Mention of King Charles III’s coronation on Saturday popped up here and there in Melanie Scheuer’s senior social studies classes this week, and when it did, the British Columbia high school teacher invited students to share their thoughts and challenged them to dig deeper.
“I didn’t really know what to completely expect of their thoughts of the monarchy, but a lot of them were talking about how elitist it is, how divisive it has been historically and globally,” said Scheuer, who’s teaching 20th century world history, social justice and Black studies this term in Surrey, B.C.
While some students made links to previous topics they’ve covered, including Indigenous people of different countries, colonialism, monarchism and the concept of empire, she said in general they shared a range of viewpoints — from a curious interest in the drama surrounding the younger “celebrity” Royal Family members to an ardent belief that Canada should cut ties with the monarchy. Others were ambivalent.
Some 70 years after the lavish coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, her son, King Charles, is being officially crowned amid complex conversations about the role of the monarchy in the world today and the ongoing legacy of British colonialism. Educators are among those initiating these talks with students, and several spoke to CBC News about why it’s important to broach this weekend’s event in Canadian classrooms.
Watching students absorb this week’s conversations and ponder the mixed bag of perspectives now “percolating in their heads,” Scheuer said she hopes they’re inspired to come up with further questions and formulate their own opinions.
“We’re really doing that critical thought with [students] so they’re able to find the answers, realize there are multiple answers, and they’re able to actually interrogate a little bit and work to understand a larger, more complex picture than one narrative,” said Scheuer, who heads the social studies department at her school.
“Hearing and seeing other histories … not just privileging one story, one history.”
Lack of commemoration in schools
For Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, Canada played host to multiple events — including in the country’s schools, where students tuned into the ceremony on radio, took part in parades, pageants and similar celebrations, and sang God Save the Queen each day in the classroom, a practice that continued for years.
This time around, more than a dozen school boards across Canada contacted by CBC News said they had no system-wide plans to mark Charles’s coronation or were unaware of any events being held at individual schools.
“It is up to principals to determine how to best recognize these types of occasions depending on the individual context at their school, the age of their students and their own traditions,” the Calgary Board of Education said in a statement.
“Schools make the choices that respect and consider the best interests of the entire school community. We also acknowledge that each individual and community has a unique experience with the monarchy and any commemorative activities in our schools may affect people differently.”
Discussing ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’
That educators aren’t being encouraged to hold classroom discussions about the coronation is a missed opportunity, says Nathan Tidridge, a high school history and civics teacher with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
As an educator and an academic who’s spent many years studying Crown-Indigenous treaty relationships and how the Crown operates in what’s now Canada, he believes it’s a “responsibility to explain what this institution is and explore it with [students] so that we can have the conversations that they want to have,” he said.
Students “want to talk about decolonization. They want to talk about participation in the enslavement of other peoples. And so in order to have those conversations, we have to understand what it is we’re looking at and we’re talking about so we can have a fulsome discussion.”
Most teens, like the majority of the general public, aren’t thinking about the Crown on a daily basis, Tidridge said. So he believes that engaging with events through a live broadcast or in-person can help learning resonate in a more powerful way.
When Barbados became a republic in late 2021 and removed the Queen as head of state, Tidridge and his students watched coverage of the ceremony while discussing the ramifications. Earlier this spring, students joined him at a meeting in Toronto between Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, and representatives of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, with whom he’s been working.
Tidridge, who is also a vice-president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, is now in London for the coronation, where he says his focus will be on how Crown-Indigenous relationships are being reflected in the ceremony.
Given how polarized the world is right now, he said, it’s imperative to bring people together for discussion — even if that talk is difficult and results in more questions.
“As long as we’re communicating and talking, that’s the critical piece,” Tidridge said. “I’m looking forward to having those discussions: the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Perry Bellegarde, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, expressed a similar sentiment when discussing King Charles, whom he first met more than 20 years ago and with whom he’s collaborated over the years for the monarch’s Sustainable Markets Initiative.
As head of the Commonwealth, Charles can bring people together — such as the world’s decision-makers — “for those sometimes difficult conversations,” he told CBC North in a recent interview from Ottawa.
With the King, “I think there’s going to be a strong ally to embrace treaties and rights recognition and reconciliation going forward,” said Bellegarde, who is honorary president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and helped create the organization’s new educational resource package exploring some of Charles’s links to Canada.
With Prince Harry set to attend King Charles’s coronation without Meghan and their children, broadcast journalist and author Genelle Aldred says it will look like the Royal Family is stuck in the past, while the rest of the world has continued forward.
Engaging students with current events
The narrative of Canada — an evolving “story designed to unite people” — has shifted over the years: from loyal British colony to independent country; bilingual-bicultural nation to multicultural, pluralist society, said Alan Sears, professor emeritus of social studies education at the University of New Brunswick.
Tensions may arise when policies and curriculum informed by these shifted narratives clash with traditional practices, he said, noting as an example when schools officials espouse honouring diverse perspectives, but also mandate that all students stand and sing O Canada every day.
When teaching social studies, Sears said he encourages educators to tap into what’s going on in the world today. If he were headed into a classroom right now, he said he’s got a raft of questions at the ready: What does the coronation have to do with us today? Why did past students sing God Save the Queen every day? What’s the story behind those plaques still found in older schools dedicated to “the men who went off to serve?” Crack open a history textbook from the 1950s — how does it compare with your history classes now?
Some may feel that now’s not the time to debate abolishing the monarchy, but Sears calls it the perfect occasion to engage teens on the subject and teach about sharing differing viewpoints in a respectful way.
“We assume with national ceremonies — like Remembrance Day or Canada Day — that everyone feels the same, but everyone doesn’t,” he said from Fredericton.
“Part of respectful commemoration is understanding that and having an empathetic understanding that people who aren’t on-board aren’t doing it just to be disruptive…. They have something to say and some substantial reasons.”
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