And I'm unimpressed

[lordshipmayhem]

When I first heard of the proposal, I thought it was the most breathtakingly racist one I'd seen from the Toronto District School Board: re-introduce segregated black schools. To try to put a politically correct spin on the idea, they're calling it "Black focused schooling". Ranks right up there with Alabama's "Separate but Equal" schooling of the first half of the 20th century.

This is what Martin Luther King Jr. fought against. This is what the Ku Klux Klan fought to maintain.

Tonight, it got narrowly accepted by a school board full of left-wing wingnuts.

Now, I understand what they're trying to accomplish, and the intentions are good (perfect paving material for the Road to Hell): in Toronto, if you're black and a teenager, you have a 40% chance of dropping out before finishing high school. These schools are supposed to fight this.

The students who go to these schools will likely have a similar rate of success as schools in the wealthy parts of Toronto - not because of the quality of the teachers or because the curriculum is "black-oriented", but because the parents who send their students are deeply committed to providing their kids with the best chance of success. In other words, the student population will be weighted towards those most likely to graduate, regardless of curriculum orientation. I suspect the impact on the overall graduation rate of Toronto's Black community will be minimal. The other kids, the ones raised by parents raised by parents in the welfare system, will continue to drop out at depressingly high rates.

(By the way, what is "Black-oriented" physics? Trigonometry? Astronomy? Chemistry? Calculus? Economics?)

Comments

[strayfish.livejournal.com]

What the fuck. Seriously.

Why don't they just dedicate schools for kids who are less likely to graduate, no matter the race? Why black specifically? This makes no sense to me.

[yumelady.livejournal.com]

Hey, I like your idea. And they are also calling it an Africentric school...um, last time I checked not all black people associated their heritage with Africa. The cause is not colour. We've always known the likely hood of dropouts has more to do with parent involvement and over all environment rather than racial environment. Plus, if they can't survive in a mixed school, how on earth are they going to deal with the reality of our country, city? Which is very mixed. School is to prepare our young for real life...not shield them from it.