In On Student Absences, Race-Based Data, Private Schools and More, education scholar Kelly Gallagher-Mackay reminds us that public schooling in Canada remains one of the few institutions still striving for equality, even as it strains under chronic absenteeism, inequity, and mental-health collapse. She notes that the share of students missing over ten percent of classes has doubled since 2010, raising urgent questions about what learning means in a changed world.
Her call for race-based data and real disability inclusion confronts the limits of privacy laws and the persistence of segregation. She argues that funding shortfalls cannot be disentangled from the feminised, undervalued nature of teaching itself, nor from society’s habit of treating education as a private concern rather than a civic foundation.
Gallagher-Mackay warns that the rise of private schooling drains both resources and faith from the public sphere, eroding democracy by allowing families to buy separation from difference. Yet she also celebrates the beauty that persists—children running before class, teachers modelling scientific wonder, students encountering new voices in literature—as proof that public education still carries the nation’s collective promise.
Read more: On Student Absences, Race-Based Data, Private Schools and More
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Starving the future: how underfunding and poor education policy are functionally eugenics
From the safety of our northern vantage, it is easy to feel heartbroken and a little superior when we watch the dismantling of the American social welfare state—when we see libraries defunded, schools privatised, and healthcare withdrawn with brutal efficiency. We shake our…
