Guessnocentric Learning

The Toronto School Board has decided that one way to stop young black men from shooting each other at school would be to get them all to stay in one school together and teach them an 'Afrocentric ' view of the world. And so the Board is preparing to launch its first all-black educational institution.

Not that there's anything wrong with exclusive educational institutions - the rich have had them for years. Some religious groups and organizations, too. Just look at the Army - although 2 military colleges have bitten the bullet. An all-black school might be just what's needed.

But if the bone-headed dopiness displayed by an overjoyed Director of Education is any indication, the school curriculum might be in for an interesting slant on reality. Didn't the head honcha of the Board go all deep when she gleefully reminded the media that 'eurocentric' history wasn't the only kind. Take those Spaniards who 'discovered the new world', the conquest was different from the Indians' point of view she gushed. As if the Indian point of view, if we could figure it out at a distance of 3 centuries, would change a single fact of that history. And as if any sort of school history textbook to-day would relate that story in the words of only Hernan Cortes, and not mention anything about the peoples he encountered. Bottom line, they do help kids understand what happened by looking at events from different perspectives. At the black school they might concentrate on telling the story perhaps featuring one of the Moriscos present, but once again the 'history' would be the same. Something tells me it wouldn't stop Jar-vhonn from bringing his shooter to school if he was feeling dissed, or quitting to lie-in late if his momma let him.

To be rednecked about it, letting the black kids all go to their own school might eliminate some of the racial bumpff that does on in some of the others. But next I can hear the Moslem kids starting to agitate for their schools too. A math school for Chinese, East Indian schools, Canadian Indian schools - the French already have theirs. And that should leave the polyglot Euroschools that did such a fine job of turning 'euros' into Canadians.

And what about the 'wanna-bees'? Those white kids with the baggy trouz who wantz to be bruth-ahz. Who knowz the rap and wearz da colahz? Like the M&M copyist from the Trailer Park Boys, any 'euro' who wishes may apply for the black academy. But admittance is to be determined by space availability. Now whitey will get to know what it's like at the end of the line and the back of the bus.