Thanks for this article, Nora. As a public school teacher, I hope my union leadership speaks out on this event and continues to support anti-racist education as well as suicide prevention resources for staff and students.
Unfortunately, you are mistaken. You seem ill-informed and obviously did not know Richard, nor were you familiar with his tireless and altruistic quest to improve public education for ALL students.
In addition, aside from your credentials, I am not aware if you have been involved with public education in any practical sense yourself. Therefore, my impression is that your information about what really goes on at schools may be outdated.
Furthermore, based on the content and wording of your article, it seems to me that you are judging people based on their skin colour. To me, that is indicative of racist behaviour.
Since the skin colour of people has a direct impact on your perception of their character and/or their views, I would like to clarify that I am not white.
Hi Nora. I respect your right to your opinion, but your article is inaccurate. You claim I have something to gain from the current situation. I do not. I spent a lot of personal time, unpaid, helping Richard through a very difficult time dealing with the press and issues around his lawsuit, because he was a friend. I have also donated time to the cause of public education reform because as a parent I am concerned about it, for my daughter and all students in the TDSB.
Richard’s suicide was horrible and painful for all who knew him. He wanted change and I respect and honour that call. Believe me, there are many other things I could with my time, but I am doing this because I believe it is in the best interests of our kids and what Richard would have wanted.
Also, the fact that I am white is irrelevant. I could tell you about all sorts of discrimination my immigrant European parents faced in Canada in the 1960s because they weren’t white enough for Toronto. Ditto myself as an Anglophone in Quebec in the 1990’s. My daughter faces challenges due to autism. All of us have had struggles and some more than others but the goal of our education system is just that: education. So our children can get skills, including critical thinking skills, and reach their potential.
All the DEI training means squat if our kids can’t read write and do math. It’s not just the money, but the energy, and the emphasis on it as opposed to excellence in education that I find objectionable. As do thousands of parents fed up with violence and bad test scores while school boards try and outdo each other on who has their name on the Forbes most equitable employers’ list.
I think I make it clear that you (like Lilley and Higgins) have structural advantages here, not that you stand to personally gain from this (unlike FAIR who does stand to directly gain from this). Here's the problem: you identify problems that plague the school system and then you put these problems into conflict with diversity training, as if the training is sopping up resources that could pay for a kid's lunch. We both know that that isn't how this works and I think that it's very damaging to argue something like this.
Violence in the schol system is intimately tied to anti-Black racism and colonization, alongside ableist structures and the collapse of many social supports. Painting these things as being oppositional rather than intimately related is what I take issue with here.
It's also no big deal to be called white. I call myself white in the piece too. I don't doubt you've experienced discrimination and challenges with the system but that doesn't change the fact that you and I and the other white people I mention in the piece benefit from white supremacy (even if I too am fighting against a French educational system as an Anglophone). If we aren't actively working to dismantle it, nothing (the issues that you raised and are concerned about) will improve.
Thank you for your reply. But what does "dismantling white supremacy" in the school system even mean? Statistically, white kids aren't even the top performers. According to the TDSB's own data, of 156,580 kids who entered high school between 2006 and 2015, published in the Toronto Star, 94 per cent of East Asian kids graduated, with 75 per cent headed to university and 11 per cent to college. 87 per cent of white kids graduated, with 50 per cent of them off to university and 15 per cent to college. 75 per cent of Black students graduated, with 29 per cent going to university and 26 per cent to college. 75 per cent of Latin American kids graduated, with 27 per cent going to university and 22 per cent to college. Focusing on white supremacy is not going to help kids who aren't graduating. Giving them extra support is.
Aside from the gap here between Black and Latinx kids which certainly points to anti-Black racism within the system, here are some other ways to see white supremacy at work in the school system (and I note that there's no data here related to Indigenous children whose outcomes are far lower than everyone else's) --
4. Principals, trustees and other senior administrators are *overwhelmingly* white and their decisions are made with their biases and blindspots.
5. White supremacy and its impacts in society bleed into schools, where principals and some teachers pick on Black and Indigenous students specifically over things like uniform infraction. Language issues which can be helped in native English speakers are not dealt with in the same way for ESL kids which marginalizes and pushes them out. I could go on.
I don't get to throw around my educational credentials much but it's clear that you really don't understand the foundations of the public education system. Which is fine -- we don't all need to be experts in everything. But the problems that you identify are directly linked to the white supremacy on which the system is built and if you don't attack that, you'll never fix any of the issues that you're concerned with.
If white supremacy is the problem then why are students of Asian background more successful than white students? Anti-Asian racism exists as well. Chinese Canadians were subjected to a head tax. Japanese Canadians were interned in World War II and all their property taken away. The pandemic saw a surge in Anti-Asian racism. Yet children of Asian background outperform all kids, including white kids. I agree with you that there is discrimination against Black students, but then call that what it is - not "white supremacy." And explore why Black children are not succeeding and what supports they need.
I read one of the articles you provided which said the government removed this section of text from the math curriculum, “[M]athematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions.” I am not an expert. But if this is the "expertise" we should be heeding, I cannot help but question it. China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea all have higher PISA scores in math than Canada. Last I checked they were not colonialist. Or European. Or white. Maybe we should be teaching math as they do, but I doubt it is "decolonized".
Again, your knowledge of this is very narrow. No one is talking about PISA scores here. How much do you know about Indigenous math systems? I would bet nearly nothing because our society managed to destroy/hide this knowledge.
The answer to your first question is that high performance and low performance are all still part of white supremacy -- you can check this article out that examines how, with this line from the abstract: "Discussions of high-achieving Asian American students have not been framed as such and, in fact, can be used to argue against the existence of white privilege"
"The answer to your first question is that high performance and low performance are all still part of white supremacy "
Intuitively this feels right but I would like to hear it articulated in detail partly because I would like to clarify my own intution but also so I could articulate it clearly to others, explain to them why, exactly.
I appreciate all the work you have been doing to improve public education. I also thank you for taking the trouble to try and enlighten the author of this article. However, it is clear to me that your time and energy are being wasted. This is the same person who, not too long ago, stated on her Twitter account:
“ if Canada enters a suicide epidemic that is related to white people taking antiracism training, I will personally donate $ 1,0000.000 to Doug Ford”.
The author seems to be delighted to see people taking their lives, specifically white people. Since, it seems that in the dark times we live in, it is acceptable to broadcast ones’ hate towards white people, the author gets away with this public performance.
I strongly advise against engaging in any more conversation with this person. I pray that God will take mercy on her, and I hope that all the troubles that have led her to develop such hateful feelings will be resolved.
You will be shocked to learn that DEI is a multi million dollar contract. That Kherridan woman was right - use it on projects for low income kids, not to pad the professional managerial class’ resumes and virtuosity scores.
I am curious because I am white. Is one allowed an opinion that contradicts your assertions and applied opinions? I work with individuals who are non-white who suffer at the hands of the 20th century’s biggest colonialist nation, a nation who has committed cultural genocide, who runs concentration camps, killed tens of millions of its own people , harvests organs, purges intellectuals with a different point of view, and propagates marxist-Leninist propoganda to which you seem enthralled with and seemingly creates the core premise of your arguements.
Your somewhat specious arguement suggests colonization and anti-black racism are the route cause to violence in the schools and has created huge inequity in our Canadian society. I believe your arguement is holy inaccurate but certainly played a role in some racism narratives in the past. I won’t argue that there are neo-nazis and white supremenists in Canada but Richard Bilkszto was certainly not one of them. Furthermore, the narrative does nothing to bring people together and in fact creates an us vs them social construct by creating many false narratives that seek to divide us.
My black, Asian, Indian et el friends and acquaintances which number in the hundreds are hard working success stories who don’t rely on a woke agenda to elevate themselves and to succeed. My parents (white as charged) came as immigrants to this country with the clothes on their backs. Is their struggle to succeed and create opportunity for their children any more unique than the millions of non-white peoples who have immigrated to Canada over the past fifty years?
I concede to you that DEI is important and I can assure you I was fighting for these ideals before you were born but they are not the only criteria that will determine the success of future generations in our school system but to berate a person in a seminar while driving a radical agenda and false narrative (Canadians are more racist than Americans) suggesting inclusion training and equality is imperative for future success seems a tad misconstrued.
I belive is reading kheiriddin’s column she is suggesting that their seems to be race to the bottom is all but assured if we continue with lottery’s for student placement that match 0 skill or ability criteria as a way to create equality & diversity. In fact we should be embracing the merit based criteria as these programs were developed for the uniqueness and diversity of students in today’s world. A focus on exceptionalism and high achievement by all and not LCD education is what will drive success for all and not the few. We are all born with innate intelligence, drive and desire and it’s up to educators to unleash these attributes at school to ensure Canadians can compete at the highest levels in order to fill the gaps and opportunities that the dying baby boomer generation will create and that a competitive world demands of us.
Embrace uniqueness and diversity of skills and abilities. It’s not equality but does make for a more equal and inclusive society. Perhaps teaching the 3r’s, history, economics and democracy and critical problem solving are far better initiatives as suggested by Ms. Kheiriddin They were when I went to school.
Thank you
PS It is a big deal to be called “White” when one’s supposed whiteness is weaponized against their character which is far deeper than the colour of one’s skin.
good points, all of them.
Thanks for this article, Nora. As a public school teacher, I hope my union leadership speaks out on this event and continues to support anti-racist education as well as suicide prevention resources for staff and students.
Ms. Loreto
Unfortunately, you are mistaken. You seem ill-informed and obviously did not know Richard, nor were you familiar with his tireless and altruistic quest to improve public education for ALL students.
In addition, aside from your credentials, I am not aware if you have been involved with public education in any practical sense yourself. Therefore, my impression is that your information about what really goes on at schools may be outdated.
Furthermore, based on the content and wording of your article, it seems to me that you are judging people based on their skin colour. To me, that is indicative of racist behaviour.
Since the skin colour of people has a direct impact on your perception of their character and/or their views, I would like to clarify that I am not white.
This piece isn't about Richard. It's about what happens in the wake of his death. I have no idea who you are so forgive me if I don't give you my CV.
Hi Nora. I respect your right to your opinion, but your article is inaccurate. You claim I have something to gain from the current situation. I do not. I spent a lot of personal time, unpaid, helping Richard through a very difficult time dealing with the press and issues around his lawsuit, because he was a friend. I have also donated time to the cause of public education reform because as a parent I am concerned about it, for my daughter and all students in the TDSB.
Richard’s suicide was horrible and painful for all who knew him. He wanted change and I respect and honour that call. Believe me, there are many other things I could with my time, but I am doing this because I believe it is in the best interests of our kids and what Richard would have wanted.
Also, the fact that I am white is irrelevant. I could tell you about all sorts of discrimination my immigrant European parents faced in Canada in the 1960s because they weren’t white enough for Toronto. Ditto myself as an Anglophone in Quebec in the 1990’s. My daughter faces challenges due to autism. All of us have had struggles and some more than others but the goal of our education system is just that: education. So our children can get skills, including critical thinking skills, and reach their potential.
All the DEI training means squat if our kids can’t read write and do math. It’s not just the money, but the energy, and the emphasis on it as opposed to excellence in education that I find objectionable. As do thousands of parents fed up with violence and bad test scores while school boards try and outdo each other on who has their name on the Forbes most equitable employers’ list.
I think I make it clear that you (like Lilley and Higgins) have structural advantages here, not that you stand to personally gain from this (unlike FAIR who does stand to directly gain from this). Here's the problem: you identify problems that plague the school system and then you put these problems into conflict with diversity training, as if the training is sopping up resources that could pay for a kid's lunch. We both know that that isn't how this works and I think that it's very damaging to argue something like this.
Violence in the schol system is intimately tied to anti-Black racism and colonization, alongside ableist structures and the collapse of many social supports. Painting these things as being oppositional rather than intimately related is what I take issue with here.
It's also no big deal to be called white. I call myself white in the piece too. I don't doubt you've experienced discrimination and challenges with the system but that doesn't change the fact that you and I and the other white people I mention in the piece benefit from white supremacy (even if I too am fighting against a French educational system as an Anglophone). If we aren't actively working to dismantle it, nothing (the issues that you raised and are concerned about) will improve.
Thank you for your reply. But what does "dismantling white supremacy" in the school system even mean? Statistically, white kids aren't even the top performers. According to the TDSB's own data, of 156,580 kids who entered high school between 2006 and 2015, published in the Toronto Star, 94 per cent of East Asian kids graduated, with 75 per cent headed to university and 11 per cent to college. 87 per cent of white kids graduated, with 50 per cent of them off to university and 15 per cent to college. 75 per cent of Black students graduated, with 29 per cent going to university and 26 per cent to college. 75 per cent of Latin American kids graduated, with 27 per cent going to university and 22 per cent to college. Focusing on white supremacy is not going to help kids who aren't graduating. Giving them extra support is.
Aside from the gap here between Black and Latinx kids which certainly points to anti-Black racism within the system, here are some other ways to see white supremacy at work in the school system (and I note that there's no data here related to Indigenous children whose outcomes are far lower than everyone else's) --
1. The diversity of teachers themselves: https://www.tvo.org/article/we-need-to-take-dramatic-measures-why-ontario-needs-more-black-teachers
2. Racism in the curriculum, with this ridiculous example where government removed a comment about how different kinds of math have been erased from curriculum even though it's true: https://globalnews.ca/news/8028182/ontario-removes-anti-racism-text-math-curriculum/
3. There's this about anti-Black racism in general: https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/anti-black-racism-education-compendium-recommendations
4. Principals, trustees and other senior administrators are *overwhelmingly* white and their decisions are made with their biases and blindspots.
5. White supremacy and its impacts in society bleed into schools, where principals and some teachers pick on Black and Indigenous students specifically over things like uniform infraction. Language issues which can be helped in native English speakers are not dealt with in the same way for ESL kids which marginalizes and pushes them out. I could go on.
I don't get to throw around my educational credentials much but it's clear that you really don't understand the foundations of the public education system. Which is fine -- we don't all need to be experts in everything. But the problems that you identify are directly linked to the white supremacy on which the system is built and if you don't attack that, you'll never fix any of the issues that you're concerned with.
If white supremacy is the problem then why are students of Asian background more successful than white students? Anti-Asian racism exists as well. Chinese Canadians were subjected to a head tax. Japanese Canadians were interned in World War II and all their property taken away. The pandemic saw a surge in Anti-Asian racism. Yet children of Asian background outperform all kids, including white kids. I agree with you that there is discrimination against Black students, but then call that what it is - not "white supremacy." And explore why Black children are not succeeding and what supports they need.
I read one of the articles you provided which said the government removed this section of text from the math curriculum, “[M]athematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions.” I am not an expert. But if this is the "expertise" we should be heeding, I cannot help but question it. China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea all have higher PISA scores in math than Canada. Last I checked they were not colonialist. Or European. Or white. Maybe we should be teaching math as they do, but I doubt it is "decolonized".
Again, your knowledge of this is very narrow. No one is talking about PISA scores here. How much do you know about Indigenous math systems? I would bet nearly nothing because our society managed to destroy/hide this knowledge.
The answer to your first question is that high performance and low performance are all still part of white supremacy -- you can check this article out that examines how, with this line from the abstract: "Discussions of high-achieving Asian American students have not been framed as such and, in fact, can be used to argue against the existence of white privilege"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23326492211018483
"The answer to your first question is that high performance and low performance are all still part of white supremacy "
Intuitively this feels right but I would like to hear it articulated in detail partly because I would like to clarify my own intution but also so I could articulate it clearly to others, explain to them why, exactly.
Dear Ms. Kheiriddin
I appreciate all the work you have been doing to improve public education. I also thank you for taking the trouble to try and enlighten the author of this article. However, it is clear to me that your time and energy are being wasted. This is the same person who, not too long ago, stated on her Twitter account:
“ if Canada enters a suicide epidemic that is related to white people taking antiracism training, I will personally donate $ 1,0000.000 to Doug Ford”.
The author seems to be delighted to see people taking their lives, specifically white people. Since, it seems that in the dark times we live in, it is acceptable to broadcast ones’ hate towards white people, the author gets away with this public performance.
I strongly advise against engaging in any more conversation with this person. I pray that God will take mercy on her, and I hope that all the troubles that have led her to develop such hateful feelings will be resolved.
You will be shocked to learn that DEI is a multi million dollar contract. That Kherridan woman was right - use it on projects for low income kids, not to pad the professional managerial class’ resumes and virtuosity scores.
I am curious because I am white. Is one allowed an opinion that contradicts your assertions and applied opinions? I work with individuals who are non-white who suffer at the hands of the 20th century’s biggest colonialist nation, a nation who has committed cultural genocide, who runs concentration camps, killed tens of millions of its own people , harvests organs, purges intellectuals with a different point of view, and propagates marxist-Leninist propoganda to which you seem enthralled with and seemingly creates the core premise of your arguements.
Your somewhat specious arguement suggests colonization and anti-black racism are the route cause to violence in the schools and has created huge inequity in our Canadian society. I believe your arguement is holy inaccurate but certainly played a role in some racism narratives in the past. I won’t argue that there are neo-nazis and white supremenists in Canada but Richard Bilkszto was certainly not one of them. Furthermore, the narrative does nothing to bring people together and in fact creates an us vs them social construct by creating many false narratives that seek to divide us.
My black, Asian, Indian et el friends and acquaintances which number in the hundreds are hard working success stories who don’t rely on a woke agenda to elevate themselves and to succeed. My parents (white as charged) came as immigrants to this country with the clothes on their backs. Is their struggle to succeed and create opportunity for their children any more unique than the millions of non-white peoples who have immigrated to Canada over the past fifty years?
I concede to you that DEI is important and I can assure you I was fighting for these ideals before you were born but they are not the only criteria that will determine the success of future generations in our school system but to berate a person in a seminar while driving a radical agenda and false narrative (Canadians are more racist than Americans) suggesting inclusion training and equality is imperative for future success seems a tad misconstrued.
I belive is reading kheiriddin’s column she is suggesting that their seems to be race to the bottom is all but assured if we continue with lottery’s for student placement that match 0 skill or ability criteria as a way to create equality & diversity. In fact we should be embracing the merit based criteria as these programs were developed for the uniqueness and diversity of students in today’s world. A focus on exceptionalism and high achievement by all and not LCD education is what will drive success for all and not the few. We are all born with innate intelligence, drive and desire and it’s up to educators to unleash these attributes at school to ensure Canadians can compete at the highest levels in order to fill the gaps and opportunities that the dying baby boomer generation will create and that a competitive world demands of us.
Embrace uniqueness and diversity of skills and abilities. It’s not equality but does make for a more equal and inclusive society. Perhaps teaching the 3r’s, history, economics and democracy and critical problem solving are far better initiatives as suggested by Ms. Kheiriddin They were when I went to school.
Thank you
PS It is a big deal to be called “White” when one’s supposed whiteness is weaponized against their character which is far deeper than the colour of one’s skin.
"I am curious because I am white. Is one allowed an opinion that contradicts your assertions and applied opinions?" Yes this is permitted.