We've Come Too Far To Go Back Now!

As many of you have probably heard, the Toronto District School Board is moving towards opening an Africentric high school. This school would teach an Africentric curriculum which would be taught by black teachers. The official voting will take place on January 30th, 2008 and if passed, the school will most likely open in September of this year. After all of the progress that has been made in the past 50 years, we cannot sit back and watch Toronto take a huge jump back into a world of separation. We feel that this issue needs to be addressed. Together, we can make a difference and make our voices heard.

Of course, those who are proposing this school be opened have their reasons and its important to address both the positives and negatives of such a school being opened. The basis for this proposal is that not enough black students are graduating high school, and the board feels that providing a separate school for black students will allow more of them to graduate. The reason they feel that this school is not exactly segregating students is because “anyone who wishes may apply”. The school would be publicly funded and open to all students, but would teach an Africentric curriculum.
Although we understand the high number of students from the Caribbean and Africa do not graduate, there are better alternatives to solving this issue. These students do not need an entire curriculum geared towards them, but rather a culturally proficient curriculum that allows all students to be educated together inclusively.
This school would be causing racial separation at the high school level, which is a vital stage in an individual’s life that often shapes their views as adults. By separating students, they are being closed off from people of other races whom they still live next door to and also will have to associate with in their post-secondary destinations and of course, in the working world. This first step is creating a black high school. What’s next? An elementary school, a middle school, and then even a black college? These students are not going to be able to be separated forever.
In addition, if it is felt that these students would excel in a school surrounded by just black students, that is the part that needs to be changed. In a city the prides itself on being multicultural, students should be educated to know that a multicultural society is a very positive thing, and should not be considered a set back for them.
This potential school might be helpful to the few hundred black students that enroll, but provides no help to black students in other parts of Ontario. What is does is set an example that cultural separation is beneficial.
Models such as this have already been attempted and have not been successful. A separated model was attempted recently in the States, and although things seemed fine for the first four months, the violence associated with the schools was out of control. The number of students that graduated that year was no higher than in previous years.
Moreover, there is currently an elementary and high school open in Ontario for First Nations students. This is also not doing any good, and this can be seen with the fact that all of this school’s third grade students just failed the EQAO examinations.
It is difficult to see what positives this school would bring. Just fifty years after the Little Rock Nine changed segregated schooling in the Southern United States, Toronto it taking a huge leap back after all of the progress that has been made. This issue is not about this one school, but about racial separation that has no place in our high school. Toronto is a city that prides itself on being multicultural, and it needs to remain that way.
Please sign this petition that will be sent to the Toronto District School Board to let them know that we do not support this proposal and do not wish to have an Africentric High School.