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“In 2009, a group of determined parents in Toronto knew that the outdated curriculum was not helping their kids. The achievement gap and high dropout rate among Black youth was discouraging, prompting the call for an Africentric Alternative School in the Toronto District School Board. The exposure was damaging. “Self-imposed segregation!” people cried.
But the concept made sense. It was a school that simply incorporated African culture into the same Ontario curriculum. Children could learn about Black Canadian figures who contributed to society, such as Viola Desmond and Dr. Alexander T. Augusta, who earned his medical degree in Toronto in the 1800s and was appointed head of an industrial school.
The courses were taught by teachers who understood the challenges students faced, first hand. It was a place to belong and thrive without being marginalized.
Not convinced, I remember naively questioning the executive in charge of the school. Why do we need a separate school? Why don’t we incorporate these facts into the everyday curriculum and why isn’t it just called “history?”
The answer was thrown back at me with a knowing smirk. Good question, he’d said.
I finally realized it wasn’t that simple. While the Ontario curriculum had been updated in 2013 to reflect some historical facts, the older textbooks don’t coincide. Many teachers are left to teach the facts at their discretion. And some have told me that some of the information still hasn’t made its way into the curriculum at all.
After more than a century it was time for change. The headlines about the residential schools was the catalyst that made the government admit that the history we’ve been taught has been whitewashed. All Canadian children need to know that their culture has made contributions to Canadian society.”
– The Star, We can no longer afford to whitewash our history.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #33 – Reclaiming the Truth.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
