Haven Anderson, seventeen, will be graduating from Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in Vancouver this year. President of the Vancouver District Students’ Council, she wrote the speech reprinted below because she’s “passionate about changing the way we educate our kids.” Anderson writes:

I sit in school everyday and I don’t feel respected or engaged. So I wanted to remind people of where we learn to be democratic citizens, or not. I presented this speech to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) workshop on democratizing public services. I think it’s important for people to think about how society relates to kids and about how they personally relate to kids, because if we continue to disrespect our kids by not letting them decide things for themselves or not listening to what they want or need, then we’ll continue to build a culture of passivity and apathy.

Democratizing Education: A Student’s-Eye View

For me, talking about democratizing education is to talk about student participation. (Roger Hart, a long-time supporter of children’s right to participation, defines participation as “the process of sharing decisions which affect one’s life and the life of the community in which one lives. It is the means by which democracy is built and it is a standard against which democracies should be measured.” We know that democracy is more than voting; it’s how we relate to each other. So the first thing that needs to be addressed is how teachers and students relate, because this is the most fundamental part of school and I believe that there can be no real change in our schools unless it informs classroom practice.

Another reason we need to start in the classroom is that classrooms might be the first place where kids would encounter democracy. If our classrooms were democratic, we could raise our children to understand and expect democratic practice outside of the classroom. So they would be able to participate in a democracy, or, more importantly, to create a democracy.

An emphasis on respecting authority (regardless of whether that respect has been earned), following instruction, and obeying rules (regardless of whether they are reasonable) teaches a disturbing lesson. We need to understand that the medium is the message.

The current school system has a set time, set place, set curriculum, and a set teacher. There are still some things that could be done in the classroom to make the school system more democratic and more respectful.

One person’s method of teaching or learning cannot work for everyone. Therefore, students need to be involved in deciding how they want to learn. Also, we know that learning can only take place when the knowledge we are acquiring satisfies some desire, curiosity or interest, so students need to have a voice in choosing what they learn. A safe, comfortable environment is vital for learning. Sitting in rows is a biased distribution of power: “Everyone look at the teacher.” How is it that we can have a room of thirty people who might not know each other’s names or if everyone has eaten breakfast, and only one person is allowed to talk?

We know that building relationships creates a supportive environment to learn in, so students need to be able to get to know the other people in their class. As for evaluation, students need to help determine the criteria by which their work will be judged and then weigh their own work against those criteria. This would be helpful for several reasons: it gives them more control over their education, it makes evaluation feel less like a punishment and eliminates that resentment towards teachers, and it provides an important learning experience in itself.

When we share responsibility for deciding what gets learned and how the learning takes place, the process is the point. We should try to reach consensus and try to shift the emphasis from punishment to problem solving. We should promote talking and listening, looking for alternatives and trying to reach agreement, working together. This is an opportunity to learn how to communicate and take the needs of others into account, to learn how to be democratic. As well, when we make decisions on our own, it is a powerful contribution to our motivation to learn. Students need information, support and favourable conditions in order to participate appropriately and in a way that enhances their dignity and self-esteem. It should be the teachers role to provide students with the resources they need.

There can be some resistance to student involvement. Teachers often say that they would love to open up the decision-making process but most decisions are not even theirs to make. Or sometimes, teachers might feel forced into an arrangement where obedience to them is expected, such as a classroom. Other times, it might be that teachers are treating students how they themselves were treated.

Not surprisingly, adults resist being told what they can do and how they must do it. It’s astonishing that so many of these adults treat youth in exactly the same way they themselves find so offensive. Parting with power is not easy, if only because the results are less predictable than in a situation where we have control. But that’s democracy for you.

There is also the chance of student resistance to their own involvement. It’s often said that most students wouldn’t want to participate. If this is true, this is simply because we have been conditioned to accept a passive position at school and sometimes at home. After a few years of being instructed to do what we’re told, it’s disconcerting to be invited, much less expected, to get involved in our education.

We learn to make decisions by making decisions, not by following directions. The only way we can acquire both the skills of decision-making and the inclination to use them is for us to participate in a democracy today. Saying “students can’t make good decisions” and making decisions for them is as ridiculous as saying “students can’t read” and reading for them.

We need to redefine how our schools view students. Instead of viewing learners as passive empty vessels waiting for a teacher’s knowledge to be poured into them, schools should view students as equal partners. Students should be seen as resources. We need to recognize adultism in schools, and actively look to counteract the attitudes that interfere with student participation. We need to let students know that their ideas will be respected and their contributions are important. We need to remember that no matter what our age, or station in life, we all have much to teach and more to learn.

I see education as a means to change to world. I don’t want to live in a world where people are passive observers to their lives. I want to live in a world where people actively participate in making the decisions that affect them. Education is fundamental to a democratic society, so we need to recognize the contradiction that the way we do education is fundamentally undemocratic because it was designed to reproduce relationships of authority and control. If we are educating for democracy, then we need to practice democracy in education. I believe that if school doesn’t change, nothing will, and we will never live in a true democracy.