Responding to Institutionalized Racism: Self-determination in Education
The Residential School system has had long lasting negative repercussions for Indigenous communities. Similarly, Canada’s history of segregated schools set the context for ongoing inequity in Canadian classrooms for Black students. The last Black-only school in Canada closed in 1983. Taught from an Anglo/Eurocentric/Settler lens, Canadian curriculum relies on the ignorance, neglect, and in many cases, outright erasure of non-European (read: non-white) experience and knowledge.
It should be unsurprising then that there is overwhelming evidence of a lack of engagement in education among Indigenous students and students of colour. Currently in Ontario, the drop-out rate among Black students in particular sits around forty percent; this is a number that has remained relatively unchanged over the course of the last 20 years.
In 1992, York University professor Dr.George Sefa Dei and a team of researchers conducted a qualitative ethnographic study of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) resulting in Reconstructing Drop-Out: a critical ethnography of the dynamics of Black students’ disengagement from school, first published in 1997. Their research captures and gives voice to the “deep” and “hidden” curricula that exist in the public school system. That is, the norms and expectations that inform school culture as well as the attitudes and behaviours exhibited by teachers and other school agents such as guidance counsellors, principals, and administrators. Through interviews and focus groups with students, “at-risk” and “achievers,” “drop-outs,” educators, and administrators, the researchers were able to provide first-person accounts of school culture and its affect on student engagement.
While common rhetoric regarding “drop-outs” holds the individual student responsible for their unwillingness to participate, Reconstructing Drop Out tells the stories of students, would-be students, parents, guardians, and educators looking for accountability from an education system that has failed to facilitate learning. A Eurocentric curriculum coupled with a colour-blind approach to pedagogy, informed by multiculturalism, has clearly been an unsuccessful approach at educating diverse populations.
The ability to incorporate, literally embody, knowledge relies on the ability to identify with the material. The ability to meaningfully connect with what is being taught relies not only on who it is being taught by, but the substance of what is being taught. The TDSB is host to 41 alternative schools premised on the understanding that a unilateral approach to teaching is simply inappropriate.
Africentric Alternative School
September 2009 saw the hard-won fruits of many years of pressure by many in Toronto’s Black communities with the opening of Africentric Alternative School, housed out of an existing and until then underused school. Located within Sheppard Public School, Africentric Alternative currently enrols students from grades JK-8. On January 29, 2008 Toronto School Board trustees approved the proposal to open an Africentric Alternative school by the narrow margin of 11 votes to nine.
The events of that January evening were the culmination of over 10 years of public acknowledgement that something needed to be done about the problem of marginalized students’ disengagement from the school system. The prospect of an Africentric school or alternative curriculum was alluded to among the 167 recommendations that came out of the Royal Commission on Learning in 1995. Recommendation number 141 states: “in jurisdictions with large numbers of Black students, school boards, academic authorities, faculties of education, and representatives of the Black community collaborate to establish demonstration schools and innovative programs based on best practices in bringing about academic success for Black students.” A highly attended 2005 town hall meeting on Black achievement attempted to bring the issue to light but was met with contention within and outside Black communities, who suggested that a Black-focused or Africentric School might resemble some form of segregation.
Despite the charges of segregationist intention, Donna Harrow and Angela Wilson submitted the proposal for an Africentric Alternative school with the awareness that TDSB policy dictates that parents can choose the types of programs that are best for their children and allows them to seek board assistance in setting up alternatives. A feasibility committee was established that included school administrators as well as representatives from the proposal group in June of 2007. November and December of 2007 were spent engaging in community consultations which were compiled into a report presented at the January meeting at which the proposal for Africentric Alternative School was approved.
The alternative school program, while in line with the Ontario curriculum, uses reference points that highlight African and Diasporic culture and knowledge rather than the common Eurocentric reference points used in other schools. This African-infused curriculum is supported by an inclusive approach to pedagogy whereby students are taught the experiences and perspectives of diverse peoples which offers them a fuller understanding of the world around them. Beyond the curriculum itself, the school maintains as its central tenant the fostering of the academic and social success of its students through a commitment to an inclusive, equitable, respectful, and compassionate school environment, a commitment to the positive development of self-identity and self-esteem, and a commitment to cohesive school and community partnerships.
What's all this talk about segregation?
While Africentric Alternative is known as Canada’s first Africentric school, an article in This Magazine by Andrew Wallace (“The Test,” January 2009) reminds readers that for 18 months in the 1980s, the York Board of Education accredited Afro-Caribbean Alternative Secondary School. The school’s short lifespan was not an indication of its lack of success; instead, it is a reflection of a general discomfort in Canadian society to address issues of racialized inequity. The school was quietly defunded while being loudly touted as a form of segregation.
The topic of Black-focused education is consistently met with such accusations of segregation despite significant distinctions between the two. Segregated schools have existed to reproduce the advantages of some groups through the forced exclusion of other groups. Segregated schools exist in a social context where the rights and liberties of particular groups are not granted or formally upheld by dominant institutions including the legal system and the education system. Segregated schools were not designed or initiated by those who have been separated out and subjugated by such educational arrangements. Rather, segregated schools are imposed by a dominant group that aims to preserve its power by preventing marginalized groups from gaining equal access to opportunities, resources, and dignity.
While the consequences of overtly segregated schools are clear, let’s not overlook the fact that schools today continue to negatively impact Black and other diverse students. According to George Sefa Dei, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), “The segregation we should be concerned about is that found in test scores and other educational outcomes increasingly patterned along racial lines. The gap that so many fought to close with integration persists and is again growing” (2007). Evidently, segregation continues to exist but is currently being carried out in a manner that is oftentimes made invisible to members of dominant groups that continue to benefit from cultural and institutional racism, exhibited by a comfortability with school culture that non-white students don’t seem to be able to access as easily.
In contrast, focused schools are designed and initiated by and for those communities who are negatively impacted by traditional (read: Western) approaches to curriculum and the institutionalized racism that informs it. Black-focused schools emerged out of longstanding, ongoing advocacy on the part of parents, students, educators and other members of Black communities who have been concerned about the negative impacts and outcomes of Eurocentric education for Black youth. Another important distinction is that Black youth are not mandated, assigned or otherwise forced to attend Black-focused schools. Rather, people have agency and are provided with the opportunity to make meaningful choices. Moreover, exclusion is not a dynamic of Black-focused schools because everyone, regardless of race, is welcome to participate in learning, teaching and success. Simply put, focused schools are about empowerment, self-determination and creating solutions to ongoing educational inequities.
Equity is not about equal treatment, it’s about equal opportunity. This framework supports the transformation of traditional approaches to curriculum to better meet the concrete needs and realities of students by developing pedagogy that students can relate to. In fact, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has begun to recognize that developing curriculum with the needs of particular audiences in mind is a creative and successful approach to learning. This is why there are over 40 focused schools in the TSDB ranging from the First Nations Public School, an LGBTTQQI2-S-focused school, schools with all-boys and all-girls classes, and others for the artistically gifted and for those with diverse learning needs. Unlike the politically motivated decisions to fund Catholic schools, focused schools emerge in response to statistical evidence of the educational disadvantages that particular groups are facing.
At the Africentric Alternative School, an environment of belonging is fostered by Africentric approaches to teaching that centre on Black communities, contributions, history, and identities alongside the mobilization of Africentric mediums of delivering education including African proverbs and storytelling for teaching language skills and African dance and drumming to teach arts. Furthermore, classrooms are restructured to provide opportunities for students to adopt leadership roles in the learning process. These approaches not only empower marginalized students, but also transform approaches to public education in ways that benefit the entire student body.
