News

By RON FANFAIR
Share

The Toronto schools' zero tolerance Safe Schools Act is an incubator for the criminalization of Black youths, says the director of Ryerson University's School of Social Work.

"This is a policy that from its inception has been a grave matter of concern for parents, teachers, educators and community networks," Akua Benjamin told a standing-room-only audience at a lively community forum last week. "It's responsible for most Black youths ending up in the criminal justice system."

The Safe Schools Act, implemented by Ontario's former Progressive Conservative government in 2001, is a zero tolerance policy requiring expulsion for certain violent offences. Under the Act, teachers can suspend students for one school day and principals can suspend students for up to 20 days and recommend expulsions.

In other instances, school staff frequently summon the police to their schools for punitive action, prompting school trustee Stephnie Payne to remark that "we might as well open up a police precinct in some high schools in my ward."

Payne is the trustee for York West, which includes schools in the Jane-Finch area.

"The school has basically abdicated its responsibility and turned the issue of discipline into a criminal matter," said Benjamin, a founding member of the Coalition of Visible Minority Women.

"Black youths are not allowed to make a mistake under this policy. The school has a responsibility to step in with parents and social workers and find out where the child has gone wrong and what could be done to remedy the situation.

"…Many of the problems we see can be addressed not only by the state apparatus and policing our youth, but by having social and community workers engage youth and parents in addressing the problems."

Gary Pieters, vice-principal of an elementary school in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), was among a large number of people unable to gain entrance to the packed St. Lawrence Centre where event was held. He said school boards needs to look at ways of practicing effective discipline in order to eliminate the need for suspensions, expulsions and a police presence in their institutions.

"There is a need to teach our kids appropriate forms of behaviour and look at an effective curriculum that will meet their needs," he said. "When I went to school, the teachers were the authority figures and you had to do something very serious to be marched into the principal's office."

The event, under title "Making the Grade: Are We Failing Our Black Youth", was sponsored by the St. Lawrence Centre in conjunction with Chin Radio & TV.

Professor George Dei, who has done extensive teaching and research in the areas of anti-racism, agreed that the school system is failing Black youth and called for the creation of experimental Black-focused schools.

"When I talk about Black-focused schools, I am however referring to schools defined by a set of principles rather than who goes there and who teaches there," Dei, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), explained.

"Because they are intended to address the problem of Black youth disengagement, you would expect the majority of students and teachers to be Black. There are all-girls and faith-based schools out there, and nobody seems to have a problem with those.

"Why is it when we talk about schools with a Black focus, there always seem to be opposition? We need to look at alternatives for our youth."

Other panellists included Scarborough youth worker Kyse Stoddard, Yaw Obeng, a supervising principal with the TDSB and Jasmine Zine who along with Dei, Josaphine Mazzucca and Elizabeth McIsaac co-authored Restructuring Drop-Out: A Critical Ethnography of the Dynamics of Black Students.

"Being a high-school drop-out myself, I know first-hand the struggles that racialized and marginalized students face within the Eurocentric school system," said Zine.

There has been considerable debate on the issue of Black-focused schools in the past 15 years, and the Royal Commission on Learning's hearings and submissions 10 years ago provided yet another forum for discussion on the subject.

The Commission, which released its report in 1995, recommended that in jurisdictions with large numbers of Black students, school boards, academic authorities, faculties of education and representatives of the Black community collaborate to establish demonstration schools and innovative programs based on best practices in bringing about academic success for African-Canadian students.