| It's Time to Read the Guestbook | Make Your Opinions Count:Sign the Guestbook |
 |
By CHARLES QUIST-ADADE,
11 March 1997,
Windsor, Canada
Gemini News Service
Pressure is growing from African Canadians for the teaching of black
history in schools.
Groups of black parents, teachers and historians say Eurocentric versions
of history have neglected the contributions of minority groups, including
the country's indigenous people and Chinese Canadians.
The struggle to include black history in school curricula has scored small
recent advances. But advocates say the battle is far from over, and fear
that even their modest gains could be undermined by a combination of
conservative resistance and public spending cuts.
Young black Canadians are losing out, says bookshop owner Daphne Clarke,
because "they have no heroes and heroines to look up to and identify
with." She points out: "Blacks have contributed in making Canada what it
is today, so why isn't black history taught in the public school system?
The usual response to this question is that black history books are hard
to get."
To counter this excuse, Clarke, of Jamaican background, has opened a
bookshop in Windsor, Ontario, called Montego Alkebulanian Enterprise,
named after Montego Bay in Jamaica and Alkebulanian, a name some
historians give to prehistoric Africa.
In what she calls a "black awareness bookstore and gallery", Clarke sells
a moderate selection of black history, sociology and children's books and
hard-to-find works by black authors.
Books by local black authors on sale include the novel Long Road by
Charlotte Brown, whose husband, Dr Walter Perry, founded the annual
Emancipation Day in Windsor in 1936 to celebrate the freedom of African
slaves who settled in Canada.
"There is no longer any excuse as to why black history is not taught in
the public schools," says Clarke.
She is part of a movement for change that embraces groups such as the
Black Educators' Working Group, the Organization of Parents of Black
Children, the Canadian Alliance of Black Educators and the Ontario Black
History Society.
Their pressure has achieved some results. Educators have started offering
courses in black history and literature, and publishers are producing a
new crop of books.
In Ontario, a provincial royal commission recommended syllabus changes,
and province policy requires textbook publishers to eliminate racial and
sexual bias.
Several school boards in the Toronto area and three in the province of
Nova Scotia now offer high-school courses in black history and literature.
Most current textbooks, however, contain little in the way of black
history, perhaps including a paragraph or two about the "Underground
Railroad", a system that helped slaves escape from the United States to
Canada.
Fleeing slaves and black Loyalists - who fought for the British in the
American War of Independence - founded black communities in Nova Scotia
and around the Niagara area of Ontario in the 18th century.
The 1991 census put Canada's black population at 225,000, but more recent
statistics suggest a figure closer to half a million.
Prominent black Canadians have included Lincoln Alexander, the first black
federal MP and cabinet minister; a Chief Justice, Julius Isaac; and writer
and journalist Mary Ann Shadd.
Last year, the Government recognised Black History Month, 70 years after
it was initiated in the United States. This annual season of events,
beginning in mid-February, includes symposiums, workshops and film shows.
But those pressing for change say much more needs to be done, pointing out
that even the few black-history courses now on offer tend to give students
a fragmented view of their place in Canadian society.
"We need a more inclusive, more holistic picture of our heritage, and not
a hotch-potch curriculum that treats black history as an extension of
European civilisation," says Nigel Joseph, a fourth-year philosophy
student at the University of Windsor.
Existing accounts, says Joseph, a member of the University's Black
Students' Alliance, make it seem "that we would not have had a history as
a people without some form of intervention by Europeans."
Resistance to change comes in many forms, says Dr George Dei, a lecturer
at the Ontario Institute of Studies and Learning and a leading member of
the Canadian Alliance of Black Educators. In response to requests for the
hiring of more minority teachers, "you hear those opposed to the idea say,
'We need a good teacher - his or her ethnic background is secondary.' "
Others argue that they are against the fragmentation of the curriculum,
adds Dei.
Pundits tend to parrot US conservatives on issues such as Afrocentric
scholarship, dismissing it as "feelgood" history. A recent article in
Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper was critical of the "conspiratorial
theorising" of Afrocentrism.
Another threat stems from the slash-and-burn economic policies currently in
vogue, with federal and provincial spending cuts leaving little or no money
for multicultural educational programmes.
The guestbook facilitates discussions on racism and what it is from the perspectives of those who study it, experience it, or challenge it. You are encouraged to either post or read comments from users that are related to racism and the many forms it takes. Offensive content violate the letter and spirit of this website and will be promptly removed and reported. ONHR does not endorse the commercial advertisements that come with the chat, guestbook and counter.
| It's Time to Read the Guestbook | Make Your Opinions Count:Sign the Guestbook |
|
