Commentary
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest school board in Canada. It might also be the most woke. The telltale sign of wokeism is an obsession with race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Woke ideology elevates these characteristics above everything else—including excellence and merit.
This is why in 2022 TDSB trustees changed the admissions criteria for their specialty arts and sports schools from a performance-based standard to a random lottery system. Trustees argued that this change promotes “equity” for all students. What it really did, of course, was lower the average skillset of students in these schools, since they can no longer screen applicants based on skill.
It also explains why the same trustees are today moving ahead with plans to rename schools bearing the names of John A. Macdonald, Henry Dundas, and Egerton Ryerson. According to a TDSB report, these schools must be renamed because of the “potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-Indigenous racism, and connection to system of oppression.” So much for TDSB students getting a proper grounding in Canadian history.
Woke ideology is also the reason the TDSB employs so many senior bureaucrats with job titles that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The board has an Equity, Anti-Racism, & Anti-Oppression team, a Centre for Excellence for Black Student Achievement, and an Urban Indigenous Education Centre. There’s certainly no reluctance among TDSB trustees to create new departments and invent new job titles, all of which consumes taxpayer-provided resources that could have been used elsewhere.
One thing the TDSB is not focused on is academic excellence or performance. Results from the Programme for International Student Assessment show that from 2003 to 2022, Ontario students declined by the equivalent of approximately two grade levels in math and more than half a grade level in reading. Since the TDSB has the largest number of students in the province, it obviously contributed in a significant way to this downward trend.
Unfortunately, instead of focusing on academics, TDSB trustees are doubling down on DEI initiatives. Earlier this year, trustees passed a motion calling on the province to force all teachers in the entire province to obtain DEI certification. Not content with ruining their own schools, TDSB trustees want to impose their woke ideology on every other school in the province.
The evidence of DEI’s harms is readily available. In July 2023, former TDSB principal Richard Bilkszto took his own life after experiencing humiliation and relentless bullying during a mandatory DEI session. Bilkszto had the temerity to challenge the DEI presenter’s claim that Canada is a more racist country than the United States. That was all the presenter needed to paint Bilkszto as a racist, something that deeply embarrassed him.
After Bilkszto’s tragic death, the Ford government initially made the right noises and said it would get to the bottom of what happened. However, it quickly lost its nerve and let the TDSB commission its own third-party investigation. This made it easy for the board to sweep things under the rug.
Earlier this month, the TDSB issued a brief media release stating that the “privileged” third-party report about Bilkszto’s suicide had been delivered to the school board. Unfortunately, instead of making this report public, trustees chose to keep it secret. Although one TDSB trustee is calling on the rest of the board to release the report, his words so far have fallen on deaf ears.
No doubt the report paints TDSB administrators and trustees in a negative light. That’s no excuse, however, for keeping the report secret. The public has a right to know the circumstances that led to Bilkszto’s tragic death.
If TDSB trustees want to improve the quality of education in their schools, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit. Cracking down on student violence by enforcing strict behaviour standards, improving reading instruction by focusing on phonics, upgrading math skills by having all students memorize math facts such as the times table, and ensuring that all classrooms have a knowledge-rich focus are a few of the many ways to turn things around in Toronto schools.
TDSB students and teachers have suffered far too long under a woke school board. It’s time for trustees to focus on improving academic achievement rather than promoting woke ideology.
Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
