| Aboriginal languages in Canada |
[2008-01-31 05:38] |
New torrent release: Finding Our Talk
It's selected episodes from a documentary TV series about efforts to teach and revive aboriginal languages in Canada. |
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| Afrocentric alternative schools |
[2008-01-31 06:07] |
It bugs me that non-Black Canadians are passing judgement (often negative) on the project to set up a Black-focused school in Toronto.
This movement has come from within the local Black community, for the local Black community. I think any debate as to whether this is a good idea or a bad one has to come from members of that community, not from outsiders who don't understand their needs or the specific issues they are addressing.
People complain that it is segregation. No; segregation is when you exclude others. In this case, it's a minority group of people who want their own spaces so they can custom do things their way instead of the way of the dominant majority culture that sometimes marginalizes them. (I suppose an alternative solution would be to improve the existing public schools to make them more Black-inclusive, but that requires changing the attitudes of non-Black people, and in life it's often much more empowering, realistic and effective to do things for yourself instead of trying to make others change their attitudes and ways.)
I can totally understand where they are coming from with regards to this movement, because I have attended special schools as a member of a minority, i.e. French-language schools for Acadians in New Brunswick, as opposed to a mixed school system where assimilation becomes rampant, as the needs of the larger always squash those of the minority. Having said that, however, I have no way of knowing which side of the Black school debate (in favour or against them) I'd personally fall under if I had grown up as a Black Canadian. I'm also curious about the specifics of whether non-Black kids would be welcome at the Afrocentric schools. |
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