Ontario’s Education Minister Paul Calandra at Highfield Junior Public School in Toronto on March 11. If schools are serious about preparing students for democracy, they cannot do so by keeping politics out, writes Joel Westheimer.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Joel Westheimer is a professor of democracy and education at the University of Ottawa and an education columnist for CBC Radio.
Ontario’s Education Minister Paul Calandra wants politics kept out of graduation ceremonies. He has directed school boards to ensure that no speeches include references to “contentious issues of any kind.” But this is not simply about banning politics. It’s about redefining citizenship as apolitical – and that is fundamentally undemocratic.
Similar dynamics are visible elsewhere in Canada, from Alberta’s recent Bill 25 that bars “political, social, or ideological matters” from schools to a British Columbia school board’s decision to ban books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and In the Heat of the Night. Across North America, schools and universities are increasingly trying to erase political expression. The impulse may be understandable. Public institutions are under pressure to avoid conflict, maintain broad appeal, and steer clear of reputational risk. But the result is a version of civic life scrubbed of disagreement, dissent, and public voice. Citizenship without politics isn’t neutrality – it’s obedience.
Ontario’s own curriculum frameworks are filled with references to civic participation, critical thinking, and democratic engagement. But increasingly, we seem to be revising that to mean raising citizens who know when not to participate.
Graduation ceremonies are not just private celebrations; they are public rituals. They are among the few moments when young people are invited to speak in their own voices to a broad community – peers, families, educators, and the public. If students cannot speak about public issues at the very moment they are being recognized as emerging citizens, when exactly are they supposed to learn to do so?
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Would a student be permitted to speak about climate change? About racial injustice? About war or human rights? These are not fringe concerns; they are the very issues that shape the world students are graduating into. To label them “contentious” and therefore off-limits is to suggest that the most important public questions are precisely the ones students should avoid.
The effort to remove politics from these moments rests on a familiar but flawed premise: that neutrality can be achieved by excluding controversial viewpoints. But neutrality is not the absence of politics – it is a decision about which politics are allowed to be heard. When institutions prohibit “political” speech, they rarely eliminate politics altogether. Instead, they privilege the status quo, signalling that some perspectives are too disruptive, too uncomfortable, or too risky to be voiced in public.
Students notice. And they learn.
They learn that public speech comes with boundaries that are not always visible but are nonetheless enforced. They learn that raising difficult or contested issues may carry consequences. They learn, in short, that democratic participation is something to be managed rather than practised.
Democracy is not sustained by keeping politics out of public life. It is sustained by learning how to engage with it – how to listen, argue, disagree, and, at times, challenge authority. These are not abstract skills; they are habits developed through experience. Schools cannot prepare students for democratic life while simultaneously shielding them from its most essential feature. Dissent is the engine of progress in any democratic society.
None of this means that anything goes. Schools have legitimate reasons to set reasonable limits on speech – particularly when it crosses into harassment or hate. But a blanket aversion to “politics” is something different. It reflects not a commitment to inclusion or respect, but a discomfort with the very idea of public disagreement. And it risks sending precisely the wrong message at precisely the wrong time.
At a moment when democracies are grappling with declining trust and growing disengagement – especially among younger generations – the task is not to insulate students from politics. It is to help them navigate it thoughtfully and responsibly.
We say we want young people to care about the world they are inheriting. But that requires more than encouraging them to vote someday. It requires creating spaces where they can speak, be heard, and take part in public life now, even when that makes school leaders uncomfortable.
If schools are serious about preparing students for democracy, they cannot do so by keeping politics out. They must do the harder work of helping students engage with it. That is not a threat to democracy – it is its foundation.