Building Hope

‘If we want to have an effect on the world,
we need to emphasize those things which will make
students more active citizens and more moral people.’
– Howard Zinn (1922-2010)


Building Hope

It is hard to find reasons for hope in the education wars these days. Brutal budget cuts and data-drenched testing schemes are enough to make progressive activists believe that “rethinking schools” is a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream (Rethinking Schools Editorial Spring, 2010). The more that we, the people, sense that resistance is futile, the more the privileged and the powerful will pick up on our collective sense of futility and run with it – all to our collective detriment.

Recent events in Jane and Finch offer hope to despairing teachers, parents, and education activists throughout the Greater Toronto area, specifically in poor racialized and marginalized communities like Rexdale in Etobicoke-North. From my location and point of view, I am painfully aware of the enduring nature of social exclusion, as is evidenced by much research (Roots of Youth Violence, 2008; School Community Safety Advisory Panel Report, 2008; TDSB Census Report K-8, 2008; United Way of Greater Toronto, 2004) in an educational realm as it affects the educational outcomes of young African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth in Rexdale, Toronto.

Since the Ontario province and the Toronto District School Board began their Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) process this school year; a remarkable struggle has unfolded in which grassroots organizing has temporarily stopped what appeares to be an inevitable selling off of our schools.

Jane and Finch seems an unlikely site for a progressive victory. Like many other urban communities inside and out of the city’s priority neighbourhoods, the community is challenged with deep problems- both in the schools and in the community. Large sections of African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth have been suffering depression-like conditions for more than a decade. Racial gaps in school achievement, as well as the city’s rates of poverty (United Way Toronto- Colour By Postal Code, 2004), and disproportionate number incarcerated black youth (Dei G, 1997; Galabuzze, G.E., 2009), are among the worst in the Province.

In Jane and Finch, social justice advocates like Jane-Finch On-The-Move along with progressive minded unions like C.U.P.E. 4400, and the Jane and Finch Green Anti Poverty Coalition have presented strong leadership in the struggle against the sale of our public schools. It demonstrates a ‘social movement’ toward a more just and equitable world.

Meanwhile, school politics have been dominated by privatizing forces for over two-decades. The 13th straight year of TDSB budget cuts and the pressure to sell off our public schools coupled with Bill 177, which gives government control of the day-to-day operations of schools without actually having to take the heat for its decisions, has produced one ‘front of resistance’ involving a wide range of parent, teacher, community and labour organizations.

What we can learn from this coalitions’ success is that patent organizing and coalition building, which at times are neglected when activists focus mainly on large mobilizations and public demonstrations, are important ingredients of any movement. But it was the building of relationships and a deep understanding of the issues within the community that laid the foundation for this coalition.

As a quick aside…U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will keynote speak at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s education summit in September, 2010, announced last summer that the solution to the similar challenges Toronto Urban communities has suffered by the Milwaukee educational system was a mayoral takeover of the school system (Rethinking Schools, Spring 2010). This Milwaukee mayoral takeover reflects a national trend in the United States. Promoted by Arne Duncan, who told the Associated Press last spring that he “will have failed” if, when his tenure is up, more urban districts aren’t in the mayors’ hands. Increased ‘accountability’ (sound familiar?) is what proponents of the plan argued would curry favour with Duncan and almost guarantee Wisconsin’s selection as a recipient for the much-sought ‘Race to the Top’ funds. When pressed by opponents to explain how a Mayoral takeover would help the students of Milwaukee, the mantra became “Something has to be done in the Milwaukee Public Schools.”

Here in Ontario the Ministry of Education continues to impose – and intensify -- a regime of standardized testing to police its “human capital” curriculum or “expectations” fragments (referred to as ‘an overcrowded jumble of disconnected facts that fail to prepare the province's 1.4 million students for the future’ (Toronto Star, December 1, 2009))… Not only do these tests, like the expectations, structure out the human core of our arts and sciences, but they also harden class and racial divisions in our schools. Tests scores can go up (with easier tests, shorter testing periods, and increased focus), but the gap between the test scores of rich and poor children never changes substantially over time. Furthermore, the testing process itself encourages increasing numbers of poor children and racialized children to drop out or lose interest in their studies – a reflection of the emptiness of what is being tested and the hostile judgments these tests impose. An entirely new agency – the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat – has been set up to force teachers to teach to these tests – functioning as templates for the expectations. Everywhere teachers turn, there is bureaucratic pressure to focus on test score production rather than student learning. Merit pay, tied to test-score production, is on the horizon, coming up from the United States. School boards in Ontario can now face provincial takeover if their test-score results do not please the Province.


What I have heard from many of my teaching colleagues and the community at-large is that they want to see broad curriculum areas of study, determined by a significant range of educator, parent and community partners. In this framework, our teachers should be encouraged to reflect and to build upon the experience of the children and the communities they serve. They should be engaged with their students in exploring the world. They should be supporting their students’ capacity to make judgments on what should be loved in the world they discover and what should be changed in the interests of social justice and solidarity with nature. It is these larger human purposes, which must frame the work we do as teachers. It is only these purposes that will ignite our children’s interest in school and learning.


Turning the Province away from a testing regime will not be an easy task. And it will be especially challenging in TDSB, given the entrenched political power and overwhelming ‘fiscal restraint’ discourse in the municipal, provincial, federal and corporate circles. To create a pathway to a stronger educational system, a mobilized teacher, parent and educational worker coalition will have to march into the halls of power and rewrite the rules-at every level of government.

We cannot be naïve about the obstacles. A grassroots movement strong enough to achieve that aim would have to quickly become as big, sophisticated, and morally appealing as the greatest democratic movements of the last century. And yet building just such a movement is the central challenge-and the highest calling-of our time.

Success in this endeavour will require genius, courage, a Herculean effort-and a great deal of luck too. But we must begin. Fortunately, we have good examples and role models to guide us along the way.

When facing grave dangers in the last century, our parents and grandparents routinely faced up to the peril, overcame cynicism, and beat the odds. Today, as new generations climb onto the world stage, we are blessed to be able to learn from heroic examples of those in the past who faced down totalitarianism, beat back an economic depression, and ended overt racial apartheid and colonial oppression in most parts of the world.

Their proud histories teach us that a successful movement for change requires three things. First, change must be grounded firmly in moral principles. Second, change must move rapidly to reinvent and realign politics. And third, change must effectively pursue and implement smart policies. Those of us who are concerned about the future must take those lessons as our own instructions and guideposts as we go forward.

We can ordinary people support the transition to an inclusive, more just society-not just as smarter consumers, but as fully engaged citizens, informed voters, and active community members.


Nigel Barriffe
nigelbarriffe@yahoo.ca

For additional information on my educational platform, please visit my website or blog at: www.nigelbarriffe.com