Before anybody lays the blame for this recent provincial-election fiasco at the feet of public education, I thought I’d get in first and say, “you may have a point.”
I say “fiasco” not because of the result, which was clear enough half an hour after the polls closed.
Nor was it a “fiasco” because all the pundits, pollsters and talking heads on TV were so wrong in predicting the result.
No, the thing was a fiasco because in a province that prides itself on having a solid system of public education, a majority government was just elected by fewer than 25 per cent of people eligible to vote.
Think about that and then wonder if it is time, no matter which side of the political divide aligns with your way of thinking, for a mandatory course in “civics” to be reintroduced into public education.
Civics is the study, both in theory and practice, of the responsibilities of citizenship, its rights and, more importantly, its duties. Civics is about the duties citizens owe each other.
Civics has fallen out of favour, except in Ontario, where high-school civics textbooks have been found to be filled with errors and omissions that have some educators there worried that a generation of students is growing up with wrong ideas or no ideas about how Canadian governments are run.
There is an argument to be made that representative democracy can only be considered such if voting is mandatory, as it is now in 23 countries — even though only 10 countries actually enforce it, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Singapore being the most notable.
Nor is there clear evidence that compulsory voting results in more competent governance, but that is hardly the point.
The point is that unless a majority of those eligible to vote actually exercise their responsibility — and let’s keep calling it that — government has not really been granted an unfettered mandate to govern.
In fact, what we are left with after this last provincial election is government without the express permission of 75 per cent of those eligible to vote.
Perhaps mandatory voting is not our Canadian way, but surely a mandatory (and objectively accurate) civics course, which administers a theoretical slap on the side of the collective heads of its soon-to-be voters, might result in some vague awareness that what we have here in Canada is a democracy, which, as Churchill explained, “is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Good point and good reminder that there are, today, other forms of government still alive and well in countries not far enough from here; theo-cracies, dictatorships, absolute monarchies and technocracies.
So let’s consider a mandatory course in civics as a small step to maintaining our way of life.
Let’s include in that course that if a government elected by so few decides to introduce new and burdensome taxes, it has the right to do so, being legally elected to make such decisions.
Let’s include a consideration of the fact that once elected, a government could, theoretically at least, redesign the electoral system, voting access, legislative decision-making, and how and why it allocates resources.
No government is likely to do any of that. Not here, anyway, and not any time soon — well, maybe introduce an unpopular new tax — but if it does and so few people managed to get up out of their La-Z-Boys and vote, nobody has any right to complain later.
Kids have a very well-developed, if somewhat inexperienced, sense of fairness, and that is fertile ground for the germination of civic responsibility and a reminder that our democracy is only as good as people’s willingness to participate in it.
A large national survey recently released by Tufts University in the U.S. showed a clear relationship between high-school civics education and knowledge of campaign issues in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. There was no correlation between having studied civics and party choice, just a better sense of participation in the process.
To paraphrase William E. Simon: “Bad politicians are sent to government by good people who don’t vote.”
A less than 50 per cent turnout in a B.C. election? Our kids need to learn why it will fall to them to do better than that.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
