Remember Los Alamos

I just have to share with you a couple bits of ridiculousness that I learned the other day while listening to Harvey Daniels, an American educator who was speaking at a Reading conference I attended. It builds onto my argument in Notions of the Nano, a recent post on this blog where I compared Europe's and North America's outraged reaction to a company targeting India with an affordable car. I compared it to America's desire to hold all the cards in the nuclear weapons game of Texas Hold 'Em.

Well, it ain't Texas that's holding them, it's New Mexico, where Harvey Daniels now resides.

Mr. Daniels lives close to Los Alamos, a government facility that spends - get this - $100 million per day on maintaining US nuclear weapons. Los Alamos also features the only museum in the world celebrating the atomic bomb.

Flowers in February

A boy displaced by recent violence in Kenya smells a rose at a refugee camp in Nairobi's Mathare slum (from news.bbc.co.uk)

Around this time two years ago, I listened to David Suzuki speak about the state of our world. To make a point about the massive carbon footprint that humans make, he deconstructed the act of ordering pizza from room service in a North American hotel room: where the anchovies came from and how they got there; where the cheese and flour were made and how they were transported to the hotel; where the copper in the telephone wires used in placing the room service call was mined and how it was transported; where the electricity came from to power the elevator that the room service waiter used to deliver the pizza. He forced his listeners to think about the massive global impact of a simple action that we do without thinking about.

I often think about where food comes from and what its environmental impact has been. Last year I read The 100 Mile Diet, a book about a couple who ate food from within 100 miles of their home for a year. Reading that book caused me to stand in the grocery store one day, for a good 5 minutes looking quite lost, trying to decide between a pint of organic New Zealand blueberries and a pint of regular Nova Scotian blueberries. (I went with the maritime variety.)

I wonder where the wood from the Ikea bedframe I like comes from. I wonder where the materials in the new mattress I should buy soon come from. I wonder where my futon mattress will go when I finally retire it.

And on today, Valentine’s Day, I'll add another product for us to think about. Where did the flowers you bought for your valentine come from? How did they get to you? One-quarter of the flowers that Europe* imports come from Kenya, a country mired in violence ever since the disputed elections in December. This year, roadblocks and street barricades have made it much more difficult to transport flowers throughout the country. I wonder where that bloom got stopped, perhaps at gunpoint, on its way to someone’s paramour.

*Canada gets over half of its flower imports from Colombia, which is quite the carbon emissions when you consider the plane ride from Bogota to Toronto.

The Africentric School Debate

This past Tuesday, I tuned into the Toronto District School Board’s meeting where Trustees and the public debated four strategies that a TDSB committee had come up with to address to needs of black students, 40% of whom are dropping out of Toronto schools. Of the four strategies, the one that stirred up the most debate (and passed by a much smaller margin than the others) was the one recommending a Program Area Review Team be formed to propose the program and operational model for an Africentric Alternative school, slated to open in September 2009.

One argument against an Africentric school is that it harkens back to segregation: the separation of blacks and whites in American society between 1876 and 1965, after the abolition of slavery and introduction of Jim Crow laws. The argument is invalid in our current context since the separation of the races in antebellum Dixie was legally enforced, whereas an Africentric school in Toronto is non-mandatory and open to all.

The fundamental idea behind this school is diametrically opposed to black schools in the Southern States during the Jim Crow era: African-Americans were put in their own schools so whites wouldn’t have to interact with them. There was an overt value put on a person based on the colour of their skin: Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus, moving further back if a white needed a seat. The Toronto Africentric school is focused on a disadvantaged group whom the TDSB is somehow failing and through curriculum, culture and African-Canadian role models, the school hopes to improve the success of this group.

In his article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson questions how well Ontarians will receive a black-focused school when the Conservatives campaigned on their platform of funding for religious-based schools and fell flat on their faces:

Ontarians did not favour the Conservatives’ arguments because most voters instinctively or explicitly believed that in an increasingly multicultural and pluralistic society, schools should be one of those places for community, or what has become known as “inclusiveness.”

Yes, that is what schools should be, but not necessarily what they are. And while faith-based schools would focus on the teachings of a specific religion, there is no evidence to indicate that the educational needs of Jewish or Islamic or Buddhist students are not being met. We do, however, have a glaring statistic of 40% that points to a need in the black community, a need that members of that community have asked for.

But is it fair, you ask? I refer you to a quote from Richard Lavoie, a famous American Learning Disabilities expert: “Fair does not mean that everyone gets the same thing; it means that everyone gets what they need.” Is it fair that my brother gets to wear glasses and I don’t? Of course it is – he gets what he needs to be a productive member of society (who doesn’t bump into chairs and walk into walls).

It may sound radical, but why not give this demographic what they need in order to be successful at school, regardless of whether or not it is “fair” to other groups. Black students do not see themselves reflected in the curriculum or in the people that stand at the front of the classroom. The Toronto District School Board already has other Alternative Schools aimed at students who cannot function in the regular school system. There is also the First Nations School of Toronto, serving a perhaps the most disadvantaged group in Canada.

Trustee Sheila Ward got quite uppity at criticisms of the First Nations School, saying it was wonderful and they were making great gains, when in reality this is not quite the case. (I speak from experience, having shared a building with the school). The school has some dedicated people working really hard to make positive change for students, but it is also working against so many social and institutional factors that are constantly getting in the way.

And this is where we have to see an Africentric school as only part of the solution. Trustee Stephnie Payne made the salient point that schools are only part of a student’s life and that good parenting is what is really needed (she, incidentally, voted against the Africentric school). Jeffrey Simpson makes the same point in his piece:

The much more frequent explanations for poor student achievement, for blacks or any other group, have much less to do with curriculum than factors over which schools have little control: dysfunctional families, troubled neighbourhoods, few roles models (absent fathers), poverty, gangs or, in a few immigrant communities, attitudes toward education (especially for females) that are not easily reconciled with mainstream Canadian ones.

With only six hours in a schoolday to remedy social inequities, teach empathy and respect of others, fix general societal problems, tend to the pastoral care of our students, and - oh yeah - teach them stuff, schools can’t offer the only solution.

But we can offer part of the solution, so why not try it? The status quo is not working. Schools need to do whatever they can to foster the success of all students. Let’s see what happens with this Africentric school. Let’s hope it helps someone in that 40%.