The Toronto District School Board has approved the 2009 opening of a school aimed to address the 40 percent dropout rate among Black students in Toronto’s secondary schools.
According to chair of the board, John Campbell, “What the vocal activists in the Black community are saying is that their kids are not actively engaged in the education we’re providing for them. There’s no mentor there, there’s no encouragement.”
Campbell among many others, believes that the students are bored and that a new Afrocentric school would motivate these students to come to class everyday. While many advocate the building of this essentially experimental school, many others believe it to be a waste of taxpayers money. Economist, Anthony Hutchinson, is in staunch opposition of the school.
Hutchinson, who claims to have been involved in a number of outreach programs, is quoted in a BBC report to have said, “The belief that if we teach kids about their social and cultural identity they’re going to perform a lot better is just stupid.”
How eloquent.
I’m wondering, why are people so opposed to establishing a school that is trying to be progressive in decreasing the high school dropout rate? According to sources I’ve read, there is a concern that this school will be counter productive – a step backward from Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.
Has any of these opponents really thought this through? These kids who have been reaping the benefit of Brown v. Board of Education – oh wait, this is Canada… Okay let me start again. These students have been a part of an integrated school system, and it’s not helping them. It’s not speaking to them, therefore it’s not helping Toronto, because these are its citizens.
The establishment of an Afrocentric school is nothing like segregation. There are no laws prohibiting white children, or those of any other ethnicities to attend, and the parents of the students will not be forced to send their children there; it will simply be an alternative to the mainstream schools that already exist.
Perhaps the opponents believe the existing schools just need a little sprucing up or, as one person has suggested, the parents need to correct their behavior and become more involved. This is how nothing gets done - fresh ideas or solutions to old problems get hung up in the bureaucratic process, and in the meantime, a sea of young adults suffer behind the “red tape.” What is the harm of experimenting with alternative education? I dare not ask the question about whether it’s because their Black or not.
An Afrocentric school may be an extreme measure to address Toronto’s secondary school dropout rate among Afro-Caribbean students, but extreme measures is what it takes sometimes to fix creeping problems. A sound education and an interest in the world around them is the only way many of these children will be able to break a cycle of poverty and see themselves as productive citizens and possible leaders.
At any rate, the proposition has been passed, and in a few years, I guess we’ll see the results of Toronto’s latest experiment.
