RACE AND EDUCATION

In Black or White?

Black community leaders say racism and the exclusive curriculum are causing black students to drop out. Their solution? Black focused schools.

AMANDA ROBINSON

Akiela Clarke, 16, is a black student at Pierre Elliott Trudeau high school. She feels black history and culture aren't being taught properly in school.

"Teachers teach about the Holocaust, they'll teach about what happened to the Japanese, they'll teach about the Indians, but they don't necessarily teach about blacks and slavery," she said.

Sh e's noticed that some black students have developed negative attitudes towards school because they feel left out in the learning environment.

"We (Clarke and her friends) try to empower black students by joining different groups but other black students lay back and say we're not going anywhere," said Clarke who regularly attends a black heritage program every Saturday where she learns about her history and culture.

And black students who don't care about school is what worries black educators like George Dei.

Black students are dropping out of school because the curriculum doesn’t speak to their own experiences, explains Dei.

Dei is a professor and chair of sociology and equity studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He's well-known for his research on inclusive schooling and student disengagement, specifically African-Canadians.

The problem black educators have with the curriculum is that it is taught from a European perspective. And because black students don't see themselves in the curriculum they become bored with school and then they dropout, he said.

"Sometimes we see students are present physically but they are absent in mind," he added.

In an essay called Black Focused Schools: A call for Re-visioning, Dei explained that students needed to be in a learning environment that “spoke to their culture, history, personal locations and spiritual identities.”

But Dei isn’t the only one who recognizes the disconnection between black students and education.

"Racism does exist in society and therefore it will reflect itself within the school and the school system."

Lloyd McKell, Toronto District School Board executive officer for student and community equity

A report commissioned by the Ministry of Education found black, Aboriginal and other minority students were not being taught in an inclusive environment.

The Community Health Systems Resource Group and the Hospital for Sick Children conducted a series of interviews, in which students said racism, stereotypes, unfair disciplinary practices, and non-diverse curriculum created a hostile learning environment and forced them out of school early.

Dei is troubled by this exclusive curriculum because students aren’t being taught about racial tolerance. There is less open discussion when schools fail to adequately discuss issues about race, gender, and sexual differences, said Dei.

"You don't teach about anti-racism by putting race in the closet," he added. "You have to talk about what it means being an African-Canadian, being an Asian, being an Aboriginal living in this society."

These issues have to be discussed in the classroom since race, class, gender, and sexuality are things that form a students’ identity. And the way students learn and interact in the school environment is influenced by their identity, explained Dei.

"Racism does exist in society and therefore it will reflect itself within the school and the school system," said Lloyd McKell executive officer for student and community equity for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).

Atkinson Report
The criteria for students at risk was based on the number of credits at the end of grade 10

2001-2002 statistical data from the TDSB indicates the percentage of students from specific geograpical locations at risk of not graduating:

45% of Western African, Central and South American students at risk
39% East African
24 % of South Asian
23% Eastern European
16% Eastern Asian

Like Dei, McKell believes the current curriculum is too culturally exclusive to keep students interested in school.

"When we looked behind the reasons why students were dropping out, we found out that what mattered to students was how they saw themselves reflected in the school environment," he said.

It matters to students if they see teachers that look like them and they see curriculum that reflects their own experiences, he added. The large number of students dropping out was a concern to McKell and the TDSB. Currently, 25 per cent of high school students are not graduating.

According to Class Struggles, a report commissioned by the Atkinson Foundation Fellowships in 2003, 54 per cent of students born in English-speaking Caribbean countries have 14 credits or less in grade 10 and to the TDSB, this means these students won't have enough credits to graduate.

But other than numbers pointing out how many students aren't graduating from a specific geographical region, there aren't any race-based statistics to show there is a large number of black youth dropping out of school.

TDSB associate director Gerry Connelly said in the report that "even though they don't have specific data, they are aware that a problem does exist."

That's why in 2006, the TDSB distributed a census to students.

The census asks students personal questions ranging from their racial background and sexual orientation to what they eat for breakfast.

McKell explains the TDSB started discussing the census more than two years ago because they were concerned about those students who were not graduating from the system, many of whom are visible minorities.

"We recognize we have an achievement gap and this research project will help us see what strategies we need to put it in place," he said.

With the new census, the TDSB is recognizing that things such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion affect how students engage with the curriculum. The only way for the education system to prevent students from dropping out is to ensure the curriculum is relevant and inclusive of all backgrounds.

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Radical Solutions for black students: Focused schools the answer

Children assemble in a classroom to listen to a story about the underground railroad. The Black Heritage Program is run every Saturday by the African Canadian Heritage Association (ACHA). Veronica Sullivan, the program coordinator talks about ACHA and weighs in on the discussion about black-focused Schools.

The issue surrounding black students and education has been lingering for almost two decades.

In 1995, the Royal Commission on Learning released a report called For the Love of Learning. The report recognized that a significant amount of black students were dropping out of school.

When race-based statistics were kept by the Toronto Board of Education, they found between 1987 and 1991 that 36 per cent of black secondary students were "at-risk" based on their English and math courses. The Toronto board also tracked students from 1987 to 1992 and they found that 42 per cent of black grade nine students dropped out by 1992.

The commission proposed the creation of demonstration schools focused on the needs of black students, remove any bias in the curriculum in terms of race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation and recommended the Toronto school board hire more black teachers.

But the school board did not set up a demonstration school because a prominent black community leader at that time, Wilson Head, claimed a black-focused school was equivalent to segregation.

Then in 2005, the Toronto community saw a surge in gun violence. Most of the victims and those involved in criminal activities were African-Canadians. And 90 per cent of the victims of gun violence were black males, said a 2005 Toronto Star article.

The black community, united in the form of the Coalition of African-Canadian Organizations, cried out for something to be done to stop young black males from dying. Parents, teachers, and students organized conferences, public forums, and ran anti-violence campaigns such as B.L.I.N.G.: Bring Love In Not Guns to help stop the surge in gun violence.

Many of the complaints from Toronto's black community were directed at the TDSB's curriculum. The low teacher expectations, streaming, unfair disciplinary practices and the euro-centric curriculum were cited as some of the reasons black youth were leaving school and turning to street life.

"I see black focused schools as a temporary solution to help the students who need help. What we want in the end is one school system that addresses the issues of everyone."

Bairu Sium, Danforth Collegiate Instititute, History teacher

In a February 2005 public forum on black education, George Dei raised the age-old idea of creating a black focused school to address the high dropout rate of black students, said a 2005 Toronto Star article.

"I want my son to be in an inclusive school environment but I am not going to put him there if he finds himself disengaged," said Dei.

Dei's vision for the school is that it would enforce community responsibility. It would teach black youth about the sanctity of life and it would address the issue of student disengagement.

The creation of a holistic learning environment by weaving the experiences and values of different cultures into the curriculum would help make school more relevant for black students and keep them interested in learning.

The school "wouldn't talk about history in terms of enslavement or who discovered A or B," he said. It would "teach about history in terms of it's totality and not sweep things under the carpet."

This school would address the issues of exclusion because it would allow students to talk about race, racism and other forms of differences and oppression, he added.

Bairu Sium is a history teacher at Danforth Collegiate Institute. He is not in favour of a black-focused school if the school is only meant for at-risk students. He doesn't think it's a good idea. For him, a focused school is a solution for the short-term.

"I see black focused schools as a temporary solution to help students who need help," he said. "What we want in the end is one school system that addresses the issues for everyone."

If the school is created, he wants it to have an all-inclusive curriculum by including world history instead of just teaching African history.

McKell too is also in favour of a pilot-project focus school. He said the board is willing to try anything in order to re-engage students in education.

But the school he's talking about wouldn't be a separate school. It would be implemented at a school with a large population of black students.

And for those who argue focused-schools are like segregation, McKell says they’ve missed the point.

"Using terms of segregation are completely inappropriate. What we find is that emotional and psychological segregation already exists in the school system."

Segregation was intended to discriminate and oppress, and what black educators are talking about is addressing a problem, said Dei.

"They are bored. They want to leave school. They want to drop out. Where do we want them to be, on the streets, or if there's an alternate environment that may work for them, why don't we try it."

Akiela Clarke doesn't understand all the fuss going on over black-focused schools. She only sees tremendous benefits in creating these schools. For her, a focused-school would teach her everything she wanted to know about her culture.

"They can have their Jewish schools, they can have their Chinese schools, but all of a sudden it's a big issue now that they want to create black schools," she said.

"I think that by having black teachers in a black school they're going to teach us our history, they're going to teach us everything that we went through, and I think the greatest minds will come from that."

The Ministry of Education has said they have "no plans to open a racially segregated school." And in a 2005 Toronto Star article, the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty said he was uncomfortable with the concept of black focused schools as he cites a lack of evidence showing that the schools will work as his main reasons for not supporting the proposal.

But TDSB has recognized the need for inclusive curriculum. In January, 2007, they will be launching the Africentric curriculum at Brookview Middle School . The school is located in the troubled area of Jane and Finch and has predominately black students. This project is part of the equity board's approach to ensure students feel their culture is valued by the school system.