In the past, the school systems have focused on teaching life skills like sewing, cooking and however, these skills have slowly become outdated and are in need of an update. We need to be teaching our students how to be respectful, educated and morally correct people after they leave high school and go into the real world. Now in the year 2020, the vast majority of the population is able to realize the true horrific nature of these issues and how immoral and detrimental these issues are in our modern world. We now realize that these issues are not only things that need to be changed, but things we need to educate others about. We must teach the next generation to be  better than us and even more accepting of all people than how we are today because although most of our society has made some  progress, it still is not enough to stop here. My goal is to make social justice, equity and inclusion courses mandatory in Ontario high schools. Since this is a very demanding goal with many elements and hurdles to it my primary goal is to get the conversation and talks about making it mandatory started in hopes of it becoming a course required for graduation. This is 100% attainable for multiple reasons one being that Ontario already has an approved curriculum for a social justice course (HSE4M1 -the course I am in right now) and therefore, it is not difficult to simply make the course a requirement to graduate high school. This plan is relevant as it is simply taking what is in place and putting more emphasis on it and what young students can learn from the course. It stresses the importance of understanding “hot button” issues and the importance of equity and equality together in the real world. This course will help to further teach students the key catholic principles outlined in the catechism, bible and encyclicals some being to treat everyone with respect and to love thy neighbour. This is most needed in times of social unrest and the awakening to so many issues that the general population was not aware of 10 years ago. We need to start educating our youth to become good citizens of society and to hopefully make the world a better place overall There is no dead set time frame for when this needs to be enacted by but ideally sooner than later! 

Right now is a perfect time to start this conversation of implementing it as a mandatory course as there has been a surge of media coverage about things like racial inequities and injustices in Ontario, race related police brutality, islamophobia, gender discrimination among many others. 

Sign the petition and have your voice heard!