'Africentric' school to open in Toronto

I'm not really sure what to think of this yet, although it seems like it could be deeply problematic, largely with the concept that there is some kind of unified 'Africentric' perspective that could be drawn on in Toronto.

what's the problem?

Well, it's not my field at all and I've just read a couple journalistic articles. I was sincere about not being sure what to think. I was just thinking that what could be categorized as the black community in Toronto is extremely culturally diverse, including a large community of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as well as e.g. immigrants from Somalia and people whose families have been in the country for generations. So I was not sure whether there is a single 'Africentric' experience common to people from all these backgrounds and wasn't sure what that would mean in terms of education practice. But it's possible that there are some things?

What do you think of this, moonship?

"couple of"

Odd. In the US, the term is (or recently was) "afrocentric". I'm not sure what I think of afro/afri-centric education at less than a university level, but I can see as how there might be benefits.

there's afrocentric primary and secondary parochial schools all over the place in L.A., but no public ones that I know of.

My high school was de facto afrocentric.

you should really incorporate that line in a rap song.

So I was not sure whether there is a single 'Africentric' experience common to people from all these backgrounds and wasn't sure what that would mean in terms of education practice. But it's possible that there are some things?

What do you think of this, moonship?

content standards for things like history and literature aren't built around developing specific knowledge, but rather in terms of developing a toolbox of thinking skills (what we call critical thinking for shorthand). the specific content in the school is usually just a frame around which the learning happens. so it's not so important that kids learn about the magna carta, but rather that they learn how to tell a history story with the "proper" voice, the proper citations, the proper research procedures, etc. similarly, it's not so important that kids learn the names of all of the mammals - rather they just need to get familiar with the linnean system.

imagine if there was an elementary school whose focus was medieval studies. so the kids would spend all their time learning about castles, and kings, and medieval architecture, and catapaults and pulleys. not because that's the most important stuff in and of itself, but it's the most important stuff to these kids. so it captures their interest, and motivates them to learn, and they form a community of interest built around that subject, in which productive learning happens.

or you could imagine a middle school built around computer arts. so kids learn to use wikis and webpages to express their social studies research. or they learn to write interactive fiction or media for english class. and they use computer graphing programs as well as pencil-and-paper graphing, and computer simulations of mechanics and chemistry and population dynamics.

neither of these would be particularly useful for the population of elementary kids at large, but for a small group of kids, who would *elect* to go that special school, it could be immensely motivating. and i doubt that it would be very politically controversial.

now, you might raise an issue that afrocentrism is more politically and culturally loaded than a "neutral" subject like science interest or medieval studies or whatever. but i think it's pretty well accepted (in the academy anyway, and certainly in my grad program) that *any* knowledge has a cultural valence to it, that none of it is any more neutral w/ respect to the child. so i guess that's the real sticking point.

you might think there's something insidious about teaching kids in an afrocentrism-interest setting (because of the loaded cultural politics), whereas teaching kids in an ecology-interest setting would be OK (because ecology is somehow culturally neutral). but i just don't see that.

to be fair, this is touching an a *huge* flashpoint in education, which is the extent to which content matters (vis-a-vis what people call "process", for lack of a better word).

in other words, are we teaching kids to be consumers and producers of information, or are we teaching kids to be repositories of that information. is social studies a way of thinking that kids need to learn, or is it a set of facts that they need to know?

obviously the answer is a balance of both, but where exactly the balance lies is a very, very, very contentious issue ... and by no means is there one right answer to this question!

so if you fall on the side of process, then interest-area charter schools make a lot of sense. because your standards aren't so much the content, but what the kids are doing. and kids can do groupwork and write reports and build models and do math problems all in the context of learning about africa.

if you fall on the side of content, then this would represent a serious chipping-away at the standards, because learning about africa is taking away valuable time from learning about, i don't know, the times tables and the reactivities of acids (something i'm always afraid to admit i don't really know that well, for a chemist) and the articles of the constitution, etc etc

Good points, MSJtB, but this type of afrocentric education isn't typically as value-neutral as that. As I understand it, it's usually based on the idea that black students will/may benefit from being educated in a predominantly black peer group, by predominately black instructors, using an afrocentric curriculum.

nothing is value neutral

Good point, and though I missed it the 1st time through, moonship even said as much.

3xpost

You make good and interesting points, as ever. I do suspect that an entire medieval-centric public school (as opposed to, say, a summer camp or even a charter school, which this isn't AFAICT) would be rather controversial. Do you not see any questions to be raised at all with grouping people of varied backgrounds into a single category (with a specific curriculum) based on skin colour? (I know I don't really identify as part of a single group that includes, say, immigrants from Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well as Trinidadian-Canadians.) I'm really naive about this stuff though.

(Still haven't checked out that article you recommended previously but I should.)

They are all people of the African diaspora and share a common ancestry that is not generally taught in public schools, which generally teach a very white-washed, Eurocentric version of history. I don't see what the issue is. You should read Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G Woodson if you're really interested in the idea of an AfroCentric Curriculum.

It kind of throws the whole "multiculturalism/affirmative action is beneficial for everyone" out the window which I thought was part of the justification for it on college campuses. I don't think that outweighs the benefits at all but just how it looks theoretically.

Do you not see any questions to be raised at all with grouping people of varied backgrounds into a single category (with a specific curriculum) based on skin colour?

so are you against the idea of international baccalaureate European History courses?

sundar: everything about the language of those articles reads that this is a charter school

Will the classes at this school sounds like the skits on "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill?"

hahaaa

joe had some marbles
then he gave 2 to tom
now joe has 4 marbles
how many did joe have in the beginning

success rate: 17% in kindergarten, 85% in third grade (riley & greeno, 1988)

you have some cookies
a cookie monster comes and takes 2 away
now you have 4 cookies on your plate
how many cookies did you have in the beginning?

success rate: 68% in kindergarten (sophian & vong, 1995)

When I say my school was de facto afro-centric, I mean that we actually had some fairly afro-centric courses and the occasional afro-centric guest speaker. There were claims that were outright ridiculous (all of Greek thought was actually stolen from Africa), but also ideas that were sort of enlightening (European scholars' practice of exempting Egypt from Africa), and some debates that just seemed pointless (whether or not the original Jews were "black".) But I guess what I mainly learned from it all is how political the "standard" western civilizational history that we learn really is, and how much all history is about ingraining and reinforcing a people or nation's ideas about itself.

I swore that I wouldn't discuss this topic anymore because it makes me so sick and angry, but here I go.

As an "Afro-Canadian" or whatever PC term is currently en vogue, I can't help but feel insulted by this idea. I was born and raised in suburban Toronto, and although my hometown is quite culturally diverse now, that wasn't the case while I was growing up. In my elementary school, there were less than 10 other black kids, one of whom was my sister, in a school of a couple hundred. In spite of that, I and my sister always did well, and were generally at the top of our classes. My other black friends also did well and many of them went on to post-secondary education and professional careers. The point is that when factors such as socio-economic status, income, and parental educational level are controlled for, there is no difference in students' performance. I refuse to accept that I am somehow inferior to my peers and require a special "black" school in order to succeed. I'm not sure if anyone in favour of this school has taken a look around Toronto recently, but there are a lot of different people about. In the real world, students from these "Africentric" schools will have to deal with co-workers, colleagues and neighbours who don't look like them.

I don't for a second believe that there is not a serious problem. Black youth, young men in particular, are not performing as well as their peers, and have a drop-out rate of around 40%. Clearly, something is amiss. However, the fact that Canadian educational curriculum doesn't dwell on the contributions of Chinese-Canadians doesn't prevent them from succeeding academically. A brief stroll around the University of Toronto's downtown campus will attest to that. I think that a lot more can be done to make what is taught at school more relevant to the students being taught, but it's not an excuse for failure. And certainly not to the tune of 40%

Black kids interested in learning about black history can get a library card (like I did), or go on the internet and read. They can attend heritage classes on Saturday mornings like so many other first-generation kids do.

This is a band-aid solution of the worst kind. All it does is give the politicians and parents a convenient scapegoat upon which to blame the abysmal performance of black youth in Ontario schools. The REAL issues that nobody wants to get into revolve around the disintegration of the basic family unit in the black community. Please don't think that I am some type of "family values" conservative - I'm not. But the simple fact is that in many communities in and around Toronto, single black women are left to raise the children while the men contribute nothing. This has become the norm in some places. For whatever reasons, everyone is deathly afraid to address this issue, so they just blame the schools. In addition, black youth in "at risk" communities have internalized the bizarre notion that anyone aspiring to academic success, or showing any ambition to be something is labelled as acting "white". I'm with Bill Cosby on this one. It starts with the parents.

By the time these kids get to high school, they are already lost. The intervention needs to come much earlier, and it needs to begin in the home.

A few years from now, after this experiment has failed, I wonder what they will blame the 40% drop out rate on?

I mean there really is a lot of stuff in Western history books that subtly reinforces ideas about European and white superiority, some of it so subtle that even a well-meaning, enlightened textbook writer could have taken it for granted in including it.

Hurting maybe OTM, but I can't stretch from there to Yakub.

I appreciate j-rock's POV but before this gets conflated entirely: As I understand it (in the states) the first wave of African-centered private education wasn't borne out of remedying any acute academic failure so much as trying to bring a prospective 'black power' renaissance to fruition , with all the educational/psychological 'realignment' that that would entail. There's many reasons parents buy into these programs here(again, talking exclusively private schools), including "our kids aren't motivated by eurocentric course matter that's why they don't succeed" but I seriously doubt even the Toronto case can be wholly reduced to that.

The point is that when factors such as socio-economic status, income, and parental educational level are controlled for, there is no difference in students' performance

so basically you are saying that if you are poor and of low socioeconomic status, you have no hope for educational success?

joe had some marbles
then he gave 2 to tom
now joe has 4 marbles
how many did joe have in the beginning

success rate: 17% in kindergarten, 85% in third grade (riley & greeno, 1988)

you have some cookies
a cookie monster comes and takes 2 away
now you have 4 cookies on your plate
how many cookies did you have in the beginning?

success rate: 68% in kindergarten (sophian & vong, 1995)

the first might be more confusing b/c it's two third-person characters and the kids might get joe & tom confused

yes -- but that doesn't change the point -- that different groups of students need different types of pedagogy, even for *identical* content. and sophian & vong is not some sort of radical fringe research or startling new finding. this is the tiniest TIP of a 50-year-old iceberg that goes back past educational theory into very basic knowledge of psychology and cognition.

....
and tremendoid is OTM. sure, there's no causal link between not having arts & music classes to drop-out rates. kids drop out of school because, well, school is *hard*. but it's been shown that having strong arts & music programs in school is a tremendous motivator to keeping kids from dropping out.

do chinese-canadian kids need arts & music programs? maybe not, maybe they get piano lessons. (maybe we can add "rich" to the "successful" stereotype) maybe they'd succeed with or without arts & music programs. but given that you could reach a certain number of kids by spending a small amount of money, why not do it?

i could go on and on and on about situated cognition. the point is that everybody's ability to think is improved in familiar situations and reduced in unfamiliar situations.

I swore that I wouldn't discuss this topic anymore because it makes me so sick and angry, but here I go.

i mean, this comment sort of sums it up for me. the issue here isn't so much race and education as it is just race. race makes even smart people FLIP THE FUCK OUT. if you look at the comments box in the article from the OP it's people talking about segregation, whites-only and blacks-only schools and so on.

segregation, forcing black kids to go to this school, not letting whites in, etc ... none of that's even on the table!

but start talking about race ... yeah, touchy topic.

The REAL issues that nobody wants to get into revolve around the disintegration of the basic family unit in the black community. Please don't think that I am some type of "family values" conservative - I'm not. But the simple fact is that in many communities in and around Toronto, single black women are left to raise the children while the men contribute nothing. This has become the norm in some places. For whatever reasons, everyone is deathly afraid to address this issue, so they just blame the schools.

this is sort of a misleading argument, tho--assuming, for a second, that the "problem" with urban black youth is a direct result of the "disintegration of the basic family unit in the black community" (and i dont necessarily subscribe to this by any means, but assuming), i cant help but note that higher graduation rates and other measures of academic success will likely only lead to lower rates of teen pregnancy, absent parents, etc. if nothing else, high school graduates will be at higher paying jobs that allow them to contribute more in child support!

there is a chinese-language charter school in town here. instruction in chinese, focus classes on chinese culture and arts, world history classes focus on asia, etc.

very little happened around town in the way of "what's next, white's only schools?!?", very little in terms of "what will happen to these poor deprived asians". few people seemed to assume it would become an asian-only ghetto, or that the chinese students wouldn't make up their stuff elsewhere.

i guess they're just ... more trust-able?

^^^ the part I swear not to discuss etc.

Do you not see any questions to be raised at all with grouping people of varied backgrounds into a single category (with a specific curriculum) based on skin colour?

so are you against the idea of international baccalaureate European History courses?

Maybe irrelevant, but isn't there something of a difference between a single class dealing with 'the cultural and political history of the people of this continent' and a school designed around a concept of cultural unity (Afrocentrism) that's (as I read Sundar's statements) ill-defined and doesn't necessarily exist?

Do you think that people with qualms about this would take issue with AP/IB African History?

I don't think the concept of cultural unity is "ill-defined." It's very well defined : people of African heritage/people of the African diaspora. That is very inclusive : actual Africans, people from the Carribean, African-Americans, Afro-Cubans, etc. The idea of an afro-centric curriculum is to give a much inclusive perspective that shows that people of african heritage can and have accomplished greatness... like I said, if you're really interested you should read Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. No one is saying that an AfroCentric education is a cure-all, but rather that it teachers kids to be proud of their heritage and culture.. standard history books practically ignore Africa (bar Egypt), all we learn about "black history" is slavery and Martin Luther King, etc. It's kind of a systemic way of reinforcing black inferiority..

Not taking white superiority/cultural bias and replacing it with black superiority, but rather adding in what is traditionally left out.

I really don't feel like getting into j-rock's argument - because I strongly disagree with a lot of it.. Bill Cosby and others like him are totally missing the point.. this "blame the victim" mentality and ignoring the very real systemic causes of the achievement gap, ridiculously high rates of incarceration, etc. is just really shortsighted and wrong - but the whole "if you want to learn about black history go to a library" thing really bothers me.. you shouldn't HAVE TO go to a library.. that's the point.

Maybe irrelevant, but isn't there something of a difference between a single class dealing with 'the cultural and political history of the people of this continent' and a school designed around a concept of cultural unity (Afrocentrism) that's (as I read Sundar's statements) ill-defined and doesn't necessarily exist?

Do you think that people with qualms about this would take issue with AP/IB African History?

-- milo z, Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:53 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Right, but for the most part U.S. schools still are structured around a default concept of Euro-American cultural unity. This permeates literature, history, art and music courses at minimum, and even well-meaning attempts to "include" other cultures tend toward pat-on-the-head condescension.

And having AP African History as an optional course is not necessarily going to address that.

widening ppl's cultural POVs (especially from a young age) is always a good thing but really they should try to teach everyone from many different POVs instead of one POV per student

(fwiw this is probably a step in the right direction, esp. in that it is bringing this sort of discussion to the table)

Yeah, I agree. Ultimately I don't know if these schools are the solution. But it's not like I spend much time thinking about whether Jews should send their kids to private Jewish schools (I mean I don't want to send my kids to one but I don't go criticizing people for it really). And really I think cultural and historical mythology plays a huge role in the Jewish culture that leads to disproportionate success in certain areas, because the message gets reinforced over and over again that Jews are good at certain things and can succeed in certain things.

I don't disagree with that, Hurting - I just find the specific comparison between Afrocentric Elementary and IB European History to be specious. IB European History is a single class that deals with the political and cultural history of the continent of Europe, just like a class on US history - it doesn't explore a meta-culture of European-ness.

If the argument were that we all grew up in schools that were Eurocentric, OK, I agree. But IB Euro History (or a hypothetical IB African History) is quite different.

I don't think the concept of cultural unity is "ill-defined." It's very well defined : people of African heritage/people of the African diaspora.

What Sundar referenced earlier is why I think the idea is problematic (and potentially ill-defined) - " including a large community of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as well as e.g. immigrants from Somalia and people whose families have been in the country for generations. So I was not sure whether there is a single 'Africentric' experience common."
Isn't it difficult for those of us on the outside to assume a uniform identity based almost entirely on their skin color?

I don't have an issue with an Afrocentric school, and can see its value - but the issues raised by Sundar are perfectly valid.

Well yeah, but the people who design American History curricula very consciously cobble together a kind of cultural mythology for disparate immigrant groups and pilgrim-descendents alike. I think the question is really whether it's useful to so deliberately create a sub-culture within a nation as opposed to just trying to find better ways to pluralize the standard curriculum.

"but the whole "if you want to learn about black history go to a library" thing really bothers me.. you shouldn't HAVE TO go to a library.. that's the point."

If you had read my entire post you would have noticed that I did in fact mention that the current curriculum is lacking, and it should be dealt with. The simple fact is that in a multicultural environment like Toronto, it's not practical for every ethnic/cultural group to have their history or culture properly addressed in school. But it doesn't seem to result in 40% drop out rates for other groups, although the Portuguese also have an abnormally high drop out rate.

"this "blame the victim" mentality and ignoring the very real systemic causes of the achievement gap, ridiculously high rates of incarceration, etc. is just really shortsighted and wrong"

I don't for a second deny that there are "very real and systemic" causes for the achievement gap. Although the ghost of slavery doesn't hang over Canada in the same way it does in the US, there is a great deal of institutionalized racism here. It sucks, but that's the way it is. But you know what? It's not directed only against blacks. Why don't other groups who are also discriminated against suffer from 40% drop out rates? Black parents need to start accepting some of the responsibility. The community needs to take a good look at itself and start asking tough questions. "Blaming the victim" - I won't even start on that.

"so basically you are saying that if you are poor and of low socioeconomic status, you have no hope for educational success?"

No. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I was trying to say is that kids in that situation will generally perform at a level comparable to other kids in that same situation - regardless of skin colour.

You don't think that covers an enormous amount of cultural and historical territory?

Well yeah, obviously, that's what I said in the part you cut out. The point is that there is a shared cultural ancestry.

What Sundar referenced earlier is why I think the idea is problematic (and potentially ill-defined) - " including a large community of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as well as e.g. immigrants from Somalia and people whose families have been in the country for generations. So I was not sure whether there is a single 'Africentric' experience common."
Isn't it difficult for those of us on the outside to assume a uniform identity based almost entirely on their skin color?

Well first off, I'm not really 'on the outside' - I'm a 1st Generation american - my family is mainly from the carribean. So my ancestors weren't slaves here in America, but they were obviously uprooted from Africa at one point and were slaves in the carribean.. Obviously Afro-Cuban, Carribean Black , African-American, and Africans have very different cultures now.. but there is a shared cultural bond of african heritage, all being of the african disapora...

I mean, the point isn't to go into all of the different cultures in depth, but merely to have more concentration and spotlight on the history of africa, the historical achievements of people of african descent, uprisings and movements of people of african descent, the diaspora, etc. And of course it will not JUST focus on that, it's just a broader curriculm that is less culturally biased/white-washed...

americans posting to this thread. the following are things we don't have, for contextual purposes:

a comprable system of school funding. school funding is not as closely tied to local property tax revenue. schools are a provincial prerogative, and funding is generally distributed in order to ensure equality. this process is not contentious. we don't talk about school vouchers, and students aren't bussed to different districts on the basis of race.

a comparable history of slavery. though nova scotia has a long standing black community, and a sordid history to go along with it (africville), canada had roughly 1400 black slaves in its history.

a comprable black population. canada had explicitly racist immigration laws until the early 1960s. the country, and toronto were pretty white until the 1970s. canada is about 2.5% black - toronto is 8.4% black - less than seattle.

the following are things Toronto has, that your city probably doesn't:

the highest foreign born population % in the world (for a city) - 47% of the city qualifies as a 'visible minority,' whatever that is.

200 distinct ethnic groups (emergency services are equipped to respond in 150 languages).

a defined policy of 'multiculturalsim.'

i think that the initial issue raised by sundar at the beginning of this thread - that there is not a 'unified africentric perspective' - is very valid. my mother teaches at an elementary school in lawrence heights - a relatively 'black,' realatively impoverished area in Toronto. when she's buying books for the library, she's well aware that histories of the slave trade have significantly less relevance for the recent influx of muslim, somali refugees. while there may be a 'shared bond of african history,' institutionalizing that seems to gloss over the extraordinary differences in toronto's population, and doesn't sit well with canada's (however flawed) multicultural ethos.

while i'm not sure where i stand on the africentric school issue, part of me thinks it better to teach the history of africville, chinese discrimination etc. to all students, in all schools.

judge holden caulfield OTM.

I can't help but feel that a lot of America's racial and social baggage has impacted this discussion, and it simply doesn't apply here. jhc is right in saying that Nova Scotia, as well as southern Ontario, have long established black communities, but for the most part, the majority of black people in Toronto, and Canada for that matter, are relatively recent immigrants. By that, I mean that they're either brand new or have been here for only a generation or two. Few if any of our ancestors were slaves here, and we haven't been subjected to centuries of discrimination, violence and marginalization. So in that context, what are black students or families in TORONTO doing so differently from the other recently arrived ethnic / cultural groups who are not experiencing the same failure rates in the schools? If the curriculum, and the people teaching it, were indeed to blame, wouldn't other groups, many of whom are also discriminated against, and whose cultures also are not reflected in what's being taught, be suffering from at least comparable drop out rates?

part of me thinks it better to teach the history of africville, chinese discrimination etc. to all students, in all schools.

Definitely. And that's much more appropriate for a city in which "minorities" nearly constitute the majority.

the highest foreign born population % in the world (for a city) - 47% of the city qualifies as a 'visible minority,' whatever that is.

200 distinct ethnic groups (emergency services are equipped to respond in 150 languages).

a defined policy of 'multiculturalsim.'

This is an important thing to remember for those who don't live in TO. My own feelings about the proposed school are very mixed, but the people I know who live here and object to it do so on this basis. It's seen as singling out and coddling one (ill-defined) 'group' from the melting pot. It's seen as a tacit endorsement of, or first step towards, separate schools for all ethnic groups, which people see as a terrible step in the wrong direction.

^^ Not that those things are necessarily the case, but that is the perception I've run into.

why shouldnt white students attend africentric schools

We had a lot of motivational lectures on the need for strong black men and the like. I kind of wish the lecturers had just said "We need strong black men -- and Josh."

why shouldnt white students attend africentric schools

They're allowed to, but it's not likely that many will. As mentioned before, why not just teach everyone a more inclusive curriculum?

im also not sure that i buy the 'because we dont have slavery our racism is different' thing either. something structural/cultural must be causing this achievement gap right? what do u think it is?

i mean its not these schools that are bringing skin color into this right, its the stats?

something structural/cultural must be causing this achievement gap right? what do u think it is?

I don't know that it's any one thing, but in my experience poverty and the single mother situations sure don't help. This is where my ambivalence re: the proposed school comes in. I do think that stronger positive role models would go a long way to helping, and in that way I can see where the school idea is coming from, but it seems like working to achieve this in the regular school system would be more beneficial in the long run. Maybe I'm naive.

im also not sure that i buy the 'because we dont have slavery our racism is different' thing either. something structural/cultural must be causing this achievement gap right?

It is very different here. Slavery still affects everything in the US, in a way that it doesn't in Canada. Even just watching the coverage of the US election, I find it somewhat interesting that while Obama is being hailed as the first viable African-American candidate, nobody seems to mention that he's half-white. The "one drop" rule that is clearly still in effect, is a holdover from less enlightened times.

The stats do point to a significant problem in Toronto schools, but the causes haven't yet been clearly identified. Having successfully navigated the system here, I don't think that all of the blame can be put on the schools. Other groups who face many of the same obstacles as black kids, perform just fine.

can see where the school idea is coming from, but it seems like working to achieve this in the regular school system would be more beneficial in the long run. Maybe I'm naive.

I don't think you're naive at all. As I said previously, I am in favour of making the existing curriculum more inclusive of the students being taught. Furthermore, what can an "Africentric" school accomplish that can't be done within the context of the existing system? Students who want to learn more about their own history or culture can, and often do, establish clubs and study groups, and I also support the idea mentoring as a way of providing positive role models to kids who might not have many.

tentatively, i think you can differentiate between types of racism here and in the us (besides the tautology that racism is racism). in addition to a different history - as was said above - people likely have different daily experiences in toronto than in philadephia or dc say. it's a little more difficult here (though not impossible) to identify areas as 'black' or whatever. even the jane/finch corridor - where the killing of a young student in school intensified the debate about africentric schools, and is often at the epicentre of such discussions - is not exclusively lived in by any one ethnicity.

in many repsects, i'd be more interested to know whether or not a city like winnipeg had schools with curricula geared predominantly towards native canadian students.

im not questioning that its different, but i am questioning that schools as they stand aren't already white-normative

as a product of a single-parent home i dont buy that as an explanation of why kids are doing badly in school either

i've no doubt that they're largely 'white normative' - my education in toronto was. the question is, with such a diverse social makeup, how do you address this problem? maybe africentric schools? maybe a more comprehensive curricular reform.

The thing that makes me laugh about all this is that the program is going to be open to kids of any colour, and there isn't a ton of Canadian black history, so these kids are going to learn less about Canada in favour of learning more about a (valuable, sure) culture they may not even be a part of (though obviously the kids are applying, not being put into this program at random, so hopefully the interest will be there..)

yall should be careful blaming high dropout rates on single-parent households

The stats do point to a significant problem in Toronto schools, but the causes haven't yet been clearly identified. Having successfully navigated the system here, I don't think that all of the blame can be put on the schools. Other groups who face many of the same obstacles as black kids, perform just fine.

if youre going to dismiss curriculum arguments because you were able to make it through school despite the content of its classes, i feel fine dismissing single-parent arguments because i know a lot of people who made it through school growing up with a single mother (or single father, for that matter)

as a product of a single-parent home i dont buy that as an explanation of why kids are doing badly in school either

I was not offering it as an explanation of why kids are doing badly in school. Certainly it's a symptom rather than a cause. But it's on a large scale within certain communities, and it's not helping.

but it seems to me that youre objecting to this on ideological grounds while vahid is defending it on pragmatic grounds (and thats an unstable distinction im setting up, i know). i dont think youve really addressed his main point, which is that these schools work. they lower dropout rates, engage students in school, invest them in education (and therefore in their futures). and the fact is, if these schools can do that, and do it without doing anything hateful or illegal, why object?

you being j-rock

i dont think youve really addressed his main point, which is that these schools work.

This has never been tried before in Toronto, and there's been no data presented to indicate that it will work in this context. My problem with it is that it stigmatizes black students in this city. Why do only they need "training wheels" in order to succeed, when so many other groups face nearly identical challenges in the school system?

I was not offering it as an explanation of why kids are doing badly in school. Certainly it's a symptom rather than a cause. But it's on a large scale within certain communities, and it's not helping.

-- franny glass, Friday, May 23, 2008 10:38 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i know this is getting away from the pragmatic/schooling discussion but i really disagree w/ j-rock's analysis so far.

one parent can raise multiple children successfully. generally the disadvantage of single-parent homes is related to poverty, in that a single-parent home aggravates existing poverty-related problems. i.e. how to earn income and raise your children. i dont think that the reason for the achievement gap is in any way attributable to % of single-parent homes

This has never been tried before in Toronto, and there's been no data presented to indicate that it will work in this context. My problem with it is that it stigmatizes black students in this city. Why do only they need "training wheels" in order to succeed, when so many other groups face nearly identical challenges in the school system?

-- j-rock, Friday, May 23, 2008 10:49 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

why do white students need to stack the deck w/ eurocentric history in order to succeed

jesus christ j-rock, no one in this damn thread has said that black students need this to succeed.

jesus christ j-rock, no one in this damn thread has said that black students need this to succeed.

You're right, nobody on this thread has said that, but proponents of this idea have said this in the press, and this is being treated as a simple solution to a very serious, and complicated problem.

why do white students need to stack the deck w/ eurocentric history in order to succeed

Again, here's the very American idea that discussions of race only revolve around the black/white dichotomy. There are lots of kids of all different colours in Toronto schools, and many of them do very well in spite of a eurocentric curriculum.

heres the rub--if these schools will lower the dropout rate, if theyll re-engage some black students (and open the minds of students from other backgrounds), if theyll do what schools are supposed to do--who the fuck cares what the proponents of the idea said? who gives a shit about "how it seems"? because 20 years from now when some graduates from this school are successful and in positions of power and influence, when the school has a consistently high graduation rate and is shown to engage and attract students, its not going to seem like "training wheels" at all.

i mean look im willing to go to the floor to defend the politics behind these schools but thats not even the issue here--the issue is that a 40% dropout rate is a crisis-level problem, and schools like this can be a really important way to lower that rate. and there will have to be a lot more done, obviously, and let me be clear that neither i nor anyone on this thread think that this school is a cure-all. but at some point, if what we want to is teach students, and invest them in education, at some point i dont really give a shit about the argument, or how it seems. i just want to get it done.

history more like his story

am0n more like a man

why do white students need to stack the deck w/ eurocentric history in order to succeed

Again, here's the very American idea that discussions of race only revolve around the black/white dichotomy. There are lots of kids of all different colours in Toronto schools, and many of them do very well in spite of a eurocentric curriculum.

-- j-rock, Friday, May 23, 2008 11:02 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

and some dont. so? i kind of think "and you have a better idea?" is a totally legit response to this argument

how long before they get accused of "breeding radicalism"

i have no expertise wrt this question, especially with regard to high school, but this thread reminds me of an experience i had in lol grad school:

a (white, male) friend of mine told me he chose to join my graduate program over another one he got into because when he went to the prospective students day for that one, it turned out that the entire entering year was male (to be fair, this is incredibly rare in English and i still don't really understand how it happened). not only that, but one of the entering students commented on how GLAD he was that there weren't going to be any women, because they could all feel more comfortable and stretch out intellectually or something.

i was honestly shocked that someone would say that and commented on this to another (white, male) friend in my graduate program, in sort of a "can you believe this?" tone. and he responded, "well, i think everyone prefers to be in a learning environment where everyone is like them." because i had never had that option at any period in my education (where "like" is defined as same-gender or same-race, and in particular, the latter doesn't exist except in the form of Islamic schools with lots of Indo-Pak students, as far as i know), i was offended. but i think maybe he was just right in a way that depresses me, and, especially at the higher levels of education there's a de facto white maleness to who "everyone" is perceived to be.

one thing white men need more of is comfort

so another interesting point is the "training wheels" / "saturday at the library" argument

from 2004 to 2007 i worked in an afterschool program for students who were either a) below a certain socioeconomic line and had no family history of post-secondary education or b) black, hispanic, native american or pacific islander and had no family history of post-secondary education.

our thinking was that these kids would need special support to transition successfully into the culture of college or university, because no-one in their family had ever been. so we gave them about ~20/wk afterschool tutoring and one saturday per month of extra classes, plus a one-month summer course. and we did intense pre-college counseling too.

so why did *these* kids need training wheels? couldn't they have bootstrapped themselves into college? was this okay? were we stigmatizing these kids? what is different about the "africentric schools" idea?

^^ these are honest questions

Basically if you have two college-educated parents you already have massive training wheels.

no kidding!!!

Don't have time to fully reengage with this discussion, but I do want to say that there's a significant difference between supplementation and having an entirely separate program. I mean, to sketch it out in caricature, I can imagine a Cosby-esque figure basically saying that the former signifies "if you work hard and let us help with you, you can hang with anybody", whereas the latter has a troubling whiff of separate-but-equal at best. I don't agree with this argument, but it might play out this way in the real world -- to be blunt, there might be a stigma. I think that's a big part of what worries many people, and we can all say "Well, who gives a fuck about anyone who would think that", but that righteous sentiment doesn't really amount to much when someone's applying for a job.

cosby-esque!!

:-D

out of curiosity, how big is the proposed school going to be? 2,000 kids? less? there are 87k high school students in toronto--assuming that black students make up the same portion of the student population that black citizens do in toronto as a whole (~8%) there are around 7k afro-canadian high school students in toronto. just so were clear, this proposal isnt about taking all the black students and putting them in a different school (setting aside right now the point that students of all backgrounds will be attending).

toronto is 8.4% black - less than seattle.

Not true. According to 2006 census data, Seattle is 8.2% black. You also have to take into account that Toronto is nearly five times the size of Seattle, thus having a much larger total black population.

side question, but as per max, if success is the bottom line, shouldn't people be supporting vouchers more, or does seperation of church & state trump that?(in the u.s.)

something serious that's been bugging me about this thread.

one thing that always rears its head in discussions of systematic inequity among groups of students is the issue of "value". it's usually suggested that certain groups of parents and/or students simply value education more. they somehow understand the value and importance of education, and somehow manage to pass that on to their children. other groups of parents either don't believe in education, or somehow don't pass that value on to their children. and this explains why certain groups succeed and other groups fail.

i don't remember where, but somewhere in this thread the idea came up ... we just need to impress the *value* of education on these canadians.

the problem with this idea is that there's simply *no* evidence to suggest that this is true. there is study after study showing that people who succeed don't rate the value of education any higher than people who don't. on paper, anyway, everyone *says* they value education. and everyone makes more or less the same sacrifices for their kids, puts in the same amount of time checking up, etc. the differences that exist are too diffuse to really explain anything.

what IS striking is that there are two factors that are hugely important in determining success (at least on a by-class basis, because that's really what i know much more about, why some people do well in math & science and others don't)

the first is the perceived difficulty and value of a subject. in asia and india, students don't think of science or math as especially hard. students in the highest performing country in the world (singapore) think that science is easier than business or law. in america, we have the opposite point of view. the intellectual hierarchy starts w/ einstein, and works its way down to doctors, then to lawyers and MBAs, and then down to the rest of us proles. so this is an interesting reversal: students who do well in math & science tend to be those whom americans would consider to be the "least" motivated. they don't consider math & science to be especially difficult or somehow different from other subjects.

the second is the method by which improvement happens, or doesn't. students who are successful in math & science tend to be those students who think that improvement happens gradually, and that if you work at the subject, you will improve. the students who tend not to succeed are the students who think that you're either good at math and science or you're not. if you get to the class, and you're "bad at it", no amount of work can get you to the level of the students who are "good at it" by nature.

so anyway, here's two big ideas that are very, very prevalent in american society and which tend to be even more prevalent in under-performing groups.

we just need to impress the *value* of education on these canadians.

wtf? "Canadian" is the new N-word?

just kidding, V. Very good points.

I have nothing interesting to say about this article at this moment, but I'm posting it in this thread because I want all the cans of worms here to get re-opened.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/education/23gap.html?_r=1&nl=pol&emc=pola1

The study has not yet undergone peer review
"It’s a very small sample"