Every day she would get a call from the school complaining that her seven-year-old son was disruptive.
“It was things like, he's not standing in line properly. He told a story in class, and the bunny died in the story. And so she thought he needed to go and get some sort of help. She said he had scissors and was a danger to himself and others. And when I asked, why they have scissors, it was art class, and they're scissors,” she remarked.
But what can you do if your child is disrupting others? Kearie and her partner felt like the pressure was on them to discipline their child into behaving in class. They chose to believe the young teacher and come down hard on their child. Constant badgering at home and school led her son to develop anxiety. He stopped wanting to go to school and needed a weighted blanket just to sleep. Even as a person working within the child aid sector Daniels could not help but reprimand her son based on what teachers believe is outlandish behavior. Daniels was even more shocked when she compared her child's experience in the school system to her own.
“They wanted to put me in a special class. The same conversation we're having about my son now, 30 years apart. And I just thought this was wrong. We can't continue to do this cycle decade after decade.”
So Kearie decided to do something about it. She co-founded Parents of Black Children to advocate for Black parents in Ontario. Her goal was to bring questions of equity to school boards that would rather avoid those conversations. Much of our conversations about equity come from Dr. Carl James, a Canadian sociologist and education equity advocate.
“I had read a paper by Dr. Carl James called Towards Race, Equity and Education towards Race, Equity and Education. And in that paper, he starts to talk about how by the age of around eight, Black boys start to disengage from schools. And everything he had listed in that paper, from the research that he had collected from the boards and GTA, was happening to my child. And that's when it clicked for me. Oh, my god, this is not my son. He's not the issue here. He's being targeted and it's his teacher. And we have to name this what it is, which is racism.”
Decades of research by Dr. Carl James has a lot to say about what is going on in Ontario’s education system. Regarding racism, his work makes an excellent point for higher equity in schools. Black students are more likely to be suspended, streamed into applied programming and the least likely to be deemed gifted. The study states that 48% of expulsions in the Toronto District School Board were against Black students, even though they make up only about 12% of the student population.
The goal of exploring the inequities and finding remedies became an institutional part of Ontario’s education system in 2009 with its Realizing the Promise of Diversity: Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy. As a goal, the strategy wanted to help reduce systemic inequalities in Ontario schools through acts similar to affirmative action, and culturally aligned programming. The list of activities, policies and strategies is long, but the endgame is to have populations of students that generally underachieve (Black & Indigenous groups especially) perform at levels similar to everyone else.
In 2017, the Ontario government introduced the Equity Education Action Plan. According to the plan, “This strategy involves working with parents, educators, principals, board staff, trustees and the community to ensure Ontario’s publicly funded education system will be fairer and more inclusive for all students, educators and staff, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or any other factor related to individual identity.” So it is curious to see the current Minister of Education Stephen Lecce, signalling away from an equity focus in his most recent policy announcement dubbed the “back to basics” bill, using language which underlines the right-wing narrative that schools have been “distracted” by diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
This has left many equity advocates in education concerned that diversity, equity and inclusion programming will fall by the wayside. But researcher and equity consultant Tana Turner, says the work must and will continue because equity plays a key role in improving student academic outcomes.
“Many school boards have a deep commitment to equity work and understand their obligations under the Human Rights Code. If one of your goals is to ensure that there are no gaps in student achievement in literacy and numeracy, equity has to be part of that. For example, if you’re teaching literacy, students learn better when they see themselves reflected in the books they are reading. So you can’t do one without the other.”
So how has Ontario’s equity strategy fared?
Well, data from one school board in Hamilton shows inequity still exists.
According to the study, Arabic-speaking, Black and Bisexual students were more likely to be suspended than any other group. Even after equity-based policies were initiated Black students still face barriers, and in some places, it has gotten worse. Equity in schools has launched a number of programs and the general idea that Black students need help.
In a study by Dr. Carl James and Tana Turner (2017), Black youth stated that they were pushed away from reaching higher and attaining more:
“My guidance counsellor didn’t want me to apply to the University of Toronto. When I insisted, she said, ‘Don’t be discouraged when you don’t get in.’”
Even from my own experience in the TDSB, I will never forget when my guidance counsellor almost forced me not to take academic math. It wasn’t my strong suit, but I was determined to try. What a feeling. I was used to defending my sad math marks to my mother, but not validating my need to learn to a teacher. His tone was affectionate and helpful. He really thought he was doing me a favour, rather than tying me to some picture he sees of Black kids.
I said forget my counsellor and took the higher level math. While I did drop out of calculus (got the functions credit though) it actually gave me a goal to work toward, and in university, I took an economics minor. Throughout that first year, I worked to improve my calculus for the econometrics class. If it wasn't for my stubborn mom telling me I could do anything I wanted, I'd never have had the ability to understand economics, something I use in my profession and personal life. If I listened to that counsellor I couldn't have even gone to university.
According to Dr. James’ work, third-generation Black students do comparatively worse on all metrics than first and second-generation students. That means a Somali immigrant new to Canada has better educational outcomes than his grandchild would. While it is common for first and second generations to have higher education attainment rates, the stark contrast for the Black community, including the increases in suspensions and streaming leads us to believe that operation within the Canadian education system, and society at large, kills the potential of Black kids. We don't start as failures but are made into them, and that's a failure in the education system.
“The racism that is inherent in each system (i.e., labour market, education, child welfare, policing, the criminal justice system, media, etc.) combines in ways that reinforce the unequal treatment of individuals experience in Canadian society. As such, it was argued that the education system is no better or worse than any other public institution in the ways it operates to disadvantage Black people.”
The sheer size and magnitude of anti-Black racism make it hard to properly address it in one policy or through a campaign. What we can do today is call out forms of racism when we see them, acknowledge that it exists in all forms, and work towards properly representing Black kids throughout a system that does not work for them, and will not until society changes as well. That is the work Kearie is busy doing.
One of the services Parents of Black Children have is a resiliency tool for parents. The Education System Navigator gives parents the tools to see their children survive the Ontario education system. Of course, this is not the silver bullet to end all racism, but it is a realistic solution to help parents deal with the multifaceted issues involved in raising a Black child today. The organization also aims to be an extra arbiter when parents are talking to teachers, so parents do not go through what Kearie did with her son.