A decision to create the first Afrocentric, or black-focused school funded by taxpayers in Canada's biggest city has sparked a heated debate. The scheme was approved at the packed meeting of the Toronto District School Board.
It proposes the opening of a school in 2009 that will aim to use "the sources and knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent as an integral feature of the teaching and learning environment".
One study found the drop-out rate for young black men to be as high as 40%.
Anthony Hutchinson is an economist and former university professor who has been involved in a number of youth outreach and employment programmes…
"Out of the 100 or so families I worked with in Malvern, I would say 80% of the families were non-supportive of their children's education. When you'd go into a lot of the houses, there was a lot of yelling and arguing. There were lots of latchkey kids."
He says the high failure rate would be more effectively addressed by smaller class sizes and more one-on-one tutoring.
"This belief that if we teach kids about their social and cultural identity they're going to perform a lot better is just stupid," he says.
Carl James, a professor at York University, says it is important that teachers recognise the experience of black children not just in terms of their being black, but also "in terms of how their race is related to other interests, and tap into that".
"It has to be a school that speaks to them," he says.
Sources: [link] [link]
Let’s move on to statistics:
- “The majority of drop-outs are young men. Of the 212,000 drop-outs in Canada in 2004-2005, 135,000 were men.”
- ”The evidence suggests that much progress has been made at a national level in reducing the high school drop-out rate among Canada's youth. This decline has touched all parts of Canada, but especially the Atlantic provinces.”
- “Not all sub-groups have made equal progress in this regard, however. Drop-out rates generally remain higher in rural areas and in small towns than in urban areas, especially in Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta. And clearly, young males continue to experience a higher likelihood of dropping-out than young females.”
Source: [link]
However, “
Studies warning of rising dropout rates in Canada's two most populous provinces are ringing alarm bells among some education experts. The latest Quebec statistics and a major study in Ontario earlier this year suggest more teenagers are leaving school, bucking long-term trends in Canada toward rising graduation rates.”
Source: [link]
- “For young women, pregnancy often plays a large role in the decision to drop out of high school. Labour Force Survey data indicate that nearly four in ten young female dropouts had children and were heading a household, but here too, the trend is pointing downward. In the early 1990s, approximately 60,000 female dropouts headed a household with children in Canada. This number dropped to about 30,000 in recent years.”
Source: [link]
- Interestingly enough, “Case studies (Schwab, 2001) of Australian educational programs that have succeeded in retaining Aboriginal students have isolated the following factors as critical to keeping Aboriginal students engaged in their own education… [which includes] Community-based education and training, community relevance, balancing expectations from two cultures, and a commitment to Aboriginal employment…
- With the high drop out rates for students in rural areas, “Students in rural and isolated communities may see limited returns for their investment in education.”
Source: Same as above
Let’s go look at ethnic group populations:
- “22.77% of respondents gave a single response of 'Canadian', while a further 16.65% identified with both 'Canadian', and one or more other ethnocultural ancestries. 4.99% of respondents gave a single response of English, 3.58% gave a single response of French, 3.16% gave a single response of Chinese, 2.45% gave a single response of Italian, 2.38% gave a single response of German, 2.05% gave a single response of Scottish, 1.96% gave a single response of East Indian, 1.68% gave a single response of Irish, 1.54% gave a single response of North American Indian, 1.10% gave a single response of Ukrainian and 1.07% gave a single response of Dutch (Netherlands).”
Source: [link]
I agree with Mr. Hutchinson, the idea that teaching kids about their cultural and social identity is going to contribute to less drop-out rates is just stupid. It might work, it might not. But looking at the population of ethnic groups in Canada—Chinese citizens make up 3.16% of the total population, East Indians make up 1.68% of the population… Blacks make up about 0.33% of the population.
I remember reading this the first time I heard of this black-focused school idea make headlines:
"I think it has a lot to do with empowerment," said Cheryl White, a mother, a social worker and a student.
"The education system at this point is focused around a Canadian history that has very little to do with other races." While she supports trying out an Afrocentric school, she worried about labelling it alternative "because alternative schools are not that credible at the end of the day." [link]
Canadian history has very little to do with other races? Okay, I’ll grant her that much—we do focus a lot on Native, British and French roots, seeing as how… well, Canada
was largely legislated as a country though those roots.
But the question is, where are all the Chinese and Indian kids who are dropping out? When I was in high school, the only mention of the Chinese was that they died building railroads, and the Japanese were discriminated against during WWII. The only time I heard of East Indians, was in a cooking after-school class when we made biryani. If the Canadian education system, specifically the Toronto District School Board, is failing to consider or include the social identities of certain racial groups—then why are only Blacks constituting the highest number of drop out rates?
Blacks drop out more than the Chinese do. Men drop out more than women do. This points to several things for me: 1) The
lack of focus on Black culture is not the problem, as much as there is too much focus on popular Black culture that is being directed at Black teens (ie, rap/hip-hop culture), 2) Parents/guardians of Black teens are largely doing, or failing to do something, and 3) If Black men are dropping out more than Black women, then the only logical place to look at is the category of men—because if it had anything to do with “race,” then Black women should be dropping out at the same rate… no?
Group-centric schools are nothing new—after all, we have Catholic schools, and certain religious focused schools. And last I checked, there was a LGBT-centric program (the Triangle Program) in the TDSB (although I’m told that this is not a school in itself, but just a program). Maybe a black-focused school shouldn’t really cause heated arguments—but the reasons behind their creation is absurd, to say the least.
What say you?
