of this as a parent of young kids - so we don't bother to engage them in those conversations, and it's a mistake because kids understand much more than we give them credit for.
So, it's my strong belief that kids should certainly be engaged in the way that the world works around them and, in particular, in the way that the power structures around them work. So, part of that is what happens in this Chamber and elected politics, but as we all know it goes much further than that. How can young people effect changes that they want to see? If they're interested in an issue, how does that issue work? How could they effect change in that issue? All of those conversations, I think, are important to be having with young people and to the extent that we can make those part of curriculum, that we can make them part of initiatives of political Parties, or of this House, I'm fully supportive of that.
That's all I think about the political system and the political process, and you know, I'd say, to be honest, Madam Speaker, one of the reasons that I feel really strongly about this is because I think that we need young people engaged to keep us honest. I think that my experience of having conversations with those young people, during the election when I went to the doors, was that they weren't jaded, they didn't have a pre-formed sense of how the world works, or what was possible, or what wasn't possible. They asked the hard questions and sometimes, frankly, they asked the really weird questions - but that's great. I mean, I think answering weird questions, I don't know if any of you have checked your email lately, but I get a lot of weird questions.
So, that's a part of the job and I think it's one that we need to pay attention to. In terms of keeping us honest, Madam Speaker, I think we also need to think about, as we encourage young people to become involved in politics, to pay attention to what happens in this Chamber.
What lessons would they learn if they looked now? Madam Speaker, what does it teach students about our values as a province that we legislate away a level of democratically elected government? What do young people learn when thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people sign a petition that's tabled in the provincial Legislature, again this is a process thing, what do you want to do if you want to effect change? Send out a petition. Well, what happens when tens of thousands of people sign a petition and it's tabled, and it's completely ignored? What does it say about how we value diversity when the government takes the occasion of International Women's Day to eliminate the only level of elected government with gender parity?
Madam Speaker, I submit that we have to give people a reason to be engaged. Young people have to feel that there's a value in participating. I think most recently we saw when the government cancelled meetings with student groups for expressing dissenting views that that's not something that's going to send a positive signal to young people who want to engage with government.
So, in closing I would just say again that I support the member's legislation. I think it's important, but I think (Interruption) it's partly because he's from Dartmouth, it's partly because he's an educator, but it's mostly because I agree with him.
Beyond that, I just want to take this occasion to say that, on the one hand, yes, we need to encourage young people to be engaged, to use their voice, mostly to use their eyes and ears and to listen and understand what's happening, but at the same time as we do that we better pay attention to what it is that they're learning when they use those eyes and ears and when they pay attention, and from the feedback I've gotten, Madam Speaker, particularly in the education debates of the last year, it's a pretty grim picture.
With that, I'll take my seat.
Published by Order of the Legislature by Hansard Reporting Services and printed by the Queen's Printer.
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