We Are In A War For Our Kids

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned everywhere is war...

Bob Marley sang the above in Zimbabwe in April 1980.

War!

It is painful to see the truth in the statement that we are at war in our society because of the philosophy which holds one race superior to all others. But I see that truth. As an educator I confront its effects – just as all Black parents do every day.

I am involved in this “war” as a parent, a member of the Black community, one of the few Black educators privileged enough to have gained a position within the educational system for the last 14 years and an advocate for the most disadvantaged in our school communities.

Recently, I sat in an audience and cried as members of our community celebrated the accomplishments of Black children, women and men and highlighted the many contributions we have made to Canadian society. Yet, we must remain aware, as the 1992 Stephen Lewis report pointed out, that it is still Black youth who are unemployed in excessive numbers; it is still Black students who are inappropriately streamed in schools; it is still Black kids who are disproportionately dropping-out or fading out from our school system.

We are at war and it is a war of inequity and social injustice — and many of us are forced to sit at the table with the oppressors everyday. We discuss the effects on our communities; on our children, women and men and we are still, many of us, naïve enough to believe that we can use ‘the masters tools to dismantle the masters house’.

As we moan and bemoan the effects of racism on our lives, the door is later closed behind us as the furniture is cleverly rearranged — in the house of inequality! The space is redefined so that, for example, within the school system, we now have the “graduated streaming model” as described in the Ministry of Education and Training’s “Building Capacity for Secondary School Reform” documents. Courses once labeled “advanced” are redefined as “ACADEMIC”. Courses labeled “general” are redefined as “APPLIED”. And we are told that this will prepare students in senior grades for their “future destinations”.

Parents will have to be aware of what this jargon means and how it affects the future ‘destination’ of their children. In reading their children’s report cards they will have to understand that the child who will be assessed and promoted as university bound i.e. ACADEMIC, will be the child working at the high level 3 to level 4 end of the rubric designed for this “new graduated streaming model” because she or he demonstrates, for example, considerable or thorough knowledge of format; insightful understanding of the assessment policy and of relationships and uses critical thinking skills with considerable or a high degree of effectiveness to analyze what is familiar and what is new. These children may (devastating encounters with racism notwithstanding) become our future leaders; our future Harry Jerome Award winners. The others, after demonstrating limited or some knowledge of format and relationships, after using critical thinking skills with limited or moderate effectiveness to analyze and interpret what

is familiar and what is new, can be assured of being streamed by the “new graduated streaming model” into an “APPLIED” level program that is designed to lead them into a college program and/or labour related job.

By Grade 10 most counsellors will be able to identify those students who will need to realign their goals with their abilities. Historical and sociological research show us that counsellors do this very effectively! In fact, many of our children will enter high school with files and reports that already identify them as level 1, level 2, level 3 or level 4 students. High school counsellors will continue as part of their ‘intake’ procedures, to consult with teachers and administrators from their ‘feeder’ schools in order to get a clear ‘profile’ of the student so that she or he can be effectively streamed upon entering high school.

Many Black families acknowledge the fact that structural — racial and cultural —inequality impacts greatly on our lives. In fact, I remember in the early years of my counselling career, approximately 1989, seeing a young man sitting at a desk in a typing class with his winter jacket on and his hands stuck in his pockets, as he made no attempt to do the assignment that the teacher had given. I remember asking the teacher why the young man was not participating in the class. To my utter shock and dismay she responded that he was so big and intimidating that she was not going to risk asking him. I remember, when I spoke with him, he showed me the size of his hands and told me that he had told the teacher his hands were too big for the typewriter keys and that the desk and chair he had been assigned were too small for him. He said the teacher told him there was nothing she could do about it and as a consequence, he had been allowed to ‘disengage’ from the classroom.

Today, the government proposes to allow similar teachers more power in choosing not to educate our children. If the Harris government succeeds, instead of schools being encouraged to find alternatives to suspension, as the former Toronto Board policies have attempted — albeit unsuccessfully — to do, irresponsible racist teachers, similar to the one above, who perceive their power as being threatened when in effect their power gives them the privilege to disempower a student in a life altering manner, will have the freedom to suspend children from classrooms (see Toronto Star, April 27, 2000).

As I write, I remember the young man evaluated by his Art teacher as having minimal talent and who consistently received approximately 55 per cent for his efforts in the subject. This student had a slight learning disability and it was under great parental and administrative pressure and with great resentment, that the teacher agreed to make accommodations for the student who nevertheless continued to be evaluated at approximately 55 per cent. His parents had paid for lessons at the Art Gallery of Ontario before he entered secondary school and continued to do so until his graduation in recognition of their son’s passion for the subject — notwithstanding his high school teacher’s low evaluation. Through my office in Guidance, I arranged for him to be evaluated by the Art Gallery. He received a grade of 89 per cent for work at the Grade 12 level and was described as having remarkable talent. His parents, with the help of the Co-op Education Department at the school, helped him find a job placement at a graphics firm. He later applied and was accepted to the University of Toronto, the Ontario College of Art and now will soon be entering his third year of York University’s Fine Art Program.

War!

I remember a young Black female student who ran a tutoring service for Black youth for the five years she was in high school. I had recommended her for the Toronto Sun’s “Women on the Move” award which she won. I remember sharing my pride with others in my department. I told them that at the luncheon there was a woman involved in fundraising at one of Toronto’s universities who was so impressed with the young woman who had an 85 per cent average, that she worked to create an “Opportunity Scholarship” for her to attend the university. I remember being told that my department head in guidance had called the university to question why the student had received the scholarship and had asked if it had been based on race. When I questioned her about this blatantly racist act, I remember being told that the reason for the call was the fact that the offer had been sent out earlier than the usual scholarship offers and that she saw this as unfair. I remember that with my continued support the young woman not only received the scholarship but also applied and won the Lincoln Alexander Award. After this next success I was told by the principal at that time to “counsel her not to be greedy”. I remember the young woman’s feelings of betrayal at the conflict her successes generated at various levels within the school. I remember, at commencement, asking to present the young woman with the cup that her peers had voted be given to her (again despite efforts to keep her name off the ballot) and then speaking of my pride at her successes and the fact that she represented the most disenfranchised within the school community. I remember my department head, who claimed to speak for several administrative and teaching staff, later telling me that it was considered that I had introduced my politics at an inappropriate time and had burnt my bridges at the school!

Ah, we who experience the constant attempts to silence and erase us and who refuse to be quiet and accept it.

War!

I remember the Black parent who recently called me to tell of her son — a Grade 8 student who upon returning early to school on the first day, wearing his gifts from his Christmas vacation, was asked in front of his classmates whether he had received a watch for Christmas. When the child, puzzled, answered that he didn’t, he was told that it was good that he’d been able to get his “Black ass out of bed on time for a change”. When his parent finally recovered from her shock and brought the matter to the attention of the principal he apologized and then shocked her some more by forwarding a letter of apology from the teacher where the teacher stated that he felt he had a good joking relationship with the boy and was sorry she and her son had interpreted his words as negative!

If the “new graduated streaming model”, new ‘Codes of Behaviour” and new ‘suspension rules’ do not destroy our children, the so-called ‘well-intentioned’ ‘liberal’ teacher will.

War!

In September 1998, I spoke with a man who had been a teacher at a detention center for the past 10 years who said when he began teaching there perhaps 20 per cent of his students were from Black families. He said that (at the time of my speaking with him) at least 70 per cent of his students were Black! The reason the government is putting more money into building prisons than school programs should be clear to us. We are at war!

If the Black community is to survive the holocaust that continues to destroy Black life in this society, its members and supporters will have to not only sit up and pay attention but take a stand. Audre Lorde in her book “Sister Outsider” wrote that as Black folk “we have learned to be at home with cruelty because we have survived so much of it within our lives”, and Maya Angelou in “Even the Stars Look Lonesome” wrote that “somehow and for some vague and inane reason, we have decided it is better to be exploited, misused, battered and bedraggled than to become disagreeable because we think that possibly that brute who is prepared to treat a victim in the most unkind way, will be coerced into being more kind if the victim is courteous.”

Sister Maya said she did not agree with this stance, and neither do I. As individuals we will have to be brave. We will have to be willing to say no to the bureaucratization of the mind to which we are exposed every day, and continue to do so even when it is so much materially advantageous to stop, because we are at war.

Courtesy of Share Newspaper

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