Why We Need to Protect Education, Speech, and Our Own Minds

We are watching, in real time, what happens when power is unconstrained by truth, empathy, or accountability.

When countries are treated as assets. When human beings are reduced to bargaining chips. When conquest, surveillance, and threat are presented as strength.

In moments like this, it’s tempting to argue about individual leaders or single events. But history shows us that the deeper danger appears long before headlines — in what people are taught to fear, to repeat, and to obey.

These moments don’t begin with tanks or troops. They begin much earlier — in language, in education, in what people are taught to question and what they’re trained to repeat.

After thinking about our relationship to the Earth — about breath, land, water, and shared responsibility — I find myself thinking about the mind.

Because if we are inside a living system, then how we think, speak, read, and learn matters just as much as how we treat the land itself.

Wonder keeps us human.

But protecting our minds — our ability to think clearly, speak honestly, and learn without fear — is how we stay free.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what happens when people stop feeling safe to say what they truly think.

About teachers being attacked.

Libraries being defunded.

Universities being muzzled.

About how “wokeism” sometimes makes people afraid to speak — afraid they’ll be cancelled.

And how ultra-conservatives do the same thing from the other side:

policing which books children can read,

policing which truths are allowed to be taught.

We’ve reached a strange place.

A place where ordinary people are afraid to question.

Afraid to speak.

Afraid even to wonder.

And that’s dangerous.

Because once you’re afraid to say what’s in your heart or your head —

once you’re afraid to even think certain thoughts —

you lose something essential.

We become parrots, repeating slogans, left or right.

We lose the very muscles that make us human:

Curiosity.

Discernment.

Empathy.

Courage.

When I taught Night by Elie Wiesel, we talked about the power of language — and the cost of silence.

About how neighbours were carted away while others looked on.

About a boy being hanged while ten thousand men removed their caps — forced reverence, a grotesque ritual.

I brought in Jane Elliott’s blue-eyes/brown-eyes experiment, to show how easily children can be turned against one another with nothing more than a story.

And the Milgram shock experiments, where ordinary people were instructed to hurt others — and most complied, simply because an authority figure told them to.

These aren’t old problems.

They’re human ones.

Look at how quickly people reduce immigrants to labels — “illegals” — boiling full lives down to a word.

Look at how quickly people on the left dismiss everyone on the right as ignorant, trash, monsters.

When did we stop being curious?

When did we stop seeing each other as complicated?

That isn’t freedom.

That’s programming.

This is why literature matters so deeply.

Books let us live a thousand lives — so we can grow empathy without having to suffer every wound ourselves.

Imagine banning To Kill a Mockingbird — not because it’s false, but because it’s true. Because it holds up a mirror some would rather not look into.

And it’s not just that book.

1984.

The Handmaid’s Tale.

Beloved.

The Kite Runner.

Persepolis.

Even The Diary of Anne Frank has been banned.

Not because these books are dangerous —

but because they make us think.

And thinking scares those who want obedience.

We also need to talk about the systems that hold societies together.

In Canada, we have public health care — and we’re expanding access to dental care.

Because when people are cared for, the whole society is stronger.

We have social systems that help level the playing field:

• - pensions for the elderly and for veterans

• - affordable childcare

• - minimum-wage protections

• - unions

• - public education for all

These systems don’t just serve individuals — they protect democracy.

Because when people are educated, supported, and healthy, they’re harder to fool.

They ask questions.

They think for themselves.

And that’s precisely why these systems are so often attacked.

If we lose the ability to wrestle with hard ideas together, we lose everything.

That’s why protecting libraries, schools, and art classes matters.

Why supporting teachers who open minds — instead of simply filling them — matters.

Why standing up for public systems matters.

And still — joy matters too.

Go to a small music festival.

Plant something on a sidewalk.

Invite someone in for a glass of wine.

Talk.

Listen.

Wonder.

Those small acts of openness — that curiosity, that kindness — keep our hearts supple.

They keep us human.

And that might be the most radical act of all.