Integrating Young Canadians
How can it conceivably be thought of as empowering to a signal group of young people by treating them differently than other Canadian youth through an especially designed education system that deliberately devises a curriculum based on a history, traditions and a culture of a country other than that which they currently inhabit as citizens?
They might just as well be transported physically to their country of origin, there to be immersed in those exclusive subjects.
Living within Canada, as Canadian citizens and Canadian youth, it's logical that all children and youth be exposed to an identical educational system designed to ensure that they are all grounded similarly, all invested with a universal Canadian experience. The idea being, logically, to enable all youth to become and to be Canadian to their very core.
It hardly matters where they've been born, in a country other than Canada. The fact that they have migrated to Canada to become citizens, to take advantage of what this country has to offer, mitigates against setting and keeping them apart. It is Canadian history that should be taught to new Canadians; Canadian values and traditions that should be the template for their futures.
Yet here is the Toronto School board, seriously considering introducing a black-focused education for the proposed enablement of children born in Africa or the Caribbean - or offspring of that parentage - to enthuse them about their backgrounds, as a means of encouraging them to remain within the school system and complete their education experience.
These Afrocentric schools are being viewed as viable proposals in an effort to retain black kids' interest in schooling.
Educational apartheid. Rather than drawing children from all immigrant-experiences together, pulling them apart. It's a divisive gambit. As though Canada hasn't problems enough with its oppositional French-English divide, and its Aboriginal-general population divisiveness. We've made what we feel to be reasonable accommodation for the truly special needs of our second-language-legislated entity, and for our First Nations children's needs.
Why embark on yet another project whereby the education system will churn out children in whose heads will have been ingrained their separateness, rather than encouraging them to feel welcome and equal within the larger community of children? That children of black parentage fail to value education may be a symptom of parental neglect in encouraging their children to value education.
To offer children who prefer to drop out of high school rather than make the effort to receive a needed education, an alternative that may encourage them to think of themselves as set apart, different, unequal in some respect, seems a regressive step, a guarantee of diminished returns. The place for affirmation of one's roots and black-centric studies should be in an after-hours parochial, single-community-based classroom.
For those who claim that this move is really about choice, not race, it would seem rather pointedly about race to those looking on from the outside.
They might just as well be transported physically to their country of origin, there to be immersed in those exclusive subjects.
Living within Canada, as Canadian citizens and Canadian youth, it's logical that all children and youth be exposed to an identical educational system designed to ensure that they are all grounded similarly, all invested with a universal Canadian experience. The idea being, logically, to enable all youth to become and to be Canadian to their very core.
It hardly matters where they've been born, in a country other than Canada. The fact that they have migrated to Canada to become citizens, to take advantage of what this country has to offer, mitigates against setting and keeping them apart. It is Canadian history that should be taught to new Canadians; Canadian values and traditions that should be the template for their futures.
Yet here is the Toronto School board, seriously considering introducing a black-focused education for the proposed enablement of children born in Africa or the Caribbean - or offspring of that parentage - to enthuse them about their backgrounds, as a means of encouraging them to remain within the school system and complete their education experience.
These Afrocentric schools are being viewed as viable proposals in an effort to retain black kids' interest in schooling.
Educational apartheid. Rather than drawing children from all immigrant-experiences together, pulling them apart. It's a divisive gambit. As though Canada hasn't problems enough with its oppositional French-English divide, and its Aboriginal-general population divisiveness. We've made what we feel to be reasonable accommodation for the truly special needs of our second-language-legislated entity, and for our First Nations children's needs.
Why embark on yet another project whereby the education system will churn out children in whose heads will have been ingrained their separateness, rather than encouraging them to feel welcome and equal within the larger community of children? That children of black parentage fail to value education may be a symptom of parental neglect in encouraging their children to value education.
To offer children who prefer to drop out of high school rather than make the effort to receive a needed education, an alternative that may encourage them to think of themselves as set apart, different, unequal in some respect, seems a regressive step, a guarantee of diminished returns. The place for affirmation of one's roots and black-centric studies should be in an after-hours parochial, single-community-based classroom.
For those who claim that this move is really about choice, not race, it would seem rather pointedly about race to those looking on from the outside.
Labels: Environment, Society, Values
posted by Pieface | 6:29 PM
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