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3.7 "That's the Million Dollar Question" · Public Good

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Justin Fraser.
0:01
Speaker 2: And I'm Shannon Moore.
0:02
Speaker 1: And this is Public Good on the Prairies. Today's episode
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Speaker 1: focuses on the role the mainstream media plays in representing
0:18
Speaker 1: the parental rights movement to the populace, and more specifically,
0:21
Speaker 1: the way that parental rights are legitimized and mobilized through
0:25
Speaker 1: coverage in the mainstream media.
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Speaker 3: Joining us to discuss this is Matthew McCorkadale-Bauer. Matthew is
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Speaker 3: an English and humanities educator in Winnipeg. He recently completed
0:35
Speaker 3: his master's in education, where his thesis examined how Canadian
0:40
Speaker 3: media represents the parental rights movement, interrogating how its rhetoric
0:45
Speaker 3: individualizes education, marginalizes gender diverse identities, and undermines public schooling.
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Speaker 4: Matthew McCorkdale-Bauer, welcome to Public Good on the Prairies.
1:02
Speaker 5: Thank you.
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Speaker 4: In your recently completed thesis, which was awarded the University
1:07
Speaker 4: of Manitoba's Distinguished Master's Thesis Prize, you offer a sophisticated
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Speaker 4: and detailed analysis of the way mainstream media legitimizes and
1:17
Speaker 4: advances parental rights. Can you tell listeners about the research
1:22
Speaker 4: you conducted?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, so basically I took a look at the re-presentation
1:28
Speaker 5: of the parental rights movement in mainstream media. The key
1:32
Speaker 5: there is the re-presentation, as in how it has been
1:36
Speaker 5: portrayed and therefore how it's understood by the broader public.
1:41
Speaker 5: But if I may, I want to start with the
1:43
Speaker 5: curiosity that kind of led me to the question. Essentially,
1:46
Speaker 5: I was curious about media. I was curious about the
1:49
Speaker 5: ways in which it molds our perception. Whether it be through, like,
1:54
Speaker 5: the concept of media and its message, or Foucault's example
1:57
Speaker 5: of the painter, you know, Drew's public pedagogy, or really
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Speaker 5: where I landed on, along with all the others, was,
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Speaker 5: you know, the idea of representation. I began honing in
2:08
Speaker 5: the curiosity to a more specific question. That question being,
2:13
Speaker 5: in what ways has the parental rights movement been positioned
2:17
Speaker 5: in mainstream media? I then asked three subset questions. How
2:22
Speaker 5: have the roles and relationships of students, parents, teachers been framed?
2:27
Speaker 5: How is public education being framed? And how are gender
2:30
Speaker 5: and sexuality framed? And so with these questions, I looked
2:35
Speaker 5: at the three most accessed national news sources in Canada. CBC,
2:40
Speaker 5: Global Mail, and the National Post. These three sources also
2:45
Speaker 5: had varying socially attributed labels of political leanings. CBC being center-left,
2:50
Speaker 5: Global Mail being center, National Post being center-right. Although, as
2:55
Speaker 5: I looked at the language, despite the attributed social or
3:00
Speaker 5: political leaning, each news source shared language of neoliberalism. And
3:06
Speaker 5: then using these three questions as framework, I began to
3:09
Speaker 5: look at the micro, macro, macro discourses, basically meaning how
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Speaker 5: does specific language, syntax, and organization affect meaning and how
3:19
Speaker 5: this language within larger social context affects meaning.
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Speaker 1: And Matthew, your research reveals the way that these news
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Speaker 1: sources can mobilize particular narratives through language and word choice
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Speaker 1: and We're wondering if you could speak a little bit
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Speaker 1: about your analysis of the language and word choice. And
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Speaker 1: do you think this word choice motivated particular understandings or
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Speaker 1: even misunderstandings of parental rights and the motivations of the
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Speaker 1: parental rights movement?
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Speaker 5: Most definitely. So, Neil Sorensen does a brilliant job of
3:53
Speaker 5: outlining the culturally loaded epithets that are omnipresent in the
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Speaker 5: parental rights movement. He writes about how jargon and buzzwords
4:02
Speaker 5: are mobilized in his article, I Am Become Woke, Destroyer
4:05
Speaker 5: of Schools. I love that title. These words include woke, grooming,
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Speaker 5: radical gender ideology, queer propaganda, the list goes on. And
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Speaker 5: while this language is present in the three mainstream news
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Speaker 5: outlets that I looked at, I actually want to speak
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Speaker 5: to the mundane platitude of common language. It starts with
4:29
Speaker 5: the phrase parental rights. It's what Rogers calls, of course, language.
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Speaker 5: It's a thought terminating cliche likened to the statement, as
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Speaker 5: everybody knows, it stops critical thinking before it has a
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Speaker 5: chance to start. In regards to parental rights, it is
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Speaker 5: easy to agree with. The logic goes as follows. Parental rights, well,
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Speaker 5: that is a good thing. And therefore, when it is
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Speaker 5: proposed that parental rights are under attack, fear is induced.
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Speaker 5: This institutionalized fear is really what came forward in the analysis.
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Speaker 5: But it is paired with a feigned neutrality. Once again,
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Speaker 5: keeping in the mundane. One CBC reporter wrote, Both sides
5:15
Speaker 5: have a point. It is this idea that perspectives need
5:18
Speaker 5: to be equally covered. But when paired with linguistic fear,
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Speaker 5: the undermining of public education, the demonization of gender and selfhood,
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Speaker 5: and the infantilization of young people, this equal coverage buries
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Speaker 5: the issue at hand. So another example could be something
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Speaker 5: as simple as one quote from a Globe article. The
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Speaker 5: quote goes, parents are concerned about lessons kids are learning
5:45
Speaker 5: on the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation. While
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Speaker 5: this example doesn't deployed purposeful language of defamation or necessarily
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Speaker 5: inflammatory language, what it accidentally does is build to the
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Speaker 5: discourse of the social identification fallacy that is rampant in
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Speaker 5: PRM discourse. By this, I mean it puts parents on
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Speaker 5: one side and education on the other. And the air-quoted
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Speaker 5: helpless child in the middle. The helpless child is one
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Speaker 5: in need of protecting from gender or from education or indoctrination.
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Speaker 5: It is this passive use of a grafted tree of
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Speaker 5: neoliberal and neoconservative logic that is pervasive in the news coverage.
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Speaker 5: And in many cases, the articles are not purposely supporting
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Speaker 5: the logic. but hegemonic understandings supersede the intention, presenting itself
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Speaker 5: through word choice, positioning of the youth, and positioning of
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Speaker 5: gender and identity.
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Speaker 4: I really appreciate the way that you're focusing on the
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Speaker 4: particularities of language and the impact of that language. And
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Speaker 4: I think what is fantastic about your research is that
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Speaker 4: you pause on the words to consider the effect and
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Speaker 4: you look at them in the aggregate, like, How many
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Speaker 4: times does each news source use this language? And what
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Speaker 4: does the default to that type of language actually result in?
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Speaker 4: Possibly for the reader, recognizing that readers do have some
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Speaker 4: agency in their interpretations as well. But something else you
7:21
Speaker 4: looked at was just the volume of stories. And I
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Speaker 4: think of, you know, there are so many important stories
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Speaker 4: going on in the world that people wish news sources
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Speaker 4: would pick up. And it seems that some news sources
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Speaker 4: picked up the parental rights movement with a bit more
7:39
Speaker 4: fervor than other news sources did. In particular, the National
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Speaker 4: Post had the most number of articles on the topic.
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Speaker 4: So how do you think the way in which this
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Speaker 4: was presented in the media and the volume of stories
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Speaker 4: impacts the public discourse on this topic?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, like huge. So to use actual specific numbers to
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Speaker 5: contextualize the amount of articles, between May 2023 and June 2024,
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Speaker 5: CBC published 32 articles on the parental rights movement. The
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Speaker 5: Global Mail published 21 and the National Post published 43.
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Speaker 5: What I found interesting wasn't just the quantity, but the pattern.
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Speaker 5: The Globe and Mail and CBC tended to spike coverage
8:34
Speaker 5: around major news events. So something like Saskatchewan's Bill 137.
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Speaker 5: The National Post, however, showed something different. Rather than responding
8:47
Speaker 5: primarily to events, there was a much more sustained and
8:51
Speaker 5: gradual increase in coverage over time. So if I were
8:55
Speaker 5: just to look at, you know, kind of the end
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Speaker 5: of May, beginning of June of 2024, Global Mail and
9:02
Speaker 5: CBC had very little publications, and that was one of
9:07
Speaker 5: the highest publication output for National Post. Once again, it
9:11
Speaker 5: was just this constant and gradual increase over time. And
9:16
Speaker 5: that matters because, you know, kind of what you already
9:19
Speaker 5: said in your question, media doesn't simply report what's happening.
9:23
Speaker 5: Media tells us what's important. The more frequently an issue
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Speaker 5: appears in our newsfeed, newspapers and timelines, the more central
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Speaker 5: it begins to feel in public consciousness. even if people
9:38
Speaker 5: never read every article, repeated exposure creates a sense that
9:42
Speaker 5: something significant and urgent must be happening. So once again,
9:48
Speaker 5: kind of more so honing in on the National Post
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Speaker 5: was not only the amount of coverage, but also the
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Speaker 5: tone of that coverage. Again and again, I encountered language
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Speaker 5: suggesting that parents, Christianity, traditional values, or even Western society
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Speaker 5: itself were somehow under siege. That language of threat and
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Speaker 5: attack is far from politically neutral, and it echoes what
10:15
Speaker 5: scholars such as Dumais have identified within strands of evangelical conservatism,
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Speaker 5: the construction of a besieged majority that must defend itself
10:27
Speaker 5: against cultural decline. Once again, kind of speaking to the
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Speaker 5: quantity of all three, but particularly National Post, was this
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Speaker 5: Irony that was there. National Post articles portrayed concerns about
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Speaker 5: parental rights as being over covered by mainstream institutions like CBC,
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Speaker 5: while simultaneously publishing far more articles on the subject than
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Speaker 5: either CBC or Global Mail. There is this kind of
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Speaker 5: perpetual crisis narrative being constructed. Once again, not shadowing news events,
11:02
Speaker 5: but having a gradual increase in coverage over time. And
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Speaker 5: that has consequences. You know, when people repeatedly encounter stories
11:12
Speaker 5: suggesting that schools are hiding information from parents, that children's
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Speaker 5: identities are being manipulated, or that something nefarious is happening
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Speaker 5: in classrooms, those ideas begin to feel less like political
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Speaker 5: claims and more like common sense. Not because they've been proven,
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Speaker 5: but because they've become familiar. So if this is the
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Speaker 5: reporting that's happening on the socially attributed center right, and
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Speaker 5: then the socially attributed center left is covering it, once again,
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Speaker 5: in great quantity, but very much doing this tiptoe of
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Speaker 5: a tightrope walk, saying both sides have a point, the
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Speaker 5: public discourse, the public understanding, the public pedagogy is starts
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Speaker 5: to lean in this narrative of fear. With that being said,
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Speaker 5: being a little bit critical on the amount of coverage
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Speaker 5: there is, but with that being said, when government claims
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Speaker 5: ownership of identities, when they deny healthcare to individuals and
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Speaker 5: deploy draconian surveillance on education and identity, this demands media attention.
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Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 1: And building on that a little bit, Matthew, what do
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Speaker 1: you think the National Post has to gain from covering
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Speaker 1: the parental rights movements in this way and to the
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Speaker 1: extent that it does?
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Speaker 5: That is the million-dollar question. I think sensationalism. I think fear, anxiety, self.
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Speaker 5: We've seen that Maria Ressa, a brilliant journalist and activist,
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Speaker 5: outlines it in her book, How to Stand Up to
12:58
Speaker 5: a Dictator, about how information spreads and the way in
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Speaker 5: which Whenever something triggers that emotional response, not necessarily an
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Speaker 5: emotional response to love or compassion, but of fear, it
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Speaker 5: spreads way more on social media. And whenever we think
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Speaker 5: about mainstream news sources, they are, you know, really feeling
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Speaker 5: a huge brunt of fear. social media. It's like the
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Speaker 5: million-dollar question within privatization. Whenever the dollar is the bottom
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Speaker 5: line for these news sources, Sensationalization sells. And whenever there's
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Speaker 5: potentially other intentions involved, whether that be privatizing education, increasing
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Speaker 5: influence of private companies. we see this narrative of neoliberalism
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Speaker 5: heightened and increased. So why? I think it's got to
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Speaker 5: do with, one, merely gaining readers. and two, advancing this
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Speaker 5: quite neoliberal discourse around education. And we've seen the way
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Speaker 5: in which it is slowly eroding the public of public
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Speaker 5: education and allowing different pathways of privatizations to come in.
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Speaker 7: Right.
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Speaker 1: And I appreciate how you talk about readers, right? Increasing
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Speaker 1: readership and these neoliberal discourses. And I think to your point,
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Speaker 1: it's follow the money, right? Both of these tie in
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Speaker 1: together in those ways. And Matthew, you also considered in
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Speaker 1: your research whose voices were included and how articles were
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Speaker 1: structured in these news organizations. And so we're curious, what
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Speaker 1: did you note about voice and structure? And how could
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Speaker 1: these particular elements offer unique understandings of, I quote, like
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Speaker 1: parental rights? Both of those words are very loaded. And
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Speaker 1: what else does it offer for our understandings about the
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Speaker 1: motivations of the parental rights movement?
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Speaker 5: I am an English teacher. So bear with me as
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Speaker 5: I go into a little bit of grammar. It is
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Speaker 5: my English teacher ways. If we think about common sentence structure,
15:21
Speaker 5: there is generally a subject, the actor of the sentence,
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Speaker 5: and an object, which is acted upon. What became almost
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Speaker 5: ubiquitous across the coverage, all three, was that when young
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Speaker 5: people appeared in these articles, they were overwhelmingly positioned as
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Speaker 5: the object rather than the subject in the sentence. Parents acted.
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Speaker 5: Governments acted. School divisions acted. Advocacy groups acted, but students
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Speaker 5: themselves were rarely granted grammatical agency. They were spoken about
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Speaker 5: far more often than they were spoken with. What I
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Speaker 5: found particularly interesting was that this pattern persisted even in
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Speaker 5: articles attempting to challenge the parental rights movement. A reporter
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Speaker 5: might write something like, We need to protect children from
16:18
Speaker 5: the parental rights movement. And while the intention is undoubtedly different,
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Speaker 5: the grammatical relationship remains remarkably similar. Once again, the youth
16:29
Speaker 5: is positioned as an object requiring action from others. And
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Speaker 5: something I hear often is, well, shouldn't we be protecting children?
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Speaker 5: I always stumble when this question is asked. I will
16:45
Speaker 5: try to go into the history of the way youth
16:47
Speaker 5: have been used as political leverage points. I'll try to
16:52
Speaker 5: explain the hot appeal fallacy. I will try to go
16:55
Speaker 5: into concepts of soft and hard paternalism or go into
16:59
Speaker 5: the Canadian Charter, Manitoba case law, the UN Convention of
17:04
Speaker 5: the Rights of the Child. But none of these explanations
17:08
Speaker 5: seem to work when I attempt to explain it. So.
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Speaker 5: I will try something completely novel. Once again, weird choice
17:16
Speaker 5: for a podcast. Something new from me. But I'm going
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Speaker 5: to actually keep with grammar. Rather than saying we need
17:27
Speaker 5: to protect children, we could simply flip the subject. Youth
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Speaker 5: are right-bearing individuals and their rights must be upheld. Once again,
17:40
Speaker 5: just by simply flipping the subject and saying youth are
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Speaker 5: rights-bearing individuals and their rights must be upheld, we see
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Speaker 5: the way in which grammar itself can either uphold or
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Speaker 5: subvert youth autonomy. Circling back to articles that sought to
18:00
Speaker 5: push back against parental rights movement, another pattern emerged in
18:05
Speaker 5: the overall organization of the articles themselves. In particular, many
18:11
Speaker 5: CBC articles would begin with an empathetic portrayal of parents
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Speaker 5: who felt their rights had been infringed upon. Only later,
18:20
Speaker 5: often halfway through the article, would the reporting begin to
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Speaker 5: unpack the flaws, contradictions, or unsupported assumptions within those claims.
18:29
Speaker 5: In journalism... This, to my understanding, is called burying the lead.
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Speaker 5: The critique exists, but it arrives after readers have already
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Speaker 5: been invited to emotionally identify with the narrative of the
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Speaker 5: aggrieved parents. And that matters. Not everyone reads an article
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Speaker 5: to completion. Some readers may only read the headline and
18:51
Speaker 5: opening paragraphs. Others may carry the emotional framing established at
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Speaker 5: the beginning of the article into the rest of their reading.
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Speaker 5: And by the time the critique arrives, the audience may
19:01
Speaker 5: have already developed a degree of sympathy or may have
19:05
Speaker 5: just stopped reading. Also important were the voices that were
19:10
Speaker 5: not merely grammatically or structurally subverted, but almost entirely omitted
19:15
Speaker 5: from the conversation. The most glaring absence was the voice
19:19
Speaker 5: of the true subject of these debates, transgender youth themselves.
19:23
Speaker 5: Despite being positioned as a central concern of the parental
19:27
Speaker 5: rights movement, there were remarkably few instances in which transgender
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Speaker 5: youth were afforded meaningful space to articulate their own experiences, understandings,
19:38
Speaker 5: or identities. And when these voices did appear, they were
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Speaker 5: often framed through victimhood, through the language of harm, vulnerability,
19:46
Speaker 5: or protection. There is one more omission that was included
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Speaker 5: now this was not you know an individual per se
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Speaker 5: but another subject of it and that was any discussion
20:02
Speaker 5: of the purpose of education There was one article that
20:08
Speaker 5: talked about the purpose of education, attempted to. It was
20:13
Speaker 5: a National Post article. It was a rather transactional concept
20:18
Speaker 5: of education, saying that there are true subjects and fake subjects,
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Speaker 5: and that these woke ideologies are distracting from true education. So, yeah, no,
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Speaker 5: I actually go back. No articles talked about the purpose
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Speaker 5: of education. And that omission about what is the purpose
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Speaker 5: of education is so powerful. It just allows it to
20:43
Speaker 5: be completely ignored and never thought about and never broken
20:48
Speaker 5: down to what is really the rudimentary concept of education.
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Speaker 5: Education can either uphold education. hegemonic norms or it can
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Speaker 5: disrupt hegemonic norms. A rudimentary, broken down, stripped down concept
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Speaker 5: of education, completely ignored. And as long as it's ignored,
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Speaker 5: as long as the uh voices of youth is completely
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Speaker 5: left silent completely dramatically um excluded through being an object
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Speaker 5: it will do nothing but uphold hegemonic norms i.
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Speaker 4: Really appreciate your outline of structure and the ways in
21:30
Speaker 4: which you know as we know people do not read
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Speaker 4: often beyond the headline and then secondarily how it can
21:36
Speaker 4: coerce or manipulate the reader emotionally to empathize with the
21:41
Speaker 4: people in the parental rights movement who seemingly are saying
21:44
Speaker 4: they genuinely just care about their children, right? But that
21:47
Speaker 4: positioning of their children as property and that idea that
21:51
Speaker 4: they only want their child learning the values of their
21:53
Speaker 4: home and school, which denies children the rights to learn
21:56
Speaker 4: beyond the values of their homes and often the rights
21:59
Speaker 4: to learn research-informed curriculum as well. I wonder not to
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Speaker 4: put you on the spot, but you also point to
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Speaker 4: a really huge hypocrisy in the ways in which people
22:09
Speaker 4: within the parental rights movement and even the media sources
22:14
Speaker 4: themselves can suggest they are caring for children, but often
22:18
Speaker 4: actually promoting policies that do not actually advance the rights
22:21
Speaker 4: of children, undermine the rights of children. But you found
22:24
Speaker 4: in a National Post article that one case or one
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Speaker 4: narrative in which all of a sudden they were saying
22:31
Speaker 4: let's platform this child's view what what was it about
22:34
Speaker 4: that one case you thought was so so brazenly hypocritical
22:38
Speaker 4: not to put you on the spot to tell you
22:39
Speaker 4: one single story but I thought that one was so powerful.
22:43
Speaker 7: Yeah so so repeatedly particularly national post articles you know
22:50
Speaker 7: had this narrative that You know, schools were.
22:57
Speaker 5: Dividing parents from their children, you're quoted. And it really
23:03
Speaker 5: demonized this concept of youth autonomy. And then there's one
23:08
Speaker 5: article just completely broke that narrative. And before the listener
23:15
Speaker 5: gets too excited to not break it into good way,
23:19
Speaker 5: I don't want to lead you down that with that hope.
23:21
Speaker 8: It was a story of a youth, a youth that
23:28
Speaker 8: used transphobic, transphobic and homophobic slurs in school.
23:35
Speaker 5: So then the school offended the student and whenever he replied,
23:42
Speaker 5: repeatedly to my memory kind of like refused to apologize
23:47
Speaker 5: he was just deemed unsafe to be in the same
23:49
Speaker 5: school as certain certain students but what he did and
23:54
Speaker 5: his parents were sounded relatively supportive of the school uh
23:59
Speaker 5: so what he did was he gained legal independence from
24:02
Speaker 5: his parents um so that then he could fight the
24:07
Speaker 5: school district And the article celebrated his legal independence from
24:14
Speaker 5: his parents. Made him out to be this ideological martyr
24:20
Speaker 5: for standing up for these traditional Christian values. But for
24:25
Speaker 5: what we see is that in this one instance, youth
24:29
Speaker 5: autonomy is celebrated. And in all the other, it's demonized.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I just think, I mean.
24:36
Speaker 6: repeatedly through our conversations that we've had over the last
24:39
Speaker 6: couple of days with different scholars and activists across Canada
24:42
Speaker 6: and educators it's just this notion of hypocrisy that keeps
24:45
Speaker 6: coming up right like this idea that we care for
24:48
Speaker 6: children but we actually are undermining their.
24:50
Speaker 4: Rights or we care for free speech but not your
24:53
Speaker 4: free speech and we care for neutrality but actually we
24:56
Speaker 4: want to impose our ideological understandings and and I wish
25:01
Speaker 4: We could put all of that on display in some
25:03
Speaker 4: large infographic that people couldn't ignore, but I think that
25:07
Speaker 4: people ignore what they want to. So what do you
25:10
Speaker 4: think the impact of these re-presentations in mainstream media have
25:16
Speaker 4: been on societal understandings of parental rights? and of the
25:20
Speaker 4: parental rights movement? Because we know the three of us
25:23
Speaker 4: here are quite suspicious of the motivations of the parental
25:26
Speaker 4: rights movement. But what do you think the mainstream media's
25:28
Speaker 4: representations have had on societal understandings of the legal legitimacy
25:33
Speaker 4: of parental rights, and then on the movement? And does
25:37
Speaker 4: that have an impact on public education?
25:39
Speaker 5: I find it very difficult to properly answer this question.
25:44
Speaker 5: Because As Foucault explains, the message or the image has
25:51
Speaker 5: a double invisible vision of never-ending permutations. By this I mean,
25:58
Speaker 5: and I'll kind of paraphrase from Foucault here, the painter
26:02
Speaker 5: paints an image, but we will never see the vision
26:05
Speaker 5: of that painter. I attempted to do this in some
26:08
Speaker 5: capacity in my analysis. But what I can never do
26:12
Speaker 5: is see the permutations of visions, of understandings, of the thousands,
26:19
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of readers and how they interpret it.
26:24
Speaker 5: So how it's had the broader impacts is trying to
26:29
Speaker 5: see that second refracted image going back. But I'll try
26:33
Speaker 5: to answer it based on not only my analysis, but
26:37
Speaker 5: what I have noticed as well outside of my analysis.
26:41
Speaker 5: I think the coverage has brought the topic to the
26:43
Speaker 5: foreground of public understanding, which on paper could be a
26:47
Speaker 5: good thing. The problem is that the name parental rights
26:51
Speaker 5: or parental rights movement is a very powerful term. Journalists
26:56
Speaker 5: are cornered into repeating the term. The term appears in
27:00
Speaker 5: headline after headline, and it creates this sense of common knowledge,
27:04
Speaker 5: common vernacular. And parental rights movement has become a household topic,
27:09
Speaker 5: and that repetition matters. Because here's what I noticed while
27:13
Speaker 5: conducting the research. This isn't, you know, within the thesis
27:17
Speaker 5: is more so, you know, kind of like a post
27:20
Speaker 5: hoc reflection. Whenever people asked about my thesis, I would
27:26
Speaker 5: often ask whether they knew about the parental rights movement.
27:30
Speaker 5: Almost everybody said yes. What's remarkable about that is that
27:35
Speaker 5: many of those individuals had no professional connection to education.
27:40
Speaker 5: No children currently in public schools and no direct experience
27:43
Speaker 5: with the issues being debated. We do all have some
27:48
Speaker 5: of our own democratic flesh in public school, but I
27:52
Speaker 5: do not believe that is what drove the concern. Yet,
27:56
Speaker 5: they felt they understood the movement. That understanding, more often
28:00
Speaker 5: than not, had been mediated through news coverage and broader
28:04
Speaker 5: media ecosystems. I experienced firsthand this. I stood in a
28:11
Speaker 5: driveway being told I needed to use common sense, which
28:15
Speaker 5: incidentally is a thought term in cliche. I was yelled
28:20
Speaker 5: at while at Cinnabon Park and accused of supporting pedophiles.
28:26
Speaker 5: I sat in restaurants listening to conversations about school supposedly
28:31
Speaker 5: indoctrinating children. I had a neighbor tell me that when
28:35
Speaker 5: his son reaches public school age, he will not go
28:37
Speaker 5: to public school, but private, because the schools are too
28:42
Speaker 5: woke based on what he had seen in the media.
28:46
Speaker 5: The common thread wasn't knowledge, it was fear. And this fear,
28:52
Speaker 5: whether it was learned from mainstream coverage, social media, or elsewhere,
28:55
Speaker 5: has consequences. Now, to be clear, none of this is,
28:59
Speaker 5: you know, about me being yelled at in a driveway,
29:02
Speaker 5: told to use common sense whatsoever. It's about people who
29:07
Speaker 5: have been targeted by legislation in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan.
29:11
Speaker 5: It's about the individuals whose identities are repeatedly transformed into
29:16
Speaker 5: political talking points. It's about the way public anxiety can
29:19
Speaker 5: be mobilized against already marginalized communities. And it's about our
29:24
Speaker 5: collective responsibility to imagine a more democratic, more free, and
29:28
Speaker 5: more humanizing society. And it's about public education. Public education,
29:32
Speaker 5: I believe.
29:35
Speaker 5: Through these narratives of privatization, from these narratives that individuals
29:44
Speaker 5: have the right to single-handedly change curriculum, single-handedly change lesson
29:51
Speaker 5: plans based on their private belief systems. This is, you know,
29:57
Speaker 5: very much of what is being repeatedly purported by the
30:01
Speaker 5: headline parental rights movement, parental rights. It's this very iniquitous
30:08
Speaker 5: and silent form of privatizing education. So once again, how
30:14
Speaker 5: has it exactly affected broader public understanding? Very difficult for
30:21
Speaker 5: me to say for sure, but that's my noticings.
30:25
Speaker 1: And then following up on that, what do you hope journalists,
30:28
Speaker 1: news sources and readers take away from your analysis?
30:34
Speaker 5: Another tough question. Can I just keep in theory and analysis,
30:37
Speaker 5: not say anything direct and just let the double vision
30:40
Speaker 5: have its actual consequence? No. Yeah.
30:47
Speaker 7: Yeah.
30:48
Speaker 5: So there is a, A dichotomy within me. It's a
30:52
Speaker 5: difficult one. I am deeply optimistic about people and rather
30:58
Speaker 5: skeptical of institutions. So I suppose my answers reflect both.
31:04
Speaker 5: For readers, my hope is simple. Remember that media is
31:08
Speaker 5: not reality. It is representation of reality. Every headline, quote, image,
31:14
Speaker 5: narrative is nothing but construction. That doesn't mean that journalism
31:19
Speaker 5: is dishonest. It means that journalism, like all forms of communication,
31:24
Speaker 5: Involves choices about what to emphasize and what to omit
31:28
Speaker 5: and how to frame events. Because of that, I hope
31:31
Speaker 5: that readers approach, you know, media and, you know, I
31:34
Speaker 5: can speak specifically to parental rights movement media approach it
31:39
Speaker 5: with curiosity and criticality. And that criticality is really the
31:44
Speaker 5: crux of it. Judith Butler has a line that I
31:48
Speaker 5: really like to paraphrase. I rarely leave a conversation without
31:53
Speaker 5: paraphrasing it, but so I will paraphrase it again. To
31:56
Speaker 5: be critical is an act of love because criticism begins
32:00
Speaker 5: with the belief that things can be better. So I
32:03
Speaker 5: hope to have readers bring that spirit to the media
32:06
Speaker 5: they consume. For journalists, well, I first want to say
32:11
Speaker 5: thank you. A free press is essential to democracy. My
32:15
Speaker 5: critiques come from appreciation and love of journalism, not a
32:20
Speaker 5: rejection of it. If I were to offer one takeaway
32:24
Speaker 5: from my research, it would be, you know, focus on
32:27
Speaker 5: the grammar and the subject and the object. No, well, actually,
32:30
Speaker 5: that's a big one. Focus on the grammar and subject
32:32
Speaker 5: and object. But it's actually just to move beyond performative neutrality.
32:40
Speaker 5: Whenever we think about the parental rights movement, on one side,
32:45
Speaker 5: we have individuals and their right to their own identity.
32:52
Speaker 5: On the one side, we have education, public education for
32:57
Speaker 5: the public good. striving to be better. Public education is
33:01
Speaker 5: far from perfect. It's never been perfect. From Humboldt's conceptualization
33:06
Speaker 5: of education onward to this Frankenstein drafted tree of public
33:12
Speaker 5: education we have now, it's far from perfect, but it's
33:14
Speaker 5: something that we have to keep public and have in
33:18
Speaker 5: the best interest of public good. So on one side,
33:21
Speaker 5: we have individuals and the right to their identity, and
33:23
Speaker 5: we have public And then the other side, we have
33:27
Speaker 5: privatized values. We have stripping away of human rights. Well,
33:32
Speaker 5: a feign neutrality does no good for anyone. And then
33:38
Speaker 5: two new sources. I find this one very difficult to answer.
33:43
Speaker 5: My hope is that they... Okay, I'm going to answer
33:48
Speaker 5: this with complete optimism. Complete optimism in the sense of
33:54
Speaker 5: some of the mass amount of reporting is nothing more
33:57
Speaker 5: than a reflex to the mass amount of information on
34:00
Speaker 5: social media. Freer has this quote that I'm going to
34:03
Speaker 5: do kind of like a fallacy and connect it um
34:07
Speaker 5: freer says i'm paraphrasing that the oppressed can sometimes seek
34:13
Speaker 5: liberation by mimicking the oppressor in some ways i see
34:17
Speaker 5: that in in mainstream news coverage in the ways in
34:20
Speaker 5: which this mass production you know 32 articles by cbc
34:26
Speaker 5: has been output almost mimicking the mass production of of
34:30
Speaker 5: social media but to news sources i say trust your
34:34
Speaker 5: audience trust that they want that nuanced, well thought out,
34:41
Speaker 5: well thought, investigated news story, not the new story that
34:46
Speaker 5: just is written and published and is forgotten about. That
34:51
Speaker 5: as long as, you know, we trust that people are
34:55
Speaker 5: willing to sit in discomfort and are willing to read
34:59
Speaker 5: an article that gets to really the nitty gritty of it,
35:02
Speaker 5: you know, then we can start skewing public discourse away
35:08
Speaker 5: from hearing parental rights and and thinking that it's under
35:12
Speaker 5: attack and start thinking about who are the stakeholders on
35:17
Speaker 5: either side of the argument.
35:19
Speaker 4: Thank you, Matthew, so much for joining us today on
35:22
Speaker 4: Public Good on the Prairies. You've given readers something to
35:25
Speaker 4: think about, about critical media literacies and how they approach
35:28
Speaker 4: a story. And I think this is something that educators
35:30
Speaker 4: could take up in their own classrooms to look at
35:33
Speaker 4: how stories are represented to audiences, considering things like word choices, headlines.
35:40
Speaker 4: images that are used and the structure of the article
35:43
Speaker 4: and whose voices are included. I think you've also really
35:46
Speaker 4: called out journalists to say like when these parental rights
35:49
Speaker 4: folks are saying things that are legally false, like that
35:52
Speaker 4: there's criminal content in libraries and falsely citing the Criminal
35:56
Speaker 4: Code of Canada, that it's a journalist's responsibility to then
35:59
Speaker 4: follow up that quote from somebody that they're speaking to
36:02
Speaker 4: with the reality of what the law says around that
36:05
Speaker 4: and although it's probably not enjoyable for you I'm really
36:08
Speaker 4: glad it's you having those conversations in parks and driveways
36:12
Speaker 4: and restaurants because you are so knowledgeable on this topic
36:15
Speaker 4: so thank you so much for taking the time with
36:17
Speaker 4: us today.
36:18
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
36:26
Speaker 1: So Shannon what are some things that resonate with you
36:28
Speaker 1: coming out of that conversation.
36:30
Speaker 2: Well, I think something that continues to infuriate me is
36:33
Speaker 2: this idea that we have to give both sides or
36:36
Speaker 2: multiple sides of a story. And I think Matthew makes
36:39
Speaker 2: that point really clearly. It's like, why do journalists feel
36:42
Speaker 2: the need to give a parental rights perspective that is
36:47
Speaker 2: homophobic and transphobic and give it equal space in an article?
36:50
Speaker 2: And what Matthew pointed to, give it half. half of
36:53
Speaker 2: the article before you ever hear from an educator, before
36:58
Speaker 2: you ever hear from a legal scholar, if you do
37:01
Speaker 2: at all, before you ever hear from, hey, maybe some
37:04
Speaker 2: of the children and youth that are actually being spoken
37:08
Speaker 2: about in these articles. And I think our fetishization of
37:11
Speaker 2: both sides, I mean, it comes up in so many
37:14
Speaker 2: of our conversations. It comes up in the neutrality policies
37:17
Speaker 2: that are being implemented in places like Alberta.
37:20
Speaker 5: But these are public schools.
37:22
Speaker 2: Public schools don't have to invite all perspectives, just like
37:26
Speaker 2: I don't think our mainstream media needs to give space
37:30
Speaker 2: and airtime. to voices and perspectives that are against human rights.
37:35
Speaker 2: And I just I really hate this notion that we
37:38
Speaker 2: need to give everybody's perspective on an issue around something
37:42
Speaker 2: like parental rights. And I reject the notion that they're
37:46
Speaker 2: not being corrected by legal scholars right after they say
37:49
Speaker 2: some of the stuff that they're saying. And I don't
37:52
Speaker 2: know if you want to jump in on both sides
37:53
Speaker 2: before I thought there was another really important critical media
37:57
Speaker 2: literacy point that I thought Matthew made that I want
37:58
Speaker 2: to pick up on.
38:00
Speaker 1: What would you say, though, to those who say that
38:03
Speaker 1: public education is a place where every perspective has to
38:08
Speaker 1: be given time?
38:11
Speaker 2: I would say we don't do that already all the time.
38:13
Speaker 2: And we have policies that say that school divisions and
38:16
Speaker 2: curriculum is supposed to align with human rights legislation in
38:20
Speaker 2: the province. It's supposed to align with the Charter of
38:22
Speaker 2: Rights and Freedoms. It's supposed to align with the UN
38:24
Speaker 2: Conventions of the Rights of the Child, which Canada ratified.
38:26
Speaker 2: It's supposed to align with law. So this idea that
38:30
Speaker 2: all perspectives are legitimate and deserve to be platformed is
38:34
Speaker 2: just inherently flawed.
38:37
Speaker 1: I feel like this is turning into a little bit
38:38
Speaker 1: of an interview of you, but- I'm going to ask
38:41
Speaker 1: the questions anyways.
38:43
Speaker 2: Fucking love it. Let's do this.
38:46
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of research on media. Is there
38:49
Speaker 1: an increase in this both sides business going on? Or
38:52
Speaker 1: is this something that's just a tale as old of
38:54
Speaker 1: time and journalism in Canada?
38:57
Speaker 2: I mean, I would think that in this moment where
39:00
Speaker 2: there is the weaponization of neutrality and the labeling certain
39:05
Speaker 2: perspectives ideological or brainwashing or whatever it is, there is
39:10
Speaker 2: extra pressure on educators and journalists to feel as though
39:13
Speaker 2: they need to platform some of these perspectives. But the
39:16
Speaker 2: notion of false balance has been an issue in media
39:18
Speaker 2: literacies for a long time, right? I mean, John Oliver... decades,
39:22
Speaker 2: I think it was probably a decade ago, he did
39:24
Speaker 2: that great episode with Bill Nye, the science guy, where
39:26
Speaker 2: he basically said like, what would it look like if
39:29
Speaker 2: we had a discussion of climate in the media that
39:31
Speaker 2: actually represented scientists? And what he was trying to get
39:35
Speaker 2: at is, Often what the mainstream media does is do
39:38
Speaker 2: a 50-50. Let's have somebody that denies that the climate
39:41
Speaker 2: crisis is human caused and let's have a scientist that
39:43
Speaker 2: thinks it is. And what that projects to the reader
39:46
Speaker 2: or the audience is this notion that this is a
39:49
Speaker 2: 50-50 split on this issue. And that notion of false
39:52
Speaker 2: balance has been an issue in the media for a
39:53
Speaker 2: long time to go back to your original question. But
39:56
Speaker 2: to add on to that, I would say that there
39:57
Speaker 2: are factors in the current context, post-COVID, in the media
40:02
Speaker 2: landscape that we're in, in which there's this idea that
40:05
Speaker 2: some people are more ideological and political than others and
40:08
Speaker 2: how that's really been weaponized, that I think makes journalists
40:11
Speaker 2: feel like and educators feel like that they need to
40:14
Speaker 2: give airtime to these perspectives. And we somehow forget that
40:17
Speaker 2: we have human rights legislation and we somehow forget that
40:20
Speaker 2: schools make decisions about what's acceptable all the time. I
40:24
Speaker 2: don't know, did you have some media literacy thoughts that
40:26
Speaker 2: you were thinking about when you were listening to him?
40:28
Speaker 2: As a teacher, were you like, I'm just going to
40:30
Speaker 2: do this with my students. We're going to do CDA
40:32
Speaker 2: with my students.
40:33
Speaker 1: To media, I really appreciated Matthew's point about the parental
40:36
Speaker 1: rights narratives being driven by fear and sensationalism and how
40:40
Speaker 1: that drives clicks and how that drives engagement. And those
40:43
Speaker 1: are languages and discourses that students do understand in the classroom,
40:47
Speaker 1: clicks and engagement. And let's be real, like this drives
40:50
Speaker 1: advertising money as Matthew makes clear. But I want to
40:53
Speaker 1: unpack that a little bit more because I don't think
40:56
Speaker 1: that neoliberals associated with the parental rights movements are actually
41:00
Speaker 1: fearful of trans and gender diverse youth. I don't think
41:03
Speaker 1: they're actually fearful. I think that the neolibs just want
41:08
Speaker 1: to defund and privatize public education and the parental rights
41:10
Speaker 1: movement is a convenient way for them to achieve those goals.
41:13
Speaker 1: But I do think that the social conservatives that are
41:16
Speaker 1: within this parental rights movement have actually bought into a
41:20
Speaker 1: manufactured crisis and fear mongering from right-wing media and right-wing
41:24
Speaker 1: social media. Again, it drives clicks. It drives engagement. And
41:27
Speaker 1: these media have launched an all-out attack on trans and
41:29
Speaker 1: gender diverse folks, including kids. They positioned 2SLGBTQIA plus youth
41:34
Speaker 1: as if they represent an attack on traditional family values,
41:38
Speaker 1: whether Judeo-Christian or otherwise. I don't think it's a hot
41:41
Speaker 1: take to say that anyone who spent a meaningful amount
41:44
Speaker 1: of time in a in a classroom can tell you
41:45
Speaker 1: that it's not the trans kids that make the classroom
41:48
Speaker 1: a dangerous place. It's often kids spouting white supremacist, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic,
41:55
Speaker 1: otherwise hateful rhetoric. I think that's what makes a classroom
41:59
Speaker 1: an unsafe place. And where are those youth learning that
42:03
Speaker 1: hateful rhetoric? Media, whether more formal media, social media, whether
42:08
Speaker 1: directly or indirectly through parents, friends, family who are also
42:12
Speaker 1: learning it through media. And so this this fear, this
42:15
Speaker 1: manufactured fear of trans and gender diverse youth, it doesn't
42:19
Speaker 1: hold up to a hint of scrutiny. It's completely bogus.
42:21
Speaker 1: I think Matthew does a fabulous job of unveiling this
42:24
Speaker 1: in his research. And I think that it's largely smoke
42:29
Speaker 1: and mirrors to veil larger projects of power and control,
42:32
Speaker 1: whether that's economic, religious or or otherwise.
42:35
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I really appreciate your point about the convenient
42:38
Speaker 2: alliance of neolibs who see this as an opportunity to marketize.
42:41
Speaker 2: Like they're actually not transphobic and homophobic, but they are
42:45
Speaker 2: using transphobia and homophobia, which I don't know if you'd
42:48
Speaker 2: call that worse. It's pretty fucking awful regardless. But the
42:51
Speaker 2: ways in which they have found the parental rights movement
42:55
Speaker 2: and discussions of gender and sexuality as their way in
42:58
Speaker 2: to advance the marketization and choice of fetishization in education.
43:03
Speaker 2: And I think that's what makes it especially dangerous in
43:06
Speaker 2: this moment is the ways in which those two groups
43:08
Speaker 2: that want to reform education are working in tandem in
43:12
Speaker 2: this moment, even though they don't necessarily have the same
43:15
Speaker 2: objectives for education, their objective is to reform education, but
43:18
Speaker 2: not necessarily in the same ways or for the same purposes.
43:22
Speaker 2: I wanted to pick up on something that you spoke
43:24
Speaker 2: about in regards to how some children are constructed as dangerous.
43:30
Speaker 2: And I think Matthew really makes an excellent point about
43:32
Speaker 2: this when he gives us his little grammar lesson when
43:34
Speaker 2: he's talking about how children are spoken about in these
43:38
Speaker 2: articles rather than spoken to. And I thought that that
43:41
Speaker 2: was such an incredibly important point in this discussion. And
43:46
Speaker 2: such an important point for people to think about when
43:48
Speaker 2: they're reading articles. You know, who's being spoken about, by whom,
43:53
Speaker 2: for what purpose, and whose voices are absolutely missing from
43:56
Speaker 2: these articles. You and I have both been teachers in
43:59
Speaker 2: K-12 schools. We've seen journalists outside of schools stick microphones
44:03
Speaker 2: in kids' faces to ask them questions in what I
44:05
Speaker 2: think are really unethical ways. So it's not like they
44:09
Speaker 2: all of a sudden were like, oh, we have ethics
44:11
Speaker 2: and we shouldn't go stick a microphone in the kid's
44:13
Speaker 2: face to see how they feel about this. It's just
44:15
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, they feel as though 50% of the
44:18
Speaker 2: article needs to go for people in the parental rights movement,
44:21
Speaker 2: despite how horrific their views are. We're going to platform
44:24
Speaker 2: them and not correct them. And then 50% of the
44:26
Speaker 2: article needs to go to talking about people that are
44:29
Speaker 2: educators or people that are affected by some of the
44:31
Speaker 2: suggested policies that people in the parental rights movement have.
44:34
Speaker 2: And I think Kevin Lopuk and I wrote an article
44:37
Speaker 2: called Discursive Decoys. And when we were first doing our analysis,
44:41
Speaker 2: and I think it was in the Brandon Sun that
44:43
Speaker 2: Kevin was looking at, he's like, you know what, Shannon,
44:45
Speaker 2: I think some of these articles are quite positive. And
44:48
Speaker 2: then when we started to sort of look at some
44:50
Speaker 2: of the decoding that we were doing of the articles,
44:53
Speaker 2: the word choices that are used, whether or not parental
44:56
Speaker 2: rights is put in quotes or not, whose voices are included,
45:01
Speaker 2: whose are excluded, what image are they choosing? What headline
45:04
Speaker 2: are they choosing? What's the structure of the article? It
45:07
Speaker 2: really broke down this idea that even an article that
45:10
Speaker 2: could seem sympathetic to trans and gender diverse kids in
45:15
Speaker 2: classrooms or critical of the parental rights movement, still used
45:20
Speaker 2: some of these elements that could influence or message to
45:24
Speaker 2: the reader particular ideas about parental rights being a legitimate
45:29
Speaker 2: and unbounded legal right, which it's not, right? So I
45:33
Speaker 2: don't know. I just think as this, to me, this
45:36
Speaker 2: conversation with Matthew, it was excellent for teachers who might
45:40
Speaker 2: think about, well, if As Matthew said, he wants readers
45:43
Speaker 2: to be more critically media literate. Then how could I
45:47
Speaker 2: use the very thing Matthew did to decode these articles
45:51
Speaker 2: and take that up with my classes? How is it
45:53
Speaker 2: a message for readers that are reading the media? And
45:57
Speaker 2: once you learn those decoding techniques, you can't really unsee them.
46:00
Speaker 2: And then finally, how is it a message to journalists
46:03
Speaker 2: to do better? I don't know. What else were you
46:09
Speaker 2: thinking about?
46:11
Speaker 1: A question that I ask myself and my students and
46:14
Speaker 1: my colleagues, wherever I am, is what's the purpose of education?
46:20
Speaker 1: And more specifically, what's the purpose of public education? That
46:23
Speaker 1: to me is probably the most fundamental question that drives
46:26
Speaker 1: my research, my thinking, and my teaching. So Shannon, I'd
46:30
Speaker 1: love to hear your thoughts on how the parental rights
46:33
Speaker 1: movement is maybe veils that question a little bit? Or
46:37
Speaker 1: do you think it veils it? Or how does it
46:39
Speaker 1: shift the purpose of public education?
46:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I, you know, you and I probably both
46:44
Speaker 2: write notes to ourselves during the interviews. And as we
46:47
Speaker 2: re-listen to the conversations with our guests, we think about
46:50
Speaker 2: things that we want to talk about. And I was
46:51
Speaker 2: so glad that Matthew brought this up, is that none
46:54
Speaker 2: of the articles themselves talked about what is the purpose
46:57
Speaker 2: of education. And I think for so many of the
46:59
Speaker 2: discussions that we're having in this mini series of Public
47:03
Speaker 2: Good on the Prairies is whether it's talking about parental rights,
47:07
Speaker 2: whether it's talking about science of reading, whether it's talking
47:09
Speaker 2: about neutrality in the classroom, the very first thing we
47:12
Speaker 2: should ask ourselves is what is the purpose of education?
47:15
Speaker 2: And does this movement or this idea for how to
47:20
Speaker 2: enact our pedagogy in the classrooms, if it's about reading
47:23
Speaker 2: these policies around neutrality, how do they position the purpose
47:27
Speaker 2: of educations? And do they position it in ways that
47:31
Speaker 2: I agree with? And I think that should be the
47:32
Speaker 2: beginning of every conversation we have is what is the
47:35
Speaker 2: purpose of education? Because if the purpose of education is
47:39
Speaker 2: to be literate, for example. Does just sounding words out
47:44
Speaker 2: on a page, does that mean that I'm actually literate
47:46
Speaker 2: in the current media context, right? In the case of
47:48
Speaker 2: the parental rights movement, is the purpose of education only
47:52
Speaker 2: to teach children and youth exactly what they already learn
47:55
Speaker 2: in their households? Is that the purpose of education?
47:58
Speaker 5: Is that learning?
47:58
Speaker 2: I don't actually call that education to just only experience
48:02
Speaker 2: and be confronted by ideas that you already experience and
48:05
Speaker 2: are confronted with at home. I actually think that makes
48:07
Speaker 2: people very unprepared to live in a diverse society.
48:11
Speaker 1: Like, what are we doing here? What are we doing
48:14
Speaker 1: as teachers? And that's a real question. I don't say
48:17
Speaker 1: it just sarcastically. When we show up in the morning,
48:20
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? And what drives our work
48:25
Speaker 1: as educators or teacher educators? And working within a larger system,
48:30
Speaker 1: if we take this balanced approach, this 50-50 approach, that
48:35
Speaker 1: has severe consequences. If we take a different approach, that
48:38
Speaker 1: also has consequences. There's always consequences to no matter what
48:41
Speaker 1: choices or actions we take. And I think critically reflecting
48:45
Speaker 1: on that question of purpose is foundational for us to
48:49
Speaker 1: be able to expose the parental rights movement for what
48:54
Speaker 1: it is, for the ways that it's being used by
48:56
Speaker 1: neoliberals to marketize and privatize education, and it's being used
49:00
Speaker 1: by social conservatives to who, again, these are strange bedfellows
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Speaker 1: working together within the parental rights movements, how it's privatizing
49:08
Speaker 1: the values within public education in ways, as Matthew makes explicit, dehumanizing,
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Speaker 1: in particular for trans and gender diverse youth. So what
49:19
Speaker 1: is the purpose of public education? I think that's a
49:21
Speaker 1: question that we have to grapple with continually throughout our careers.
49:24
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a definitive answer that's static, but
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Speaker 1: that it's complex, it's changing, it's in flux at all times.
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Speaker 1: Being able to have a working definition of that or response, perhaps,
49:36
Speaker 1: to that question will help us hopefully enact less oppressive
49:41
Speaker 1: ways of engaging in teaching and learning in our schools.
49:44
Speaker 2: Well, hopefully we'll continue these conversations throughout Public Good on
49:47
Speaker 2: the Prairies. Until next time.
49:49
Speaker 1: Until next time.