Citizenship in School

Upon a little reflection, I initially thought that there wasn’t a presence of any of the three concepts discussed by Westheimer. I thought this because our school didn’t organize or promote much in terms of citizenship. Sure, they wanted us to come out with enough knowledge to pursue further education or find a job, but we never really aimed towards democratic goals such as the promotion of democratic voting. We never really addressed issues of injustice or racism that I could recall. Even matters of gender we left untouched by the faculty. Our school was made up of predominantly white students with some minorities of immigrants a majority of which came from Africa.

The realization that I was in fact wrong making my initial reflection was that I didn’t even stop to think of the context that surrounds my school. To any who know me, most people be able to say two things that are essential to my identity. The first being that I am tall, which I hear almost everyday from strangers on the street. The other is that I’m a “Frenchie”. The school I attended from K-12 was a francophone school, the only one in the city in fact. The reason that this is important is because upon further reflection I realized my school, was busy being tangled up in the red tape the government was wrapping them in to try and get funding, alongside trying to raise kids who were surrounded by English in day to day interactions to become competent and confident french speakers. French for the most part is undervalued in Saskatchewan, on five percent of our population is able to speak it fluently. Despite the big push of immersion schools within the bigger cities, English remains Saskatchewan’s only official language. This reminded me of some of the activities we did participate in, our school at one point was in desperate need of a new school. We were too many students packed into a small school space and our faculty was desperately struggling with the School board to get the funding they needed to create another location. Without even taking note of it, I was a part of a participatory citizenship type of learning. On more than one occasion, we were asked as students to come out and attend the court hearings that the school was participating in to try and get funding for the school. The school asked us to pass word onto everyone we knew to generate interest within the community. We were a minority and were doing what we could to help ourselves.

After the better part of four years, we were finally able to get some funding. Though it still wasn’t what we had asked for, we were given the old run-down Robert Usher school which needed a ton of renovations. Now I’m uncertain as to whether the reluctance to fund our needs were due to constraints, or general disinterest for our culture. It makes me think however, that if this is the resistance that we got as white people trying to obtain help, how difficult it must be for minorities like the First Nations people. Like mentioned in class, we need to strive towards equity, equality doesn’t cut it. Some people need more help than others, and to truly make an impact within our society we need to identify critical problems within our societal systems and combat them in whatever ways we can.

Author: brodlanj

This site is for my ECS 100 teacher portfolio. I am an joint kinesiology and education student at the university of Regina. I have been studying for six years now, I am currently finishing the education portion of my degree as well as extra minors in french and health. My goal is to one day become a physical education teacher in the francophone school system.

2 thoughts on “Citizenship in School”

  1. Thank you for this genuine blog Jean! I love your honesty about your past experiences. Do you still receive these comments on your identity? 🙂

  2. Hey Jean! I love how you were able to connect your own experiences in needing to create social change for your own school! At the beginning of your post, you mentioned that there was “red tape”. To be honest, I am quite ignorant about what the situation was between the government and your school. That being said, I really enjoyed how you brought it all together in the end and recognized that the structures of power and oppression in our society affect multiple groups in many ways!

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