Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 3 of 3

 

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

I wrote a blog last year about discrimination in education that reported the results of a study that a colleague and I undertook to see if British Columbia student teachers discriminated against Aboriginal learners. We found that pre-service teachers led to believe that students were Aboriginal were more likely to place them in a remedial program, even though their performance was identical to students whom they were led to believe were not Aboriginal.

 Another colleague studied the factors associated with school completion for children and youth with behaviour disorders and mental illness in BC. She found that “students of Aboriginal ancestry were grossly overrepresented among students with behaviour disorders and mental illnesses and at a significant disadvantage with respect to high school completion in comparison to all other peers.” When I say our assumptions are baked into the system, I mean they are habitual and often codified in the policies and procedures we follow. This is what the colleague wrote about the implications of her findings:

The designation of special education categories for distinguishing students with moderate to severe behaviour disorders and mental illnesses has not resulted in supporting this population of students with intervention strategies leading to successful high school completion. Current definitions for students with behaviour disorders and mental illness in the Special Education Services: Manual of Policies, Procedures and Guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2016) are subjective, putting heavy emphasis on the attitudes and opinions of schools and school districts to determine the status of the students. The vague definitions and subsequent inconsistent identification is problematic and does little to determine if the services are focused on the appropriate students (p. 234-235).

Schools separate students into courses or programs according to their perceived ability or interest levels. Students are often encouraged to “choose” a pathway the school thinks will produce successful outcomes for the student. This separation (called tracking or streaming in different places) often finds students over- or under-represented in a stream or track in relation to their overall proportion in the student population. Black students in Toronto streamed into courses below their levels of performance prompted the Ontario Minister of Education to refer to streaming as a "systemic, racist, discriminatory" practice and announce that grade 9 streaming will be eliminated by the 2021-2022 school year in Ontario.

Streaming and tracking occur whenever there are alternatives that appear to be the same but are actually not. Two or three different mathematics courses at the same grade level may not be called streaming, but the separation often provides opportunities to some that are denied to others. The nomenclature used to refer to Ontario’s grade nine mathematics tells the story. One pathway is academic mathematics, a requirement for entrance to most universities; the other is applied mathematics, an alternative to the more rigorous academic pathway. 

A factor associate with lower graduation rates is student mobility. Students who change schools are at greater risk of not graduating. Schools do not adapt well to students who enter school once the academic year has begun. It is not that schools are unwelcoming to the individual. They usually are. The problem is integrating the newcomer into an existing instructional program. Albeit unintentional, this impediment to learning most often affects students from low income families among which racialized and Indigenous Canadians are over represented.  

Could institutional racism be one of the reasons that the teaching force does not reflect the demographic variety in the population? It might be difficult for individuals who have seen the subtle and not so subtle racism in the system to work within that system, even if they believed that being part of the system would help to change it.  Harold Johnson, author of Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada, was recently asked why, after serving as an Indigenous defense lawyer and prosecutor in Saskatchewan, he believes that having more Indigenous lawyers will not lead to better justice or outcomes for Indigenous offenders and victims. To which he responded:

To get through that education, you have to allow yourself to be colonized. You have to become one of them. And once you become one of them, then you’re outside of your own community. If you believe in that system, then you’re put outside. You’re going to struggle to connect again.

There are numerous structural and operational practices that fail to consider the demographic diversity of the students enrolled in Canadian schools. Many of those structures and practices arose during a period of colonial settlement. Slavery was an approved practice and the extermination and mistreatment of Indigenous people were accepted when colonial institutions, like public schools, were developing.

It took until the late 1960s for Canada to begin to talk about racism. It revised its overtly racist immigration policies and strengthened human rights and anti-discrimination legislation. But the justification for its revision of immigration policy was often discussed in terms of the advantages that diversity would bring to Canada’s economy. Few were willing to speak about racism and consider how it was embedded in all institutions.

Social segregation sometimes occurs without intention. In the return to school this fall, an Ontario school board decided to distribute students to online classes alphabetically. By doing that students were inadvertently grouped by their ethno-linguistic backgrounds. It was some time before the school board learned that it had formed groupings that did not reflect the racially diverse nature of its district. A spokesperson for the board acknowledged the concerns parents had expressed about the groupings but said that reorganizing the classes “would have delayed the start of the school year.” The decision of the board to keep the alphabetical groupings leaves the impression that bureaucratic expediency takes precedence over ensuring diversity.

Canadian society is increasingly willing, even if reluctantly, to talk about racism and consider its impact on its institutions and its population. That is a good thing. But willingness to talk about racism and consider its impact on Canadian education is only a first step in addressing the institutional racism and inequities that are perpetuated.

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 2 of 3

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 

We speak about whether children are “ready for school.” This often means that we expect children entering school to know their colours, letters, and numbers, and can arrange objects in a prescribed order. These abilities are the foundation for much of what they will learn in school. We expect that most children entering school will be school-ready and assume that the children who are not manifest deficiencies that will need to be addressed. We often assume that children from specific sub-groups in the population are less likely to be school ready.

We could consider entry to school from another perspective. We should ask: are schools ready for the range of children for whom they will be responsible? Other related questions are: what strengths do children entering school possess upon which the school can build? How might we recognize and validate the knowledge that students do bring to school?

I do not dispute the desirability of children learning their colours, letters, and numbers and being able to arrange objects in a prescribed order. But, taking the perspective of school readiness, we should plan that some children will not have learned those skills prior to coming to school, but also expect that those children almost certainly will know and be able to do things that other children do not know and cannot do.

Recognizing and validating a broader range of knowledge does several important things. It says that what you know and can do is important here. You should be proud of what you know and can do. As almost every teacher knows, children who believe they are successful are more persistent learners because they recognize that they have already learned things of value. Students’ expectations about their own success also influence learning. Having been successful learning in the past engenders confidence in learning things that are new to them.

The children who are ready for school in the conventional sense will learn that the knowledge they posses is not the only knowledge. They will see that there is a broad range of knowledge recognized and valued by the institution. True education is leading people (or learners) out from what they know to master things they do not know.. Those children will be less likely to stigmatize children who do not have the same skills at school-entry because the institution values the knowledge that all their peers bring to school.

Now, here is the tricky part. Schools cannot be content to simply recognize and validate the knowledge some children have and continue to prize the knowledge children who are ready for school possess. There is no question that those skills are important, but they are not the only valuable skills. The following anecdote illustrates the impact of false assumptions and one of the many skills people have that are not recognized in school.

On a trip with my spouse and friends, I was persuaded to go white-water rafting, an activity I would normally avoid. We assembled at the designated place and a young woman asked us to sign a release. After we read and signed the forms, she introduced herself as our guide. I did not expect that, imagining she would pass us along to her father. We boarded the raft. She gave a safety briefing and asked, “any questions?” I said, “this is my first time white-water rafting” and asked, “how old are you?” “16,” she replied, “but don’t worry I have been guiding since I was 12. I’ve made hundreds, maybe thousands of runs with newbies, and have never lost one.” At the time I was focused on my survival, but, in retrospect, was embarrassed about the assumptions I made about white-water rafting with a 16-year-old female. Moreover, it is illustrative of knowledge that people possess that is not typically recognized and valued in school.

Assumptions like mine are baked into the structure and practices of our schools, and into the perceptions about the students and families they are supposed to serve. The assumptions we teachers make influence how we teach and, in turn, the performance and the assessment of performance of the students for whom we are responsible.

Institutional Racism and Inequality in Canadian Schools: Part 1 of 3

 

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Trustees in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted unanimously to make completion of an Ethnic Studies class a high school graduation requirement by the 2023-2024 school year. In addition to the course requirement, the motion approved by the School District made the Superintendent of Schools responsible for ensuring support for educators to integrate Ethnic Studies into the Pre-K to Grade 8 curriculum. 

The decision will affect many students.  LAUSD, the second largest school district in the United States, serves more than 600,000 students, about the same number of students as attend public schools in British Columbia or maybe a few more.

The trustee who introduced the motion said “. . . recent protests calling for equality across the nation have shown us the value in education in dismantling institutionalized racism and inequity.” She also said, “The majority of the students we serve in L.A. Unified are Black and Latino, and it’s important for them to learn about their history and see themselves reflected in our curricula.”

There is much to applaud in the decision of LAUSD. Infusing the curriculum with what LAUSD calls ethnic studies will ensure that the subject matter becomes part of the course of study rather than an add-on. In assigning responsibility to the Superintendent for ensuring teachers have the needed support sends a signal. Educators need assistance in learning how to teach about the history and contributions of the groups who have suffered from institutionalized racism and inequity. It is one thing to include a body of material in the curriculum, but something entirely different when it comes to teaching about it without perpetuating racist stereotypes and stigmatizing the people whose history and accomplishments are being taught.

One could ask why a special motion is necessary to ensure the inclusion of this material? Why is it not already part of the curriculum being taught today? The answer is racism, the institutional exclusion, marginalization, and denigration of the groups whose history and contributions are now to be included.

There is one place I disagree with Kelly Gonez, the trustee who introduced the motion. Part of her argument was that it was important for students to learn about their history and see themselves in the curricula because Black and Latino students comprised a majority of the students in the district. I disagree. Even if there were no Latino or Black students in the district, it would be important to include knowledge of the history and contributions of Latinos and Blacks. The knowledge is important not because of their physical presence but because excluding it makes students less well educated and more likely to perpetuate institutional racism and inequality.

I raise this California initiative in my blog, which is principally about Canada, because the curricula in Canadian school jurisdictions largely ignores the history and contributions of Indigenous people and their systematic mistreatment by settlers. When Indigenous people and people of colour are included in the curriculum, they are represented in a superficial way that stereotypes them and makes them seem foreign or exotic. The exclusion and misrepresentation are manifestations of the institutional racism that pervades Canadian education.

I think referring to “ethnic studies” is also a manifestation of unconscious institutional racism. Gonez and her colleagues want to draw attention to groups that have been excluded – particularly Latino and Black Americans. But the term ethnic has negative connotation. At worst it is often taken to mean racial, tribal, or folkloric. At best, it is taken to mean cultural.

Using the term ethnic, as Gonez does, unintentionally implies that there are traits or cultural practices that are the essence of the people to whom the term is applied. This inadvertently ignores the diversity among the individuals who may choose to identify with the group to which reference is being made.

Speaking about curricular inclusion requires serious, continuing, and difficult conversations that are just getting started in the Canadian context. But eliminating institutionalized racism does not begin and end with curricular inclusion. There are other features of the system that need to be addressed. From school entry to graduation, there are structures, practices, and assumptions that need examination and change.