Compounding Failure

There, they've done it. The Toronto District School Board has proceeded with its intended solution to an almost universally vexatious problem; the failure of a large proportion of children of black heritage to succeed at school. The wholesale drop-out rate of black children from Toronto secondary schools is a problem reflected in the United States as well, it's not an exclusive Canadian concern.

Nothing seems to bind black youngsters to the idea that achieving a sound education equates with future success as responsible, well-educated, well-functioning and meaningfully, well-remunerated, employed members of society. Where many cultural and ethnic groups strenuously encourage their children to achieve academic success as a means of assuring a well-adjusted future, the idea appears alien to the broader black community.

A community which, like any other, has its hierarchy of achievers, its socially-pedigreed, those whose successes garner them acclaim across colour barriers. Unfortunately, it is also heavily weighted at the other end with those to whom success in life can be achieved through illegal means, those whose use of drugs, and sale of illegal substances garner them the wherewithal to acquire wealth. Sandwiched between the larger proportion that coasts along, querulously dependent.

A community, at the bottom-end, whose values don't reflect those of the larger society. For whom single-parent families are the norm, and subsidized housing and regular welfare cheques help raise their children. Where endemic poverty too becomes the norm and teen-age pregnancy is viewed as not only inevitable, but a badge of social honour among the young.

So the well-meaning folk who run the school board, eager to please that portion of the disgruntled black community who, instead of attempting to view the situation with a reasonable view on where lies self-responsibility and answers to social and familial failures, fall back on the more time-honoured blaming of white society; gearing success toward whites, failing black aspirations.

Succumbing to the demands that the education system "fix" the default error, the Afrocentric school with its Afrocentric curriculum is born. Nowhere in this scenario of plausible success is there a presence of the community, the family. Young people must be taught to value education, to see failure in choosing to drop out. That comes from within, not from without.

This deep and abiding valuation of education's primary role in ensuring young people grow into schooled adults has long been missing from the greater black community's quiver of targeting valued pursuits to complement a life well lived. Simply put, not only have black children not been invested with a understanding of the importance of acquiring a good education, but they have also been led astray by living exposure to values their parents' choices submit them to.

The migration of young black, undirected youth to street gangs, criminal activities, drug use is a cultural, social problem, best solved by parents willing, able and eager to demonstrate to their children the values of their own choices in life styles. Children emulate the choices of their parents; children of educated parents seek education for themselves.

Parents who invest no time and energy in the well-being of their children need not be surprised when their children's lives closely resemble their own; aimless and socially bankrupt.

Parents have an obligation to take responsibility for the social-educational trajectory of their young. Instead of pleading default and insisting that society does not understand the underlying needs of their children. Core subjects should be taught from a Canadian, not a divisively black perspective.

We're teaching children that they're different, because of their colour, and expectations have been lowered for them, because they are black. That, because of the colour of their skin, they are deleteriously "special".

They need reminders that they came from elsewhere, and will receive an education delicately pointing out to them the heritage, traditions and values inherent in another country's social system, while they have long ago left that country of origin. It is encouragement to adapt to the prevailing social values of the country they have adopted, which is required.

Young people need to be encouraged to feel included. Held up to the same expectations as any other children. Not excluded, by virtue of colour and culture. Expectations run both ways. A social studies programme can be written into any universal curriculum that might focus on cultural backgrounds of any number of ethnic groups, all of whom are amply represented in the current population base of Canada.

There hasn't been a total consensus from within Toronto's black community that Afrocentrism in education will create a winning formula for combatting the black youth drop-out rate, nor for confronting and possibly alleviating the scourge of black gangs in Toronto. Among others, the mother of 15-year-old Jordan Manners who was shot to death last May is adamant that this separation sends the wrong message, and will be ineffective.

If the current and prevailing attitude in the black community with respect to education has failed their young, how will a curriculum that reinforces their separate-ness, their difference, the colour of their skin, the cultural malaise that has trapped them, be of any help in lifting them out of the syndrome of failure and drop-out?

The thought that submitting black children to an aura of comfort, in reinforcing their difference, in origin, culture, skin colour? A re-affirmation of the circumstances of their origins and their continued odd-man-out in the larger community? To encourage a heightening of their sense of self-esteem? Black power, pioneered in the United States seems to have effectively gifted young blacks with a sense of time, place and self-respect.

Studies out of the U.S. appear to demonstrate that black students perceive themselves in a higher positive light than their more educationally successful white counterparts. The solution lies elsewhere than dividing Canadian children from normal and natural interactions, and submitting black children to a tailored curriculum that will only serve to drive a further wedge between them and the surrounding culture.

If reinforcement is needed to persuade young blacks that achievement in education will assist them in their working and social lives in the future, they must be taught to value that achievement in the very same way that other children do, on its own merits. It is the overall social malaise - not restricted to black households - of unstable or broken marriages and homes, poverty and the comfort to be had from gang association that must be confronted.

The values of positive self-regard and independence are universal, they are not social attributes envisioned by a handful of ethnic, cultural groups to the exclusion of others. And if those values are foreign to any particular group, that group must seek to inculcate those values into the social skill sets of their young by demonstrating those values themselves, through their own lifestyles.

The education system, like all important and achievable elements in life, helps those that seek to help themselves.