JORDAN MAXWELL
NEWS REPORTER
Chris Spence, the education director of the TDSB, released a report – A Vision of Hope – late last month which highlighted the organization’s plan for a better, stronger and more understanding education system within the TSDB. In this report, the TDSB laid out their plans for a more effective way of reaching and teaching students who are disadvantaged by any means in classrooms to date. Among the technological and green initiatives outlined in the report, Spence also has a plan for boys.
The Male Leadership Academy, a proposed all-boys school, was introduced in November and is expected to target boys in elementary school who seem to be lagging behind girls in the classroom. This strategy is supposed to revolutionize the way “we reach, teach and develop our boys.” However, the only thing that this idea achieves is the marginalization of “our boys” and a continued segregation and structured class system.
Some reasons cited for this program are a young boy’s restlessness or the lack of a father figure in their lives. But Spence’s proposal offers a temporary solution to the overall problem: teachers have lost the ability to maintain interest in a monotone curriculum and provide the one-on-one mentoring necessary for ALL children to thrive.
This is a temporary solution to the problem since the target grade is only boys from kindergarten to grade three. A successive grade would be added to the program each year thereafter. In other words, the boys are indoctrinated with a set of principles different to the methods taught in traditional elementary schools and then are plopped back into the same incompetent system they were in before.
Moreover, one of the programs purposes is to address the dropout rate in high school students; however, no high school students are offered this opportunity at specialized learning. Rather, they are discarded in favour of the young, fresh batch of kids who can’t dropout even if they wanted to – yet.
Spence’s controversial strategy for change includes some of the following methods: portable desks, clipboards to substitute textbooks and male teachers who can nurture a stereotypically competitive nature that have lain dormant in boys in the classroom. The purpose: to hone mobility as a solution to boys not being able to sit still and learn.
Where did they get this pathetic ideology from? If boys are not learning material in class, it’s because teachers aren’t able to relate the curriculum material to them in sufficient and effective ways. And if that is the case, then this is a serious problem for the TDSB. If teachers cannot make the curriculum relatable to students – whether girls or boys – then that is simply a reflection of the system and its outdated curriculum. But rather than address that specifically, Spence has ducked and weaved this problem with a temporary solution.
This idea can be directly applicable to the Afrocentric Alternative school that was introduced this school year at Keele and Sheppard public school. This was designed to cut a 40 per cent dropout rate among black students in high school but the target group is elementary children. After, they too will be plopped back into the same, ineffective system with a set of indoctrinated principles that segregated them and could exaggerate racial and social stereotypes.
The TDSB needs to alter their curriculum so that’s its applicable to ALL students in the system. Why should only boys and black kids get all of the attention? This will only lead to girls and Latino kids getting a school of their own in a couple years because “they can’t sit still and learn”.
Nevertheless, Spence has the right idea in introducing an electronic learning environment where teachers would have access to a computer in their respective classrooms making for a more visual and interactive classroom.