by Jane Hilderman
Last weekend on December 10th, Samara’s Alison Loat shared an overview of Samara’s work with sixty-nine Ontario civics teachers as part of the Post-Election Teacher Consultation organized by Student Vote. Following the recent release of The Real Outsiders, Alison led the teachers through one of the exercises used in the focus groups that informed the findings of Samara’s report.
The event also provided an opportunity for Student Vote to introduce its latest project, CIVIX.
On a piece of paper, teachers wrote down the words that first popped into their minds for both “politics” and “democracy”. We have turned their responses into word clouds which give a sense of the most popular words (below). By using clouds, it offers a quick visual comparison between impressions of politics versus democracy. We can also compare the civic teachers’ word clouds with the clouds generated from Samara’s politically disengaged focus groups!
"Politics"
"Democracy"
One quickly observes that there is some overlap in the teachers’ impressions of politics and democracy – especially for “voting” and “representation”, but also “elections” and “responsibilities”. There was greater diversity of words associated with “politics” compared to democracy, where “freedom”, “voting”, “rights” and “voice” were frequently used.
Comparing the teachers’ impressions with politically disengaged Canadians, we see a fascinating contrast is between the “politics” word clouds.
"Politics"
"Democracy"
While there were some negative terms in the teachers’ politics word cloud, it is a far lower level than found within the politics cloud from The Real Outsiders. Perhaps this suggests that civics teachers are more likely to see politics as neutral – reflected in terms like “government”, “decisions”, “elections” and “debate” compared to “boring” or “confusion”. However, these two groups also share many of the same ideas about democracy. “Freedoms”, “rights”, “voting” and “voice” stand out in both clouds.
The Real Outsiders’ word clouds highlight the distance between disengaged Canadians’ views of politics and democracy; politics is a source of deep dislike, while democracy remains a positive, ideal. This differs for the group of civics teachers, who seem to be more likely to find interconnectedness between politics and democracy – that you don’t have one without the other. Notably, the word “democracy” itself features in their politics word cloud! Interestingly from Samara’s perspective, words associated with “democracy” were not dramatically different. Perhaps this reinforces the case that most Canadians understand what they want to see from their system of government.
Samara is certainly interested in working with more civics teachers to tailor material for the classroom! We’ve put together one package with Historica-Dominion Institute on the role of a Member of Parliament called Representing You, found here. If you are a civics teacher, please drop us a line and let us know how Samara can further contribute to bringing to life politics and democracy for students!