Here I am sitting with a grade 6 student who has finished his EQAO test a few minutes ahead of time. I am going to work with him next year so we are spending a little time chatting. He tells me about his family, I tell him about mine.
"Were does your daughter want to go university", he asks, wise beyond his years, knowing what he knows: after all he comes from a culture where "these parents" want "these kids" to go to university. So he knows what comes next.
"Have you been to Quebec", he asks. "Yes", I reply, " My daughter is going to university to Montreal, so we visited last month.
"Do you know there are bad people in Montreal now? They are bad, very bad", he remarks. He's been watching the student protests and this is what he remembers from the vivid images. I choose not to engage in the politics of this discussion, time enough for that later. Now, I only sit and listen to him.
So we chat. I talk to him about the conversations around equity and affordability and democracy as simply as his young mind can understand.
At the end he says: "You mean it is like selling a slice of pizza for 10 dollars so no one can afford it anymore. I get it."
You sure do, young man. You sure do.
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