Lucy

Please forgive me if I sound very redundant. I'm new here and could not read in detail all 18 pages before I joined in, but I tried to skim through most of it. I've been reading about this in the media too. Of course, this is my city, so I do care about such a shockingly high percentage of teenagers who are failing out of high school and belong to one ethnic or racial group. Was it really 40% of black kids failing? I would hate to see some kind sprawling ethnic or racial ghetto that you might find in other world cities, created here by an uneducated and underemployed section of our society increasingly carrying guns and joining drug gangs. It seems really serious to me, and I can't see that any federal politician outside Toronto cares all that much what happens to us. While I don't think the education system is to blame for it. How can you just ignore the problems in any community itself? I do think it's the education system itself that created the opening for this school. Education policy in Canada allows room for so much diversity and flexibility, at provincial and school board level, that we already have literally dozens of alternative schools in the city. Not too mention all the private schools that we never hear about. So, I'm not surprised at all that we now have a school for Black children only. (Q - Why are they not using African term, instead of "Black", for an Afrocentric school?) Since we already have, in Toronto, a mix of public and private schools for specific groups of people, ie. Girls, Boys, Catholics, Muslims, Natives, French-Canadians, Gay & Lesbian Teenagers etc.. etc.. not to mention the parents who simply educate their kids from home. So I don't think you can just look at this one school and try to shut the door on it, without looking at the whole education system in Toronto. As controversial as it might be to some, I actually think that it would fly just as easily if a bunch of parents decided to open the "Anglo-Saxon High School for Boys" or the "Irish Girls Elementary School" or the "Public School for White Children". After a Public school for Black children? What on earth could stop them? I'm not saying that our education system should not have some diversity. I just think that there should be one strong, well-funded and as inclusive as possible, Toronto School Board for everyone in Toronto, with the exception of adding non-mainstream schools for kids with severe disabilities who can't be accomodated in regular schools. But since you can't please everyone, and there is nothing more important to parents than the eduction of children, any schools set up outside the main system, should be private and funded on bake sales or celebrity donations.. but closely monitored by the city and shut down on slightest conflict with Canadian education standards or if they promote hatred, racism, sexism etc.. Why should tax dollars from everyone even fund Gender or Religiously segregated schools? Never mind Racial or Ethnically segregated ones. I just don't understand why we can't iron out the one school system we have. I am not without compassion for the desire in parents to build alternative or special interest schools, we all want to make sure our kids are not being abused by racists, or sexists, or British Colonialists, or Islamists or whatever.. and I will attend many bake sales or concerts to support some of them. Public funding? No. Why should I support all these schools, when some of them I think may be causing harm to my home-city? Anyone agree? And hello to everyone. I found this forum while searching for articles on Omar Khadr, and have enjoyed reading various messages in the different topics.

I have to say, I found this article hysterical when I first read it in The Star. It made me wonder what our travel warnings of Australia, America and Britain look like. Did something happen that provoked them to unleash these dire warnings about us? Have we been scaring off tourists to Australia with reports of deadly jellyfish bites? Rampant gun crime in America? Terrorism in Britain? Really made me wonder. I got the impression that the staff reporter found it as funny as I did. I didn't take his tone seriously at all. We sometimes encounter, in The Star, some true great pieces of snark hilarity. And I've read a few of his other articles whose headlines or contents made me laugh: An a-peeling proposition Valentine's Day: A love of tyranny and a fear of intimacy The city that walks, slips and falls I've enjoyed all the articles I've read by him. I still remember the quote from his weather piece from last week: "Jack Frost has returned to Toronto with his pockets full of snow."