COLUMN: Viewpoint – Kids offer a unique political perspective

Last week Mark Carney was installed as Canada’s 24th prime minister. The event reminded me of some social studies lessons I observed while mentoring university education students doing practicums in schools.

During four successive weekly visits to a Grade 5 classroom I watched a teacher help her students learn the names of every Canadian prime minister and remember something important they’d done.

The kids composed a rap where they chanted the names of the prime ministers in chronological order. As they said each name they made a gesture that symbolized something positive that prime minister had done.

They made the peace sign for Lester Pearson because he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in settling the Suez Canal crisis. They pantomimed twirling a curly French mustache for Pierre Trudeau since he made French an official Canadian language. The kids held up two fingers for Mackenzie King because he shepherded Canada through World War II. They raised their arms high to represent a sun for Wilfred Laurier who was determined to bring ‘sunny ways’ to the nation.

I can’t remember all the movements the children invented so I’ve been thinking lately about some of our other prime ministers. How might we recognize them with a gesture? For Jean Chrétien perhaps we could pretend to smell a flower since he created 10 new national parks. Brian Mulroney’s sign might well be joining hands together, since his leadership at the United Nations was instrumental in bringing together many countries to forcefully oppose apartheid in South Africa.

We could hold up one finger for John Diefenbaker. He appointed Canada’s first Indigenous senator and first female cabinet minister. We might pantomime wiping away tears of shame for Stephen Harper since he was the first prime minister to officially apologize to Indigenous Canadians for the harms of residential schools. Could we act out putting on a mask for Justin Trudeau since his leadership during COVID-19 resulted in our country having the second lowest death rate in the world from the disease?

After the children in the classroom I observed had learned the prime minister’s names and some of their accomplishments the teacher brainstormed with them for questions they would like answered about the role a prime minister plays. I wrote down their ideas.

What makes a good prime minister? Have some prime ministers made mistakes? Why have most of Canada’s prime ministers been old white men? Why are some people prime minister for a long time and others just a short time? How old do you need to be if you want to be prime minister? What does a prime minister do anyway? Do you have to be rich to be the prime minister? What makes a prime minister popular? How does a prime minister make new and better laws for Canada? What does a prime minister do when they aren’t the prime minister anymore?

As we head into a federal election I think we can learn some lessons from the elementary school students I observed. They looked for the positives in each prime minister. Could we try to focus primarily on the specific positives each electoral candidate running might bring to our families, our riding, or to the country instead of continually harping on negative things about them?

And rather than blindly accepting whatever partisan newsfeeds have to say about the various candidates could we ask critical questions like those discerning fifth graders did?

During the upcoming election political candidates across the country might consider asking kids for their observations, opinions and questions. Children often provide a unique and insightful perspective on things.