Investigating social justice issues: Teachers notes

Objective statistical information is vital to an open and democratic society and provides a solid foundation for informed decision making.

At Statistics Canada our role is to collect, compile and supply the numbers that help Canadians better understand their country—its population, resources, economy, society and culture.

While Statistics Canada does analyze the information that we produce, we do so from an objective and factual perspective. For example, is there an increase or decrease in employment in a certain province over a given time period? For the most part, Statistics Canada does not provide opinions or commentary on why a change is happening. Data that Statistics Canada releases are used however, by other organizations in conjunction with supplemental information for decision making or for forming social policies.

The datasets outlined on the Investigating Social Justice Issues section are not meant to tell the whole story. Numbers never do! They are simply important pieces of the puzzle.

Teachers are perhaps a student's best resource when it comes to making sense of the numbers, or exploring what the numbers demonstrate. We encourage you to open a discussion with your students, to challenge them to critically think about the circumstance around the numbers, and to explore more deeply the environment surrounding the issues. Teachers can always reach us at mdm4u@statcan.gc.ca for support on questions of this type.

Here is an example of a discussion that might take place in your classroom to frame a question such as inequality in Internet use and access as a social issue.

In preparing to use this material, you could ask:

1. What is the math needed to analyse this material?
2. What do the numbers tell us?
3. What could be some hidden factors that help to explain what we see?
4. What statistics could be collected to tell us more about those hidden factors?