News

How much public opposition must there be before those

implementing a policy think twice? In the case of the Toronto District School Board and the plan to create a so-called Afrocentric school, the numbers are stacked heavily against the idea - and for good reason. Though the promoters' intentions are good - a novel attempt to keep black youths from falling behind in school or dropping out - the effect will be to hive off students of one skin colour from those of other colours and institutionalize this division in the name of the public good. This has been called many names in the past, and none of them was Afrocentric.

Small wonder most of the reaction has been negative. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he won't provide extra funding for the pilot project. An Angus Reid poll of Ontarians found 79 per cent opposed the Afrocentric school (59 per cent strongly) and 15 per cent supported it (only 3 per cent strongly). Even in the board's vote, nine of 20 trustees turned thumbs down. But board chair John Campbell responds as so many do in the face of such criticism: that the critics misunderstand the proposal, that it's not as bad as the headlines say, that the community asked for this alternative school.

If the issue were different, one might argue that majority opinion should not hold sway when determining minority rights or interests. After all, a defining document of this country since 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, recognizes the importance of safeguarding ethnic and other minorities from a majority that might curb their free-

doms. The wrinkle in the Toronto case is that the result, if not the aim, will be to segregate black-skinned students - of their own volition, but segregate them nonetheless. That's not progress; that's a regression to the bad old days.

If the public education system throws up its hands and says the only way to reach many black students is to withdraw them from the common system and skew their curriculum to distance it from other students' curricula, this is a declaration of failure. Before declaring such failure, a system dedicated to treating all students equally regardless of skin colour has a duty to try harder to remove whatever obstacles exist in the regular classroom to the education of disaffected youths.

Mr. Campbell should see the

opposition for what it is: not mis-

informed criticism, but genuine concern. The school board is shutting a door instead of opening it.