Some parents say their children need gifted-education programs. But not all kids are benefiting from the public-school streaming system
THE PLANNING and Priorities Committee was meeting in the boardroom: it was more Kafka than Kanye, so it was incongruous to see teenagers in this setting — like walking into a passport office to find the waiting room filled with lemurs. But there they were (teens, not lemurs), on a cold night this past January, in a brick-slab office building of the Toronto District School Board. Several trustees sat around a giant U-shaped desk facing a gallery crowded with parents, educators, and assorted members of the public.
Wherever they are, even in airless rooms boggy with Robert’s Rules of Order, teenagers bring with them their loping awkward energy, inappropriately beeping cell phones, and barely suppressed giggles. Of course, their presence shouldn’t have been strange, because young people and their futures were what everyone was there to talk about — sort of.
The largest school board in Canada has some large problems to solve. Dropout rates for black students are twice as high as they are for white kids. Black, Latino, and Indigenous kids are much less likely than their white counterparts to be enrolled in university-track, “ academic” classes and more likely to find themselves in the more trade-oriented “applied” classes as early as grade nine. That means that, before many of these kids are even through puberty, options for their futures are severely curtailed: a York University study found that only 53 percent of black students in Toronto were in an academic-stream program versus 81 percent of white students and 80 percent of other racialized groups.
この記事は The Walrus の October 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The Walrus の October 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Dream Machines - The real threat with artificial intelligence is that we'll fall prey to its hype
Some of the world's largest companies, including Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet, are throwing their full weight behind AI. On top of the billions spent by big tech, funding for AI startups hit nearly $50 billion (US) in 2023.
MY GUILTY PLEASURE
MY CHILDREN are grown, with their own partners, their own lives.
The Quest to Decode Vermeer's True Colours
New techniques reveal hidden details in the Dutch master’s paintings
Repeat after Me
TikTok and Instagram are helping to bring Indigenous languages back from the brink
Smokehouse
I WAS STANDING THERE at the corner, the corner where the smaller street intersects with the slightly wider one.
How Could They Just Lose Him?
The Huronia Regional Centre was supposed to be a safe home for people with disabilities. Then, amid suspicions of abuse at the facility, twenty-one-year-old Robin Windross vanished without a trace
Prairie Radical
How conspiracy theorists splintered a small town
Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe
Scott Moe rose quietly through the ranks. Now the Saskatchewan premier and his party are shaping policies with national consequences
The Accommodation Problem
Extensions. Extra exam time. Online everything. Addressing the complex needs of students is creating chaos on campus
MY GUILTY PLEASURE
I WAS AS SURPRISED as anyone when I became obsessed with comics again last year, at the advanced age of forty-five. As a kid, I loved reading G.I. Joe and The Amazing Spider-Man.