CHAPTER 8

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Several years have passed since this study was conducted, and yet its main observations continue to be relevant to our current educational system. Has there been substantial change in the way the education system works? Has there been any movement towards an inclusive ? If so, what exactly has changed? The answer to these questions, unfortunately, is an emphatic no. I reviewed an array of relevant studies and reports published between 1987 and 2009 (cited below), and they suggest that no progress has been made towards democratization and diversification of education to accommodate all students in the Ontario school system. What has happened is essentially a reshuffling of the cards in the deck to give the impression that slow, but steady change is really happening. I would argue, however, that racialized and working-class kids are in pretty much the same position they were in during the 1980s. Inclusive education has, by and large, remained just a dream. An inclusive school environment is defined as one which has taken irreversible steps towards the acquisition of three necessary elements for democratization of the classroom. First, it empowers students to be heard in what is taught and how it is taught in school. Second, it embraces an adequately diversified curriculum which has national, as well as global, concerns at heart, and third, its workforce reflects the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the community it serves. Some researchers have been hard at work shedding some light on democratization and diversification strategies. Among the few, is one by a noted teacher and researcher, Debbie Miller (2002) Reading with Meaning. The weakness of Miller’s work is that it was conducted in an exclusively middle-class white school. It is easy to see that the issues and concerns in an inner-city multicultural school would be different, requiring different approaches. With some modifications however, Miller’s model for change could work in a multicultural society. In fact, a study conducted by K. Cooper and R. White has done just that. One of the schools they included in their study was an inner-city school in (Cooper and White 2006). The issue of democracy in education, and the lack of progress in diversifying the curriculum in Toronto are getting more attention from researchers in the field of education (Radwanski 1987; Darden 1991; Shor 1992; Osler 1994; Delpit 1995; O’Sullivan 1999; Osborne 2001; Portelli 2001; Solomon 2001; Egan 2002; Trifonas 2002; Duckworth 2006; Portelli 2007). All of these studies make clear that democratization and diversification efforts in education in Toronto have not been making significant progress. Rather, change has been painfully slow, and the end result is far from satisfactory. It occurs not incrementally, but in an “ebb and flow” kind of a pattern.

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A look at the history of the former boards in , and now the TDSB over the last thirty or so years shows this ebb and flow change pattern. In his book, Race to Equity, Tim McCaskell has chronicled this phenomenon (McCaskell 2005). The boards gave in a bit as calls for change from school communities, activists, parents, advocating teachers, and students got stronger. It seems, however, that as soon as the political masters changed, or the voices for change ebbed, Board bureaucrats worked in tandem with the incoming, more conservative political masters to take away all or most of the changes they had relented to in earlier times (Kerr 2002: McCaskell 2005). If nothing else, it is clear that there is a need to ensure that small gains stick, and that the conceding elements of the school system are held accountable to see through these gains with a long-term strategy. In fact, the voices of change for more democratic and diversified schooling have been active ever since public education started over a century ago. Since the seventies, the struggle for change in Toronto has taken a new tone; as equity for minority students took centre stage, so did public demands for greater inclusivity within the school environment. Gender, race and ethnic-based inequalities in particular received considerable attention. The eighties and nineties ushered in some of the most vocal parents and activists on education. Quoted in 1994 in a report compiled for the Ontario Institute for the Studies in Education, here is what one parent said about the source of conflict: The system, and I hate to sound so strong ideologically all the time, but it is the reality … the system has served those who have been privileged in the sense of being part of the Anglo community, those who have been part of the economically comfortable community. The system has served those very well. There’ve been people it hasn’t served. There are always exceptions, just like there are exceptions in the less well-off socio-economic groups in the immigrant community. There are great success stories there too, but they’re the exception. The system we’ve had has served the successful very well, and so the successful will always try to defend the status quo. (Dehli 1994:75) Such a view may not have been shared by every parent, but there certainly was enough support to move the former boards of education in Metropolitan Toronto to take some steps, albeit baby steps, towards the creation of a more inclusive school environment. There is no shortage of studies conducted since the 1980s. Ontario provincial governments, teachers’ unions, school boards, civil societies, community groups, and academics have been active studying our educational system. As an increasing number of youth in Ontario, particularly in amalgamated Toronto, became more and more defiantly agitated and disengaged in the classroom, more studies were commissioned by different entities. No doubt, the addition of parents; and community groups’ voices of concern helped to heighten the level of awareness of inequities in the Ontario school system. Since then, the number of studies conducted and reports prepared per decade escalated in response to escalating youth disengagement and

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