Health first, reading second

The Manitoba Human Rights Commission’s report on the Right to Read has reignited the public discourse on provincial literacy scores and debate regarding teaching strategies to support students’ literacy development.

While I concede that literacy skills are axiomatically important, I would like to gently remind our educational stakeholders that if we aim to enhance learning, perhaps safeguarding the well-being of Manitoba youth should be our apex societal priority.

This report has illuminated our collective interest in supporting literacy, but why is public discussion on addressing students’ and parents’ declining mental health not garnering similar widespread attention?

The Manitoba government should be commended for accentuating the interconnections between societal inequities and its direct impacts on learning through advancing school-based nutritional programs. Understandably, youth will be ill-equipped to learn if they struggle with basic nutritional deficiencies.

Similarly, we are not fostering learning conditions conducive to success if Manitoba youth struggle with anxiety, depression, dysregulation, or other mental health challenges. Early diagnostic screenings and interventions can amount to only so much if youth, and their parents, are unwell.

The peer-reviewed research documenting the declining global rates of youth and parental mental health are disconcerting and certainly worthy of our local consideration.

Our youth are inheriting a world riddled with myriad social challenges, ranging from climate change and ecological destruction, democratic decay, nuclear proliferation, the rising threat of artificial intelligence … and our young people are cognizant of these trends.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the World Health Organization has issued warnings that one in seven adolescents across the world now experience a mental disorder. Within these reports, challenges relating to anxiety, depression, and behavioural challenges are among the leading causes of illness and disability in youth.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, recently highlighted sinister findings from a peer-reviewed research study sharing the perspectives of over 10,000 youth aged between 16 and 25. Nearly 60 per cent of youth respondents indicated feeling “very” or “extremely worried” about our looming ecological crisis

In this same report, approximately 75 per cent of youth described the future as “frightening,” while nearly half of respondents indicated these concerns were negatively affecting sleeping patterns, academic performance, and basic daily functions.

The American Psychological Association has also publicly recognized the detrimental impacts of eco-anxiety on youth’s development, and has explicitly recommended staging interventions via cultivating mindfulness practices to help circumvent strenuous environments.

Coinciding these developments are the declining rates in parental mental health. In a 2025 peer-reviewed study showed that of nearly 200,000 mothers surveyed, self-reported perceptions of “excellent mental health” have dropped from 38.4 per cent (2016) to 25.8 per cent (2023). These scholars further noted that families of lower socioeconomic status and other marginalizing factors were more disproportionately affected by mental health challenges.

It has only been five years since the global onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and there has been little relief for young parents that navigated these tumultuous, isolating environments. Working class parents are now struggling with inflation and economic tensions provoked by American tariffs, further compounding these tensions.

Concurrent to these circumstances is our increasing technological reliance. There is mounting evidence outlining the associations between prolonged screen usage with negative interpersonal development, compromised sleep quality, heightened feelings of anxiety, and reduced attention spans.

Again, our provincial government should be extolled for implementing cell phone prohibitions in our public schools. However, a collective critical reflection on how to support our young people who are navigating these profoundly chaotic social circumstances should perhaps be of greater emphasis.

My intent in generating this piece is not to advance a red herring by deviating from a focus on literacy education. Rather, I am humbly asking that we consider the broader contextual circumstances surrounding students’ literacy scores.

These issues are not necessarily exclusive, but rather multifaceted and interconnected. The Manitoba Human Rights Commission report does acknowledge that various socio-emotional variables impede students’ learning, such as chronic absenteeism.

If we genuinely aim to support students’ academic performance and their healthy development, perhaps we should be systematically prioritizing mindfulness pedagogies, advancing outdoor and land-based educational platforms to reconnect with the natural world, cultivating aesthetic learning through music and the arts, and exploring new social service opportunities to support struggling parents.

During these uncertain times, cultivating the positive physical and mental health of our youth should be the apogee of our educational platforms. I have the full confidence in the professional capacities of my colleagues to support students’ literacy.

Jordan Laidlaw is a public school teacher and holds a Ph.D. in educational administration.