Is creating a so-called Africentric secondary school to improve education chances for African Canadian students a step forward or a step back? Based on my personal experience, I believe it can be an important step forward.
In 2005 I saw first-hand how students benefited from a summer-long pilot project designed to stimulate and engage students who were performing below the provincial standard.
The Africentric Summer Institute provided culturally relevant staff, resources and teaching strategies. For example, in one math class, the richly woven West African “Kente cloth” was used to identify algebraic patterns.
As the summer school principal, I interacted with the students and witnessed its positive impact. Students told me they liked school better and were eager to come to class, were more interested in learning about their cultural roots and excited to share what they learned with others.
Staff, parents and the community also were enthusiastic and engaged. With all the activities and events, the school looked like a community centre: parent engagement workshops, a parent information evening, a parent breakfast, a bi-weekly newsletter to the community, professional development workshops for staff, a community potluck luncheon and a closing celebration for the community.
Plus there was real academic progress. Students in the D-minus to C-plus range improved by one level, while students in the B-minus to A range maintained their levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy.
The debate on Africentric education has flared again in light of the proposal to create an Africentric alternative school at Oakwood Collegiate. Defenders of the traditional system can indeed point to students of African descent who do very well and demonstrate high levels of academic achievement. But we cannot ignore high-school dropout rates among African Canadian students of about 40 per cent or be indifferent to the systemic barriers that impede their progress.
As far back as 1992, Stephen Lewis’s report to the premier on racism in Ontario mentioned the lack of a culturally relevant and responsive curriculum, along with limited numbers of African Canadian mentors and role models, as barriers to student success:
“Everywhere the refrain of the Toronto students, however starkly amended by different schools and different locations, was essentially the same refrain of all students. Where are the courses in black history? Where are the visible minority teachers? Why are there so few role models? Why do guidance counsellors know so little of different cultural backgrounds? Why are racist incidents and epithets tolerated?”
Nineteen years after the Lewis report, the education sector’s biggest challenge remains the development of inclusive curriculum and practices that foster high levels of academic achievement while reducing the racial achievement/opportunity gap for blacks and other racialized student populations.
Africentric education has been put forth as one of many culturally relevant practices to address new ways of engaging African Canadian students. This approach has, however, been criticized as being tantamount to segregation.
This is far from the truth. Segregation involved the suppression of people based on race. The Africentric schools approach provides an opportunity to create an inclusive learning environment for all students.
The high level of academic achievement among students in Africentric learning environments has already demonstrated the effectiveness of culturally relevant and responsive teaching and learning practices.
In September 2009, Toronto’s first full-day regular Africentric alternative school was implemented as a K-5 school. In the 2009-10 academic year, 81 per cent of Grade 3 students performed at or above the provincial average in mathematics, compared with 71 per cent for the TDSB at large, according to the Education Quality and Accountability Office. Similarly, 81 per cent scored at or above the TDSB average in writing and 69 per cent scored above the TDSB average in reading.
Given our society’s emphasis on academic excellence and the concurrent need to reduce the racial achievement gap in academic performance, the implementation of new and successful practices for educating African Canadian students is an urgent priority.
An approach to education that acknowledges the role of culture and community and their relationship to the subject matter covered in schools has proven to be an effective strategy.
The curriculum and organization of our schools have to become more responsive to students of all diversities in order to improve public confidence in the publicly funded education system and its ability to serve all students and communities.
That’s why the Africentric model discussed at Oakwood should not be seen as a retrograde step back to segregation but a forward-looking development for our vibrant multicultural society.