What our children learn: Pedagogy and prejudice

Kevin Libin, National Post Published: Tuesday, September 02, 2008

As children across the country return to school, the National Post takes a look at the curriculum issues that are flashpoints in their respective regions and examines how the most controversial subjects are taught. Today, pedagogy and prejudice.

A dozen years after the Black Learners Advisory Committee delivered a stinging indictment of how Nova Scotia taught its black youth, more than 2,200 high school students are enrolling in classes about African history and heritage.

One-fifth are black.

The statistic may reflect the makeup of a province with strong Anglo-Saxon and Acadian roots, but officials also offer it up as proof of the "integrated" approach educators have taken to revamping the curriculum.

In Toronto's version of such a program, the catchphrase is "inclusivity."

Alarmed by a high achievement gap between races, public school board officials have pushed for lesson plans that better reflect -- and engage -- an increasingly diverse student population. Educators are developing a more inclusive curriculum and, this year, the Toronto District School Board decided to establish a black-focused public school in a bid to reverse the 40% high school dropout rate among black youth, setting off a fierce debate about the merits of separating students, albeit voluntarily, for their own good.

Toronto already has a First Nations Public School, which launched in the 1970s after parents, too, agitated for a change.

So, how best to teach our children in a multicultural setting? While curriculum is becoming more diverse, Canadian public schools still teach a largely Eurocentric canon that academics say needs to keep pace with the expanding population.

Critics of plans for race-based schools say failing grades, regardless of ethnicity, have little to do with lesson plans -- it is about parental support at home, about poverty-stricken children who cannot afford the luxury of planning to go to university one day.

"This notion that somehow limiting a person's experience to a particular cultural education will improve their educational ability is not necessarily true," says Andrew Knight, a political science professor at the University of Alberta who is working on a project about how immigrant and refugee youth are falling between the cracks. He obtained a British education in Barbados, where there was scant reflection of his heritage. "Of course, we were very critical of the fact that we didn't get enough of Caribbean literature, but the exposure to British literature gave me the structure to explore other literature."

And yet, the groundswell of support for an Afrocentric school shows that some parents believe the status quo is not working.

"I don't think there's anything that says one kind of school, or one way of teaching is the best," says Ingrid Johnston, a multicultural education expert. Edmonton's public school board, for example, is a leader in providing different language programs. Schools also specialize in music, arts and sports programs; private Islamic and Jewish schools are a popular choice.

She says that changes in public education usually occur at glacial speed, so most schools continue to deliver a Eurocentric curriculum: "It's very hard to often make changes in the kinds of books students read in school. Something like To Kill a Mockingbird, which about everyone in the country reads in Grade 10, is held up as a book that challenges racism, when in fact it really just looks at privileging the experience of the white lawyer who manages to solve the problems of the poor African-American."

Offering a curriculum that places students of other ethnicities in a position of privilege may help some do better in school, but she says there is a danger that separating them will create "ethnic silos" that can run counter to some of the hallmarks of a multicultural Canada.

"There is a danger, I think, of thinking too much that separate is better," she said.

The 75 students who attend the First Nations Public School, in Toronto, are almost entirely aboriginal. Established as a "cultural survival school," it still faces enough challenges that critics cite as examples of continued problems: A report about school safety revealed it suspends one-third of its students and the entire Grade 3 class could not meet provincial standards in reading, writing or arithmetic.

When Toronto's Afrocentric debate heated up this year, critics seized on the implications of separating students according to race and called it a throwback to segregation. Leading black Torontonians argued that the plan would end up doing more harm than good, isolating black youth in a school they feared would be ill-equipped to succeed.

Advocates dismissed what they called a misrepresentation: The Afrocentric alternative elementary school, which will open next September in a building that already houses another school, will deliver the Ontario elementary curriculum from an African perspective to any student who wishes to enrol. Proponents say it could engage marginalized students simply by validating their history, their context, in the classroom.

"Suppose you remove Afrocentric from it, and just simply say teaching. However you approach it, it's paying attention to the students," says Carl James, a York University professor who was on the TDSB's Afrocentric advisory committee. He is helping teachers in four north Toronto schools better engage their students. "Once you start doing that, you will start to think about the connections to other groups and their social existence."

The curriculum for the new school is still being developed, but the board has already developed and tested Afrocentric units in 44 elementary classrooms with students of different backgrounds.

"It's important that all students see themselves in the curriculum, that they're valued in the curriculum," says Verna Lister, the superintendent who has shepherded the initiative.

In a unit about explorers, for example, Grade 6 students are challenged to think outside the conventional Eurocentric notion of "explorer," Ms. Lister says. They learn about Mathieu Da Costa, a Portuguese navigator and interpreter of African descent, and consider how he would have viewed the interaction between Europeans and aboriginals, since he was of mixed race and had seen how the arrival of Europeans affected his mother's African village.

In kindergarten, students learn about the importance of oral storytelling in Afrocentric cultures, in Grade 3 about the underground railroad and early African communities, and the Grade 4 and 5 unit is called "Changing Perspectives: Talking About Africa and Europe."

"Global citizenship from an Africentric perspective is not about giving charity to have-not regions. Instead it is about gaining a global perspective on complex relationships," states a draft introduction to Grades 7 and 8 units on geography patterns. "Not only do students learn about the contributions of Africans to Canadian colonial heritage, but also about the impact of colonialism on Africa. Students are exposed to the positive impact of foreign aid, as well as the devastation and corruption wrought by aid and business development."

The Afrocentric material was written by teachers, then edited by the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto for "equity, Africentricity, and authenticity," says Ms. Lister. It is in a constant state of revision, she says, since it is meant to be open to different points of view. The Afrocentric units shift the perspective away from the white, northern European cultures that colonized Canada.

A similar approach is taken at the First Nations School, where, principal Wayne Kodje says, "we use culturally appropriate material or terms [such as not] referring to Columbus discovering the Americas, which is not really true. The Americas were already discovered, by our people. I think that people are becoming more aware of that and the education materials that are being produced for schools are acknowledging that."

Other than that, he says, "we teach the same math, same language arts, history, geography, science. But we do have certain overlays that are different. For starters, we don't teach French." All grades learn Ojibway about 40 minutes a day, in addition to a traditions and culture program.

"Globalizing the curriculum makes sense," says Darren Lund, a University of Calgary professor and a proponent of a multicultural curriculum. "I think there have been some pretty good strides in the last few years at opening up the curriculum to writers from around the globe."

But even that may not go far enough, some suggest. Ontario's geography curriculum offers a "progressive" point of view emphasizing global connections, says Ryerson University professor Mehrunnisa Ali, but some textbooks imply that Muslims and Arabs are one and the same, and largely associate Islam with medieval societies, not the modernity of a city like Dubai.

"Even very young children are able to understand that people can have different perspectives on the same issue, but I don't think there is adequate recognition of that in the curriculum and by the teachers," says Ms. Ali, who teaches early childhood studies and immigration and settlement studies.

Mr. Lund said a separate Afrocentric school goes against the concept of inclusive education, but he supports it as a means of addressing a "serious crisis" among black youth.

The attitude in Nova Scotia is that the only way to address challenges in ethnic communities is to expose students to every point of view.

"Simply focusing aboriginal people on knowing about aboriginal people, and not knowing about the Irish and Russian history is not going to work," says Patrick Kakembo, who runs the African Canadian Services Division in Nova Scotia's Department of Education. "History taught from one perspective is misguided and they call it miseducation."

Nova Scotia has attacked a legacy of marginalizing its black community by offering African-centred high school courses as electives. Education officials distinguish the Maritime province's approach from what is happening in Toronto, calling it an "integrated" education.

"Canadian society has always been multicultural and multiracial. In order to function, we need to learn about each other, not just an understanding of ourselves," says Mr. Kakembo, a Ugandan native. Instead of poetry by Irishman George Bernard Shaw, for example, students in the African Heritage English class may study the work of George Elliott Clarke, a black Canadian poet, playwright and author. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the acclaimed novel about the clash between African and European cultures in a Nigerian village, will likely be on the reading list.

Here, too, students are encouraged to examine perspective. They consider questions, such as how does an author's experience affect his or her social commentary; what observations are made about how society operates, and how it should change?

Language frames our notions of race and teachers' sensitivity to that varies from classroom to classroom, Mr. Lund says. "It's one of the things that we address in our teacher preparation program. You do need to watch your language, and not for political correctness but for basic human respect."

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National PostA LOOK AT CANADA'S AFROCENTRIC CURRICULA

Excerpts from a draft version of Afrocentric units that follow the Ontario curriculum and have been taught in 44 classrooms in Toronto's public school board:

Grade 3 -- After the Underground Railroad: Early African-American Communities

"To date, the focus in schools, curriculum materials, and texts on the impact of enslavement on African-Americans has been very narrow, restricted primarily to these people's experiences on the Underground Railroad. Upon completion of their danger-filled journeys, fleeing African Americans settled in various parts of Ontario and created thriving, successful communities ... [which] validate the African presence in Ontario and provide us with valuable information regarding the role played by them in the successful building of Canada as a nation. In a unit about Harriet Tubman, students are expected to describe the early settlers and First Nations peoples in Upper Canada around 1800."

Grade 7 and 8 -- History and Geography

One possible activity for students in the senior grades is reading a handout called "Debunking the Myths About Africa." The author, an American who studied in Zimbabwe, goes from recalling how skinny people were referred to as "Ethiopians" when she was a child, to observing the modernity of a suburb of Harare that "had paved streets, big houses, manicured lawns, pet dogs and Japanese cars."

Grade 8 -- Empowering Role Models: Nathaniel Dett and the African-Canadian Community of Drummondville

Students move beyond the study of slavery to examine the vibrant and self-sufficient African-Canadian community of Drummondville. Students role-play actual community members to infer how they perceive of the world around them.

Students study African-Canadian community leaders and challenge misconceptions that Canada was "founded" only by Europeans

Excerpts from Nova Scotia's African Canadian Studies in Grade 11:

In Module Two, students will learn about African history and precolonial kingdoms up to transatlantic slave trade. They will assess the impact of colonial expansion by looking at how slavery shaped the world and its economic impact. They will "examine the difference between displacement, forced displacement migration and forced migration as it relates to the African people throughout the diaspora." Later units will study the struggle for civil rights, the role of the church in Black communities, the evolution of Black families in Canada and "analyze the correlation between power, disenfranchisement, segregation and racism of African people as it relates to their social conditions i. e. employment, housing, education and politics."

Students learn about how local grassroots groups such as the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People have emerged and developed, and focus on the contributions of African Nova Scotians.