Anti-Racism Urged In Toronto Schools
Written by Deborah J Thomas
Filed under: Administrators, News, Parents, People Involved, School Safety Issues, Students, Violence
Now I like the sound of this! We all know that despite the noisy professing of many individuals and sectors about doing away with racism, there are still a lot of racist attitudes that prevail. Perhaps this cannot be done away with that easily. After all, the subject of race is not a simple thing. The action plan that was delivered to the District School Board of Toronto is a good step in resolving the issue, however.
On Tuesday of this week, the Leadership Action Team of the Board delivered the action plan. It was created as a response to the shooting of a 15 year old student in May of last year. According to CBC News:
Tuesday’s report said the board should give additional training to 140 staff members to deal with racial issues. The team also said more needs to be done to improve safety, help marginalized students and combat gender-based violence.
The report said the board should create a safer environment for students, in particular girls, in all secondary and middle schools in the city.
The team calls for a greater police presence in schools and programs that foster interaction between officers and students.
Earlier, board chairman John Campbell and trustee Chris Bolton said that won’t mean metal detectors, sniffer dogs or more officers patrolling the hallways.
Knowing how Canada has a lot of citizens and residents who are of foreign origins, this kind of action plan makes a lot of sense. Seeing how they are realizing the importance of addressing the issue of race is another thing – it makes me feel some admiration for the people behind the action plan. I believe that racial differences may have something to do with violence in schools and between groups in general.
Even between grown ups – adults as we call ourselves – race can cause friction. It is thus no wonder that even school children can do questionable things because of race. Disseminating the right kind of information to all the people concerned can help a lot in solving the issue of race. More than this, actually taking concrete steps against racism will, hopefully, make great headway.
Now I am not saying that this kind of plan will solve the whole problem – far from that. I am still pragmatic to a certain degree. To make absolute change, everyone involved would have to have a paradigm shift. This kind of sweeping shift may be but impossible in real life. Still, having a considerable number of people supporting the movement might just make a difference, don’t you think?
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I’ve always considered that the root of racism in any country as stemming from the indigenous people feeling that the incomers will not hold the values of the home country as sacred as themselves. By ‘dumbing’ down the argument to the insults that we often see being evangelized by extreme groups, what we’re actually doing is diluting the core values of a nation with hatred and ignorance.
All communities feel more comfortable with people that they understand will be of support to them, but this surely doesn’t mean that we can’t help communities to learn more about each other. Bringing peoples of different ethnic backgrounds together in mixed race social activities will help to highlight the similarities between communities. Mixed race sporting team contests (i.e. Only teams with mixed races are aloud to enter) place people in situations where they learn to trust each other, communicate and eventually extend their friendships past the football or netball field.
IMHO Government money would be better spent in this way …