Another school year is coming to a close in B.C., and the kids are headed out in the world to party and look for summer jobs and start racking up some student loan debt of their very own.
But have they learned enough about the way their government functions? Of course, we all learn about how Parliament works, and the divisions between federal, provincial, and local governments.
I remember visiting the B.C. Legislature on a field trip when I was in elementary school, and I believe such trips are still fairly common.
But the number of people who will become involved directly in provincial or federal politics in our country is small, bordering on miniscule.
The number of people who will become involved in some way with their municipal governments, on the other hand, is pretty sizeable. Across the province, thousands of people turn up for public hearings, call their mayors or councillors, and get tickets from bylaw officers. It's at the local level that you will have to deal with government.
If we're going to add more stuff to the B.C. high school curriculum (high school teachers, you can thank me for this suggestion in letters to the editor!) we should add a course in local government.
Right now, some of this is undoubtedly covered in courses like Civic Studies 11 and Law 12, but let's bring it all together.
Above all, let's make it practical. You don't take auto shop and spend the whole year learning about the chemical structure of hydrocarbons and the physics behind the four-stroke internal combustion engine. You get to mess about with the spark plugs.
So what are the spark plugs and oil filters of local politics?
Bylaws. What the heck is a bylaw? Who is it "by," anyway? Are they trying to hide something from us by dressing up the word "law" with a prefix? Students should learn what authority their municipality has to regulate their activities, especially when it comes to land use.
Which brings us to the next big part of the curriculum.
Zoning. Zoning? You mean some bureaucrat can tell me how high I can build, or whether I can have a business or a house on that property? Wait, you say it also prevents people from building slaughterhouses next to my home? Well, maybe it's good for something.
Zoning laws haven't actually been around for that long in some communities, so field trips can be arranged to those buildings that pre-date zoning rules, like the disco/baked goods factory that still sits amid the fields of rural Langley. (Not kidding about this.)
If we're going to talk about zoning, we're going to talk about rezoning, so that means we're going to dig into.... Public Hearings.
This is where the rubber meets the road. There are a number of reasons for speaking to a local council, including rezonings, budget issues, and property taxes.
What are your rights when speaking to a council? How does a public hearing work? Can you ask questions and get answers from a council at one? After 16 years of covering local councils from North Vancouver to Abbotsford, I've seen a lot of people slam headlong into their lack of knowledge about local government.
It can be quite a steep learning curve for people who suddenly need to deal with a system about which they know very little.
A single high school course couldn't solve the problem, but it would be a start.
Matthew Claxton is a reporter for the Langley Advance.
