Today (Agent 3 reports)The Toronto District School Board is unveiling a "Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement". In politically incorrect English (archaic language no longer spoken in Canada), that's a segregated school For Blacks Only.
Unable to justify the cost of building a full-sized standard school building for the few dozen students expected to attend, the TDSB, after a year of delays and "virtual learning" has settled for a wing [left or right? Ed.] in Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in the dreary but integrated Scarborough district, some distance from North York and Etobicoke, where many schools are already segregated, being located in predominantly black neighbourhoods.
According to CBC News, the centre, which the TDSB says is the first of its kind in Canada, "is part of its plan to dismantle anti-Black racism after years of complaints from staff, students and families. It reached a tipping point last year when the board said in its annual report that it had a 'serious racism problem' and anti-Black racism exceeded all other hate incidents by far....
"The ultimate goal is to educate staff and students on anti-Black racism, help affirm the identity of Black students and give them the tools to advocate for themselves when instances of racism do happen, so 'they know how to engage and be responsive'."
Agent 3 questions the boards claim that the new school is the first of its kind. A short-lived "Afro-Caribbean alternative high school" operated in the mid-1980s. In 1995, a royal commission Report on Learning recommended "black-focused" schools. Some critics it, errr, "segregation", but others said such a school was needed to tackle the 40% dropout rate amongst Toronto’s black yoofs.
The idea of separate schools for blacks and others was even more divisive by the mid-2000s, but the TDSB, dominated by leftist politicos, voted in 2008 to move ahead with a small "Africentric" school. It opened for students in JK to Grade 5 in September of 2009, with 128 kids from across the so-called Greater Toronto Area enrolled.
Like the new Centre for Excellence &c, the Africentric school had to share a building, and some spaces, with an integrated public school. The Toronto Red Star reports that the library was divided by an imaginary line, with a poster of Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews on one side, and a picture of Nelson Mandela on the other. The latter has books clearly focused on the black experience, while the former is filled with typical children's books.
Teachers at the Africentric school, most of whom are black, incorporate black history, experiences and contributions into the curriculum. While curriculum from the alternative school was available online following the closure of schools due to the Wuhan flu, Africentric teaching was discontinued.
Agent 3 could not say whether the Africentric school will reopen in September, or whether the new Centre for Excellence &c is intended as a "new and improved" replacement. The Africentric school had challenges right from the get-go. There was no school bus service. Test scores were shaky and enrolment declined to a few dozen in the last year it was open.
The TDSB, "Canada's largest and most diverse school board", has 582 schools, serving 246,000 students, 11% of whom are Black. Statistics show black students have historically performed below average. They're more likely to be labelled as having "special education" needs, suspended and expelled, and streamed into programmes that don’t lead to university or college. Whether they'll do better, now that they don't have to compete with white and (especially) Asian kids, remains to be seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment