Building a Civil Society: Education as Liberation

Leaders and Legacies is happy to announce that world-renowned educator, Dr. Avis Glaze, is now a regular columnist. Dr. Glaze will be writing about important issues in education in the coming months.

By Dr. Avis Glaze

Educating all children to a high level, regardless of background factors, is the number one mandate for those entering the teaching profession today. We often hear that we must raise the bar and close achievement gaps and that excellence and equity must go hand in hand. Undoubtedly, this agenda offers challenges for those who work with students in increasingly diverse settings. But it is also difficult to describe the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that we experience when we succeed in overcoming these seemingly intractable challenges.

Teaching is the profession I chose many years ago as a young girl growing up in Jamaica. During difficult times, this is the part of my career that I think about the most. Reflecting on my early years in teaching, and why I chose teaching in the first place, restores my motivation, sense of mission and direction. I feel grounded in who I am and what I am doing, convinced that I chose a profession that is noble, moral in its intent, multi-faceted in its scope and boundless in its possibilities. Although I have worked at all levels of the education system over many years, I still respond “I am a teacher!” when asked what I do. I say it with pride, confidence, enthusiasm and conviction.

Education has a liberating effect. It is said that a mind that has once been stretched can never again be small. Education prepares us to think critically, feel deeply and act wisely and ethically. It encourages responsible citizenship, giving us tools to anticipate problems and to contribute to the solutions that will save us as a planet. It helps us understand that all people share a common bond and that we are one human family in an interdependent world.

Being educated today means being highly literate. And literacy, which is a primary vehicle for empowerment, is the gateway to all future learning. It is an important means of social mobility. It enhances life chances and enables individuals to extricate themselves from the cycle of poverty in which many find themselves. It follows, then, that as teachers we must recognize the potential of education to bring about significant changes within our communities. The value we place on education and the quality of schooling that we provide are directly related to the kind of society we will have in the future.

As teachers, we contribute to the development of a civil society. According to Robert Putman (1993), civil society refers to the  “third sector,” after government and business. It comprises professional associations, religious groups, labour unions and citizen advocacy organizations. Putnam argues that communities do not become civil because they are rich, but rather become rich because they are civil. The best predictors of success, he concludes, are strong traditions of civic engagement. Putnam describes these aspects of civic engagement as “social capital.”

As educators, we must ensure that our country continues to be the embodiment of a civil society with strong social capital. Each day, within our classrooms and places of work, we are contributing to the society that our children and grandchildren will inherit.

In 1994, I served on the Ontario government’s Royal Commission on Learning. As a commissioner, I spent 18 months travelling across the province and listening to the perspectives of Ontarians who shared their vision for the future of education in Ontario. I will never forget how passionately parents, business people and community members spoke about their expectations of a publicly-funded education system. They wanted improvement – with a sense of urgency. Parents of modest means said that they would mortgage their homes and send their children to private schools if the public system did not improve.

Then in 2004, I played a key role in implementing Ontario’s Literacy and Numeracy Strategy. Thanks to many educators, not just in Ontario but in many jurisdictions across the world, there is steady growth in our students’ learning and achievement. In Ontario, there are frequent visits from international educators who ask how we have been able to make these improvements without rancour or the ranking of schools. We are one of the few school systems in the world that is simultaneously raising the bar and closing the achievement gaps.

Thinking back to my experience as a Commissioner in the 1990s, I recall the many classrooms we visited and the hundreds of Ontarians who came to share their vision for education with us. On a few occasions, the challenges faced by children and their teachers were so daunting that I had to wipe away tears from my eyes hoping that no one would notice.

I vividly remember two such classrooms.

The first is a classroom I visited in a school in northern Ontario for Aboriginal children. I saw how these children lived and learned more about their experiences. I talked with young ones who did not want to leave their homes and families in remote areas to attend schools. I saw their tears and felt their anguish.

The other was a Grade 1 teacher who made a presentation to the commissioners. The teacher related to us the frustrations, challenges and rewards she experienced on a daily basis as she worked valiantly to cope with the diversity of the needs of the children in her classroom. She talked about children from war-torn countries, children in need of protection, children who lived in abject poverty and children for whom English was not their first language. In our report, For the Love of Learning, we wrote about teachers’ professionalism as one of the important levers of improvement in the quality of schooling.

The following is an excerpt from the short version of our 1994 report:

“Teachers are our heroes. We believe they should be everyone’s heroes.…” Anyone who has watched a teacher begin a day facing a group of kids who would rather be anywhere in the world than sitting in that classroom learning about something called geometry that they couldn’t care less about understands only too well what a frustrating, thankless, enervating task these mortal women and men face so much of their working lives. In return, they feel unappreciated, disrespected, the focus of attacks, caught in an almost war-like situation not to their making. …

Yet just about all of us remember with love and gratitude those special teachers we encountered along the way who influenced our lives so greatly. They’re still out there, the naturals, the born teachers, accomplishing miracles. We’ve seen teachers whose Grade 2 kids were writing real essays and happily learning about correct spelling, grammar and syntax in the process. … We saw with our own eyes a group of young teenage boys – so engrossed in a computer project they were doing together that they ignored the lunch bell. … We’ve learned of teachers who have saved kids in trouble from doing terrible damage to their lives, and who have spent time and energy persuading them to stay in school. We know of teachers who have given themselves to other troubled kids and ended up with heartache and frustration; that, too, is part of the reality.”

As Commissioners, we were quick to admit that it would be too good to be true to expect all teachers to be dedicated, devoted and brilliant in their work. In fact, many students told us in no uncertain terms that there are teachers who are uncommunicative, unresponsive, indifferent, mechanical, inflexible and responsible to no one. Some, they explained, were “retired on the job.”

Because the education of all our children was so important to us, we felt that one such teacher was one too many. We felt that there was no excuse for poor teachers and that they should not be permitted to work in our schools. Because of the emphasis we placed on accountability, we went as far as to say that for every student who fell through the cracks a principal or a teacher must be held responsible.

As a profession, it is important for us to engage in a process of self-examination and to recognize that we must bring about improvement from within. To my mind, true professionals do not wait for change to be imposed upon them – they change from within; they do what is right for the people they serve.

It is also important for policy makers and politicians to understand that there is significant cost to a nation when we do not educate all our citizens to the maximum extent possible. Higher levels of literacy and numeracy, facility in technology, and a range of interpersonal and emotional skills required for teamwork and problem-solving are all part of 21st century expectations. Students must also be able to communicate in many languages and across cultural lines.

Teachers, I encourage you to embrace the need for change in the settings that are not achieving success and to rethink your strategies in order to bring about success with a greater sense of urgency.  The children cannot wait.

I urge you to continue to fight for causes outside of yourselves as you play your part in building a civil society. Focus on educating hearts as well minds. We cannot give up our emphasis on high expectations for academic achievement. That continues to be a primary purpose of schooling that we must fulfill. That is what the public expects of us.

– Dr. Avis Glaze is an international leader in the field of education and one of Canada’s outstanding educators. She is president of Edu-quest International Inc. offering a wide range of educational services and speaking engagements across the globe.