Friday, February 01, 2008

Alternative Education?

Anyone want to weigh in on the recent approval for the development of "black schools" in Toronto? There are already a number of alternative schools available which segregate communities at least in terms of economics. I am quite sure that our local private Mennonite high school does not limit enrollment to confessional belief (as I belief there is at least one Muslim student enrolled). The heat of course is in part historical after such effort was made for integration out of the civil-rights movement. The argument now is that black students in Toronto are statistically not succeeding and the belief is that this is in part due to the structure and content of the school system. The premier of Ontario has recently called to a stop to this decision. I don't have a real clear response as of yet . . . how about you?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been following some of the discussion on the news and talk radio and my gut reaction is that this is a BAD idea. Realize that these will not be private schools. As you may know I am a supporter of Christian day-school (though not necessarily in favour of faith-based school funding of the government)—but those are private schools with no government funding I don't have a problem in principle of having a privately funded afro-centric (which is the term some are using for this) school. But the government funding of such a school is folly. There may indeed be problems with the education system in Toronto but they ought to deal with the fundamental problems and not make rash decisions based upon the abuses--if that makes any sense.

I should mention that these afro-centric schools will not refuse children from other races from enrolling.

Anonymous said...

Hey David, I usually don't do this sort of thing but it is interesting to know what people are reading--so consider yourself tagged. You can see results on my most recent post.

Here are the rules:
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people

Anonymous said...

ckeck out the response from a guy i happen to know:
http://wrf.ca/emails/080201/