Deck 8: Racism in Canadian Education

Question 1

The 'formal curriculum' in the education system

A) Allows teachers to make subjective evaluations about the academic capabilities of visible minority students
B) Undermines the hegemony of racism in social institutions
C) Consists of content and processes of instruction, such as educational material
D) Is a perfect fit with the 'multicultural education' approach that elementary schools are now adopting
E) Is based on the principles of universalism

Answer 1

Consists of content and processes of instruction, such as educational material

Question 2

What strategy could be implemented to deal with some of the Eurocentric discourses that are traditionally found in subjects like history, English or Science?

A) Get rid of all texts that reproduce racist discourses
B) Force students to be accountable for their own learning outside of the classroom when it comes to their own culture
C) Establish separate schools for everyone
D) Get the government to pass a law forcing schools to change the current curriculum
E) Provide training to teachers so that they are able to critically analyze such material in the classroom setting

Answer 2

Provide training to teachers so that they are able to critically analyze such material in the classroom setting

Question 3

In high school, students are often required to read 'literary classics', such as Huckleberry Finn. However, for minority students in these classes, the racist language, images and concepts found in these texts

A) Causes them to physically act out in class
B) Is one of the many reasons they decide to drop-out of school
C) Helps to further marginalize them in the classroom
D) Encourages them to speak out and challenge forms of racism at an early age
E) Often leads to higher grades, but a lower sense of self-esteem

Answer 3

Helps to further marginalize them in the classroom

Question 4

In the chapter on education, the term 'placement' refers to:

A) The extra-training that foreign-born students are required to take before getting a job in their related field
B) Areas that racialized students are encouraged to pursue besides academics, like athletics
C) The different levels of education offered in high school, such as basic, general and advanced
D) Visible minority educators who are placed in school environments because the institution is dominated by racialized students
E) Parents who do not believe in the Canadian public school system and place their children in private institutions

Question 5

One of the largest barriers to educational equity is the system of ______ and placement.

A) Mediation
B) Mandatory testing
C) Sponsorship
D) Assessment
E) Discipline

Question 6

One of the myths surrounding the recently implemented Africentric school in the Toronto District School Board is the claim that

A) It promotes the discourse of reverse racism
B) It can accommodate students from any ethnic or racial background
C) It reverts back to the days of segregation in Canadian society
D) It will promote even those Black students who are failing to make the program look like a success
E) It will lead to demands for exclusionary institutions in other realms of society

Question 7

The fact that the Toronto District School Board has decided to implement an "Africentric" model into an existing school in 2009 shows

A) That the decision to collect race-based data on educational performance was the biggest reason the program was approved
B) How different political parties can come together and make important decisions aimed at eradicating manifestations of racism in Ontario society
C) That when communities are empowered and given a voice changes can be made
D) It takes a lot of money to make changes in the system
E) That if the model does not produce positive results in the first year then there really are biological differences in levels of intellect and the ability to reason based on race

Question 8

The 'hidden curriculum' in the education system

A) Undermines the hegemony of racism in social institutions
B) Allows teachers to make subjective evaluations about the academic capabilities of visible minority students
C) Consists of content and processes of instruction, such as educational material
D) Is something that only school administrators, teachers, and parents are aware of
E) Ensures that educators are tested annually to measure how competent they are to deal with diversity issues in the classroom

Question 9

One of the key assumptions of many educators is that children enter school

A) Having already received three years of home schooling
B) Once they are ready to handle the vigorous teaching schedule
C) Already fed
D) As 'blank slates'
E) With a strong sense of identity and self-esteem

Question 10

It has been suggested that children become aware of differences in physical characteristics such as skin and hair colour

A) Once they are taught these differences by biased teachers
B) At birth
C) By the time they start talking and communicating with others
D) Between the ages of three and seven
E) At a very early age if they were born and raised in Canada

Question 11

A report on race relations conducted at Queen's University in 1991 identified a number of vital curriculum concerns, including:

A) The need to hire more white males in non-traditional disciplines
B) The existence of course names that do not reflect their content (e.g. The History of Political Thought)
C) The need to lower entrance-examination standards so as to attract more minority students who meet the qualifications
D) The need for more criminology courses examining issues of 'white-on-white' crime
E) Lower rates of retention among minority students who transfer from the university within the first year of admission

Question 12

In many mainstream historical texts, Christopher Columbus is said to have discovered the New World. However, this

A) Is a Eurocentric perspective
B) Fails to credit the assistance that he received from others on the ship
C) Does not take into account the fact that he had gotten lost in his three previous attempts
D) Contradicts earlier reports that Indigenous peoples had 'discovered' Europe
E) Shows that these new text books portray history based on the experiences and knowledge of diverse groups of people

Question 13

Which discourse of democratic racism is commonly used by psychologists in the education system to counteract claims of racially biased assessments?

A) Discourse of Aversive Racism
B) Discourse of Equal Opportunity
C) Discourse of Colour-Blindness
D) Discourse of Multiculturalism
E) Discourse of Blaming the Victim

Question 14

______ racism is apparent both in the lack of awareness of the educational psychologists and in the failure of the institutions that trained these psychologists to make them aware of the knowledge gaps and their consequences.

A) New
B) Democratic
C) Individual
D) Institutional
E) Systemic

Question 15

Rather than practising a(n) _______ approach, school authorities tend to favour a more authoritarian exclusionary approach to parent and community participation in the school.

A) Eurocentric
B) Multicultural
C) Anti-oppressive
D) Collaborative
E) Tokenistic

Question 16

At the level of university, one of the consequences of streaming practices would include

A) A higher number of students entering university who have failed to grasp the 3 R's of education
B) A reduced number of minority students who are eligible for university
C) A noticeable decline in the grades that first- and second-year students are achieving compared to levels in the 1990s
D) Reduced expectations from white students who have not been forced to overcome barriers to that point in their education
E) Higher numbers of minority students pursuing degrees in athletics, social work, or tourism at the university level when compared to the number of white students in similar programs

Question 17

Black parents and educators have identified a number of issues that hinders the relationship between educational institutions and the Black community, including:

A) The absence of people of colour on parent advisory boards
B) Feelings that communication with the school are one-way, non-transactional and initiated only when the school reports disciplinary problems
C) The lack of school sponsored events in the community allowing for more informal interactions between parents and educators
D) Prohibiting Black and other minority parents from participating in after-school programs
E) The overtly racist language that teachers use when forced to conduct teacher-parent interviews every year

Question 18

In the case study examining the 1997 killing of Reena Virk in British Columbia, the authors suggest that rather than exploring the role that race might have played in her death, the media instead

A) Completely ignored the story
B) Downplayed the issue because of a fear that a race war in B.C. would be initiated
C) Blamed Virk for creating the hostile environment that would eventually lead to her death
D) Focused on Virk's cultural background and the fact that she refused to assimilate into her new surroundings in a timely manner
E) Linked her death to the larger issue of rising incidences of youth violence in Canada

Question 19

Schools have generally not been able to effectively respond to incidents of racial harassment or violence. The most common response by educators has been to deny or re-define the 'racial' dimension of such incidents. In other words, they are relying on the

A) Discourse of Liberal Values
B) Discourse of Colour-Blindness
C) Discourse of White Victimization
D) Discourse of Binary Polarization
E) Discourse of Denial

Question 20

In 2000, Ontario's Education Act was amended to incorporate which controversial provisions pertaining to disciplinary policies?

A) Safe Schools and Zero Tolerance
B) Get Tough on Students
C) Anti-bullying and Anti-racism
D) Leave Weapons At Home campaign
E) Educators Opposed to Corporal Punishment

Question 21

One of the responses to racism in the schools has been the development of policies, programs, and practices intended to create a learning environment that respected the cultures of all students. However, one of the key assumptions underpinning multicultural education includes:

A) Teachers are willing to promote multicultural education strategies
B) They work to challenge untested assumptions about culture and its transmission
C) Students will be more likely to find a friend from each cultural group once they have shared foods from different parts of the world
D) Learning about other cultures will reduce children's (and adults') prejudice and discrimination toward those from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds
E) Learning about other cultures will increase one's commitment to challenge all forms of racism in Canada

Question 22

A critique of 'multicultural education' strategies would include:

A) The fact not everyone comes from a readily identifiable ethnic or racial group
B) The fact teachers often have very little knowledge or understanding of other cultures, thereby leading to the trivialization and stereotyping of different ethnic and racial groups
C) It focuses too much on the dismantling of the current education system
D) It tries too much to impose the histories and experiences of people of colour into the curriculum
E) It wastes a lot of tax-payer money because teachers don't do anything but take students to the museum to see how different people lived throughout history

Question 23

The central thrust of anti-racism education as both a theoretical and practical approach is to

A) Change institutional and organizational policies and practices that have a discriminatory impact
B) Ensure that clear and measurable steps to ensure that racist educators are identified and suspended or expelled, depending on their willingness to take race relations courses
C) Find ways to ensure that more minority educators are recruited and hired in existing school boards across the country
D) Require potential teachers to enrol in training courses that focus on 'cultural relativism' in an effort to get rid of any pre-existing Eurocentric ideals
E) Take into account what the school has already done to eliminate racism from the school system and to commend them on these efforts

Question 24

An attempt to initiate a de-streaming process, in which Grade 9 students would no longer be separated into academic and vocational streams reflected a proactive response to racism in the education system. However, it was never fully implemented because

A) Of a lack of administrative support from institutions in predominately rural areas of Canada
B) It would mean that white students would not be given an unfair advantage to begin high school
C) It was believed it would empower to many minority students and their parents
D) It was revoked by the Conservative Ontario government of then-Premier Mike Harris
E) Parents from the dominant culture were able to vote against it because of the lack of minority parents on the advisory board of the Toronto District School Board

Question 25

The discourse of tradition and universalism is a form of resistance that is

A) Based on the fact that no changes have ever been made to the traditional education system from its inception in Canada
B) Based on fragmenting groups into universal categories of "we-they"
C) Important in dismantling the hidden curriculum tradition found in many schools
D) Formulated on the premise that the traditional core curriculum should remain unchanged
E) Used universally by different ethnic and racial groups who are not supportive of anti-racism initiatives
True & False Questions:

Question 26

Adopting 'multicultural education' strategies is one positive way of eliminating racism in schools.

Question 27

Bias in the classics and the Eurocentrism that permeates other texts and teaching materials only have an impact on the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours of minority students.

Question 28

Due to the objective nature of science, it represents one of the only subjects in school where racism is not manifested.

Question 29

In the realm of education, it is now generally accepted that 'objective' tests are not as 'culture-free' as test manufacturers assert.

Question 30

Many school administrators believe that fostering collaborative relationships with parents will ultimately reduce their independence and encourage more people to challenge their professional competence.

Question 31

Racial harassment in educational institutions can include racist graffiti.

Question 32

Zero tolerance policies fail to provide students and teachers the opportunity to decide for themselves the terms and conditions defining acceptable behaviour.

Question 33

A commonly shared assumption among educators is that all students start with the same opportunities.

Question 34

University campuses across the country often offer a hostile learning environment for minority students pursuing educational degrees.

Question 35

Recent research on the responses of prospective white student teachers to attempts to introduce anti-racism into their educational programs has revealed that many actually welcome these changes.