Cynics Unlimited

From the Toronto Star:

Admitting it is failing some students of colour, the Toronto public board could open a black-focused school as early as next fall.

Two community meetings are planned in the next week to discuss the idea of an “African-centred alternative school” from junior kindergarten to Grade 8 that would have more black teachers, black mentors, more focus on students’ heritage and more parent involvement.

“Whatever is being used in the system at this moment is failing a lot of students – and more specifically a lot of black students,” said Donna Harrow, a community worker who is behind the push for such a school, along with Etobicoke parent Angela Wilson.

Race-based schooling, despite its good intentions, is a dangerous way to combat academic failure for three main reasons -

Problem #1: Black-Focused Schools are Hypocritical

As some bloggers have already opined, it is sadly ironic that members from the racial group responsible for the biggest civil rights / integration push in North American history now campaign for racially-segregated schooling. Alas, that is not what I was alluding to – rather, Ontario just had an election that focused inordinately on the possibility of public funding for religious-based schools. Ontario Conservative leader John Tory staked his reputation on support for the initiative and Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty howled in protest. The voting public were equally dismayed with the idea and Tory was slaughtered at the polls (failing to even win a seat for himself). For the McGuinty government to consider race-based schooling barely a month later is a double standard beyond reproach – and a betrayal of the public confidence.

Problem #2: The Segregation Genie

If blacks are allowed to have their own schools, who’s to say that the Portuguese –another group said to be underperforming academically- won’t want their own as well? On the other end of the spectrum, why couldn’t the high-successful Chinese also apply for segregated schooling? Chinese culture is quite unique from the European experience, there are far more Chinese than blacks in Toronto and the Chinese could additionally claim that public schools aren’t teaching their high performing children quickly enough (or at least SOME of them could claim the latter).

An additional wrinkle – contrary to what fund-chasing activists publicly proclaim, there is no such thing as black culture. The “black” population of Toronto comprises of several ethnic groups from four continents. The primary groups are Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Somalis, Ethiopians and Nigerians. Jamaicans and Trinidadians have a somewhat similar culture due to their shared history of slavery and Euro-Centric indoctrination. The East Africans -Somalis and Ethiopians- and somewhat similar, owing much to Arabic influence and the fact that both states have been historically independent as they do to any notion of blackness. Nigerians belong to a third faction (West Africans) and have a different history altogether. Now, if these schools are being justified on cultural and historical relevance grounds, how the heck can you place these three factions of “blacks” together? Jamaicans are the most notorious of the black groups for crime and poor school performance – why would they care about Haile Selassie any more than they would about Winston Churchill? Will the East Africans continue to be isolated if there are no bilingual classes in Soomaali and Amharic? How finely will the school population have to be subdivided to eliminate all of these supposedly incapacitating barriers?

Problem #3: History Classes Cannot Override Social Deficiencies

The most dubious claim by proponents of an Africentric curriculum is that the inclusion of African history will increase interest and subsequently the achievements of black students. If that is the case, how come Asians are doing so well despite little instruction on the dynasties of Ancient China (which would still be of little use to a Vietnamese immigrant)? Better yet, why aren’t Jamaican children as a whole performing much better in Jamaica, where the history classes are heavily oriented towards local culture? The answer lies in both history and economics: except for the rich upper classes, Jamaican kids are doing extremely poorly in school and end up feeding a gang culture far worse than multicultural Canada. Jamaica’s murder rate has consistently been in the top 5 for the world, surpassing considerably poorer states like Zambia and political hot-spots like India (whose students tend to do quite well in Toronto).

More academically-successful immigrants emigrating from places like India and Hong Kong tend to be wealthy and well-educated in their homelands. More recent Jamaican immigrants, by contrast, tend to be from the poorer classes who lived in shanty-towns embroiled in gang wars precipitated by the nation’s two political parties. Education in Jamaica is still largely a privilege of the wealthy.

This cultural disparity was exacerbated by the refocusing of Canada’s immigration point system away from academic traits and in favour of required employment experience, which took place during the late 1970’s. Entry to Canada became more difficult for Jamaican university graduates and much easier for housekeepers. Most Jamaicans –even wealthier ones- were not and are not able to “buy” their way into Canada like their Asian counterparts, causing freshly-educated Jamaicans to look elsewhere for migration. The revised immigration policy also favoured single workers over family units, which caused many Jamaican women to leave their children behind to get a job in Canada. Many applied to have their children emigrate later as direct family members once the rules became more family-friendly.

The social effects of this migration pattern should be obvious – a child that grew up with one or zero natural parents in an unstable environment with poor education would beseverely ill-equipped to handle the pressures of living in Canada. (S)he would have to live in an alien culture with a mildly-educated mother who was never around through the formative years and often still won’t be around due to long work hours, the lack of a father, and a culture of origin that placed little emphasis on academics. In short, many of these kids, by nurture, have no value for learning and become more economically isolated as manufacturing and other low-education jobs cease to exist in Canada’s service-oriented economy.

My question to the Africentric scholars – do you seriously think this social problem can be fixed by teaching more history lessons about Africa?

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That said, I don’t officially oppose Africentric schools. Why? Because Ontario is already segregating schools, as stated in the article. One cannot seriously oppose Africentric schools without proceeding to oppose native-only schools and the entire Catholic school board. To attack one type of focused school system is at best myopic and at worst biased. Thus, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed - just mind the slippery slope.