Standing up to book bans and beyond: Protecting and strengthening public education
Public education is situated at a time when provincial governments continue to underfund and underresource, as class sizes grow, as special needs programs are shortchanged, and as control is centralized. And as educators, students and their families pay the price—in communities across the country.
The authors in this issue of Our Schools/Our Selves explore what students, educators and school communities are grappling with in the absence of provincial leadership that sees public education as a system and a service to be prioritized rather than a budget to be decimated.
But as these articles also demonstrate, workers, educators, and students are pushing back, in defense of their rights and in defense of the public education system and the students and communities it services. If we are to learn anything from the decades of activism, it is that progress is never a given, that the fight for justice and equality is ongoing, and that building empathetic and compassionate communities is a full time commitment.
Editorial: The fourth R stands for “resistance”
We are indebted to those who continue to remind us that while the stakes are high, so too must be our standards when it comes to shaping the world as we want it to be
The “notwithstanding clause:” Or, how to avoid the Charter of Rights
Using the notwithstanding clause as a tool to avoid court challenges over questionable or controversial legislation makes a joke of democracy
When violence is the system speaking: What Ontario’s schools are telling us
Violence in classrooms is the result of staffing erosion and the offloading of social crises onto unprepared and underfunded schools
First they came for the unions: How governments learned to love union busting
Over the past two years Quebec has seen a deliberate dismantling of the right to strike, the most powerful tool workers have ever held
Why fascists fear teachers: Public education and the future of democracy
Teachers who encourage critical thinking are a threat to fascists who celebrate gut feelings of fear and rage
Parental rights and the surging demand for censorship in Canadian schools
Libraries are the battleground in censorship wars; academic freedom and critical thinking are casualties. What does this mean for students?
See no evil, hear no evil: Anti-trans apologetics under Bill 137 in Saskatchewan
Despite evidence that Bill 137 would harm LGBTQ+ students, public opposition has declined. Grassroots organizations are pushing back
Budget as border: How public systems quietly decide who gets left out
The system begins to fails a student as soon as a budget determines how much or little care, space, and attention the system can afford
The hollowing out of public postsecondary education: What do we have to lose?
Is post-secondary education in Canada a pipeline to train students for jobs or a source of critical perspectives essential to a healthy society?
Knowledge under siege: Charting a future for universities
In a democracy the university must question governments and other power structures, in service both of current society and what we aspire to