scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Which is why putting them all together may not be the best idea.
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TDSB Ponders Black-Focused Schools
- Thread starter khris
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Which is why putting them all together may not be the best idea.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
As far as I can tell, this isn't a school for struggling students. It's a school for black students. It's more than a little offensive to directly equate the two.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
It is for everyone else, including those black students whose parents are smart enough to realize that this isn't a school for black kids, but is a school for troubled black kids. I can just see it now, Guidance Counsellors and VPs will be telling the parents of the black kids, "you know...we have a special place ideal for Jamal, so why don't you transfer there?".
What the heck is a Black curriculum anyway? Okay, so we add a black history class or two...but what about Geography, Chemistry, Economics, Biology, Algebra, Physics, French, etc...? How do you teach Chemistry from a black perspective?
Perhaps it is nothing about the subjects, but how they're taught? Do black students need to learn Algebra in a different manner than Chinese, Indian, Tamil, English or everyone else? I suspect this is a Caribbean thing, more than a black thing, so perhaps there's special methods needed to teach Jamaican kids Physics?
If I was a parent of black children, I wouldn't touch that school with a ten foot pole. I want my children to be amongst their smartest and most talented peers, thus pushing my kids to compete, and not amongst the losers of whatever colour who can't get their lives in order and use pigment and poor parentage as a crutch for their woes.
JasonParis
Moderator
I was initially very against this idea, but have softened my stance a bit as I've come to realize that indeed the media was playing this as a "segregation" story when it's really something quite different. Moreover, it's hard to argue with those numbers of black youth dropping-out. I think 'outside the box' thinking may be what's required here.
Jim Coyle's column in today's Star sort of matches where I'm coming from...
Building a base to give a voice
Jan 31, 2008 04:30 AM
Jim Coyle
In an ideal world, we'd never have to make decisions based on the hard reality that there's no such thing as an ideal world.
In an ideal world, the Rodney King maxim would hold and we'd all get along. There'd be no segregation, no inequity, no history of injustice and oppression throwing its legacy down the generations.
It hardly needs saying that, in principle, schools – or anything else – premised on race are a troubling proposition, the depth of that concern best illustrated by the divided opinion and misgivings in the black community itself.
But it's an idea – given the crisis at hand, the minimal cost and risk attached, and the lack of easier answers – whose time has come.
Too many black youths drop out of school. Too many languish in prisons. Too many are dying. Too many have lost trust – in adults, society, but worst of all themselves.
Too many are without hope or motivation, but most of all without a sense of pride and identity, a sense (beyond caricatures retailed by popular culture) of who they are, where they come from, what they can be.
The situation cannot stand. Something must be done to break the cycle. Accommodations must be made. Risks must be taken.
When the Toronto District School Board voted Tuesday to open an alternative Africentric school by 2009 to help fight a 40 per cent dropout rate among black teens, it took one.
Personally, I'm a reluctant convert. But it began to seem a bit precious – given the realities of life in this city, how wealth and opportunity are distributed, the dearth of black faces in legislatures, city councils and corporate boards – to wax righteous about the pitfalls of segregation or apartheid.
It got increasingly difficult – given schools based on religion, language, affluence – to argue that segregation doesn't already exist.
The fact remains that any group hoping to gain a voice, to build strength, needs a base. There's no better motivator than having a stake in the success of something on which your well-being depends.
Other than black churches, however, it's hard to see where the black base has been. But soon, proponents of black-focused schools will have one. And there's probably no better base than a school.
Schools are much more than classrooms. They can be the heart and anchor of neighbourhoods, the place where other people's kids become "our" kids, the path to self-discovery, self-confidence, identity and community pride.
There's probably no better discussion of the challenges of race and identity than that provided by Barack Obama in a memoir he wrote before entering politics.
As a community organizer in Chicago, he was told by a school principal how the children in the projects changed at about age 10 or 11.
"Their eyes stop laughing," she said. They still made the sound. "But if you look at their eyes, you can see they've shut off something inside."
Another teacher told him the start of any education was to give a child a sense of himself, his world, his culture, his community.
"That's what makes a child hungry to learn – the promise of being part of something, of mastering his environment."
If nothing else, a black-focused school can be that starting point and that promise; a symbol of possibility and a community's commitment to itself.
No one who's ever visited the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit and seen, then sat in, that bus where a black woman named Rosa Parks made history, can ever underestimate the power of a symbol.
Jim Coyle usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Jim Coyle's column in today's Star sort of matches where I'm coming from...
Building a base to give a voice
Jan 31, 2008 04:30 AM
Jim Coyle
In an ideal world, we'd never have to make decisions based on the hard reality that there's no such thing as an ideal world.
In an ideal world, the Rodney King maxim would hold and we'd all get along. There'd be no segregation, no inequity, no history of injustice and oppression throwing its legacy down the generations.
It hardly needs saying that, in principle, schools – or anything else – premised on race are a troubling proposition, the depth of that concern best illustrated by the divided opinion and misgivings in the black community itself.
But it's an idea – given the crisis at hand, the minimal cost and risk attached, and the lack of easier answers – whose time has come.
Too many black youths drop out of school. Too many languish in prisons. Too many are dying. Too many have lost trust – in adults, society, but worst of all themselves.
Too many are without hope or motivation, but most of all without a sense of pride and identity, a sense (beyond caricatures retailed by popular culture) of who they are, where they come from, what they can be.
The situation cannot stand. Something must be done to break the cycle. Accommodations must be made. Risks must be taken.
When the Toronto District School Board voted Tuesday to open an alternative Africentric school by 2009 to help fight a 40 per cent dropout rate among black teens, it took one.
Personally, I'm a reluctant convert. But it began to seem a bit precious – given the realities of life in this city, how wealth and opportunity are distributed, the dearth of black faces in legislatures, city councils and corporate boards – to wax righteous about the pitfalls of segregation or apartheid.
It got increasingly difficult – given schools based on religion, language, affluence – to argue that segregation doesn't already exist.
The fact remains that any group hoping to gain a voice, to build strength, needs a base. There's no better motivator than having a stake in the success of something on which your well-being depends.
Other than black churches, however, it's hard to see where the black base has been. But soon, proponents of black-focused schools will have one. And there's probably no better base than a school.
Schools are much more than classrooms. They can be the heart and anchor of neighbourhoods, the place where other people's kids become "our" kids, the path to self-discovery, self-confidence, identity and community pride.
There's probably no better discussion of the challenges of race and identity than that provided by Barack Obama in a memoir he wrote before entering politics.
As a community organizer in Chicago, he was told by a school principal how the children in the projects changed at about age 10 or 11.
"Their eyes stop laughing," she said. They still made the sound. "But if you look at their eyes, you can see they've shut off something inside."
Another teacher told him the start of any education was to give a child a sense of himself, his world, his culture, his community.
"That's what makes a child hungry to learn – the promise of being part of something, of mastering his environment."
If nothing else, a black-focused school can be that starting point and that promise; a symbol of possibility and a community's commitment to itself.
No one who's ever visited the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit and seen, then sat in, that bus where a black woman named Rosa Parks made history, can ever underestimate the power of a symbol.
Jim Coyle usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
I-Z1
Banned
Do we need a school for gay black kids now? (of course, 'everyone' is welcome)
JasonParis
Moderator
No as there are now at least two alternative options for them.
I-Z1
Banned
The alternative school, and the new black school? what if you're black and gay? What do you do, get your ass kicked at the black school, or be 'forced' into a 'white' school?
Blixtein
Active Member
Any idea that plays into the hands of white supremacists is a dumb idea. And this proposal for black-focused schools is as dumb as it gets. Racists must not believe their luck that the school board wants to remove black children from normal schools and educate them seperately. What year is this again? Whatever happened to "diversity is our strength" slogan that the city so proudly promoted a couple years back?
grey
Senior Member
What ever happened to learning the facts before forming an opinion?
Admiral Beez
Superstar
How about making that base the two-parent family? That's what every other oppressed or disadvantaged demographic group has done to gain a voice and build strength. Jewish, Italian, Ukranian, Sub-Saharan African, Arab, Tamil, etc.....have all come to Canada will little resources, but they came with strong two-parent family ideals.
Black schools won't save most of our lost black youth...only a strong nuclear family can, since even with no money, living in abject poverty and despair, a strong family can get you through anything. So, day one of the black (Caribbean-focused) school has to be abandoning or deprograming everything they've learned about and from their culture so far.
theowne
Active Member
The system isn't failing black students more then anyone else, tons of immigrant families come over here and they get by fine in our school system and get spots in universities, I don't see why it's any different for the black students. I really do think it's a social issue with the black community and that's what needs to be targeted. I understand the perspective of the article that it feels that black students need a "base" and "identity" to succeed, but the fact is all the immigrants and families of immigrants are in the public schools, chinese, bengali, tamil, etc, and they generally do as good on average, or even better then the others, and you can't tell me that they have no identity.
I think school is the one place that should always be a melting pot because it's with constant exposure to people of all races, learning and growing alongside them, that people develop understanding and compassion and recognize that everyone, regardless of appearance, is essentially the same. It's important that these ideals are put into people when they are children so it will carry throughout their lives. I'm excited about the new generation because of this, and I don't want people to "stay with their kind" in their own schools, which is why I also dislike Muslim schools and Chinese schools and such, because that is not progress and will just produce the same kind of people from the older generations. I'm not saying anything bad, just that it's natural when closed off with your own to be suspicious or have misconceptions about others. And that's why starting this trend of having black schools, muslim schools, chinese schools, etc, is just continuing the problem.
I think school is the one place that should always be a melting pot because it's with constant exposure to people of all races, learning and growing alongside them, that people develop understanding and compassion and recognize that everyone, regardless of appearance, is essentially the same. It's important that these ideals are put into people when they are children so it will carry throughout their lives. I'm excited about the new generation because of this, and I don't want people to "stay with their kind" in their own schools, which is why I also dislike Muslim schools and Chinese schools and such, because that is not progress and will just produce the same kind of people from the older generations. I'm not saying anything bad, just that it's natural when closed off with your own to be suspicious or have misconceptions about others. And that's why starting this trend of having black schools, muslim schools, chinese schools, etc, is just continuing the problem.
syn
Senior Member
I think the constant use of "black" is very misleading. Overall black students do just as well as their counterparts from other backgrounds and are just as successful, if not moreso in life. This is for a pretty specific demographic that's falling through the cracks.
Tewder
Senior Member
I agree. There are lots of black kids doing just fine in the school system, growing up to have successful careers and lives. This whole discussion is a disservice to them by linking them in with others. Isn't that the very essence of stereotyping??
The school issue is a red herring that will only lead to bigger problems. Instead, they should be focusing on what happens after school, which is to say on the broader cultural and community issues in question.
The school issue is a red herring that will only lead to bigger problems. Instead, they should be focusing on what happens after school, which is to say on the broader cultural and community issues in question.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Argh. It's nice if they "do good", such as charity work, or helping others, but in this context, I'm more concerned that they generally do as "well" on average. It's our language people; so let's use it correctly.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Can it get you through an abusive two-parent family?
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