by Grace-Edward Galabuzi
On January 29 2008, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB)
passed a four-part motion aimed at setting up an Africentric Alternative
School in the public education system in Toronto. It was narrowly approved,
under a 43 year old policy on alternative schools, promoting choice in
curriculum and pedagogy, which has yielded 36 alternative focus schools
including an Aboriginal school and the Triangle program aimed at creating a
safe, supportive and non-homophobic learning environment for Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans students. The TDSB motion also called for a
three-year pilot to model integrating the histories, cultures, experiences and
contributions of African descendant peoples in schools; a staff development,
research and innovation centre in collaboration with post secondary
institutions and a report to the Board on action to address student under-
achievement.
Since this motion has been passed, there has been widespread
negative commentary and in some cases gnashing of teeth about the
decision, even from really powerful quarters such as the Ontario Premier’s
Office and his Minister of Education. The Premier went so far as to call for a
citizen’s revolt against the
TDSB – a kind of rare official advocacy for mob
justice against a project to undertaken partly to address historical
disadvantages faced by a minority group in modern Canadian society. Many
in the broader community have also weighted in, including editorials from
the major newspapers, and pundits – covering the entire ideological
spectrum, most disapproving of the decision. It is not unusual for the Black
community to feel under siege and misunderstood. But the nearly total
disregard of the challenges of under-achievement and high school drop out
many black students face that made the decision imperative raised questions
about what was motivating the public pontification that has ensured – and
really stung the community.
There remains widespread confusion about this initiative. It is
important to say that this is not a Black only school or even a Black school,
but a school with an Africentric curriculum focus. It will be attended by
anyone who wants to attend such a school and qualifies based on transparent, non-discriminatory criteria – not unlike all other alternative
schools. It will have teachers of all ethnic backgrounds as long as they have
competence in delivering an Africentric curriculum – and these are many in
Toronto. It aims to ensure that African Canadian youth get a good education,
in a controlled learning environment. There is the clear understanding that
the overwhelming majority of black youth will not attend this school and the
pressure needs to be put on the Ontario Ministry of Education to address
their needs, and also on the
TDSB to aggressively implement its equity
policy and programs which acknowledge that equality does not obtain
simply in requiring the same treatment for students of varied learning styles,
especially when the dominant curriculum and instructional approaches de-
emphasize student’s connections with their cultural and historical
experiences. In education, one size does not fit all – period.
We have known for some time now that a curriculum that assumes
sameness or colourblindness does not necessarily lead to equality. There is a
widely accepted human rights principle that Equal treatment does not mean
same treatment. The need to acknowledge differences as a basis for ensuring
equitable outcomes is anticipated and enshrined in the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedom, Sec 15 (2) and in the Ontario Human Rights Code Sec
14 (1). Implementing an Africentric Alternative school certainly does not
constitute an act of segregation as we have heard so loosely claimed lately. It
is a remedy for effective exclusion from education by the conditions that
obtain in the system today. What it implies is the need to substantiate the
mission of the school system as articulated in the Education Act, to provide
an education to
ALL students. Unlike the common assumptions that are
prevalent in the education system, the project is built on the assertion that all
students can learn although they may require different environments to be
successful. It simply rejects the illusion of inclusion that so many find
comforting from the sidelines of the victimization the African Canadian
youth face, in favour of a theory of social justice that promotes equity in
educational experience and outcome. There is a rich body of literature in the
United States and Canada on this approach to education.
The Africentric Alternative School is but one small, yet important step
in meeting the obligation to ensure equitable education for all. It provides a
long overdue choice but needs to be supplemented with many more efforts
to build an environment for equitable education for all in the school system.
Its objective is not to separate the children, as so often argued, but to
effectively and substantively integrate them by providing them an education that approximates that of dominant society students in its quality – a learning
environment that affirms their social, cultural, and historical realities.
A comprehensive African Curriculum learning system would
endeavour to achieve the following:
- Assist students in developing the necessary intellectual, moral and
emotional skills for accomplishing a productive, affirming life in
society
- Provide educational instruction that analyses and deconstructs the
hegemonic nature of Eurocentric order, making the European
experience universal and marginalizes the African experience
- Provides students of African descent educational instruction that uses
pedagogical approaches that utilize the learning styles of the students,
ones that are also consistent with their historical, cultural, socio-
economic experiences
- Strengthen the ability of students to build a positive self-concept,
provoke engagement and excitement about learning, and enthusiasm
for collective action
- Serve as a model for transformation and social action1
Part of a wider struggle
The issue of a culturally and historically relevant educational
experience and the use of varied pedagogical approaches and instructional
methodologies for cultural minority children is not new or limited to the
Canadian contemporary experience. In the 1920s in the United States of
America, Dr. Carter G. Woodson began an experiment aimed at
reintroducing African-America children to their history. Dr. Woodson
introduced what he called the Negro History Week – as an opportunity to
explore the history of African peoples in the semi-captivity in which they
existed under a Jim Crow regime that institutionally mimicked slavery.
What motivated Carter G. Woodson was not just that the American
education system largely ignored the role of Africans in American and world
history, but that the missing pages – some say chapters – suggested a near
total irrelevance of Africans to the human experience. He argued that contrary to the impression suggested by Eurocentric curriculum, Blacks
were not be marginal to the world experience and that young Blacks needed
to know their past in order to participate intelligently in the affairs of their
countries and the world. He also argued that others needed to be literate
about the role of Africans in history.
As an advocate for equal citizenship, Dr. Woodson argued that the
inadequacy of the Eurocentric curriculum to the education of African
students should not go unchallenged. The promotion of social justice, he
argued, and the introduction of a world view that valued and, in fact, centred
the African experience – through teaching Black history which others have
tried so diligently to minimize or erase – held the key to first class
participation in world events. Every effort had to be made to provide Black
students with an understanding of their history and how it explains their
current conditions and, if necessary, the basis for emancipation. History, he
suggested, should be seen as a dynamic and transformative phenomenon,
one that the people who live it make and not just an account of events
handed down by the powerful.
There are parallels to the emergence of the Africentric Alternative
School in Toronto and the powerful opponents it has attracted. Not unlike
Negro History Week, there were many powerful opponents of the idea, both
among friends and foes of the Black community. The arguments were
similar – some dismissive of the endeavour while others fretted that it would
mean the end of pluralism as we know it. Neither of these positions were
warranted or justifiable because most were rooted in ideological posturing,
moral panic and social anxieties about the indictment of the dominant
society and its self-serving preoccupations that did not allow it to consider
the socio-psychological crisis faced by Blacks as worthy of their attention.
Many educators and activists, who have long challenged the
marginalization of people of African descent in the school system and have
to deal with the implications of disproportionate high levels of
disengagement and non-performance among African-Canadian youth, not
only celebrated the decision to set up an Africentric Alternative school in the
Toronto District School Board but also look forward to the day when Afri-
centric education is a normal integral part of an inclusive common
curriculum. It is not one or the other – it is both. The school is an important
first step in that regard because it provides parents with an important and
long overdue choice. It is a tremendous victory partly because it is in contrary to the impression suggested by Eurocentric curriculum, Blacks
were not be marginal to the world experience and that young Blacks needed
to know their past in order to participate intelligently in the affairs of their
countries and the world. He also argued that others needed to be literate
about the role of Africans in history.
As an advocate for equal citizenship, Dr. Woodson argued that the
inadequacy of the Eurocentric curriculum to the education of African
students should not go unchallenged. The promotion of social justice, he
argued, and the introduction of a world view that valued and, in fact, centred
the African experience – through teaching Black history which others have
tried so diligently to minimize or erase – held the key to first class
participation in world events. Every effort had to be made to provide Black
students with an understanding of their history and how it explains their
current conditions and, if necessary, the basis for emancipation. History, he
suggested, should be seen as a dynamic and transformative phenomenon,
one that the people who live it make and not just an account of events
handed down by the powerful.
There are parallels to the emergence of the Africentric Alternative
School in Toronto and the powerful opponents it has attracted. Not unlike
Negro History Week, there were many powerful opponents of the idea, both
among friends and foes of the Black community. The arguments were
similar – some dismissive of the endeavour while others fretted that it would
mean the end of pluralism as we know it. Neither of these positions were
warranted or justifiable because most were rooted in ideological posturing,
moral panic and social anxieties about the indictment of the dominant
society and its self-serving preoccupations that did not allow it to consider
the socio-psychological crisis faced by Blacks as worthy of their attention.
Many educators and activists, who have long challenged the
marginalization of people of African descent in the school system and have
to deal with the implications of disproportionate high levels of
disengagement and non-performance among African-Canadian youth, not
only celebrated the decision to set up an Africentric Alternative school in the
Toronto District School Board but also look forward to the day when Afri-
centric education is a normal integral part of an inclusive common
curriculum. It is not one or the other – it is both. The school is an important
first step in that regard because it provides parents with an important and
long overdue choice. It is a tremendous victory partly because it is in contrary to the impression suggested by Eurocentric curriculum, Blacks
were not be marginal to the world experience and that young Blacks needed
to know their past in order to participate intelligently in the affairs of their
countries and the world. He also argued that others needed to be literate
about the role of Africans in history.
As an advocate for equal citizenship, Dr. Woodson argued that the
inadequacy of the Eurocentric curriculum to the education of African
students should not go unchallenged. The promotion of social justice, he
argued, and the introduction of a world view that valued and, in fact, centred
the African experience – through teaching Black history which others have
tried so diligently to minimize or erase – held the key to first class
participation in world events. Every effort had to be made to provide Black
students with an understanding of their history and how it explains their
current conditions and, if necessary, the basis for emancipation. History, he
suggested, should be seen as a dynamic and transformative phenomenon,
one that the people who live it make and not just an account of events
handed down by the powerful.
There are parallels to the emergence of the Africentric Alternative
School in Toronto and the powerful opponents it has attracted. Not unlike
Negro History Week, there were many powerful opponents of the idea, both
among friends and foes of the Black community. The arguments were
similar – some dismissive of the endeavour while others fretted that it would
mean the end of pluralism as we know it. Neither of these positions were
warranted or justifiable because most were rooted in ideological posturing,
moral panic and social anxieties about the indictment of the dominant
society and its self-serving preoccupations that did not allow it to consider
the socio-psychological crisis faced by Blacks as worthy of their attention.
Many educators and activists, who have long challenged the
marginalization of people of African descent in the school system and have
to deal with the implications of disproportionate high levels of
disengagement and non-performance among African-Canadian youth, not
only celebrated the decision to set up an Africentric Alternative school in the
Toronto District School Board but also look forward to the day when Afri-
centric education is a normal integral part of an inclusive common
curriculum. It is not one or the other – it is both. The school is an important
first step in that regard because it provides parents with an important and
long overdue choice. It is a tremendous victory partly because it is in response to long-standing demands by African Canadian and other racialized
parents for a model of education that provides diverse curriculum offerings
and employs diverse pedagogical approaches that affirm, as opposed to
devaluing, the social, cultural, historical experiences of youth and validate
their heritage.
An education system that teaches young people to accept subordination
and reinforces alienation not only challenges their heritage, their social class
and their humanity, but it also short changes them in the competition for
opportunity and undermines their ability to participate fully and
independently in the democratic process and in society.
Mis-education’s outcomes
The material outcomes of this mis-education are clear. In Toronto,
there is a 42% drop out rate among high school black students,
approximately 50% among black males. There are even higher
disengagement rates – although some remain in school. The lack of
engagement and motivation not only leads to an achievement gap with their
cohort, but is a manifestation of marginalization and alienation in the school
system. These phenomena are connected to the low expectations teachers of
these youth (often using the social deficits rationale), high levels of
suspension and expulsion (especially under the punitive Safe Schools Act
regime introduced in the late 1990s in Ontario), the disproportionate rates of
criminalization of all sorts of anti-social behaviour in and out of school,
exploding incarceration rates, and fatal violence. All of these phenomena
point to a crisis in Black Canada.
Young blacks are four times (10.1 per 100,000) as likely to be victims
of gun related homicides than other members of the population (2.4 per
100,000). Black youth unemployment stood at 21% in 2001 compared to
7% for the rest of the population (only approximated by the unemployment
rates of Aboriginal youth at 22%). In fact, a McGill study of the Black
community in Canada revealed that, in 1996, Black university graduates had
the same rate of unemployment as high school graduates from the
mainstream population. Employment: African Canadian youth earn as much
42.3% less in average after tax income and 38.7% less in median after tax
income than other Canadians.
Zero tolerance policies codified under the Safe Schools Act, not only suggest that Black youth are targeted by administrators, teachers and even
their peers as a disruptive presence in the education system, they also justify
a conception of ‘creating a safe learning environment’ through resort to law
and order in resolving conflicts in schools and heightened levels of
surveillance. The result is the creation of unhealthy and alienating conditions
for learning, which undermines student success and raises the drop out rate.
They fail to banish or diminish incidents of anti-social behavior or violence
as the Falconer Report clearly showed.
Young Black men, particularly, experience social marginalization in
schools, recreation centres, malls and in the criminal justice system. It has
led them to take positions of defiance and resistance — including aloofness,
showing attitude, and rejecting a school environment that does not affirm
them and seeks to trivialize their existence, their history, their cultural
relevance and the validity of their social class experience. Their parents and
advocates are routinely served with trespass orders when conflicts arise
between them and school administrators.
A Eurocentric, middle-class centred curriculum, that is dismissive of
the Black reality, Black history and Black culture and that is delivered by
teachers whose competence is limited to Eurocentric education and whose
world view disregards the humanity of ‘the other’ has no chance of drawing
the best out of Black youth. While many succeed despite these realities,
they are succeeding against long odds and they do not necessarily achieve to
their potential. As a parent of a teenager, I know this from experience.
Overall, Black children in school experience social and economic
vulnerability, powerlessness, voicelessness, a lack of recognition and sense
of belonging, limited options, diminished life chances, despair, opting out,
suicidal tendencies and increasingly community or neighbourhood violence.
Increasingly the government is exchanging the status of Black youth as
clients of the education system for clients of the criminal justice system.
The broader processes of marginalization that impose barriers to full
economic and social participation in Canadian society for African Canadians
through the intersecting structures of racism, sexism and social class all
contribute to the conditions that create a situation where young people
cannot be successfully engaged in our schools today. In turn, the resistance
or opting out of these young people from some social institutions is read by the police – as, indeed, it is read by the broader society – as a sign of
criminality. The police response is then to act to contain these young people,
harass them or arrest them for resisting arrest or obstructing justice.
Building a culture of liberation
There is a deep and abiding antipathy about Blackness in Canadian
society that is often disguised as ‘patronizing goodwill’. It is coupled with a
failure to interrogate the socio-psychological pathologies of cultural and
sociological disadvantage that are responsible for the limits imposed on
public policy responses to the crises in African Canadian communities.
African culture is both blamed for the problems and also contained.
Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a
determinant of that history. It exerts a positive or negative influence on the
evolution of relationships between a people and their environment, relations
among peoples or groups of people within a society, as well as among
different societies. Those who would dismiss or erase a people’s culture –
those who would remove a people’s culture as a critical reference point for
learning – also destroy a people.
Various forms of domination operate by normalizing (and in some
cases naturalizing) the condition of oppression and denying the historical
and cultural development of the subordinate group. Racist domination, like
patriarchal, colonial, imperialist orders, requires, for its maintenance,
cultural oppression and seeks to, directly or indirectly, liquidate the essential
elements of the culture of the subordinate population – either through
assimilation or erasure. We have seen both mechanisms at work in Canada,
cultural genocide with Indigenous people and varied forms of cultural
assimilation for non-European communities that count many generations in
Canada. That is why, today, the talk in Quebec about the limits of tolerance
and the strange interpretation of the concept of reasonable accommodation
of ‘immigrants’ is frightening – especially within the context of a pluralist,
multicultural society.
A society that has historically been at war with segments of its people –
Aboriginal people remind us regularly that Canadian settler society is a
colonial society – often disregards or demonizes the memory and heroism of
the freedom fighters who defended the land or the people who resisted the
conquest. Not long ago, the Mau-Mau in Kenya, the African national Congress, the Black Consciousness Movement, the Black Panther party,
were held in the same regard as terrorists are held today – simply for
articulating, by various means, the grievances of their people.
Africentricity is an attempt to build a contending world view that puts
the experiences of people of African descent at the centre of world events –
not to remove them from world events as some have suggested – but to put
them at the centre of world events. It is an ideology of liberation – a means
by which we can articulate the struggle against the status quo of structural
racism in North American society and beyond. It involves critical pedagogy
– a pedagogy that seeks to interrogate the structural processes responsible
for the conditions we face. We need to provide tools to help young people
understand their condition in society and how to overcome it. Many of us
learned these truths and acquired the skill through participating in social
movements such as the anti-apartheid movement or struggles over police
brutality in this city.
By centring the educational experience around the experience of
African descendant populations, Afrocentricity seeks to acknowledge the
existence of another world view. This is one in which African Descendants
are not marginal to history or simply appendages of European history, but
are central actors, whose agency matters and is pivotal in the making of
history. It is not the history of the hunter who brags about his conquest, it is
the history of the lion and the tremendous tack and guise s/he uses to thwart
the hunter’s attempts to objectify the lion and bag it. It is a history of
resistance, rich with narratives of courage and overcoming and tremendous
achievements against long odd. It is a source of pride and inspiration. It is
that reality that should inform the environment within which African-
Canadian children should be taught, not the pathologies of the ‘wounded
victim and the walking death’. It is an empowering image and platform for
an emancipatory educational project – one that should cause the community
to coalesce around it as a transformative community institution and provide
extra parenting and social support for the youth. For it does indeed take a
village to teach our children.
In light of the above, many in the African Canadian community
welcomed the
TDSB decision to create an Africentric Alternative School as
an expression of the Board’s recognition of the need for a model of
education that recognizes varied approaches to learning, centres children’s
cultural and historical experiences in their learning and affirms the commitment to provide an education experience that engages and empowers
African Canadian students. This positive educational experience becomes a
building block for student success.
The African Canadian community has to work with the
TDSB on the
next steps to ensure that the community is well informed about the choices
that need to be made about implementation and that an appropriately
Africentric curriculum is developed for the school, the right choices are
made for its location, the right administrators and teachers are identified, the
school-community ties are developed and that adequate resources are
provided to ensure its success
But this is not the end of it. The African Canadian community needs
to continue its advocacy with other institutions and governments at the City
and provincial level, to ensure support for other efforts to address the related
challenges of economic, social and political disadvantage that our
communities face and to show the same courage and commitment as the
TDSB has done in this instance. In the final analysis, an essential part of the
experiment with the Africentric Alternative School – and it is an
experiement – is to focus on the emotional, social and psychological healing
of African Canadian youth. The first step to healing is finding someone who
will listen to you and truly hear your story. We owe them a demonstration
of our well-developed listening skills. We need to hear their grievances and
focus on their potential and positive assets, not their failings and their
‘deficits’.
1
Giddings, GJ “Infusion of Africentric Content into the School Curriculum: Towards
Effective Movement” in Journal of Black Studies Vol. 31, No. 4 March 2001 pp462-482