Poste - Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children

Ontario. British Columbia has developed training for
male instructors teaching girls in non-traditional fields. It
also has guidelines to develop inclusive curricula for all
groups. Manitoba organized summer institutes on antiracist
and multicultural education from 1989 to 1994. 45
Visible minority teachers and administrators are underrepresented
in the education system. However, Nova
Scotia is actively increasing the number of visible
minority persons on staff and it has courses on race
relations and cross-cultural understanding. Ontario’s
Ministry of Education and Training had projects to
improve access to the teaching profession for candidates
from racial and ethnocultural minority groups between
1994 and 1996. 46
Voices
Coalition Questionnaire:
Do you think that your teachers generally treat
students with respect?
Yes, I think the teachers are very good at
our school.
—Ryan, aged 12, Nova Scotia
Not really. We’re treated more like small
children. We’re only allowed to use one out of
four doors. We’re not allowed upstairs during
lunch time. There could be good reasons for
these, but they’ve never bothered to explain
them to us. They do tell us to respect people,
but the fact that they don’t respect us
doesn’t give us much reason to respect them.
—Kim, aged 14, Newfoundland
Yes, I definitely do. The teachers I’ve had
have a lot of respect for students [and] are
glad to help with school work and problems.
You may run into a teacher that you don’t like
but even then you will still receive respect.
—Emily, aged 16, Ontario
No...In my class, some kids did not understand
and the teacher said: “Stupid, you understand
nothing. It shows that you’re in special ed.”
(translation)
—Pascal, aged 13, Quebec
H O W D O E S C A N A D A M E A S U R E U P ?
83
Culture, Language, National
Values, Other Civilizations
Respect for one’s parents and cultural
identity: multiculturalism, diversity and
anti-discrimination
There are varying efforts to promote multiculturalism,
diversity and anti-discrimination in schools across the
country. The promotion of multiculturalism is protected
in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms and enunciated in Canada’s Multiculturalism
Act.
The rights of individuals are protected in national and
provincial legislation and human rights codes, as well as
in education acts. 47 All jurisdictions review curriculum
and learning resources in an effort to eliminate racial,
ethnic, cultural, gender and socio-economic biases. 48
Teachers are encouraged to promote an understanding
and appreciation of all cultures in the classroom, 49
although the effectiveness of these efforts is unknown.
Efforts to teach respect for diversity have been
constrained in some provinces recently. For example, the
Ontario Education Department eliminated its Division of
Anti-Racism, Access and Equity in 1997 and recently
announced plans to remove violence prevention, antidiscrimination
training and education about Aboriginal
peoples from proposed secondary school curriculum
guidelines, citing existing policies in these areas.
However, according to Ken Ramphal of the Ontario
Anti-Racist Multicultural Educator’s Network:
Teachers rarely look at policy statements, they
will look at curriculum documents...which will
translate into classroom instruction. To say it is
included in their policy documents and not
curriculum documents is to really encourage
teachers not to use it. 50
A 1997 survey of the Canadian Council for Multicultural
and Intercultural Education found that multicultural
programming in western Canadian schools is
marginalized because it competes as “one more
provincial expectation” among too many other provincial
priorities. 51 Furthermore, school reforms across the
country make the priority of equity and diversity in
Canadian education unclear. 52