A civic sermon: teaching our children well

Globally and domestically, the world we adults have created is in a mess right now and we don’t like it! Absurd and unjustified wars rage, extreme and divisive partisan politics prevail, violent and toxic religiosity abound, and human empathy and decency wane. For me, however, the surest sign that we can’t stand today’s human world is our antipathy toward the education of our children.

Around the world and closer to home we are simply denying our children an education. What they are experiencing and learning is not how, through adult instruction and example, to become better people and in the process improving on the human condition.

Instead, they are learning that children are expendable, and there’s little hope of things getting better. They are learning that politics and governments are exploitative, untrustworthy and selfish, that rich and powerful people can deny them an education. Some are learning that war is inevitable, a constant presence in their lives, and has no regard for them, their parents, siblings and friends. War means hunger, injury, illness, displacement, hatred and the destruction of their schools.

Many are learning that religion is meant to be a powerful weapon to hurt and exclude people not like them, their leaders or their families. Still others quickly learn that they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and people like them can be expected to suffer the consequences throughout their lives. In short, they are learning that, for them, the world is not a safe and hospitable place.

And, if that’s not bad enough, children learn that the real justifiable purpose of schooling is private gain, be it wealth or power and, that if they don’t achieve these, they are being deprived of their rights. The world is a place of scarcity and hardship and, if they don’t look after themselves and gain advantage over others it is unfair.

Their responsibility is first and foremost to themselves to the exclusion of others, and feelings for others are weakness and dangerous.

A pretty grim picture and outlook for millions of the world’s children! Educationally, wars have many casualties – aside from thousands of children never experiencing peace in their lifetimes, millions living in refugee camps, and hundreds of schools destroyed in Gaza and Ukraine – arguably the greatest one might be the loss of truth and reality.

Meanwhile, the “mad men,” so called leaders, starting and perpetuating illegal and unjust wars insist that not supporting them personally is tantamount to treason, antisemitism and defying the will of God. They force their perversions on us through legislation, propaganda and sheer violence.

Wars of offence, domination and revenge always make things worse for people on both sides, both in the short and long run. And criticisms of American and Israeli wars are not treason or racism, they are support of international humanitarianism, perhaps just as necessary as denouncing Hamas’ terrorism and the Iranian regime’s harsh repression of its own people for so-called religious purity.

Based on their own convenient brand of Christianity, the U.S. government is waging war on LGBTTQ+ children, removing previous rights and protections. Ironically, under right to life legislation they banned abortions, while denying protection to those very children once born. Their president even going so far as to suggest that the government cannot fund daycares because the money is needed to support the Iranian war, which they try to sell as a just (holy) war.

Whenever religions promote violence over tolerance, and turn schooling from education to indoctrination, they concede their claim to make the world a better place for both adults and children. Religions can be beautiful guides to harmony, equilibrium and mutuality but become compromised in political and educational spheres, at the same time as they undermine the integrity of those spaces.

In the U.S. and Alberta, governments are purging school libraries and rewriting curricula to confirm and affirm their political and religious biases at the same time as calling on teachers to be less political. In Ontario the government is contemplating eviscerating school boards and appointing a non-educator as provincial education “czar.” In Florida, billionaires are building their own schools for their own children. And virtually everywhere in North America, governments are supporting, sometimes promoting private and home schooling. and disparaging public schools.

Universal educational rights for children are hardly even an afterthought.

Rather than undermine our public schools and their teachers, we should be grateful for what they represent and what they do – a welcome correct to a world gone mad. Unlike the alternatives, public schools welcome all students regardless of their economic status, their gender identities, their religions and their parents’ politics.

Although the challenges can be formidable, attempts are made to make every child feel valued, needed and loved. And unlike the alternatives, public schools must remain unconstrained by religious adherence and partisan loyalty. Public education, simply put, is one of our last hopes for a better future where there are room and a place for everyone.

In that vein, public school teachers must be allowed, even encouraged, to teach universal humanitarian values, teaching not only tolerance but also mutual acceptance of and respect for difference and diversity. This also means that they need to be able to name and call out inhumanity wherever and whenever it occurs without fear of retribution. Our children deserve no less from those they look to for answers to life’s missteps.

For teachers this is not just a calling, it is also a public obligation.

The way to make the world a better place is by loving, caring for and educating our children in such a way so, that when adults, they can enjoy the world together with all others. It means that we must honestly and relentlessly confront our political and religious leaders with the devastating consequences of some of their attitudes, behaviours and decisions, demanding that they acknowledge their responsibilities to be examples to our children for how to live good lives contributing to making a better world. We cannot let them pretend they don’t know better, or that it’s just the way we do things now.

That is not just an obligation for our teachers, but for all of us who want to be considered adults and democratic citizens!

» John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. This column was first published in the Winnipeg Free Press.