This week, young people from the school community returned to class all over Quebec. We want a safe return to school for these students and school staff. We hope that the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be limited, considering that our health system is not able to treat the entire population with dignity.
Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
We are pediatricians committed to disadvantaged and marginalized populations, both locally and globally. We have devoted nearly all of our adult lives to caring for the health and well-being of children, their families and their communities. Over the years, we can make an observation that persists: the absence of young people’s voices in the public and political spheres!
Pediatricians certainly have a privileged role to play in defending children. However, that does not necessarily mean that we have to be their spokesperson. Rather, we must invite them to speak up and amplify their voices.
School-aged youth do not have regular access to public forums to voice their concerns and hopes. We hardly involve them in the process of political decisions.
Yet political decisions (for example, when and how to reopen schools) have direct and indirect consequences for young people.
Catherine Larochelle, a childhood historian and professor at the University of Montreal, recently wrote about this in The Press1 : “the children […] have perspectives on the world that are no longer so readily available to us.” She explains that for some children, “their reflections are not yet hindered by the “naturalized” logics of capitalism”.
It’s not enough to sometimes hear these voices here and there. We have to ask them and listen to them. The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating, but can we use this historic crisis to finally change our ways?
Young Quebecers have already revealed how distressing the fear of transmitting the virus to others (especially relatives such as grandparents) is.2 “School” and “community” are not isolated. If there is significant spread in the community, it will be reflected in schools; the reverse is just as true. Our healthcare system, weakened over the years by devastating neoliberal cuts and harmful austerity measures, is currently on the verge of collapse. The suffering caused by the pandemic – including the snuffed lives of parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, caretakers, friends, neighbors, etc. – has had, and will continue to have, an impact on the well-being of young people.
Not a panacea
The return to face-to-face at all costs is not a panacea to relieve the distress of young people. Brie Villeneuve, a student who is campaigning for a return to class with safe sanitary measures, lucidly declared to the Winnipeg Free Press “We are struggling with mental health issues because there is a global pandemic. The conclusion is clear: a return to face-to-face school will not solve the mental health problems triggered by the pandemic, and this will continue as long as we do not adopt a global approach. The question arises, then: what are we doing to end this global pandemic?
We cannot honestly address this issue without acknowledging that many of the same factors that have led to this global pandemic are contributing to deepening societal inequalities and injustices: exploitation, colonialism and capitalism ravaging people around the world and the Earth itself. 3
Indeed, the pandemic has been a blow to climate justice movements largely led by young people.
Moreover, long before the pandemic, the mental health of young people across the planet was already affected by the climate catastrophe. A large study published in 2021 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet and carried out with 10,000 young people (16-25 years old) in 10 countries suggests that by not acting on the climate crisis in a coherent and urgent way, governments are instilling in young people a feeling of betrayal and abandonment of generations future. This distress is felt more in the more impoverished countries, those of the South, and those which are more directly affected by climate change. The words of a teenager quoted in the study are overwhelming: “I think it’s different for young people. For us, the destruction of the planet is personal. »4
Students leading protests for their health and safety from COVID-19 in the United States are teaching us important lessons. During an interview with the Midwest Socialist, Chicago Public Schools Radical Youth Alliance (Chi-RADS) member Catlyn Savado said, “You don’t leave your humanity at the door when you walk into school. These young people bring a different way of imagining education, imbued with critical thinking and caring.5 In the end, isn’t that what we want from our schools?
As adults, it’s time we listened to what these students are telling us instead of speaking for them. The youth are back in the classroom, but at the end of the day, we are the ones who still have lessons to learn.
*Joanne Liu is a professor in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University; Samir Shaheen-Hussain is Assistant Professor at McGill University and author of No More Indigenous Children Uprooted — Ending Canadian Medical Colonialism