Emma Abramowicz
On January 29th 2008, amidst tremendous, twelve-year-old controversy surrounding the issue, the trustees of the Toronto District School Board voted 11-9 in favour of establishing an Africentric school program as a pilot project in Toronto.
The vote was deemed necessary due to continuous campaigns in the GTA for an Africentric school program, which was first suggested by the Ontario Royal Commission on Learning in 1995, after it was found that 40% of African-Canadian students drop out of high school.
After speaking to many students about the proposed Africentric school, it became clear that no one is really sure of exactly what the idea is for the Africentric school in Toronto.
Sheila Ward, the former chair of the Toronto District School Board trustees, voted in favour of the Africentric program project. Ms. Ward explained that the school would not be entirely a school, but, at the beginning, an Africentric program within a school. The students at the school would be learning everything required by the Ministry of Education, as well as the Africentric heritage that would be part of the program. The school would be open to anyone wishing to learn about African and Caribbean culture, and no one would be forced by the school board to attend.
As progressive as this school sounds, the main argument against the idea of an Africentric program is still that it would be segregation of Black students in our multicultural society. People may believe this because, since the information most are getting isn’t very clear, many fear that creating an Africentric school would be like taking a step back in history to when African-Canadian students were not allowed to attend the same schools as white students.
There has been a lot of Martin Luther King-name-dropping throughout the debate, with those against the program making the argument that this was everything that he and others fought against during the 1960s. At Jarvis, almost half of all the students surveyed from all four grades felt this way.
“The whole purpose of the civil rights movement was to ban segregation, and now they’re asking us to segregate ourselves again?” asks an angry Marian Ali, Grade 11 Jarvis student.
“It’s dumb, because at one time everyone fought for equal rights, and now they want to bring that all back. If they do separate, then they should separate everyone else into their own ethnic backgrounds,” says Sathish, another Jarvis student surveyed.
What Sathish is hinting at is another problem with Africentric schools that many of the students expressed.
“Why isn’t there a brown-centric school or a Cambodian school?” asks Grade 11 student Gladwin Joganathan. Although he is not entirely serious, this was what many of those surveyed were wondering. The question is, if African-Canadian students are to receive a school program that specifically teaches their heritage and culture, why shouldn’t all other ethnicities get a provincially-funded school of their own?
While this is a valid question, the answer is offered. There are private schools all over Toronto available for many different ethnicities and religions. If parents want to send their children to a school representing their own faith or culture, the choice to pay for that sort of education is on them.
Otherwise, those parents have to trust the public school system. It is only when there is an otherwise unaddressed problem for a certain group of kids in the regular public schools that the Toronto District School Board takes action, for example, with the alternative schools established for gay students, Aboriginal students, and over thirty others.
But despite this, 45% of the 76 Jarvis students surveyed are against the establishment of a Toronto Africentric school program, and only 17% are in favour of one. The other 38% were not sure of their opinions, either because they saw valid points on both sides of the issue, or because they hadn’t heard enough information about the debate to make a decision.
A possible reason for the overwhelming opposition to the Africentric program idea could be that Jarvis students feel that we are presented with enough Africentric culture already. For instance, in the Visual Art classes, Ms. Sparham and Mr. Simpson cover sections in the textbook of African art, and Ms. Sparham studies an African-American sculptor with her students. In the music classes, history and theory work is done on Black music and Black artists, as well as pieces that are sung and played. Vocal and Strings teacher Ms. Kwok talked about the extent of our Africentric coverage in the music courses.
“In this curriculum, we are supposed to cover World Music and music of all cultures. It doesn’t specify how much of it we have to do, but I think we do a lot of it because of the cultural diversity of our school.”
In the Grade 12 Canadian History course, though Ms. Giddens has to limit a lot of African-Canadian content to ISU choices in order to cover her entire course load, she teaches her students about Black Loyalists, African-Canadian figures at the turn of the century and Black-centred issues in Canada, such as the Railway Porters’ Strike. Ms. Sgouromitis, a former Grade 10 Canadian History teacher, talks about studying Black soldiers around the World Wars, and the experiences of African-Canadian families in Canada. These are things she chose to teach in her Canadian history classes, which other teachers of the course might not.
Mrs. Gotsis, curriculum leader of the Social Sciences department, says that all history courses include studies in African history. The Grade 11 World History course celebrates the legacy of great African kingdoms, including presentations on Kush, Mali, East Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana and others.
The Grade 12 World History course examines the impact of the slave trade on African peoples. The Grade 11 American History course traces the Black experience in North America to the present in its study of the slave trade, abolition, emancipation, segregation and the Civil Rights movement.
“I do think that you can include any type of racial or ethnic teaching in any curriculum if the teacher chooses to,” says Ms. Sgourmitis. And it is very possible that Jarvis teachers are more inclined to teach about a variety of cultures, in order to represent the student body here, while at other schools teachers might not do so.
Another feature of Jarvis that other schools might be lacking is an equivalent Ujaama club.
“There are a lot of schools that are lacking in Black organizations such as ours,” says Grade 11 student Danielle Thomas, one of the executive members of Ujaama this year. She explains that Ujaama promotes “education and unity among all students of all races, and teaches predominantly about Black culture.” Aside from organizing and presenting the African Heritage Month assembly, they also want to have sessions in the school and bring in speakers to talk about Black cultures with Jarvis classes.
“It’s a great way to get to know more people in the school that are of African or Caribbean descent, and it’s also a great way to learn about different cultures,” she says.
While many Jarvis students think that our curriculum already integrates enough African heritage into the courses, others still believe that more needs to be added. However, many believe that classes on African history and culture should have been added to the curriculum before the controversial vote to create an Africentric school.
“We have yet to try to introduce subjects with a more Africentric base. We should try to incorporate African Canadians through different subjects first,” says one Grade 11 Jarvis student.
“I think that such programs ought to be included in the Toronto District School Board,” a Grade 12 student comments in his survey. “I am a white male, and I would love to take courses about African-Canadian history and interact with other cultures.”
However, Zalika Reid-Benta, who wrote an editorial in January’s Jarvis Jargon issue supporting Africentric schools, outlines the problem with only adding courses on African heritage to all schools.
“The whole point of an Africentric school is that everything about it represents the people that are going to the school, even the staffing and the entire curriculum. It’s not like there’s just one course that is just the history of Africa or something like that, because in an Africentric school, you’re talking about how Picasso was influenced by African kente cloth. I think that, if you just have one course in a school, it’s not going to be enough,” she says.
Black parents have campaigned for twelve years to achieve the possibility of an Africentric school program, because they, who know their children better than anyone else, believe that a different approach is necessary. Because of the lack of detail that has reached the ears of the community, so many people believe that these students would be segregated in the Africentric program, and that it would be like publicly funding an ethnicity-based school. But Ms. Ward, who has all the details and plans for the Africentric school program, agrees that to create a school for African-Canadian students entirely on its own would be segregation. She specifies very strongly that the program would be within another school, and that the students would have many opportunities to integrate with the students of the affiliated school. On her website, she also distinguishes between a regular faith-based school and the Africentric program.
“Faith-based schools are segregated - only students who adhere to the particular faith can attend. Any student who wishes to can apply to enroll in the Africentric program. Attendance will be based on interest, not on religion, colour, sexual orientation, gender or other such descriptives.”
Although the trustees have voted to establish this program as a pilot project, its greatest difficulty is still lack of funding. Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty openly disagrees with the idea of an Africentric program, and has refused to fund the project. This means that the already-under-funded Toronto District School Board will have to take money from their current budget in order to create this option, which isn’t necessarily possible. While the plans for the Africentric school program are still up in the air, it is important for everyone to keep in mind that the school would in actuality be a program within a school, akin to gifted programs or arts program within schools like Danforth Tech and Earl Haig.
Students would not be segregated into their own entire school; they would only be learning according to an alternative program as a response to a serious problem in our society. As well, at its current stage, the program is only a pilot project; if it goes ahead, the TDSB will be examining the results of the school to see whether or not the 40% drop-out rate among African-Canadian students is improved.
It is important that we become aware of all the facts surrounding this controversial issue before we judge the creation of an Africentric program in Toronto schools.
