Equity. That’s the word that echoed through the Hamilton Central Library during The Promise of Public Education, an event exploring the vital role of public education in creating social mobility and economic inclusion.
Co-hosted by People for Education, an advocacy and research organization, and McMaster’s Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement, the event included keynote speeches and a panel discussion that addressed the role of public education in shaping the leaders and policy changers of tomorrow.
Wilson College and history professor Kristina Llewellyn gave the opening keynote address.
Historian Kristina Llewellyn, a professor with Wilson College, gave the opening keynote speech. Public education provides young people with the ability to think critically and ethically about complex issues in their communities and prepares them to work collaboratively to make positive change for a brighter future, she said.
Llewellyn, whose research focuses on the history of education, youth and civic engagement, addressed the need for historical consciousness when discussing the future of public education systems.
“Contemporary debates over public education in Canada continue to reflect historical tensions between social control and social uplift,” she said.
Llewellyn also pointed out that events like the evening’s talks and panel discussion were crucial for “facing the legacies of exclusion [in public education], because education also holds the promise to do otherwise.”
Quoting Chief Murray Sinclair, she said, “Education got us into this mess, and education will get us out of it.”
A second keynote speech by Andrew Parkin, the executive director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, was followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Paris Semansky, co-executive director of People for Education.
The panelists are all involved in public education or advocacy in Hamilton: entrepreneurs Ashleigh Montague and Emily O’Brien, Clint Johnston and Rudi Wallace, who are both advocates for policy change and educator support, and Duante Hillen, a secondary student and chair of OSTA-AECO’s Indigenous Student Trustees Council.
Nurturing the dreams of the next generation
In their discussion, the panel recognized public education as the ultimate support system for Canadian youth, bringing children of various experiences together on a community scale and exposing them to new knowledges.
Others pointed out that public education works to cultivate the dreams of the next generation and to inspire resilience in the face of historically unforgiving, dominant systems of power — but only if it supports students.
“Students are dreaming,” Wallace said, “when you have a public education system that really provides support and resources to actually pursue those dreams, all of a sudden that allows more opportunities, more pathways, more social cohesion.”
Reform is needed
While the promise of public education has enormous potential, it also exists within a legacy of colonialism and marginalization, said Llewellyn – and it will need to change to meet the challenges of the future.
“While schools have provided literacy, social mobility, and civic inclusion, they have also enforced cultural conformity, marginalized particular populations, and reproduced various inequities,” she explained.
“We are facing rapidly troubling times — from the rise of white supremacy to the climate crisis — that requires the promise or potential of a well-funded public education.”
From public education to leadership development
Dayle McKay, a first-year student at Wilson College who attended the event, said her own experience of public school shows her that public education can inspire the leaders of tomorrow.
“I’m a big advocate for having the opportunity for equal access to education and the opportunity to learn and to make it into post-secondary, to make it into whatever you want to do,” she said.
Wilson College’s mission depends on public education supporting students in their ambitions to be leaders with funding and student-centred learning, Llewellyn pointed out.
“If Wilson College is going to fulfil its mission to prepare leaders that will ensure a flourishing civic future for Canada, then we need public education that offers pathways for diverse students to be in university programs like ours.”