ACCESS AND EQUITY IN THE UNIVERSITY Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 1 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 2 ACCESS AND EQUITY IN THE UNIVERSITY Edited by Keren S. Brathwaite A Collection of Papers from the Thirtieth Anniversary Conference of the Transitional Year Programme University of Toronto Canadian Scholars’ Press Toronto Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 3 Access and Equity in the University: A Collection of Papers from the Thirtieth Anniversary Conference of the Transitional Year Programme, University of Toronto Edited by Keren S. Brathwaite First published in 2003 by Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. 180 Bloor Street West, Suite 801 Toronto, Ontario M5S 2V6 www.cspi.org Copyright © 2003 Keren S. Brathwaite, the contributing authors, and Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the written permission of Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc., except for brief passages quoted for review purposes. In the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright may be obtained: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5, (416) 868-1620, fax (416) 868- 1621, toll-free 1-800-893-5777, www.accesscopyright.ca. “Stop Calling Us ‘Slaves’” by Althea Prince was originally published in Our Schools Our Selves 9, no.6 (June 1999). Toronto: James Lorimer & Company. Reprinted with permission. Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. CSPI would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention. CSPI gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. TYP gratefully acknowledges the Ethnocultural Fund of the University of Toronto for a generous grant that assisted in the publication of this book. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Access and equity in the university : a collection of papers from the thirtieth anniversary conference of the Transitional Year Programme, University of Toronto / edited by Keren S. Brathwaite. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-55130-219-5 1. Minorities—Education (Higher)—Congresses. 2. Minorities—Education (Higher)—Ontario—Toronto—Congresses. 3. University of Toronto. Transitional Year Programme—Congresses. I. Brathwaite, Keren LB2301.A22 2003 378.1’9829 C2002-905276-9 Page design and layout by Brad Horning Cover design by Zack Taylor 03 04 05 06 07 08 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV Marquis Imprimeur Inc. Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 4 To the Students and Alumni who courageously have accessed university through the Transitional Year Programme and the Steps to University Program. To the Faculty and Staff who have assisted their journey. To Professor Horace Campbell and others who ignited the TYP access vision in 1969 and 1970. Dedication Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 5 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 6 Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Preface Jack Wayne .......................................................................................... xv Part One: Opening and Introduction Opening Prayer Elder Lillian McGregor......................................................................... 3 Acknowledging Our Ancestors: TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Carol Couchie (TYP 1989–90) ............................................................. 7 Chapter 1 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction Keren S. Brathwaite ............................................................................ 11 TYP Alumni Voices Reflections Alexander Francis (1973–1974) ......................................................... 23 From Amusement Park to University Marilli Martyn (1985–1986) ............................................................. 27 Part Two: The Meaning of Access and Equity Chapter 2 Is it Possible to Have Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century? Lessons from the Transitional Year Programme of the University of Toronto Horace Campbell .................................................................................. 35 Table of Contents Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 7 Chapter 3 Reflections on My Years in TYP: Lessons in Education Equity Keren S. Brathwaite ............................................................................ 59 Chapter 4 University Access and Educational Opportunity: A Canadian Perspective Keith A. Allen ..................................................................................... 79 Chapter 5 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality Rona Abramovitch .............................................................................. 93 Chapter 6 Dimensions of Access to Transition Frederick Ivor Case ............................................................................ 107 Chapter 7 TYP and University Boundaries Frank Cunningham .......................................................................... 117 TYP Alumni Voices TYP Has Opened Doors for Me Thomas Howe (TYP 1988–1989)..................................................... 129 The TYP Route to a Ph.D. Paul Bakary Gibba (TYP 1993–1994) ............................................. 133 Part Three: Critical Considerations and Strategies for Increasing Access and Equity Chapter 8 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy Carl E. James ..................................................................................... 139 Chapter 9 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto Eileen M. Antone.............................................................................. 165 Chapter 10 From Outsider to Insider: Toward a Model of Transition for Non-traditional University Students Carolyn Stallberg-White ................................................................... 181 Chapter 11 Minority Graduate Students and Funding: What Do We Know? Roslyn Thomas-Long ........................................................................ 189 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 8 Chapter 12 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity, and Excellence in University Education Selina L.P. Mushi............................................................................. 207 TYP Alumni Voices TYP Prepared Me for Graduate School Claude Davis (TYP 1994–1995)...................................................... 231 Building My Self-Esteem Through Success in TYP Simone Amelia Louis (TYP 1996–1997)......................................... 235 The Lost Playground! Mohamed Abdulle “Dudishe” (TYP 1997–1998) ........................... 239 Part Four: Implications of Naming and Perception for Access and Equity Chapter 13 Breaking the Testing Mould: Or What Opponents of Affirmative Action Can Learn from TYP-ing Olufemi Taiwo .................................................................................. 245 Chapter 14 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” Althea Prince..................................................................................... 259 Chapter 15 The Sociological Imagination, Critique of the Model Minority Argument, and Empowerment Horace Henriques .............................................................................. 269 Chapter 16 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities: What Do University Web Sites Say? Andrew M.A. Allen .......................................................................... 279 TYP Alumni Voices From TYP Student to Winner of National Scholarship Tyler Burgess (TYP 1998–1999) ..................................................... 303 TYP Took My Dreams and Made Them Real! Jennifer Cowan (TYP 1999–2000)................................................... 307 Part Five: University Access Through Partnerships with Schools Chapter 17 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools: The Case of Steps to University in Toronto Thomas Mathien ............................................................................... 311 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 9 Chapter 18 Teaching in the Steps to University Program: A Personal Reflection Patricia Albanese ............................................................................... 321 Chapter 19 Enhancing Access to University for “At-Risk” Students: The Steps to University Program in the Eyes of Two Participants Watson E.J. Morris and Andrew C. Okolie ..................................... 325 TYP Alumni Voices Thirtieth Anniversary Class Rosamund Dorrington (TYP 2000–2001) ...................................... 343 My Life Clint Otto (TYP 2000–2001) .......................................................... 345 Part Six: Access and Equity in Science and Math Education Chapter 20 Science Literacy: Schooled Science in the Service of Equity and Social Justice Wanja Gitari ..................................................................................... 349 Chapter 21 “Heteroglossia with Science”: A Tool for Conceptualizing Curriculum for Science Students Theresa Calovini ................................................................................ 375 Chapter 22 Mathematics and African Canadians Francis Ahia ...................................................................................... 387 TYP Alumni Voices I Want to Be the Main Role Model for My Child Raquel Madahbee (TYP 2000–2001)................................................ 399 What TYP Means to Me John David Herron (TYP 2000–2001) ............................................ 403 TYP: There Is a Light Debbie Innes (TYP 2000–2001) ....................................................... 407 Notes on Contributors ............................................................................ 411 References .................................................................................................. 419 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 10 I would like to acknowledge all those who contributed to making this publication possible. My sincere thanks to: Canadian Scholars’ Press, and particularly to its publisher, Dr. Jack Wayne, who envisioned this book while we were yet deliberating at TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Conference at New College, University of Toronto, on October 28, 2000. The managing editor of Canadian Scholars’ Press, Dr. Althea Prince, for your strong support and critical advice on the book, and for presenting a paper at the Conference and a chapter to the book long before you assumed your position at the press. The production editor, Rebecca Conolly, for your patient support, encouragement, and suggestions which assisted my completion of this book. Professor Rona Abramovitch, director of TYP, for your leadership, your enthusiastic support of the project and assistance with the application for an Ethno-cultural grant, and your contribution of a chapter to the book. The University of Toronto for making access to the university possible through the Transitional Year Programme, and particular commendation to Professor Adel Sedra, outgoing vice-president and provost, for your outstanding contribution to the stability of TYP and support of its students. xi Acknowledgements Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 11 xii Access and Equity in the University Professor Horace Campbell for igniting the vision of TYP in 1969 and 1970, for coming with Makini to share in the Thirtieth Anniversary celebrations, and inspiring us with a Keynote address which is the first chapter of this book. The members of TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Committee: Professor Eileen Antone, Hartford Charles, Dr. Horace Henriques, Professor Wanja Gitari, Dr. Belle Leon, Barbara Lew, Dr. Thomas Mathien, Christine Smillie-Adjarkwa, Denise Bobb Sifontes, Clare Cross, Claude Davis, Rudolph Klien; and to Marilli Martyn and Roslyn Thomas-Long for your splendid administrative support. Elder Lillian McGregor for your Opening Prayer at the Conference and for its inclusion in the book. Appreciation for your support of TYP through the years. The contributors who presented at the Thirtieth Conference and have so generously shared your views on access through the pages of this book. The TYP alumni contributors, my special appreciation for taking time from your pressing deadlines to prepare your reflections on TYP. The TYP students and alumni who are the enablers of this book, for your contribution to the programme’s development, and for increasing our understanding of the deeper meanings of access. The faculty and staff of TYP for your encouragement to me as I worked on this project, and for your profound commitment to university access. Professor Carl James, who supported me as you always do, through critical advice on the text, as well as moral encouragement, which helped me bring it to completion—and for contributing a chapter. Marilli Martyn and Roslyn Thomas-Long, I owe a debt of gratitude to you for the hours you have dedicated to this project, never losing your warmth and enthusiasm over the many months of our work on the Thirtieth Anniversary Committee to the completion of this book. Marilli assisted with the preparation of the manuscript, communicated with contributors, was my technical adviser, and yet had time to prepare an alumni piece. My deepest appreciation to you, Marilli, for Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 12 Acknowledgements xiii your commitment to this project. Roslyn, in spite of your hectic schedule this past year, you assisted me with research and preparation of the manuscript, and yet were able to submit your own chapter in good time. Thanks also for your critical comments on my musings. My deepest appreciation to you, Roslyn, for your contribution to this work. My family, who is always there to anchor me, especially in times of my single-minded concentration on some important project. Wendy, Eddy, and Tisha, you have been your usual supportive selves. And Tisha, thanks for coming with me on a Saturday to my office where you did your homework and studied for your Grade 3 Test while I remained focused on editing. To baby Akir, who joined us in the final stages of the project, a warm welcome. To my friends who have been neglected for a while, I can now promise time for phone calls and springtime get-togethers. My warmest thanks to all of you. Keren January 2003 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 13 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 14 TYP began as a vehicle to provide post-secondary education to a group of young adults whose education had been disrupted through immigration to Canada. The founders were themselves students, graduate and undergraduate, who saw that many young people had experienced disruptions in their education and that there was a need for a route to university education that did not demand a rigid progression through levels of schooling. The character of the Programme has been forever stamped by its beginnings in the student movement of the ’60s and early ’70s. Student-initiated new beginnings, such as TYP, have always been undertaken based on the critique of the old ways of doing things. The existing understandings of race and class were attacked and could not withstand the onslaught. Authoritarian versions of pedagogical practice were dismissed with very little notice. The young people who began TYP thought that they were wiser than their elders. In these matters they were. TYP faculty members, staff, and students continue to share the sense of optimism that was abroad in those buoyant times. There remains the sense that individual students can move to a high level of achievement in a short time. There is the sense that the communities from which these students are drawn will benefit from having persons of skill and achievement in their midst. And there is the sense that education remains important to the life course. xv Preface Jack Wayne Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 15 xvi Access and Equity in the University The student radicals of the ’60s are being transformed into the pensioners of the new millennium, but the spirit that informed the founding of the Programme has hung around, sometimes hiding among the yellowed records in filing cabinets, but more often striding through the halls in full view, as cocky with taunts and challenge as ever. This spirit of challenge, opportunity, and achievement has survived its being placed in the midst of a large, bureaucratic institution, the University of Toronto. There can be no greater tribute to the founders of the Programme than the fact that their vision has matured and grown during such a lengthy period of institutionalization. In the pages of this book there are many voices. Most of the articles have been written by people whose lives have touched mine, because they have been my students, or colleagues, or both. I am grateful to the authors for having set out their experiences, ideas, and feelings. The papers remind me of how many remarkable people there are in this world, how the course of a person’s life can be enriched by following a meandering path with serendipitous outcomes, and how education importantly frames our life experiences. There are no arguments for equity and access more persuasive than the richness, variety, and eloquence of the words you will discover on the pages that follow. Jack Wayne Toronto, January 2003 Ch 00-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 16 OPENING AND INTRODUCTION Part One Part One Part One Part One Part One Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 1 Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 2 Today, we stand together, as sisters and brothers, from the four directions of this land, to offer Thanksgiving to the Creator for all that has been given to us to use on our life’s journey. As an Anishnawbe Kwe (First Nations woman), I will ask the Creator, in my first language of Ojibwe, to allow me to speak in English, so that we may all share in Thanksgiving. Creator, we offer Thanksgiving for all the gifts of life. We ask for your blessings for all sisters and brothers, here and throughout the world. You have given us direction, by the light of the rising sun from the East, and with it the gift of air, which sustains every living being on Mother Earth, in our daily journey, so that we in turn seek ways to protect and care for this gift of air. You show us the beauty of each sunrise with colours of happiness and, at times, sadness. The clouds that bring us rain and snow and protection, your infinite love shown in the infinity of the Sky World. As we light our sacred medicines, we prepare to offer prayers, as we the first peoples of this land have done from time immemorial, to remind us to cleanse ourselves from the negative words, actions, and thoughts of our journey. To cleanse our eyes, to see the beauty of your Creation, our ears designed to hear and listen to both sides of the voices of all. And that when we open our lips we know that our voice comes from close to our hearts. 3 Opening Prayer Elder Lillian McGregor First Nations House University of Toronto Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 3 4 Access and Equity in the University We have been given hands and feet to walk and reach out to each other, to care and share. Our Eagle, whom you made to fly to the highest part of your world, is our messenger for our thoughts and words. We seek your guidance and blessings in all that we do. As we journey to the South direction, we see the sun at its highest in the sky, reminding us to do our utmost and the best of the tasks that are in our daily lives. Especially here today we thank the men and women who have taught us, guided and mentored us in the many lessons and words of wisdom and knowledge; those who have guided you in your academic walk. We also ask forgiveness for words spoken in anger. As we continue to the West direction, we have come to the end of a day, when our tasks are completed. A time to reflect and meditate, first, upon the gifts you have given us this day. From the animals of the forests, the food, the clothing, the lessons of staying together, in harmony and peace. The fish of lakes, rivers, and oceans for their food and one of the greatest lessons they give to each of us. They live in the deepest parts of your waters, reminding us to look, to search, and to hear the deepest part of our being, so that we can walk and live a good life. Today, our Eagle Feather reminds us of our messenger, the Eagle, and of all birds, who remind us of leadership shown in the formation of their sky journeys, with one leading the flight. For all these lessons of this circle of Life, we offer many thanks. As we vision and dream through this nighttime, we reflect and meditate on what we should have done for someone today. We know that our ancestors are in their Spirit World; they light and guide us by the night sky of stars, reminding us of their presence to guide and support us in our lives. As we prepare for the North direction in our journey, to be mindful of those who do not see the light of body, mind, and spirit, and to ask forgiveness for anything we have forgotten today. Meegwetch (Thank you) for all in our lives. To remember the disabled, the homeless, the hungry, those suffering injustice and intolerance. To remember the little children and the young people who seek guidance, support, respect, and love. For our parents who Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 4 Acknowledgements 5 gave us our life, and for our grandparents who have prepared for us a safe and happy life. Today especially, we remember the leaders in our schools, our organizations and of this land, and pray that they make kind and respectful decisions, so that each of us can live in balance and harmony in your creation. Each of you has been given gifts to use in your journey. I pray that you use wisely those of compassion, humility, peace, honesty, truth, wisdom, respect, so that everyone walks in dignity on your Earth, but above all Love. Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 5 Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 6 When I reflect on the Thirtieth Anniversary of TYP, it is difficult not to make this piece a litany of praise and gratitude. However, I know my mentors well enough to realize that they would want me to do a little more than their praises. I would say, however, that any discussion of my own accomplishments and the many accomplishments of my fellow TYP alumni is a song of praise to the founders and the faculty and staff of TYP. Lastly, it is important for me to recognize the University of Toronto and its continued support of TYP, which has made possible the expansion of the program’s curriculum to include the sciences. It is an emotional experience for me to look back almost twelve years ago to receiving my acceptance letter from TYP and to the beginnings of my awakening both as a human being and as an Anishnawbe Kwe (Aboriginal woman). My acceptance letter from TYP convinced me that there were people in this world who felt that I deserved a second chance, that I had intelligence and the capacity to develop leadership qualities. The two people who wrote my letters of recommendation to TYP were the late Prudence Tracy and Father Harold Nahabedian. They were some of the first people who led me on the path of awakening. There have been countless others who assisted me on this path. I will focus now on the important role TYP has played in my life and my awakening. As an Aboriginal woman, when I think of my life and where I am today, I look back at history. My review of history confirms 7 Acknowledging Our Ancestors: TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Carol Couchie (TYP 1989–1990) Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 7 my belief that the business of Colonization is to take; other verbs might be to overcome, to usurp, to steal, to conquer, to occupy, and to control. The founding fathers of Canada were busy, but more than just in occupying the land. Their attempt was to change the landscape, if you will. Indeed, the landscape has been changed in the last 500 years, but land was not the only thing they wanted. They wanted control. Over time, Aboriginal peoples themselves became a commodity in various ways. Their institutions were taken over and given to well-meaning Canadians, politicians, teachers, health care providers, policy-makers, to name just a few professionals. Institutions that had long historical significance for the health and well-being of First Nations people were replaced by those run by non-Native people. The many advances in technology were accompanied by a prevailing attitude that First Nations people were backward. The belief was that Aboriginal culture was obsolete and that communities had to move on with a higher order of modern scientific thinking. Over the years, much has been done and is being done. Our communities have come a long way in the past thirty to forty years. Attitudes and perceptions of indigenous peoples are beginning to change. People now look to indigenous technology for answers, particularly in the areas of environmental science and health. However, there is still a crisis of leadership in many First Nations communities, which is the aftermath of the ravages of colonialism. We need strong politicians, nurses, midwives, doctors, counsellors, and teachers, to name just a few. We need a higher level of education for our people, particularly our young people. In addition, Aboriginal health continues to be in a crisis as First Nations people repeatedly top the charts in mortality and morbidity statistics in Canada. So much for the bad news. The good news is TYP!! As we celebrated the Thirtieth Anniversary of TYP, I was reminded of the major contribution this program has made to the Aboriginal community in supporting adult learners of Aboriginal descent, and in helping them to take another look at their lives and try to make sense of it. TYP is to be commended for developing a curriculum that creates personal, cultural, and global understanding. It is a curriculum that allows a different side of history to be told—one that explains the mechanism of 8 Access and Equity in the University Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 8 colonization. This is history that promotes self-esteem and understanding. It is TYP that provided the preparation for me to graduate from Ryerson University in 1998 with a Bachelor of Health Science in midwifery. The Midwifery Education Program, a program that worked in conjunction with three universities, was the first of its kind in Canada. I was the first Aboriginal woman to graduate and earn a degree in midwifery in Canada. I know, however, that I will be the first of many more women from First Nations communities to earn a midwifery degree as we are preceded by many grandmothers who were trained and skilled in this area. I am also very happy to know that TYP now has a science component to its program with a curriculum that is just as politically innovative as its humanities and social science curriculum. The TYP curriculum is one that looks at other ways of knowing, and indigenous science is one of those ways. When I think of TYP, I am reminded of a line from the movie Amistad when the leader of the survivors of the kidnapped Africans tells the lawyer who is defending him that he will pray to his ancestors to come and help him. The lawyer asks the man what if they do not help. The young man simply states that they must help him for he is the reason for their entire existence. By the same token, we exist because our ancestors once lived. The elders and teachers who are the founders, faculty, and staff of TYP have called on their ancestors to help, have pledged to their ancestors to be true to their memory. And it is for this reason that we experience the transformative power that is TYP. It is a power that is created by tricksters from a hundred tribes. For this reason, TYP will continue for the next thirty years, or for as long as it takes to heal the effects of the violence of colonization. TYP teaches that we should never underestimate the power of love, community, and truth. Acknowledging Our Ancestors 9 Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 9 Ch 00-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 10 This book owes its conception to the longevity of the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto. This publication pays tribute to the founders of TYP for their vision of university access at a time when the vision was a challenge to the established order. It honours the contributions of TYP co-founder, Professor Horace Campbell, Professor Charles Hanley and Praxis Organization, and Elaine Maxwell and the first students in the summer programs of 1969 and 1970, which led the University of Toronto to offer the Transitional Year Programme at Innis College from September 1970. It recognizes the African Canadian/Black community for its contributions to the TYP idea and its articulation at its inception, and for its continuing support over the years, which was a particular source of strength in the unsettled period in the 1970s when the program was insecure and under constant scrutiny. It recognizes the First Nations of Canada who from the beginning had faith in the TYP project as an access route into university for Aboriginal students whose participation in university when TYP began was dismal. This book acknowledges also the support of the other communities who, through their students, have participated in the program and continue to value its mandate. From the beginning, the barriers of social class, race, gender, and other inequities have been the motivations of TYP, which took these barriers into consideration in its recruitment, admissions, and outreach as it sought to open the university to a limited group of students who were under-represented in it. This Chapter 1 11 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction Keren S. Brathwaite Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 11 12 Access and Equity in the University work will therefore consider critical factors that limit access and suggest strategies for expanding access within the university. In this introduction, we must take time to commend those who have made or are making a contribution to the work of TYP: the current director, Professor Rona Abramovitch; former directors Dr. Jack Dimond, Professor Marty Wall, and Professor Jack Wayne; former associate director Dr. Keith Allen; and the faculty and staff whose work has built TYP into the dynamic teaching and learning facility that it is today. It is also important to note the expansion of access into the public school system through the Steps to University Program, which TYP has jointly sponsored with the Toronto District School Board and the former Toronto Board of Education since 1992; Dr. Thomas Mathien is the coordinator of this program. And to the students and alumni who have been the true enablers of TYP’s survival for a generation, we owe a debt of gratitude for their motivation and tenacity, which in my view have helped to weaken some long-held assumptions about the purpose of university education in Canada. TYP students have demonstrated by their performance that university education ought to be more open and accessible to all citizens in a democratic society. Students in TYP (and other access programs) demonstrate that the university need not fear access as an assault on its standards and its standing, for they have enriched not only TYP but also the university environment through their participation for over thirty years. We believe, however, that there is an urgent need for greater access to university at this time, as some of the chapters will discuss. For thirty years TYP has provided a route to university for students who have no other means of access. It has the distinction of being one of two programs that were the first to offer this particular model of full-time access to university in Canada; the other program is the Transition Year Programme at Dalhousie University. The underlying philosophy of the program from the beginning has been to make university education more equitable and attainable by providing opportunities for participation to students from groups and communities who were traditionally under-represented in postsecondary education. The targeted groups included (and still include) Aboriginal students, Black/ African Canadians, women who are single parents, and working- Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 12 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction 13 class students. Students with disabilities and of diverse sexual orientations, refugee students, and those who have experienced homelessness are now among the students that TYP serves. Our program provides a space in which students can use their experiences to critically engage in education. TYP was launched as a full-time university program in September 1970 at Innis College on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto. It developed from two summer programs, the first of which was organized by Black students, Black educators, and associates, and housed in the Home Service Association building on Bathurst Street in the Black community in Toronto in 1969; this initiative prepared a small number of Black students to qualify for entry to York University. The second summer program in 1970 was relocated to the University of Toronto campus at Innis College and expanded to include other groups that needed access: Aboriginal students, students from working-class backgrounds, and women. Since 1970, the mandate of the full-time TYP at the University of Toronto was to prepare fifty students each year (sixty-five in recent years) to pursue undergraduate degree studies, mainly in the humanities and social sciences. In 1998–1999, TYP expanded its curriculum to include more math education than it had previously offered, and in 2000–2001 introduced a course in reasoning in the sciences. Nearly all of the students were the first in their families to attend a university, had no alternative means of access, and were dependent on government financial assistance through the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) to make their university education a possibility. Ontario government funded TYP at 0.7 Basic Income Unit from 1970 to 2000 when full funding was belatedly granted. However, in thirty years the program’s objectives have been expanded rather than curtailed, for the social conditions that ignited its vision of access in the first place have remained virtually unchanged for this period. From the late 1960s to early 1980s, major studies of university access in Canada (Anisef, Okihiro, and James 1982; Pike 1970) alerted educators and institutions to the barriers to university access in Canada; these studies focused mainly on the role of social class and, to some extent, gender in university participation. In recent years in Ontario, for example, although there has been a Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 13 14 Access and Equity in the University concretization of the meaning and requirements of education equity through the work of key educators and pressure from some community groups, there continues to be a huge challenge to the pursuit of equity on a number of fronts, especially in the public schools where students usually receive their preparation for postsecondary education. School retention is a requisite of that preparation, but the high-school dropout rate in Ontario is high and affects the employment and other life chances of working- class, Aboriginal, African Canadian, and other students who experience systemic barriers. The seriousness of the dropout dilemma is addressed in studies by George Radwanski, George Dei, and others who draw attention to the need for change to reduce the resulting waste of human potential (Dei et al. 1997; Radwanski 1988). This problem of school dropouts has affected the entry to university of Aboriginal, Black, Portuguese, working- class, and other marginalized students over an extensive period. Further, with the reforms in Ontario’s secondary school system since 1998, and with the New Curriculum and increased standardized testing, we anticipate that leaving school early will continue to prevent certain groups from attending university. Projections at this time concerning the performance of students in grades 9 and 10 add to the growing concerns about who will access university from double cohort groups. The escalating cost of university tuition has also been identified by students, parents, and community and education activists as having a devastating effect on students’ aspirations for postsecondary education. These factors pose a dilemma for those who already have no history of university participation in their family. The Transition Year Programme experience at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia is another groundbreaking program that began in September 1970 and was also initiated by the African Canadian community in Nova Scotia. Its model of access, though similar to TYP at the University of Toronto, differed, however, in the communities of students it serves in that from the beginning it targeted two groups: Aboriginal students (mainly Micmac) and African Canadians from Nova Scotia’s historical Black communities. Both the University of Toronto and Dalhousie programs share a common goal of providing access to university for students who experience barriers in schooling and society. Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 14 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction 15 Both programs shared a common Thirtieth Anniversary in 2000. To celebrate its Thirtieth Anniversary, TYP at the University of Toronto hosted two events on October 27–28, 2000: a cultural performance evening, which showcased the artistic achievements of TYP alumni and students in creative writing, literary reading performance, song, and movement, and two steel pan performances followed by a one-day conference on the theme of this book, “Access and Equity in University Education: Lessons from TYP and Other Programmes.” These events brought together a large gathering of people whose lives the program has touched in various ways, and others who are practitioners of education equity in various locations in Ontario, Manitoba, and the U.S. The participants included TYP co-founder Professor Horace Campbell; alumni and students from 1970 to 2000; three former TYP directors, Dr. Jack Dimond, professors Marty Wall and Jack Wayne; former associate director Dr. Keith Allen; the current director, Professor Rona Abramovitch; TYP faculty and staff; Elder Lillian McGregor and Anita Benedict, coordinator of First Nations House at University of Toronto; community representatives and educators; and faculty and graduate students from Ontario and Manitoba universities and Northeastern University in Massachusetts. The events were held at New College, University of Toronto, with the support of the college principal, Professor David Clandfield, who has been a long-time friend of TYP. New College was a fitting venue for the celebrations, for it has been the college of choice for a large number of TYP students as it offers programs of interest to them, including Women’s studies, African studies, Caribbean studies, and, more recently, Equity studies. Professor Frederick Case, a former principal of New College, was chair of the TYP Policy Committee in the early 1970s and, in addition to being an evaluator and staunch supporter of the program, has taught a generation of its students in his courses on Africa and Caribbean literature. Professor Frank Cunningham, the current principal of Innis College, the first home of TYP, was a plenary speaker at the conference. He also served on TYP Policy Committee in the early years, and has remained committed to its vision. This publication has allowed us to compile in one volume several of the papers that participants presented at the Thirtieth Anniversary Conference. It includes some significant and mature Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 15 16 Access and Equity in the University voices of innovators and practitioners in the field of education equity in Canada and the United States. Many of the educators represented have for a long time been engaged in the struggle to make universities more inclusive and more open to groups who used to be excluded. Students from these groups do not share the same experiences as the traditional groups whose presence and views used to dominate university campuses in Canada prior to 1970, and still do. They include mature women and mothers whose participation in university was low in the 1960s and 1970s when TYP was being established. The contributing writers discuss the philosophical and historical foundations of participation in Canadian universities with some attention to public education, and they examine the social context that nurtures these unequal conditions. They identify also the challenges institutions have faced in educating students who do not fit the traditional profile, and the lessons we have learned from the real life experiences of establishing access programs in Canada during the past thirty years. Further, they propose strategies that universities and policy- makers in government ought to heed if they are serious about transforming universities in Canada into more inclusive and welcoming institutions. The direction of the book evolved from the overall theme of the TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Conference and from the papers presented. Part One: “Opening and Introduction” commences the book with an opening prayer, a piece acknowledging our “ancestors,” and an introductory chapter. Part Two, which examines “The Meaning of Access and Equity,” is introduced by a chapter from Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University, New York, who was the keynote speaker at the conference. Part Three discusses “Critical Considerations and Strategies for Increasing Access and Equity.” Part Four focuses on “Implications of Naming and Perception for Access and Equity.” Part Five presents a model of “University Access Through Partnership with Schools” through a discussion of the Steps to University Programme from the experiences of faculty in the program. Part Six examines “Access and Equity in Science and Math Education,” an area in which inequities abound. The “TYP Alumni Voices” are an important part of the publication as they authenticate the value of university access for the students as expressed in their stories and perspectives. They identify what has been most valuable in Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 16 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction 17 their university experience. Through their echoes across the sections of the book, readers can hear testimonies about the changes that access provisions have made possible in the students’ lives, and in their families and communities, with Canadian society being a major beneficiary of their education. Their testimonies attest to the cost benefits of education provisions for students who are often absent from or under-represented in the traditional pool. It is also important to share with readers our expectations of this book in terms of its potential contribution to the growing interest in Canada and other parts of the world in the purpose and role of universities in a democracy, and in democratizing knowledge and power. In Canada, we are currently in a period of escalating cost of university education, with significant increases in tuition fees and other costs, and a high level of debt for graduates, which deters many students from poor socio-economic backgrounds from going to university. For example, at the University of Toronto, tuition in the Faculty of Law will increase to $14,000 in 2000–2003 and to $22,000 in five years (The Bulletin, May 6, 2002). In Ontario at this time, the changes in the public education system are affecting the attainment of the competitive grades that students need to secure a place in the elite universities, which is another factor affecting access. The reform of secondary education to a four-year system, the New Curriculum, and underfunding of public education in Ontario will predictably increase the number of school dropouts for whom adult continuing education has been also curtailed (see Rushowy and Brown 2002, “New Curriculum Proving Too Tough”). Streaming and standardized testing will continue to limit participation in university for marginalized groups, while at the same time the Canadian economy is more dependent on an educated and skilled workforce. In Ontario, unemployment and cuts to social programs have increased the problems of finding and retaining affordable housing and have led to increased homelessness and dependence on food banks. In addition, there is a technological divide between those who can afford and those who cannot afford the new technology. These current realities have exacerbated some already wide gaps in the social fabric. These are conditions that accentuate the need for extensive access. Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 17 18 Access and Equity in the University Our book should therefore make a contribution to expanding the debate over the provision of access to those who have been disadvantaged in society, and whose aspirations in education and other spheres will remain unfulfilled except there is intervention. The TYP, Steps to University, and other models can encourage students to view university as a viable option in their self- actualization—to view it as within their reach, with the potential of their participating in it and sharing in the rewards it confers on others. This book postulates that we should introduce more measures at every level of education to increase access to university for students from disenfranchised groups. It further postulates that the culture of universities needs to change, that curriculum and faculty need revision, and that other fundamental adjustments are required to accommodate a broad definition of access as a serious goal in Canadian universities. The chapters in this book are all grounded in the key principles of access and equity, which we believe ought to be imperatives in university education. Other terms that are integral to our assessment are anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion, which receive attention in some chapters. What is the meaning and weight of these key principles in the context of university education in Canada today? What are the obstacles to their realization in the university? First, we view access and equity as interconnected; one is not realized without the other. They are principles rooted in social justice and respect for all citizens in a democratic society. They are human rights principles, for education is a basic human right. When we use access and equity in the context of university education, we are in fact recognizing the role of the university in promoting equality in society. And for an institution to be seriously engaged in this promotion, it would need to have a clear understanding of what true equality means, and it would require committed leadership and procedures for realizing it. The university should lead by example. In some crucial areas that stand to benefit from principles of fairness, inclusion, and diversity, the university is positioned to take a lead: in teaching and learning, professional development, research and training, ethics, assessment of values and ideas, introduction of new values and social trends, and preparation of those who will be leaders of the future. Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 18 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction 19 Such expectations do, of course, mean an overwhelming responsibility for the university, but for public universities (as those in Canada are), these are realistic expectations that should inform the university’s mission and practices. There are, however, some barriers that impede the university’s will to accommodate a deep level of access and equity in its structure and operation. There are barriers of tradition, of definition of the university’s role in Canadian society; there are barriers imposed by funding and affordability, admissions criteria, and elitism (who the university is meant to educate, and for what roles in society the university educates). Tied to elitism is excellence, that elusive word that can lead to smugness and complacency and can delay progress in the university. In recent years, however, excellence is being linked with equity and access. University of Toronto’s president, Robert Birgeneau, has been making this connection since he came to the university in 2000. In his address at his installation, he referred to excellence, equity, and outreach as planks in his administration, and now expectations have been stirred by these words (Installation address of president Robert Birgeneau, October 12, 2000). Yet universities compete to get the best and the brightest (a term that for me is highly problematic, and connected to my worst nightmares about racial and class profiling). The competition for the brightest and the best, which is universal, is being run not only to attract top students but also top professors and researchers. This competition will no doubt result in a universal pool of those who are considered the most worthy students and scholars to be admitted to academia. We may well wonder how much space will be assigned to those who have traditionally been under-represented in both the student population and the faculty. The shadow of excellence/merit was a challenge to TYP, particularly in its early years, and affected the confidence and equilibrium of the program until it became mature enough to cope with it. The early annual formal evaluations by outside specialists appointed by the university served to weaken the confidence of the programme, students as well as faculty. The 1976 evaluation, chaired by the late Professor Harry Crowe of York University, was a particularly harsh blow to the psyche of the program and showed a lack of understanding of access to university and the challenge it posed for traditional institutions with meritocratic Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 19 20 Access and Equity in the University foundations. Among the repercussions of the Crowe Report was a one-year suspension of TYP by the Governing Council on recommendation of the report; upheaval in students’ education and lives; and denial of university access for fifty students for one year. There was strong opposition to the Report from students and some faculty and community members. A subsequent report by the late Father John Kelly of St. Michael’s College in 1977 led to the restructuring and strengthening of TYP, which allowed it the space and dignity to come into its own as a significant university program that is now recognized for its pioneering work. The Kelly Report has made a significant contribution to the longevity of TYP at the University of Toronto. Father Kelly and his committee had a solid grasp of university access and the pressing need for it in 1977. How has TYP developed since those early years? The program is now in its own building at 49 St. George Street; more credit is given for the academic work students do in the program—the students now receive 2.5 university credits for successful completion of TYP; there is a wider choice of colleges, better financial support for students, and one year of loan forgiveness for TYP alumni who graduate with their degrees (this was made possible through a donor who was matched by the university). Very significant to the development of the program is the expansion of its curriculum, the hiring of its first three faculty in the tenure stream, and the introduction of more math and science education in TYP in 1999 and 2000. There is also better provision for the retention of Aboriginal students with tenure stream Aboriginal faculty and the resources of First Nations House. As well, from 1999 to 2001, five TYP students have won National Scholarships to the University of Toronto. In retrospect, after thirty years and the understanding that time brings, it now seems obvious that a major problem in the development of TYP was that some members of the university establishment and the community educators and students who founded the program (who, with the assistance of university faculty and administrators, made possible its establishment at Innis College in 1970) had different conceptions of the TYP’s goals and mandate. The program in embryo had therefore moved from a community conception of access to an elite university conception Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 20 Access and Equity in the University: An Introduction 21 in which competition, worthiness, and a particular definition of success would be made more significant. Some of the underlying causes of the tensions between different expectations of TYP in its early years are now clearer to me. The TYP struggled for years to prove its own worthiness and the worthiness of its students while under constant scrutiny by some (who held the power—but not the moral power) who expected the program to fail and who had little faith in the potential and performance of its students, thus placing an enormous burden on them. We should note that it was in a later period during the tenure of Professor Jack Wayne as TYP director from 1987 to 1997 that TYP gained enough confidence to assume as its official motto, “TYP: Making Excellence Accessible,” which was introduced by Jack Wayne, but was obviously integrated into the conception of the TYP model of access since the beginning. This motto captures accurately the major goal of TYP in terms of providing access to university for students who have no other route of entry. For over thirty years, TYP has prepared students to survive in a traditional university with excellence as its credo, and many of its students have performed extremely well. In the process of participation, students no doubt undergo some changes and, for some, even transformation. However, it is now more accepted than it was in 1970 that the university itself needs some fundamental transformation so that students from working-class and non-traditional backgrounds (and other students as well) can participate in its programs, and truly learn to expand their minds, question their oppression, and nurture visions of change in their environment. Some developments at the University of Toronto in recent years and some current initiatives, I believe, would have assisted TYP in its earlier period. For example, curriculum offerings like Aboriginal studies, African studies, Women’s studies, Caribbean studies, and Equity studies; the introduction of First Nations House on the University of Toronto campus (which resulted from a study of the university’s support of Aboriginal students’ education); the establishment of Equity Offices; provision of services like DisAbility Services and Family Care; the recent introduction of a Mentorship Program coordinated by the Status of Women Office, etc., all foster access. The Tutoring and Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 21 22 Access and Equity in the University Mentorship Program in the Faculty of Medicine and Math Tutoring in TYP for public school students are also important offerings that contribute to changing education outcomes for the communities that TYP serves. These and other initiatives are affecting the environment, but deeper levels of change are needed to make access and equity fundamental to the mission of the university. We need to increase the diversity of the university’s faculty and curriculum to facilitate the changes that the contributors to this volume envision. We hope that our book will expand the discussion on university access and equity at this critical time. References Anisef, P., N. Okihiro, and C. James. 1982. Losers and Winners. Toronto: Butterworth. The Bulletin. University of Toronto (May 6, 2002). Dei, G., et al. 1997. Reconstructing “DROP-OUT”: A Critical Ethnography of the Dynamics of Black Students’ Disengagement from School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Installation address of president Robert Birgeneau, University of Toronto, October 12, 2000. Pike, R. 1970. Who Doesn’t Get to University—and Why?: A Study of Accessibility to Higher Education in Canada. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Radwanski, G. 1987. Ontario Study of the Relevance of Education and the Issue of Dropouts. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education. Rushowy, K. and L. Brown. 2002. “New Curriculum Proving Too Tough.” Toronto Star (January 26):A1. Ch 01-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 22 I ENTERED THE TRANSITIONAL YEAR PROGRAMME (TYP) AT UNIVERSITY OF Toronto in 1973 after my first year of a hotel management program at George Brown College. While at George Brown College, I volunteered in the Black Education Project (BEP) as a tutor. BEP offered tutorials, peer counselling, and served as a rallying point for many community activities. Through my involvement with BEP I became aware of the organization’s effort to get the Transitional Year Programme instituted at the University of Toronto. I felt I was a part of that process that put TYP in place, and I wanted to benefit from the hard-fought battle between the community and the university. I realized then that university was a real option for me, and that community college, suggested by “well-meaning” guidance counsellors, was not the academic ceiling. Early in the program it was clear to me that the faculty of TYP were interested in the welfare of the students. Their attitudes toward students played a major role in our transition to full-fledged university students. Their moral support, academic guidance, and counsel were key factors in our achievements. The care and concern of the faculty members, particularly those of Keren Brathwaite and Jack Dimond, also contributed to our social cohesion as a student group. The faculty members took into account the fact that many of us in the program had been out of the classroom for a number of years and therefore needed academic support. A l u m n i V o i c e s 23 Reflections Alexander Francis (TYP 1973–1974) Ch 01-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 23 24 Access and Equity in the University The assistance we received through the writing labs was of great benefit, which also helped to bolster students’ confidence. Unfortunately, some people reasoned that students who needed that kind of help were not university material. Some of those critics were blind to the fact that many regularly admitted university students have difficulty writing or expressing themselves clearly. Instead of opposing writing labs for TYP, the critics’ energy would have been better spent in lobbying for labs for all students. Such labs are now a feature of the university, and I doubt that they carry the stigma they had before becoming a regular service. It seems that TYP was ahead of the university in this area. The precarious status of TYP was unsettling when I was a student. The thought that the program could be cancelled at the whim of the university contributed to our perception of ourselves as “outsiders,” forged close-knit relationships among us, and contributed to our distrust of the university’s intentions. In this context, an alliance was forged between students and faculty, which helped to ward off the axe that the university intended to strike at the program. More than twenty years later at a TYP reunion, I am reminded of how important the program has been to students, the university, and the broader community. We have to be impressed by the high caliber of graduates the program has produced. Thanks to TYP, we made the transition into the university’s mainstream, and in the process many of us were transformed. We graduated as equals to everyone else and we made it into the working world better equipped to face the responsibilities of life. Today, we are artists, civil servants, entrepreneurs, and professionals employed in many spheres of life. The talent pool spans the full spectrum that one would expect an institution such as U of T to produce. It is a credit to the university that it was bold enough to accept the challenge of housing a program such as TYP. It was visionary of those who initiated the program, and it was courageous of those who fought for the program to continue at the university when it was threatened with cancellation. Where the university as a whole falls short in reaching out to students and faculty outside the mainstream of Canadians, TYP has tapped into that rich vein of Canadian potential and talent. In that respect TYP serves as a model of how the university and society at large can benefit when all Canadians are given an opportunity for higher education. Ch 01-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 24 Reflections 25 Clearly, TYP was attuned to the social needs of students and aware of the barriers to our learning. This level of sensitivity and understanding helped to bridge the gap between us as “outsiders” and the university. It is my hope that TYP stays true to the vision and practices of its founders. I hope that African Canadians and other racial minorities, the socially disadvantaged, and others who might not otherwise make it to University of Toronto will continue to find a way to do so through the program. Looking back, I see that TYP afforded me a real “Canadian experience.” My colleagues represented the Canadian mosaic. It is what all Canadian university experiences should be. I hope that marginalized Canadians will continue to be represented in the program and eventually on the faculty of both TYP and the university as a whole. Finally, I hope that it will never be forgotten that TYP is a unique contribution of the African Canadian community to the university. Ch 01-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 25 Ch 01-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 26 THE SPRING OF 1985 WAS A VERY DECISIVE TIME FOR ME. IT WAS ALMOST A YEAR since my husband left and one year since I began working in the pink- collar labour force. I was getting very frustrated with my boss for his disparaging treatment of me. He would make statements such as “You just do it exactly like I say. You don’t need to know the why—just do it.” A friend of mine, while listening to my woes, suggested that I pursue some studies through Woodsworth College’s Pre-University Program, and she also mentioned the Transitional Year Programme (TYP). After doing a little research on both programs, I quickly realized that TYP was the program for me. The Woodsworth program consisted of just one course, and I thought that if I took one course and failed it, I would be set back a lot more than just the one course. On the other hand, if I took TYP’s five courses, and perhaps not pass one, then I would still have passed four other courses. (My grandmother always said to go for the sparrow in the hand instead of the pigeon on the roof.) Actually, applying for university was, for me, more like reaching for the stars. In September 1985 I was registered at TYP, and little did I know what I was in for. At the end of my TYP year, I was more than surprised that after seemingly endless obstacles, I had passed all five courses. Adult students, especially single parents like myself, often doubt their competence and do not give themselves credit for what they endure and conquer. First and foremost for me were the financial worries: the eternal penny-pinching; taking time from my studies to find warm A l u m n i V o i c e s 27 From Amusement Park to University Marilli Martyn (TYP 1985–1986) Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 27 28 Access and Equity in the University winter clothes at the Salvation Army for myself and my children; grocery shopping at Knob Hill Farms for specials and trying to pick out fresh vegetables, always having to beg for a ride or having to splurge on a cab, but this was still cheaper than shopping at the St. Lawrence Market. Second, there were the health problems; either the children or myself came down with a cold, the Shanghai flu, bronchitis, chicken pox, and, in my case, a lack of sleep. I would get up at four or five in the morning to study and then go to bed with the children. This worked as long as nobody got sick, for then the routine went out the window. Third, there were parenting issues. “But, Mom, Daddy lets us do this at his house!” or “Why aren’t we allowed to go out and play? Andy can stay out until dark.” “Why aren’t you getting us a Nintendo or a colour TV?” Fourth, there was my mixed-up view of what studying was supposed to be. There was my intellectual striving, but there was also my lack of experience in proper academic execution. It was only logical for me to wonder that if TYP was that tough, then what would first-year university be like! TYP was like a family to me, and I felt welcomed and sheltered in it. Despite all my doubts and all the obstacles I encountered, I continued to drag myself to classes no matter what. Thanks to my sister who believed in me, I was able to persevere and complete my year in TYP and my subsequent years at the University of Toronto. I earned my B.A. degree in drama with a minor in English. My children, my mother, and my sister came to my graduation, and my fellow students from the drama program cheered for me. I felt embarrassed for being singled out at graduation, but at the same time, I also felt extremely proud. My family background is also important to my story about access to university through TYP. I come from a long line of circus folks who, after the Second World War, changed their circus for a carnival, an amusement park, sometimes also called a Luna Park. I changed school more often than some people change their clothes. We were a week in one town and another week in the next. In one school I was ahead, and in the next I was behind in the curriculum, but I never set foot in a high school. Despite these obstacles, I am the only woman on my father’s side of the family to have earned a university degree. Before I entered TYP as a single mom of two lovely, energetic children, I had an extensive background of work experience, yet there was no worthwhile job I could pursue because of my lack of specific Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 28 From Amusement Park to University 29 experiences and/or credentials. This made me feel as if I were walking on a treadmill. No matter how much I walked, I was always in the same spot. I had worked as a nanny, and I had worked in supermarkets in the frozen meat department behind the deli and fish counter. I had worked at Eaton’s in different departments, and also in various fashion stores as a sales clerk. I had worked as an antique furniture restorer. As a member of the Pole to Pole Expedition, I travelled by car and trailer from Toronto to the Northwest Territories, all the way down the West Coast through the U.S., Central America to Panama, and from there took a freighter to Colombia. The expedition travelled along the Pan-American Highway to Tierra del Fuego and back up the east coast from Argentina to Brazil. Almost four years later, I left Venezuela for the United States, and returned to Canada with lots of impressions and experiences, but I did not know what to do with them. After returning to Canada and experiencing severe culture shock, I tried my hand at back-to-the land living—roofing, carpentry, house insulation—and even film developing, receptionist work, and parenting. I had turned into a jack of all trades but was master of none, which left me feeling insecure and unfulfilled. I found motherhood exciting, but being solely responsible for two children was also frightening. My daughter started Grade 1 the same year I started TYP. At times, I had to bring my son or daughter to class when the daycare would not take them. They were too sick for daycare, but not sick enough for me to lose a day of school, so off we would go together with the assurance that if their condition worsened, the Sick Children’s Hospital was just down the street. It was always important for me that my children knew where I was and what I did with my time during the day. Bringing them with me to the university campus exposed them to my academic life. Today my daughter is attending Mount Allison University and she has made the Dean’s List for the third year. My son is at George Brown College studying culinary art and management, and he plans to augment his diploma with a degree by continuing his studies at Ryerson University. Did TYP have something to do with this? You bet! I thank TYP for giving me back my lost self-esteem. TYP did not abandon me the way my mother or my husband had. TYP believed in me and made it possible for me to not only reach for the impossible, but to attain a degree of the impossible. This program is fully responsible for making it possible for me to realize some of my dreams, Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 29 30 Access and Equity in the University and the credit for this should be shared by all the TYP faculty and staff. If it were not for TYP, this Austrian girl would never have had the courage to muster university. My grades were not the best, but getting an A every once in a while made me realize that under different circumstances I could have been an A student. After all, I had never set foot in a high school; I was a thirty-something separated woman; I was a single parent with two dependants, but I graduated at forty! I have also been fortunate to maintain my connection with TYP by working in the program since my graduation. I have held a staff position at TYP since 1991. I was looking for a full-time position and could not find one, so I volunteered to assist with planning the Twentieth Anniversary of TYP. A part-time position later became available and I applied for it. TYP has given me so much. Now it was my turn to return some of the goodwill I received from the faculty and staff, and also to be there for other students and alumni. While a student, I helped to set up the TYP Student Association, and during my university years, I was active in the Alumni Association. Now I am both staff and alumna, and I don’t just talk the talk, but I can legitimize my position with having walked the walk as a student in the program. I particularly like the part of my work that keeps me in touch with TYP alumni as well as the current students. I invite alumni to volunteer for the TYP orientation for incoming students, and for Open House on U of T Day and other activities. More recently, I have really enjoyed working on TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary Committee. I was there from the planning stage to the end of the celebrations, but, unfortunately, I was unable to attend the cultural performance and social evening. My son was graduating from high school that night. Yet, my spirit was with the TYP celebration, and I had left my fingerprints on the lovely textiles (on loan from students and alumni) that I had hung all over Wetmore Hall in New College, using a tall ladder around the stage and on the long wall from the door and onto the columns from ceiling to floor. The Thirtieth Anniversary of TYP reminded me and other alumni about TYP’s role in our lives and what we have been able to accomplish. We commend the University of Toronto for providing us with this special route into the university. I am convinced, after years of observation, that the University of Toronto is as much a winner in having the TYP access program as we the students are winners. TYP Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 30 From Amusement Park to University 31 students bring to the university many life experiences, which we successfully combine with the theoretical knowledge that we acquire at TYP and the University of Toronto. There is no limit to what we can achieve. We are role models to our children, and our success rubs off on the next generation, the future university students. Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 31 Ch 01-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 32 THE MEANING OF ACCESS AND EQUITY Part Two Part Two Part Two Part Two Part Two Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 33 Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 34 Introduction It is with some pleasure that I agreed to participate in the Thirtieth Anniversary celebration of the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto. For thirty years, TYP has opened opportunities to many students whose creativity, intellectual energy, and drive continue to inspire all of those who have been associated with this project from the outset. One of the more gratifying aspects of the TYP initiative has been the continuation of the multiplier effect in the community. The basic principle underlying the project at its conception was that those who had the opportunity to benefit from the program should be part of a team which would return to their communities to support and encourage those who are being oppressed and assist in their upliftment. This multiplier effect continues, as is evident in alumni’s testimonials of TYP. Before I continue, I want to pay tribute to all those past and present members of our community who have worked to ensure that this program reminds the University of Toronto of its obligation to the citizens of the community—that Chapter 2 35 Is it Possible to Have Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century? Lessons from the Transitional Year Programme of the University of Toronto Horace Campbell Keynote Address Thirtieth Anniversary Conference of the TYP New College, University of Toronto October 28, 2000 Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 35 36 Access and Equity in the University the university should be open and accessible to all. There are so many to remember, but it is important to remember and salute Keren Brathwaite, who continues to persevere to ensure that the students realize their potential, and to struggle against the chauvinism and narrowness of academia. It is important to recognize her contribution and the contribution of all of those supporters of TYP in the community and in the faculty of the University who have stood by TYP to assure its survival through the eternal reviews and reports to which the program has been subjected, especially in its first decade. Professor Frederick Case has been reported to be one of the more steadfast supporters from among the faculty. Scholars such as these, by their very presence in the university, remind the other members as they walk through the corridors that there must be a place here for peoples of African descent, First Nations people, and all those who hitherto have been oppressed by this system. I have been invited here by TYP on this occasion of its Thirtieth Anniversary at the University of Toronto to make a keynote presentation on “Access and Equity in University Education: Lessons from the TYP.” I am happy to share this platform with Gordon Peters from the First Nations people, and I have been encouraged by the central place of the First Nations people in all the activities of TYP. The tenacity and spiritual autonomy of the First Nations have been a source of strength for all those who want humanity to move to a new mode of politics. My presentation seeks to draw from one of the principal questions facing institutions of higher learning at this historical conjuncture. The question is: Can the university be a site in the struggle for social justice? The concept of equity conjures up images of success, accessibility, diversity, excellence, fairness, justice, and high standards. Yet the statistics from the institutions of higher learning reveal that the education system at the beginning of the twenty-first century is becoming more unequal, more inaccessible, and more undemocratic. There is news daily of the drastic measures being taken by the government of Ontario to increase the level of inequality in society, while using the language of equity. Though the ideas of White superiority and overt racism are not explicitly deployed in the initiatives of the government, the actions are, in my view, Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 36 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 37 clearly guided by the ideas of negative eugenics. In Canada as in the United States, it is in the university that major research programs are being carried out that promise to entrench the ideas of negative eugenics. In the centres of specialized learning, there are scientists who are studying the ways in which Blacks are genetically inferior and genetically prone to crime. On the one hand, research initiatives such as the Human Genome Project open up opportunities for advancing human knowledge about health and prevention of diseases. Yet without democratic control over this kind of research, the prospect of discriminatory use of genotypic experiments such as those by Adolph Hitler, by the Tuskegee experiments in the United States, and most recently by apartheid South Africa could intensify. As scientists in the university and in the research community gain more information on the workings of the human genome, they will succeed in identifying an increasing number of genetic traits and predispositions that are unique to specific ethnic and racial groups, opening the door to the possibility of genetic discrimination against entire peoples. The breakthroughs in molecular biology and genetic engineering place the research laboratories of the universities at the forefront of research into the new technologies associated with the information revolution. This is the context of the debate on access and equity—to ensure that the university is not the site for the kind of research that repeats the idea of The Bell Curve (Murray and Hernstein 1994), which claims that Black people are genetically inferior to Whites. Though the authors of this study have been critiqued extensively, there are university scholars in Canada who have overtly supported the ideas of the “genetic inferiority of peoples of African descent.” Professor J. Phillippe Rushton, of the University of Western Ontario, has been recognized as one of the researchers in Canada whose ideas are of the same orientation as those of the authors of The Bell Curve. Dorothy Roberts, in the book Killing the Black Body, notes that: The myth of black people’s innate hyper-fertility has been given currency by J. Phillippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario. In Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, recently reviewed with The Bell Curve in the New Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 37 38 Access and Equity in the University York Times Book Review, Rushton traces the evolutionary origins of physical differences between the races, including brain and genital size. (Roberts 1999:12) Rushton was repeating the worn ideas of nineteenth-century scientific racism that had been recycled in the academy throughout the twentieth century up to the research of Arthur Jensen and William Shockley. These scientists had been at the forefront of providing genetic explanations for racial differences. One of the important aspects of the civil rights revolution in the United States was that it forced those who offered genetic explanations to come out in the open as supporters of the most extreme ideas of White racism and negative eugenics. The civil rights movement made it impossible for these ideas to gain official support, except by the most brazen of racists. Even though there is no overt support for negative eugenics at the official level of policy-making, in practice, however, the attitudes and orientation of the university prevent the majority of the poor, the oppressed, and Black and First Nations people from entering university. It is important to seek ways of answering some of the questions with respect to the democratization of knowledge to ensure that those who do research on negative eugenics and on other racist ideas do not find a place of acceptance in the community of scholars. We are continuously reminded by the First Nations people of the history of genocide in this hemisphere, and that there is continual denial of the fact that approximately 100 million Aboriginal peoples were exterminated after the explosion of Europe into the American hemisphere. It is the view of this presentation that the principal challenge at this time is to develop a planetary vision for the survival of humanity. From the start of European penetration into this continent, the issue of human survival has been a burning question. The First Nations people of the continent who have survived continue to raise questions about human survival, and throughout the length and breadth of North America, the children of Africa also raise a similar question. Survival is central to clarifying the issue of social transformation, which includes a planetary vision of the dignity of all human beings. Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 38 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 39 This issue of survival was brought home to me forcefully at the start of this year 2000 when a young comrade suggested some key concerns related to our survival: (1) the major scientific and technological advances and the simultaneous debasement of human beings (2) the absence of a democratic culture in our society due to the reality that the economic system is totally undemocratic, as are the social values that flow from this lack of democracy in the area of social, intellectual, and political life (3) the humanization of the planet (4) the question of relations between human beings, viz., relations between men and women, men and men, women and women, children and elders, the treatment of the aged, attitudes toward different forms of sexual orientations, etc. (Personal communication with Densu) These concerns are directly related to the topic at hand (Access and Equity in the University) in that the university is at the centre of these debates. It is universally recognized that the university, by its very nature, sits at the apex of an undemocratic system, and that as an institution, it privileges those who have been able to rise out of the ranks of the educational apparatus, which is repressive and can be used as an instrument of oppression. By its very nature, the university is selective in determining who has access to it. I will now consider the subtheme of Equity and Social Darwinism. We are reminded by the First Nations people that Toronto derives its name from the language of the Aboriginal peoples who named it “a gathering place.” In the philosophy of the First Nations, there was no hierarchy of humans of the kind that emanated from the Western patriarchal, monotheist society with its idea of domination over nature. The democratic relations between humans, plants, and animals were enshrined in their respect for nature and in their humility in believing that humans were part of nature. I am using their experience to connect this Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 39 40 Access and Equity in the University discussion of access and equity in the university to the question of the democratization of society. The question of equity and access cannot be discussed outside the framework of breaking the silences with respect to the gridlock of Social Darwinism on the university. Social Darwinism is a philosophy guided by the idea of “natural selection” and the “survival of the fittest.” Charles Darwin himself had argued that, “At some future period not very distant … the civilized races of men will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races” (Bannister 1979). Science and myth in Anglo-American thought has historically been most pronounced in the institutions of higher learning. Canadian institutions did not rise above reproducing these myths about the inferiority of the First Nations, Africans, and other non- Europeans. African peoples were considered “uncivilized” and “savages,” and therefore the task of the “civilized” was to ensure the domination or extermination of the “uncivilized.” In the latter half of the twentieth century, Social Darwinism found a strong place in the social sciences in North America and Western Europe. The university was the place where the explanation of social development was advanced. Franklin Giddings, a notable professor at Columbia University who was very influential in the social sciences in North America, had argued that inequality and human suffering were simply a natural part of evolutionary social development (Kelly and Lemelle 1996). Today Giddings’s view of society would be considered outrageous, but the reality was that this kind of thinking had a profound influence on education in general and on higher education in particular until the explosion of the civil rights movement in the United States. It is possible to propose that the struggles for justice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have in the main discredited the ideas of Social Darwinism, of sociologists such as Giddings, and the genetic theories of Jensen and Shockley. However, the vestiges of Social Darwinism and negative eugenics continue to rear their heads in the academy, as exemplified by the debates on the bell curve. The scientists who reproduce these ideas work in sealed environments from which the oppressed have been excluded. It is now well established that the present scientific revolution has excluded the masses of the poor, locally, regionally, Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 40 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 41 and internationally, to the point where leaders can truly speak of a digital divide. However, for the peoples of the world who are being criminalized by the inequities in the education system, there are demands to open up the system to demystify the definition of who can be knowers in society and who can produce and reproduce knowledge. Knowledge is produced through a social process that incorporates economic, political, cultural, personal, and spiritual elements. While everyone is engaged in the process, knowledge itself is socially constructed, and the production of knowledge therefore reflects the most fundamental characteristics of society. Since the societies in which we live are not neutral, and gender and racial differences serve as the most basic sources of inequality, we can see the racial and gendered nature of knowledge production reflected in the academy. Moreover, because the academy has been implicated in the systems of domination, especially in relation to the military, industrial, and information complex, it will be the scientists who have recoiled from the militarism and mechanical approach to knowledge who will argue that it is time for a turning point. The research and conclusions of scientists in the university are tainted by the ideas of patriarchy, racial superiority, and other forms of oppression. This is why I propose that the scientific method and the domination over nature are at the core of the crisis of our time, and that universities and other educational institutions should pay more attention to these areas (Kapra 1993). The TYP was itself a call to change the priorities of the University of Toronto, and to extend its mandate to those who had been denied access due the history of inequality in Canadian society. One of the questions posed by the Transitional Year Programme was whether the university would continue to be a site for the celebration of Social Darwinism and the accompanying ills of society, or if there would be a strengthening of the social forces in the academy that would push the frontiers of justice. The struggles for access and equity arise from the concrete expression of the crushing inequalities, the untold human suffering, the plunder of humans and nature, and the destruction of nature in the name of the market. Can the forces that retreat from the celebration of genocide join in the struggles for social justice? Will Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 41 42 Access and Equity in the University the university continue to be a site for the entrenchment of the nineteenth-century conception of who can be knowers in society? Throughout the nineteenth century, women were considered intellectually inferior to men, and this myth about women continues to permeate education at the beginning of the twenty- first century. If one examines what is defined as education, we will see that the curriculum continues to focus on what men have experienced, what they think, and how they view the world. In reality, this patriarchal approach to education and knowledge is still with us even after two centuries of struggles. Feminists continue to challenge the long-standing androcentrism in education, and this is one of the more profound aspects of equity. Feminist scholars have waged a spirited struggle to gain access to university and to challenge the idea that it is men who make history because they are logical and rational (Harding 1991, 1992). In the twentieth century all across North America, peoples of African descent, like women, had to wage similar battles against racism in the curriculum. The reparations movement is taking the struggles of feminism to the point where there are demands for corrections to historical injustices. With these long-standing injustices in mind, it is not enough to have only access and equity, but there must be a conscious effort to repair and correct the injustices and genocidal practices of society. The Transitional Year Programme was initiated at the height of the civil rights struggle and was one component of the struggle for access and equity. Thirty years later, it is becoming clearer that this struggle for access and equity has to be carried on in the larger society. Despite the lofty goals of the university with respect to diversity and the school boards with respect to equity, the reality is that more young Black males, more youths of African ancestry, more Aboriginal youths and adults, and more immigrant non-White youths are ending up in institutions of incarceration rather than in institutions of higher learning. This reality has led to a national campaign in the United States on “Education, Not Incarceration; Schools, Not Jails.” As I address this conference, there is another conference taking place in New York City to launch a national campaign on the issue of democratizing education and to lay out the basis for more equity with respect to the resources of society. In the current Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 42 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 43 presidential campaign in the United States, there is an acknowledgement that the content and quality of education should be of the foremost priority for U.S. society. This debate is itself instructive. The ruling elements in the United States have decided that if the U.S. is to be a superpower, it has to have the best education system on the planet, yet there is little awareness that one cannot have a first-class education system when a significant number of the population are overtly oppressed. The discussions on equity and access at the University of Toronto form a component of this wider debate about democratizing education. The challenge posed by the existence of TYP at the University of Toronto is whether the wider society will take the issues of social justice to a new level. The challenge for the graduates of TYP is to assess whether their education and opportunities were simply for their individual advancement, or whether they should contribute to building their community and groups. These are some of the themes I wish to raise at this point. Thirty Years of the Transitional Year Programme The TYP emerged out of community politics in the 1960s and the awareness of the oppression that Black youths faced within the education system in Toronto. From the outset, I want to reiterate that the evolution of the program did not arise as the work of any one individual but was a collective effort to ensure that the system did not marginalize and oppress youths. At the time when we were discussing the need for TYP, I was an undergraduate at York University in Toronto. In 1969 there was an urgent need to address the racism in the curriculum and the oppression of the Black youths in the education system in Toronto. The doors of the Black Education Project (BEP) had opened at the Universal Negro Improvement Association building at 355 College St., in Toronto. The BEP was part of a wider effort all across North America to struggle for relevant education for Black students. Linked politically to the Center for Black Education in the Washington, D.C. area and to other initiatives called Saturday Schools all across this continent, the BEP started from the slogan, “If you don’t know, learn; if you know, teach.” The Center for Black Education in Washington had become an anchor for the programs that were developing all over North Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 43 44 Access and Equity in the University America. The Toronto initiative to prepare Black students to access university had been spearheaded by the most active elements of an organization called the Black Youth Organization (BYO). The first students for the program had been recruited in the summer of 1969 and after a summer of preparation for university, they were admitted to York University that same year. These students became part of the community education project that was called the BEP. Most of the volunteers from the BEP were drawn from the Black Students Organization at York University and from the BYO, which met at the Home Service Association building on Bathurst Street. It was a period of tremendous optimism when the creative energies of students and community activists went toward challenging the system. This was a volunteer project that made the Board of Education in Toronto look up and realize that it was participating in an education system that left out Blacks and tried to render them invisible. (I read in one of the publications of TYP that I was a tutor in the program, but I was never formally employed or paid for my work. We all did it out of a sense of commitment.) It was in the same year that a group of students associated with the BEP approached the group called Praxis to investigate the establishment of TYP. Professor Charles Hanley from the Department of Philosophy, Professor Abe Rothstein from the Department of Economics, Professor Stephen Clarkson from the Department of Political Science (all from the University of Toronto), and others were some of the executive members of the Praxis group with whom we worked to bring this program into being. Many of the luminaries of the nationalist organization, the Committee for an Independent Canada, were supportive of the idea of TYP. There was a definite sense from the meetings that the activists who supported our initiative were mainstream academics who did not want their university to be associated with the kind of turmoil and political struggles that were happening in the midst of the war in Vietnam. The University of Toronto could not escape the struggles raging in North America—the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the African liberation movement, and the feminist movement. Despite the good intentions of these faculty members Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 44 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 45 who supported the establishment of a TYP, there was no commitment to fundamental changes in the curriculum of the university. The curriculum remained male-centred, racist, and oriented toward reinforcing the ideas of profit, individual enterprise, competition, and the sanctity of the capitalist mode of production. Success for many who supported TYP at the time was measured in terms of one’s commitment to excellence, but more important, it was measured in relation to service to the community. The TYP began in the same period when there was a raging debate over opening the facilities of Hart House to women. There was much attention to access needed in the university. The discussion of offering TYP as an access route to the University of Toronto from 1970 was therefore happening in a period of tremendous ferment on a national and international scale, and also within the university. There was always the question of whether TYP students would be entering an arena for which they were unprepared and would therefore end up failing. Those of us from the community argued forcefully at the time that the real test for the university was whether it would open up opportunities to the young people in our community. In reality, one major role of TYP was to confront the university about the wasted potential of those who were denied access to university. There was the elementary view that there was something wrong with the system, and that there should be more opportunities offered to Black and First Nations youths and adults. (The term “Native” was used at the time.) We basically agreed that the education system was neither able nor willing to develop the intellectual capabilities of the youth, and that society should take specific measures to correct this. The competition and the curriculum in the school system were preventing the majority of Black youths in the Canadian system from being prepared to enter university. The origin of TYP, therefore, was part of the debate on equity in the 1960s in so far as it proposed that Black and Native peoples should have access to the same resources, the same knowledge and skills that are available to the wider society. At that time, however, there was not a developed theoretical critique of the ideation system of the society. Now, thirty years after the start of TYP and the provision of opportunities for over 1,500 students to have access to the Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 45 46 Access and Equity in the University resources of the University of Toronto, it is an opportune moment to critically analyze where the program has come from and where it is going. There is no doubt that the majority of students have done well in so far as success is defined in relation to individual achievement, such as gaining a degree from the University of Toronto. Yet, the fact that TYP exists is a critique of the way in which the education system from primary to university is organized, and the poor performance of working-class, Native, Black, and other students in it suggests that more than academic success is important. Throughout the years, one has heard of the constant struggles to affirm the right of Black and Native students to have access to university, and for the program to examine racism in the hiring, promotion, and tenure of the faculty. The constant reviews, the temporary closing of the program in 1976–1977, and the inferior status accorded to the faculty of TYP by the university attest to the fact that after thirty years, there are still many battles to be fought in relation to access and equity at the University of Toronto. At the start of a new century and in the midst of a major technological revolution, we have another opportunity to take stock of the ideas and values that underpin the process of education and to speak of progressive ways forward. What Is Equity? It is now clearer at the end of the cold war, the end of apartheid, and the exhaustion of the Fordist model of society that students, by themselves, are incapable of ensuring that there is equity and social justice in university education. Students themselves are not immune to the ideological illnesses of society, and the university as the site of reproducing these illnesses ensures the production of those who internalize individualism, sexism, male chauvinism, and religious and racial intolerance. Throughout North America, there is now a greater awareness of the ideological illnesses that are at large in society and that are reproduced in the academy. Feminists and oppressed peoples have been most explicit with respect to exposing these illnesses and have been calling for changes that will create better and less beastly humans. The call for access and equity is coming from the oppressed, and though conservative forces are retreating, the more Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 46 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 47 brazen of these forces are seeking to co-opt the language of equity and access to ensure that there is no popular and community involvement in the decisions affecting the lives of the oppressed. In my community in New York, I know of a university that is committed to diversity and a school district committed to equity, but, in general, the school system does not serve the needs of the broad majority. In the school district where I now live and work, the Board of Education came up with a definition of equity as follows: Equity is the allocation of resources which allows all students to maximize their potential as demonstrated by a quality delivery system of accessible, diverse and appropriate curricula, materials, staff, and programs that ensure the academic and social success of students to become the self disciplined life long learners and contributors to society. (Educational Equity 1998) This definition came from a task force that met over a number of years and came up with the following: “Equity is justice, fairness, recognizing diversity, recognizing differences, flexibility, and sensitivity to individual needs and is being impartial” (Ibid.). Justice One can say that the positive aspect of this definition of equity is the fact that it underlines the issue of justice. The silence on the components of justice becomes clearer when one deconstructs who are considered the stakeholders in the education system. If the education system is simply to provide high-level human power for the corporate world, then the justice being sought by the university and the school board is that of bringing parents and students in line to accept the priorities of the corporate world. This same corporate world has been the driving force behind the dismantling of the entitlements of working people. Though I no longer live in Toronto, the news of the extreme measures of the present government of Ontario reaches far beyond this province. At the end of May 2000, my mother passed away in Toronto and I was in this city at the time of the Walkerton disaster in which people were poisoned by the water supply system. Here was a government that had severely reduced the budget of the Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 47 48 Access and Equity in the University Department of the Environment and was not adequately monitoring the water quality in the province. This is the same government that reduced the entitlements of the most oppressed and increased the number of the very poor. This government is now known for its conservatism, yet it carries out its mandate in the name of equity. This government reduced the budget of those school districts with special needs on the grounds of equalizing resources all over the province. The government of Ontario has been the most tenacious in dismantling the last vestiges of the social democratic system of Ontario. Social democracy, during the Depression, had called for a minimum safety net for basic survival, including the commitment to collective bargaining; minimum standards of public sanitation; minimum access to housing, electricity, and running water; and health care and pensions. In this period of the new economy, however, the ideas of social democracy and social justice are on the defensive, and greed and individual success are the barometers of progress. The social democratic state has been dismantled in Western Europe, it is under attack in Canada, and any vestige of it in the United States was assaulted most dramatically in the form of the welfare legislation of the present administration. There was a period when the Conservative majority in Ontario was at the forefront of defending social equality and could not retreat from the gains of the working people. When TYP was formed and the BEP opened its doors to youth, the representatives of the Conservative government at the time wanted to meet with us. We sent a message to them to say that the more important task was to fix the problem of the Board of Education and to take measures against racism in the schools. Even with the social democratic safety net for the working class at that time, however, there was overt racism in the system. The racism of that period is now compounded by the fact that the ruling class is now openly opposed to entitlements for all but the rich. Whether it is in Canada or the U.S., the statistics show that there is no justice and that there is redistribution of income away from the most exploited to the most prosperous. This current period is now celebrated as a manifestation of the longest boom of capitalism. I will use some statistics from the U.S. as an example: Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 48 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 49  In 1980, the CEO earned forty-two times the wage of one worker.  In 1990, the CEO earned eighty-five times that of the worker.  In 1998, the CEO earned 326 times the wage of one worker.  The redistribution of income away from the exploited means that in 1980, 1 per cent of the population controlled 25 per cent of the wealth.  In 1989, 1 per cent controlled 31 per cent of the wealth.  In 1997, 1 per cent controlled 41 per cent of the wealth. These are the indices of an unjust system and an unjust society. The value of stocks has no relationship to productivity, but the top 10 per cent of the population controlled 85 per cent of the wealth in the United States and the bottom 85 per cent had access to 15 per cent of the wealth. Is this a model of justice or a model of inequality? Yet this is the model that the U.S. sells to the rest of the world. Chief executive officers in Canada are just as protected and coddled by the state as their counterparts in the U.S., and I understand that the current head of the University of Toronto is one of the imports from the U.S. One can say that the model of injustice in the marketplace and the corporate sector is reflected in the university. There will have to be profound changes in society in order for the kind of justice in education delivery that I have envisioned in this presentation to take place. Fairness The second item with respect to equity has to do with fairness. In their own literature, those who speak of fairness come back to the issue of justice and argue that all students should have an equal access to resources and to quality education. The Syracuse report on equity (Educational Equity 1998) argued that “low income and minority students have been systematically deprived of the opportunities they need to succeed in school.” In the state of New York, there are now standardized tests that expose the extent of the lack of fairness in the education system. What emerges from the trends is the fact that the rewards Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 49 50 Access and Equity in the University for the CEOs and the skewed distribution of income in society are now reflected in the school system. There are now Grade 4, Grade 8, and high school tests called Regents examinations in the state of New York. All schools must give the exams and every child must take them in order to move to the next grade. The results from the suburban schools around the city show that students in the suburbs do exceedingly well, and that in some schools 100 per cent of the students meet the standards. There is a stark difference for the students in the inner city schools. In the 1999 Grade 4 math tests, 44 per cent of the students met the standards. This meant that over 56 per cent of the students did not make the standards. And if one broke down the schools by neighbourhoods, then one would see that the failure rates are higher in those schools that have a high number of Black and Latino students. In one school, 2 per cent of the students met the standards, and in another only 12 per cent. This really means that there is negative learning going on in these schools. The situation was even more dire in the Grade 8 tests. Twenty per cent of the students met the standards. The poor results were in the Syracuse city school district because the schools in the suburbs performed very well. There was one suburban school where 100 per cent of the children met the standards. I do not know the specific figures for Toronto, but from all reports, the trends are the same here. Now more than 40 per cent of the students in the Toronto school district are from “visible” non-White communities, but the institutions of higher learning do not reflect this diversity. In Toronto, as in the U.S., officials point to the rise of Asians in the schools and develop the myth of the “model minority.” Professor Ronald Takaki has written extensively on the pernicious impact of the celebration of this myth in California (Takaki 1995). It is beyond the scope of this presentation to revisit this debate, but it is important to note that the comparisons will continue to be made between the model Chinese students and the “criminally bent” Black students. The question that I would ask this gathering is: What is the role of the university in ensuring fairness? If the university is the place that produces teachers for the education system, does the university produce the kind of teachers who subscribe to having the pyramidal structure of the corporate world reflected in the Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 50 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 51 primary and middle schools? The teachers produced by the university shape the perceptions and expectations of students, and many teachers incorporate in their teaching the system’s ideas of racism and chauvinism and communicate these values to the youth. This is why one can have a school with a 2 per cent passing rate. The question concerning the role of the university in perpetuating the inequities in society is ultimately a political question. Who holds the university accountable? This question needs to be dealt with if the building blocks for even more profound inequities in the next ten to fifteen years are to be destroyed. Diversity The next item on the mantra of equity and access is that of the struggle for diversity. This struggle for diversity should be a sign that in the past the university has not been diverse. Under the civil rights laws in the U.S. and because of the increased diversity of the population, the corporate world (where there is so much corporate welfare) is calling for the training of a more diverse workforce. In response to this call, American universities are carrying out studies of how to diversify recruitment, how to get a more diverse student body, how to recruit a more diverse staff, and how to diversify the curriculum. In these attempts at diversification, the language of multiculturalism is used, but there is no real commitment to multiculturalism (Takaki 1995). What is defined as multiculturalism is really tokenism. There is a ritual exposure to exotic cultures, and universities point to the existence of a First Nations House, Latino Month, Black History Month, Women’s Month, etc., as testaments to diversity. African Americans and First Nations people who are demanding reparations and diversity in education recognize, however, that all historic wrongs must be addressed in the struggle for diversity. The African Americans who have been drawing attention to the Black Holocaust and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa are also pointing to the fact that most children will continue to refuse to learn to read when the very material that they are reading are assaults on their humanity and celebrate genocide. A simple struggle, such as the one concerning whether children should be taught that Columbus did not discover America, Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 51 52 Access and Equity in the University continues to be a major project. Small efforts to introduce a more democratic curriculum and diverse history elicited such hostile responses that they led to celebrated books such as The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom 1987). Scholars such as Mary Lefkowitz have made a career out of opposing the culturally diverse curriculum and the rectification of the falsification of African history in the school system across North America (Lefkowitz 1996). These are the kinds of scholars who can obtain large grants from foundations while scholars such as Cheik Anta Diop, who has written on the African Origin of Civilization, are not introduced to all students. Can teachers, faculties of education, and the unions become part of the struggle for diversity and equity? This would mean that the faculties of education, teachers, and administrators would have to be self-critical of their past practices.. This would mean admitting the wrongs and moving on to a new and greater degree of understanding of how the education system has been complicit in perpetuating injustice. To what extent have the schools of education recognized the necessity of teaching the reality of the massive genocide against the First Nations people and the holocaust of the transatlantic slave trade? This is an important question that must be addressed if the education system is to deal adequately with diversity and equity. In the past fifty years, German citizens have had to confront the record of studies such as that of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s on Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. This study documented the fact that the execution of European Jews engaged the energies and enthusiasm of millions of ordinary Germans (Goldhagen 1997). There is now considerable literature on the ways in which the whole philosophy of the superman reinforced the climate that made it possible for this kind of mass killing to take place. Christopher Simpson, who wrote The Splendid Blond Beast, recounted the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who called the aristocratic predators who wrote society’s laws “the splendid blond beast,” precisely because they so often behave as though they are beyond the reach of elementary morality. These elites have cut a path toward a certain sort of excellence consisting mainly of the exercise of power at the expense of the Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 52 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 53 others. When dealing with ordinary people, he said, they “revert to the innocence of wild animals … We can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank—convinced moreover, that the poets for a long time to come will have something to sing about and praise.” Their brutality was true courage, Nietzsche thought, and the foundation of social order. (Simpson 1995) Here Christopher Simpson is confronting the kind of literature and intellectual culture that produced killers. This kind of mass exposure to the Nazi Holocaust has created a climate in which only extremists will deny the existence of the Nazi Holocaust. The major movement to raise these issues in North America is now growing quickly, and the continual discussions on equity, access, and diversity are but one manifestation of this movement. However, this movement is met with massive opposition, and scholars such as William Bennet and Mary Lefkowitz are at the forefront of it. The struggle for diversity also touches at the core of the celebration of the ideas of patriarchy, Eurocentrism, genocide, White supremacy, and domination over nature. Some corporate elements support diversity in so far as they perceive this concession as one way to train those who would be like U.S. Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas or General Colin Powell. But my colleagues in the First Nations community have reminded me that before the 1950s, Aboriginal peoples had to deny their identity if they wanted to go to university. Hence, in addition to their experience of actual genocide in the past, those who wanted access to higher education had to be complicit in their own cultural genocide. The schools of education in the university are at the forefront of resisting diversity. In many cases, the response to the call for a diverse curriculum is to teach a bit of Native American history, celebrate Black History Month, celebrate Women’s History Month, and then celebrate Western civilization as progress. Students are exposed to a little bit of the struggles of the suffragettes and the “exotic” lives of Native peoples, but there is no rigorous reorganization of the curriculum. In this sense, diversity becomes another tool in the arsenal of repressive tolerance. This was the Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 53 54 Access and Equity in the University formulation developed by Herbert Marcuse to express the reality of how the ruling classes co-opt the ideas of the opposition as a way of strengthening the system (Marcuse 1969). This is the challenge that faces those who are fighting for diversity in the United States. This is also the challenge of TYP in the next thirty years. Dealing with Differences and Demonstrating Flexibility Recognizing differences is another key concept in the struggle for equality. The key to this struggle is to militantly oppose all forms of discrimination based on race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. This is where the debates on gender and sexual difference link to the key concepts of democracy and respecting the need for new relations between human beings. This is one area in which TYP has excelled over the past thirty years. The testament of the alumni of TYP point to the model that this program offers in opening up a climate in which students from different backgrounds support each other and overcome the anxieties and stresses of the social and education system. The attention to individual needs has been one of the strengths of TYP, and in my encounter with students from the program, they always counted this as one of the benefits which contribute to their success. The themes of flexibility, sensitivity to individual needs, and impartiality raise fundamental questions with respect to the process of lobotomization and turning students into mindless people. Flexibility and sensitivity to individual needs will reopen our concern about special education, which has worried the African Canadian community for a long time. Ultimately, the success of TYP should result in the removal of the need for TYP when the school system and the university are at the base of the struggle for democracy. The challenge for the university in the next thirty years is to move from the history of celebrating genocide toward the embrace of the creativity and energy of all citizens. Conclusion At the start of this presentation, we focused on the processes of dehumanization and the specific role of the university in this process. Our presentation has drawn attention to the inordinate Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 54 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 55 influence of the corporate sector on the education system and the ways in which the corporate culture of privatization is having a negative impact in relation to the values of the university. The rewards for corporate executive officers correspond to the poor results for poor young Native, Blacks, and other oppressed peoples. It is not by accident that young people are being imprisoned and that the investment in prisons is now growing at a faster rate than the resources being invested in public education. While the government expands the prison industrial complex— the privatization of prisons with the use of cheap labor—there are calls for university departments to become entrepreneurial. This means that the university must sell itself to the highest bidder in the corporate world. This is a vicious circle that reinforces the power of the corporate culture over the education system. This is a recipe for increased inequality in our society. To stem this trend, there must be greater government spending on higher education in both Canada and the United States. But not only is more government financial support for university and public education needed, there must also be the struggle for the transformation of the education system. In recent years, there has been a move for educational reform all over the continent, but this reform movement seeks to tinker with the system without fundamental rethinking of the basic ideation system of the West, which celebrates genocide and the plunder of humans and nature. There is a growing awareness that an unjust social system cannot be the basis of an equitable and diverse education system. This is why the Black Radical Congress (BRC) in the U.S. has launched a national campaign called “Education, Not Incarceration: Fight the Police State.” The National Council of the Black Radical Congress, at its May 6–7, 2000 meeting in Philadelphia, elected to propose to the BRC membership a four-year national campaign that combines resistance to the hypercriminalization, brutalization, and incarceration of Blacks, Latinos, and other people of colour by the state and its agents with the demand for a major shift in the state’s fiscal priorities. Specifically, this campaign is demanding that the state decrease its expenditure of public funds on expanding and maintaining the nation’s prison system, on other police controls over populations of colour, and on Pentagon weapons programs, Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 55 56 Access and Equity in the University and instead increase the funding required for totally renovating the structures and fundamentally upgrading the content of the nation’s public education system. This campaign is part of the four-part campaign of a radical movement that recognizes that it is not enough to lobby the political system; there must also be a new political agenda. As we speak in this conference today, there is a presidential election campaign in the U.S. between Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Vice- President Al Gore. The electorate of the United States is being asked to choose between the two parties held hostage by the corporate world. The response of some to the call to support the Democratic Party is that one should support the lesser of two evils. The question being asked in the BRC is why one should support evil in any form. This thinking propels those who are calling for a new social movement. The four platforms of the BRC are economic justice, the fight for public education, the end to police brutality, and reparations. It would seem to me that even though Canada is a different country, these themes are still relevant in the struggles for equity and access to education in the university. In particular, the concept of reparations in the United States is forcing the university philosophy departments, law schools, departments of archaeology, history, accounting and math to rethink how they carry out their work. The link of the molecular biology programs to the new research agenda forces a re-examination of the old eugenics debate that was once alive in North America. During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, eugenics programs were aggressively carried out throughout the world. While the best- known eugenics effort was Hitler’s selective breeding, sterilization, and euthanasia program, which culminated in the methodical extermination of 6 million Jews, eugenics programs were active in the U.S. and other nations. The conceit of eugenics is that it is based on natural selection, the survival of the fittest. This is Darwinism taken to its ultimate. The Nazis had imagined themselves to be a part of a superior race. The breeding process initiated by the Germans at the time of Hitler was accelerating a natural process of weeding out “inferior” races like the Jews. In reality, eugenics is a most unnatural form of selection. Yet what is striking in the U.S. is how this old eugenics debate is re-emerging. Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 56 Access and Equity in University Education in the Twenty-First Century 57 In America, we have survived 400 years of genocide, slavery, persecution, and discrimination of every imaginable kind. Despite it all, we who have been oppressed are becoming ever more creative, are resisting the system of oppression, and are in the forefront of the politics of transformation to a new mode of social organization. In every section of society, there is some recognition of the evils of the past. This is the year of the Jubilee of the Catholic Church. The Pope has apologized for the crimes of the Catholic Church over the past 2,000 years, but the apology will remain meaningless if the same structures, ideas, and institutions are still in place. The debate on equity and access to university challenges those who are committed to a wholesome and inclusive concept of humanity to give meaning to this apology. References Bannister, Robert. 1979. Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo American Thought. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bloom, A. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. New York: Simon and Schuster. Educational Equity. 1998. Report of the Superintendent’s Issue Analysis Team (August). Syracuse, NY: Superintendent’s Issue Analysis Team. Goldhagen, D.J. 1997. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books. Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kapra, F. 1993. The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture. New York: Bantam Books. Kelly, Robin, and Sidney G. Lemelle, eds. 1996. Imagining Home. New York: Verso Press. Lefkowitz, M. 1996. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books. Marcuse, Herbert. 1969. Repressive Tolerance: An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Murray, C., and R. Hernstein. 1994. The Bell Curve. New York: The Free Press. Roberts, D. 1999. Killing the Black Body. New York: Vintage Books. Simpson, Christopher. 1995. The Splendid Blond Beast. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Takaki, R. 1995. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York: Little Brown. Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 57 58 Access and Equity in the University Watkins, W.H. 1996. “Pan Africanism and the Politics of Education: Towards a New Understanding.” In Imagining Home, edited by Robin Kelly and Sidney G. Lemelle. New York: Verso Press. Ch 02-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 58 Introduction Over thirty years of teaching in the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto has given me a valuable time and space in which to practise and reflect on education in the university as well as in the schools that prepare students for university. It is a period that has instilled in me a heightened consciousness about a public university’s responsibility to serve the people, and to strive for diversity, representation, and inclusion in its student population, faculty, curriculum, and other areas of its existence. The years have also sharpened my awareness about the intersections of the different levels and venues of education as offered in the formal institutions of the university and school, and the informal learned in our communities, homes, and in the act of living in all its dimensions. There are often tensions arising between (or because of) the different ways of knowing, formal and informal, as I have experienced in my work in TYP over thirty years. This period, spanning a generation, has provided me with critical instruction in some areas of education, which thirty years ago were either absent from or barely discernable on official education agendas, whether in the university, college, or public school systems in Canada. These lessons—more intense than those I studied in Edu 101 at university in the Caribbean, or graduate school in Canada—are about education equity and access, about critical pedagogy and inclusive curriculum, and about empowerment. Had I not Chapter 3 59 Reflections on My Years in TYP: Lessons in Education Equity Keren S. Brathwaite Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 59 60 Access and Equity in the University been associated with the innovative TYP for nearly all of my life as an educator, some important lessons in education equity might have eluded me, and my consciousness about the transformative powers of education might have been less vibrant. My aim is to use this essay to share my learning about some areas of education that need continuous vigilance if we are in serious and committed pursuit of justice in education in the public institution of the university and, by extension, in the schools in which we educate our children and our futures. I will use the history of TYP and my learning through my long engagement with it to discuss the theme of education equity. This concept of education equity as I am defining it means basically providing the social, psychological, financial, and other resources in a nurturing environment to support those students who are not on an equal footing with those whom education institutions traditionally serve successfully. My definition includes the provision of conditions, opportunities, experiences, support, etc., to allow marginalized students who have faced barriers to participate fully in the benefits of education. This means that students who need more will receive more in order to facilitate their participation. In the university, education equity implies that provisions for access will be in place to allow not only admission of the students, but their retention and graduation. A welcoming environment, mentoring, and counselling about career paths and other matters are basic to this provision. Financial support is most significant, but equally so are the other factors to which I have alluded; the students who need more should receive more. Education equity should allow those who are behind to catch up, which suggests that an equal formula for all will not yield equitable outcomes. Inclusive curriculum and institutional culture, critical pedagogy, and diversity will serve to foster the goals of equity. In sharing my thoughts about this theme of education equity as I conceive it, I will be paying particular attention to equity and access in university education, but my comments will also point to the need to enshrine and activate these important principles at all levels of schooling, from kindergarten (and also very early childhood education) to postsecondary. As I write, I am mindful that there is always a social context to education, and this is poignantly so for university access and participation. I am mindful Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 60 Reflections on My Years in TYP 61 that students’ preparation for university does not begin in high school, important as this level of schooling is, but at their birth— and even before their birth—for the unequal nature of society targets some for university and others not for university. Students’ success in school we know is influenced by social class, family, race, and ethnicity, and participation at university is greatly influenced by these factors as well as family traditions of education, the nature of the university, etc. (Anisef, Okihiro, and James 1982). First, I will discuss the origins of TYP at the University of Toronto, and why I became involved in it from its early conception in the African Canadian community in Toronto as a model of university access for African Canadian/Black students and other under-represented students: Aboriginal students, students from working-class backgrounds, and women. I will discuss the two summer programs in 1969 and 1970 that tested the TYP model and made possible its offering as a full-time, one-year program at the University of Toronto, serving fifty to sixty students annually. From among the instruction of over thirty years which I have received from my involvement in TYP, both in the University of Toronto program and also in its precursors, the two community summer programs of 1969 and 1970, I have selected three main lessons to share in this essay:  There is a Struggle involved in the provision of access programs like TYP.  There is Empowerment to be derived from Critical Pedagogy in programs like TYP.  There is a need at this time for universities to have a generalized and comprehensive access and equity plan, with accompanying implementation measures. Individual access programs should be offered in the context of an overall approach to making the university more accessible, equitable, diverse, and inclusive in all of its operation. Fundamental and generalized access is what we need to get to the root of what excludes some from the university, and what makes them feel unwelcome when they are there. Programs like TYP, I believe, ought to be viewed as part of a broader and encompassing approach to access and equity in the university. This comprehensive approach Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 61 62 Access and Equity in the University would serve students better; it would assist the university’s mandate of serving the people. Why I Became Involved in TYP When I became involved in TYP in 1969 before it evolved into a University of Toronto program in September 1970, I was at first doing so out of my utmost surprise at the very low representation of African Canadian students at the University. I observed this problem in my first interactions with the University of Toronto; the absence was obvious as I walked through the campus. Now, thirty-two years later as I traverse the university campus, I see many more African Canadian students than in my early years, but there is a decline in the number of Black males entering university; even in TYP the decline is becoming pronounced. In my first encounter with the university, I was also shocked by the negligible presence of Canada’s First Nations, and although there have been some changes which have increased the number of Aboriginal students, there is still much cause for concern and the need for much more action. Over the years, Aboriginal students’ participation in the university has been enhanced by the existence of TYP since 1970; the opening of First Nations House on the university campus in 1992 and other initiatives by First Nations communities and the University of Toronto have helped to increase the participation of Aboriginal students (Chamberlain 1989). In addition, in the 1960s and 1970s students from the working-class and poor neighbourhoods were not a significant presence in the university. In 1968 and 1970, however, I could not have imagined that I would be spending the ensuing years to 2002 connected to TYP and still be learning lessons from my participation in it. In 1967 I came to Toronto from Antigua as a graduate student in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (now OISE/UT), with confidence that I could put to good use my university education and teaching experiences in the Caribbean. Increasing university participation for the Black/African community in Toronto, a community to which I quickly developed an incredibly strong bond on my arrival here, presented itself as an area of need, but a challenging one as I observed through the eyes of the newcomer. I felt, however, that my Caribbean Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 62 Reflections on My Years in TYP 63 experience, which included participation in community development, and both formal and informal education, had provided me with some hands-on preparation to work with others on projects of change. The African Canadian community in Toronto was at the time in a posture of making change happen. I would listen to those who had been here tell their stories of discrimination—of sitting in the back of classrooms, of dreams being deferred, of struggling still in the hope for change. It was an instructive and exciting time for the newcomer like myself. My connection to and dependence on my new African Canadian community in Toronto were heightened in 1968 by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., whom I had met in person when he gave the address at one of my two graduation ceremonies at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Through this tragedy, I experienced the intensity of my collective community’s grief, the sense that the social order was deteriorating into madness, and I attended any gathering where one could share or sit in silence. Without consciously doing so, I absented myself from the university campus. I would later interpret my absence as reflecting my sense of disconnection, my feelings of alienation from the main features of the university, and my self-conscious awareness of the poor representation of members of my community in its faculty and student body. I must note, however, that a couple of my professors did notice my absence, and one of the few female professors at OISE at the time did try to intervene into my wandering. Dr. King’s assassination was one of the significant historical events that for me framed the initiation of a summer university preparation program in 1969 for African Canadian/Black students, and influenced my participation in it. It was this summer initiative that formulated and tested the concept of TYP as a university access program; in a little more than a year, the concept was transformed into the Transitional Year Programme offered by University of Toronto from 1970 to the present. The catastrophic tragedy of Dr. King’s assassination happened in the context of the Vietnam War, which he opposed and which precipitated much unrest on many university campuses. I felt the intensity of the opposition to the war in Toronto and on the University of Toronto campus. Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 63 64 Access and Equity in the University Other local events of note framing TYP’s beginning included Black students’ confrontation with racism at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, culminating in the February 1969 incident, referred to as “The Sir George Williams Affair” (Forsythe 1971). This resonated in Toronto’s Black community, which arranged many meetings with some of the students involved; one huge rally to support the students was held at the Faculty of Education at University of Toronto. I attended all such events—which taught me more than if I had remained in the university classroom—about how social conditions and experiences affect a community’s psyche to the point where the will for transformation, for changing the status quo, becomes overwhelming. This was a time of pride, Black consciousness, of reading and discussion circles in our community. The recently opened Third World Bookstore by Lennie and Gwen Johnson became a centre of information and discussion. In all of these events, Black students and community members were very vocal about racial discrimination in society, with institutional education held up as one of the most damaging venues of racist practice. The conditions of racism and inequality that affected African Canadian students at every level of education, including university, was high on the Black community’s agenda in 1969 and 1970; it had also been there in earlier generations and, lamentably, still is as I write. In the public school system, the persistent streaming and underachievement of African Canadian students at the time (which is still a problem in 2002) in schools across Canada, especially in Ontario and Nova Scotia, were limiting their access to university and other spheres of opportunity (Toronto Board of Education Report, Black Students in Toronto Schools 1988). Through joint efforts in the Black Students Union (BSU) and other groups, the Black students at York University, Ryerson Polytechnic, and the University of Toronto worked for change in the African Canadian community, and with the formation of the Black Education Project (BEP), the community strove to arrest the conditions that made Black students underachieve in school. The work of that era can be credited with saving many Black students from dropping out of school, and with strengthening the community’s efforts to have institutions pay attention to the way in which poor education was limiting not Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 64 Reflections on My Years in TYP 65 only the future of the students but that of the community. This work led to the formulation of other community initiatives, some in liaison with education institutions, which pointed the way to change. One group which emerged was the Black Liaison Committee, which advised the Toronto Board of Education about strategies for facilitating Black students’ success, while groups like the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and others were also making their contribution. At the time, from my view, there was a heightened sense of community and a belief that education would be one of the main tools to foster and maintain that community solidarity and purpose. The TYP, therefore, was born out of our community’s faith in education, but that faith included expectations of community service from those who would gain access to the university and the professions (Karenga 1982:27). The TYP, a model for access and equity in the university, was born out of the community’s will for change and full participation. The early work of TYP was, of course, supported by allies, including the First Nations, who have been actively involved in the development of the program. There was also support from professors at the University of Toronto who, from the inside of the institution, helped to facilitate the university’s commitment to this model of access, especially at the beginning. This collaboration advanced our access agenda by opening the university to students from outside the traditional pool. That TYP could become a successful model for increasing African Canadian students’ participation in the university was one of my motivations for joining the small group of innovators, which included animateur and York University student Horace Campbell, now professor of politics at Syracuse University. I worked with him and with others in the formulation and delivery of what seemed to many at the time as an ambitious and tentative project or experiment in equal opportunity for disadvantaged students (the language of that era). With my graduate work completed at the Master’s level and with my teaching experience in the Caribbean, including teaching teachers and other adults who were trying to access the University of the West Indies, I had been prepared to make a contribution to this endeavour, which for me held much educational interest. In retrospect, from early on I recognized the Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 65 66 Access and Equity in the University potential of TYP as an access program that could bring immense benefits to individual lives and the communities they represented. I volunteered my time in the two summer programs in 1969 and 1970 that provided intense preparation for students to enter university by the fall. The first university preparation program was located in the Home Service Association building on Bathurst Street (a little north of Bathurst subway), which was a centre of community meetings and activities. (The other community centre at the time was the Universal Negro Improvement Association building on College Street, a little east of Bathurst.) The 1969 program was offered for seven Black students, six women and one young man; the six who completed the program were admitted to university in the fall. The 1970 summer program was expanded to include students from other groups and communities who also shared the Black community’s need for an access route to university—Native, working-class youth, and women. A total of about ten students attended in 1970, and six of the seven who completed it also gained admission to York University. With the help of some university professors, most notably Professor Charles Hanley of the Department of Philosophy, the 1970 summer program was relocated to the University of Toronto’s downtown campus at Innis College, which was at the time at 63 St. George Street. As of September 1970, after many meetings and negotiations with the University of Toronto, the university opened the full-time TYP at Innis College, where the summer program had been offered a few weeks earlier. In the two community-based summer programs that preceded the establishment of TYP at the U of T, I was responsible for preparing relevant curriculum and resources for teaching the students in writing, reading, and critical analysis to prepare them for university in the fall. The students would be interviewed and tested by the university at the end of the program, so they had to be ready. I was both teacher and counsellor to the students, not only during the summer programs, but after they were accepted at York University and one at the University of Toronto, I continued to tutor and counsel them. One major text I used for writing and critical reading was Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, a book which at the time had assumed the role of a road map for understanding colonial oppression and violence in all of Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 66 Reflections on My Years in TYP 67 its forms. It was very popular reading among Black university students and community members in that era. I can still remember the depth of the discussions in the group as well as the writing through which the students practiced their skills and shared their experiences in the context of the readings. At the end of the summer programs in 1969 and 1970, York University evaluated the students’ readiness and accepted them for full first-year studies, with the proviso that they continue to receive mentoring and tutoring. The University of Toronto accepted only one student from the summer programs into first- year studies. This student was not only the first student to be admitted to the University of Toronto from the innovative project, but she also assisted in organizing the program and was energetic in publicizing it in the community. Bearing in mind the educational and community conditions out of which TYP emerged and which were, in fact, the catalyst for such an access program, it would have been difficult to predict in 1970 and even years later how TYP would operate as an equal opportunity (a 1960s and 1970s term) program at a traditional and elitist institution such as the University of Toronto. One could not have foreseen the shape of this access initiative in the years to come. In reality, the years ahead would be rocky, especially in TYP’s first decade, and particularly so from 1970 to 1976. The TYP developed along a path influenced by the traditional university in which it is located, and it was influenced by the traditions and expectations of that institution. The program would go through periods of intense struggle, and in the early years it was expected to prove itself according to the established rules of the university. Funding and constant scrutiny were serious constraints on its capacity to innovate. Some of us in the program felt that institutional support was tenuous in TYP’s first six years, at least until the Crowe Report in 1976 and the aftermath of suspension. The Crowe Evaluation Committee cited racial tensions, administrative problems, and Marxist content in the curriculum as endangering the program. The committee lambasted the TYP Policy Committee which included community participation. That a Black professor, a Crowe Committee member, signed his name to the report was the most unkindest cut. This was indeed troubling. I experienced the upheaval of that time as a betrayal of community Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 67 68 Access and Equity in the University dreams and hopes, and expectations. One result of the summer of 1976 for TYP was a one-year suspension of the program; and a Policy Committee has never since advised it again. The Crowe Committee did not understand the struggle for acceptance of access programs in established institutions. The TYP’s suspension in 1976–1977 precipitated a period of low morale, of fifty students denied access to university for one year, of alumni held together by one lone faculty member— myself—in Innis College. Father John Kelly, president of St. Michael’s College, was selected by the university to head a new committee to carry out another review of the program. Again the communities, notably the African Canadian and First Nations communities, came to the campus and spoke to the Committee in strong support of TYP. Father Kelly was uncompromising, fair, and tough; his report recognized the value of what might have seemed to some an insignificant program and helped to save the day for TYP and for university access. The structure he recommended has strengthened the administration of TYP, which since then has reported to the Provost’s Office, has located the program in its own space, and allowed it more autonomy to serve its students. But what has been sacrificed since the Crowe Report is the early community involvement in TYP. The name of Father John Kelly must be recorded in the history of our program. Through times of struggle, of growing acceptance, and of pride expressed in the TYP by the top administration of the university (TYP referred to as the “jewel in the crown of the university”), I remained a part of the program. In doing so, I attempted to keep alive the initial vision of TYP in which I participated. Changing times do require new approaches, but the mission of TYP has remained very relevant to many students’ needs; it remains important as an access route. The conditions of Aboriginal students’ education have not significantly altered in a generation, and even though more African Canadian and working-class students are accessing the university, the barriers of race, class, and gender are still in place. But my present aim in this essay is to extract some significant lessons from my years of participation in TYP. The history of thirty years can be written at another time. With the foregoing exploration of my involvement in TYP, especially in the early years, and with highlights of aspects of the Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 68 Reflections on My Years in TYP 69 program’s development, I will now present three key lessons from what has been for me an unforgettable experience. The Lessons from TYP The Struggle Surrounding Access My first-hand experience has revealed to me the depth of the struggle and accompanying tension that an access program can generate in institutions like the university. The TYP in its early years was particularly challenging because it was a new initiative in Canada, and Dalhousie University was the only other institution in 1970 that attempted this model. Dalhousie University, however, limited access to its TYP to Aboriginal and Black students, while the University of Toronto program, though targeting First Nations and African Canadians, also offered an opportunity to students from the working class, to women, and to others who were in need of an access route. Access, by its very nature, is known to disturb traditions held sacred by those who are privileged in society; it challenges the standards of excellence, which world-class universities like the University of Toronto hold as sacred. Access disturbs standards of excellence because under excellence lies merit or worthiness, which is not access related. The U of T, for example, now has a laudable policy that states that no qualified student should be denied a university education because of lack of money. Although this is good, the policy does not recognize that many students who do not qualify for university do not because they experience barriers in their education—barriers of social class, race and ethnocultural inequity, disabilities, sexual diversity, single parenthood, refugee status, etc. Many have been streamed out of university programs in school or have dropped out for a number of reasons. A significant aspect of the struggle around TYP, especially in the 1970s, required the program to prove that it was worthy of a place in a prestigious university. Retaining its coveted place would place its students, curriculum, staffing, and operation under constant scrutiny. It was particularly important to the university to measure the students’ success and worthiness by the usual standards. In other words, it seemed that TYP as an equity program was expected to earn its place in the institution. It Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 69 70 Access and Equity in the University was Professor Jack Wayne, director of TYP from the 1987 to 1997, who was bold enough to introduce “Making Excellence Accessible” as TYP’s motto; it is a motto that TYP retains. I have experienced a struggle similar to that of TYP in other situations in which groups are seeking equity. I participated in the struggle of Black and other equity-seeking groups’ advocacy for change in the Board of Education in Toronto. Some current students in TYP may not be aware of the intensity of the struggle and social conditions out of which the program emerged at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, even though those conditions of inequality are still the reasons why students each year access the University of Toronto through TYP. To visit the TYP building today at 49 St. George Street, which some call the TYP House, and to see the comfortable and well- furbished students’ lounge, the spacious offices, and the computer room, there are not many who would know how often the program moved in its early years. The frequent moves were unsettling. From 1970 to 1982, TYP had five homes. The fact that TYP students have won five National Scholarships to the University of Toronto from 1997 to 2002 has helped to blunt the sting of our struggle in the early years to get our students registered in certain colleges at U of T. In the 1970s and 1980s, TYP administrators had to make a case for each of the students they presented at the end of the year to college registrars, even though the TYP faculty had already deemed them ready to continue their studies in the university. Two colleges were willing to accept our students in the early years, but others were reluctant. The TYP constantly had to prove itself, which placed a burden particularly on the students. It is to the students’ credit and their determination over the years, with the help of the faculty, that they have survived their university experience. Many have done so with outstanding results. Some are in graduate school, while others are contributing to Canadian society and their communities in a variety of ways. The Thirtieth Anniversary of TYP reinforced the important contributions that the communities it serves have made and are continuing to make to its development. The expectation of community service in TYP’s original vision has never really dissipated, but it will now be revitalized and honoured from June 2002 through an endowed Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 70 Reflections on My Years in TYP 71 Community Service Award for its alumni in the name of Professor Horace Campbell, TYP’s co-founder. For me, the TYP experience at U of T demonstrates that when an institution’s leadership is committed to an access program and when it is prepared to provide a proper budget and other supports (as the outgoing provost charged with responsibility for the TYP has done in the past ten years), these supports will anchor the program and will contribute to strengthening the confidence of the students and motivating their success. The experience teaches me that the struggle around establishing access programs is inevitable in the context of the existing values and perceived mission of the university, for these are models that signal change to the established order. And institutions experience change as an unsettling challenge rather than as an opportunity. I also participated in the introduction of the International Languages and Black Cultural Heritage Program in the Toronto Board of Education from 1979; the struggle and tension generated by this initiative were enormous, for those who opposed the integration of these classes in the regular school day perceived them as destructive to the smooth functioning of their schools and their sacred unicentric curriculum. I have learned that access programs, as insignificant as they may appear to be, do challenge the status quo by their very presence, which might be the reason why they are not common offerings in Canadian universities. But in the long run, if they are true to their mission, these programs can also be instruments of change, for change is often sown in small seeds that struggle to germinate in difficult soil. I believe that these programs, which by their mission contradict how universities have traditionally defined themselves, have a transformative capacity and point to new visions of inclusion in the university. Critical Pedagogy and Empowerment The next important lesson selected from my years in TYP is the centrality of critical pedagogy to access programs (and indeed to all teaching and learning situations). In the early years of TYP, the term “critical pedagogy” was not in common usage as it is today, but in my view this concept was foundational in the project from the beginning. Note that “critical andragogy” (Knowles 1980) Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 71 72 Access and Equity in the University might be the better term to use since TYP is an adult education teaching and learning situation to which students (some of them mature adults) bring extensive experiences from their lives, work, or parenting. I will, however, in my discussion retain the term more commonly used—critical pedagogy. In my reflections on the value of critical pedagogy in access programs like the TYP, I am drawing on the theories of Paulo Freire, Brazillian educator, and bell hooks, African American theorist, whose writings and work speak directly to the kind of education environment required for assisting students’ preparation for access and survival in the university. Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Education for Critical Consciousness (1973), and other writings, develops a theory of dynamic education that allows those who have experienced oppression (as do students in TYP) to critically examine their social (and personal) reality and, through reflection and understanding, to help change the conditions that denied them a place in the university in the first place. bell hooks (1994) also theorizes about the transformative power of education for oppressed peoples. I consider critical pedagogy as embodying a methodology of interactive education, the kind that pursues education equity and anti-racism. It should engender respect between those who are charged with educating and those who come to the institution in pursuit of education. Freire refers to the Subject-Object dialectic/ opposition in most teaching situations, but as he advocated in his programs, and as I have been privileged to witness and experience in TYP, the students are very much Subjects in their learning; their life experiences can be powerful tools in their progress and ultimately their empowerment (Freire 1970:57–70). Built into critical pedagogy, therefore, is a dialogical approach, which encourages mutual learning for both the educator and the student who seeks education. I view critical pedagogy as an important mode for developing students’ critical thinking and for empowering them to make use of their space in the university, a space that had previously been denied them because of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and other oppression. This approach to teaching and learning aims at developing the students’ voice and allowing them a space in the teaching and learning situation in which to use voice to express and assess their Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 72 Reflections on My Years in TYP 73 experiences of inequality and oppression (hooks 1994:148–150). This approach can demystify the university for access students, who used to consider it beyond their reach; it can help to build their confidence so they will believe that university studies are not too difficult for them. Critical pedagogy will help students to understand that a good education is their entitlement as it is for the privileged groups who do not have to push against the door. This pedagogy can work as an antidote to the paternalism and tokenism that access programs can engender. I have seen that this kind of pedagogy is a necessary extension of access, which by its very mandate is seeking to bring into the university those who would normally be inadmissible, those who are from groups under-represented in the institution and who are, as some would say, non-traditional students. But the mission of programs like the TYP is not to change the so-called non- traditional students into traditional ones (years in the TYP have taught me that this would be a very difficult, paternalistic, and unnecessary pursuit), but rather to build the students’ confidence and skills to access the university knowledge and to use their other knowledge(s) to study, examine, and critique this university knowledge. I believe it was Professor Janet Salaff’s recognition of the value of the experiences that TYP students bring to the university that led her to refer to them as “a rich vein of understanding” in her U of T sociology classes (Transitional Year Programme Newsletter, Fall 1989). However, I should add that the university should offer a more diverse curriculum if it is committed to access and equity. (I will comment on this in my third lesson.) They are students who have experienced barriers in their lives and in their schooling, obstacles that have disqualified them from university education. TYP admits students who, for the most part, have no tradition of university participation in their family. Nearly all of the students are the first in their families to attend a university, except for those who needed the TYP route because of particular crises in their personal lives that disrupted their education. For those students who are parents, the opportunity to study at university through TYP has motivated some of their own children to earn the credentials for successfully competing for a place in the university. Others have children who are now becoming part of the second generation studying in TYP. Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 73 74 Access and Equity in the University I have found that selecting course materials that emanate from the students’ lived experiences is essential to the TYP curriculum and the students’ preparation for university. Reflection of the students’ cultural backgrounds is embodied in the pedagogy under discussion here. In teaching courses in Literature (Stories and Legends in Literature; Literature and Culture) and Composition (Reading, Writing, and Discussion) in TYP over many years, I have found that some works are particularly empowering for students. These are works that help to develop students’ critical thinking and their voice to express their understanding and their views. In addition, these works aid students’ development of their skills of writing, reading, and critical analysis, which they will need to pursue degree studies in university. One work that has had a powerful impact in my teaching literature is Aboriginal writer Jeannette C. Armstrong’s “The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment Through Their Writing” (Moses and Goldie 1998). In this paper, which Armstrong presented to the Saskatchewan Writers Guild’s 1990 Annual Conference, she first outlines the historical causes of First Nations’ disempowerment and proceeds by showing the need for empowerment through writing, through developing and using their voice, through cultural affirmation to conquer domination, through the pursuit of truth to conquer lies, and through developing strategies for change. Other Native writings that have assisted critical learning are Lee Maracle’s “Sojourner’s Truth,” Beth Brant’s “Grandmothers of a New World,” Basil Johnson’s “One Generation from Extinction,” and Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters. In addition to these Native writings are those by African Canadian and African American writers who have contributed to critical pedagogy in TYP. Marlene Nourbese Philip’s “Burn Sugar” is a story powerful in the symbolism of sugar—burn sugar—which is connected to Caribbean colonial history and the place of slavery and sugar cane in it. The story challenges students to confront history and its effects through the eyes of a forty-year-old Caribbean woman who tries to make the black cake that her mother used to make many years before in Trinidad. The story captures the depth and complexity of a mother-daughter relationship affected by slavery and oppression, and the questions that linger unanswered for generations after. It is a story that one year Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 74 Reflections on My Years in TYP 75 resulted in a group of Caribbean women meeting to find answers to some of their questions about the impact of slavery on parenting in the Caribbean. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid also evokes a mother-daughter relationship and colonial education. Black Boy by Richard Wright, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka are works that stimulate students’ thinking about colonialism and racial, gender, and other forms of oppression, and at the same time expose them to the techniques of good writing. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written in 1963 from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was incarcerated, has been a strong motivator of students’ discussion and writing in my Composition course. Each year, I try to schedule this reading around the U.S.’s Martin Luther King Day in January, which has a special impact. I recommend this as a piece that will challenge students to think deeply about oppression, why groups struggle to free themselves from it, and why waiting can mean never. This is a sample of writings that have assisted teaching and learning in TYP for both the students and myself as teacher. In Freire’s conception, the students have been active subjects in their analysis of the various themes and cultural and historical settings developed by the writers. These are themes and settings to which their personal and group experiences are connected. As I reflect on the dynamics in our classrooms over the years, I remember students discussing their life situations in the context of these works which generate a vision of different oppressions and also the forces that connect them. I have been witness to students developing their voice to express their views in the spoken word and the written language. I have marked countless papers in which students have demonstrated the power of critical pedagogy in advancing critical learning, and I had faith that their written language skills would be strengthened, and that they would write good university papers, with more time and practice. The Need for a Generalized and Comprehensive Equity Plan in the University, with Accompanying Implementation Measures The most compelling lesson from my long connection to TYP is that there is an urgent need for a generalized and comprehensive Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 75 76 Access and Equity in the University access and equity plan for the university. Since there are rewards to be had from attaining a university education, the question is why should our society continue to condone the limited access to public institutions for the groups who have traditionally been under-represented there. The research of many years has revealed the enhanced opportunities and quality of life that a good university education can confer on those who are privileged to attain it. Anisef et al. (2000), in exploring the life courses of the Class of 1973 (Ontario Grade 12 students) as surveyed in 1995, concluded that “more education pays off in terms of higher-status occupations, and correspondingly higher individual personal incomes,” and that this was particularly so for the men in their sample (Anisef et al. 2000:265–266). Further, Bowen and Bok (1998) discuss the advancement of African Americans and Hispanics through the attainment of advanced degrees, which is making them the “backbone of the emergent Black and Hispanic middle class.” They show that advanced/university education is important for diversifying the professions such as medicine, for providing political leadership, and also for allowing minority groups to develop networks, which privileged groups already have (Bowen and Bok 1998:116). With consideration of the benefits that can accrue from a university education, and particularly in highly valued professions such as medicine, law, architecture, engineering, etc., it is disturbing to contemplate the consequences of limited access to these and other areas for some groups in our society. The recent debates and demonstrations over increases in university tuition fees in general, and the projected sharp tuition increase in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in particular, are happening while many groups in our society are expecting to gain access to the rewards of a university education. To respond to the need for the deep level access that I am proposing (which emanates from my experiences in TYP and also from the frustrations of the groups alluded to), the university will have to change its present vision to a more inclusive one. The university should move beyond the add-ons of TYPs, Steps to University, Bridging, and other special programs (important as these are) to a more holistic, encompassing approach. It will need to develop an implementable access and Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 76 Reflections on My Years in TYP 77 equity plan across programs and disciplines, professional faculties and graduate schools. This wider vision of access would no doubt disturb the complacency and smugness of the university’s traditional curriculum and its teaching and research, in order to make room for more representation and inclusion of the knowledges/ ways of knowing that thus far have not gained legitimacy. It would honour informal learning in a more significant way than it currently is. This vision would call for a rethinking of the university’s mission; it would require an answer to the fundamental question of whose and what interests public universities in Canada ought to be serving at the start of the twenty-first century. My years in TYP have reinforced my thinking about how valuable education really is, especially to those who have been denied its benefits. That education is serious business was emphasized throughout my childhood and youth in Bolans, Antigua. An often repeated saying from that time and location— Education is something not to play careless with—still rings true after my over thirty years in Canada. Education affects the quality of life of citizens; it is connected to life and well-being, and is basic survival for some. It can help rescue people from dangers such as poverty, and it can open up possibilities for their participation. I submit that the university will need to consult more with disenfranchised communities and groups in society if it is to embrace a new, broader, and deeper vision of access. References Anisef, P., N. Okihiro, and C. James. 1982. Losers and Winners. Toronto: Butterworth. Anisef, Paul, et al. 2000. Opportunity and Uncertainty. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bowen, W.G., and D. Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chamberlain, J.E. 1989. Report of the Special Committee on Native Students (May). Toronto: University of Toronto. Forsythe, D., ed. 1971. Let the Niggers Burn! Montreal: Black Rose Books. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. ______. 1973. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Seabury Press. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress. New York: Routledge. Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 77 78 Access and Equity in the University Karenga, M. 1982. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press. Knowles, M. 1980. The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy, 2 nd ed. Chicago: Follett. Moses, D., and T. Goldie, eds. 1998. Native Literature in English. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Toronto Board of Education Report, Black Students in Toronto Schools, 1988. Transitional Year Programme. 1989. Transitional Year Programme Newsletter (Fall). Ch 03-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 78 Introduction This paper focuses on access to educational opportunity at the university level in Canada. The paper begins by discussing the philosophical beliefs, which, in the opinion of the writer, form the basis for the democratization of the university education sector; the paper then provides a brief outline of the way in which education is organized in Canada, with special reference to the organization of university education. The writer argues that these arrangements militate against the development of a national university access policy that would benefit groups under- represented in the university system. Finally, the paper argues that despite the difficulties posed by the constitutional and other arrangements, which deny the federal government any direct role in formulating and/or implementing a national education policy, some efforts have been made in Canada to make universities more accessible and equitable for less advantaged members of the country. Access to Education Canada espouses a liberal, democratic philosophy that stresses the importance of providing wide opportunities for improvement and betterment. This philosophical belief is tied to the notion that all young people should be provided with educational opportunities consistent with their abilities and interests. Moreover, ascribed status such as gender, racial/ethnic Chapter 4 79 University Access and Educational Opportunity: A Canadian Perspective Keith A. Allen Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 79 80 Access and Equity in the University background and/or cultural roots, socio-economic origin, place of birth, and/or community of residence should not affect the provision of opportunities for upward social mobility. Social scientists have used the term “equality of educational opportunity” to describe this generalized, philosophical belief (Anisef et al. 1982; Bennett and Lecompte 1990; Porter, Porter, and Blishen 1982). It is widely believed in Canada that there is a positive correlation between the quality and quantity of education that Canadians receive on the one hand, and the overall economic and social well-being of society on the other. As then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said in a 1988 speech: “If our national goals are to increase Canada’s competitiveness and [expand our] role in the world, clearly our educational goals must be to prepare us to meet the challenge.” 1 Therefore, over at least the last fifty years, there has been much attention given to devising ways to democratize the education enterprise, especially the university sector, so as to make it better serve the needs of the entire population. However, despite much effort that has resulted in substantial expansion of the university sector, it is quite apparent that great disparities exist in the extent to which different groups (racial/ ethnic/cultural, gendered, socio-economic, etc.) participate in the educational enterprise, especially at the university level, and in the benefits they derive from their participation. It is not difficult to recognize, as Olive Banks (1968:66) states, “the persistence of social-class inequality in educational performance in spite of the democratization of educational provision.” Organization of Universities in Canada The way that education is organized in Canada makes it more difficult to democratize educational opportunities, especially at the university level. The Constitution Act of 1867 granted provincial legislatures the exclusive right to “‘make laws for and in each province’ in relation to education.” 2 Therefore, the federal government has no general, constitutional role that allows it to establish and implement an education policy, although it does retain some limited responsibility for education in areas of its jurisdiction. For example, through such federal departments as External Affairs, Indian and Northern Affairs, Science and Technology, National Defence, Immigration and Citizenship, The Solicitor General, and Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 80 University Access and Educational Opportunity 81 Human Resources Development, the federal government retains some responsibility for the education of Aboriginal students and armed services personnel; workforce training; education of inmates in correctional facilities; and research through the research granting councils: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Health Institute Research (formerly called the Medical Research Council [MRC]). General education, including university education, is the responsibility of the provinces and the territories, although the federal government provides some indirect financial support to universities through the Established Programme Financing (EPF), a form of transfer payment; (more recently, this program has been rolled into the Canada Health and Social Transfer [CHST] under which a block grant is transferred to the province to be used for health, education, and other social programs); through the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) in the form of student aid; and through the funding of university research (through the research granting councils referred to earlier). Because the federal government has no direct responsibility for education, it lacks the ability to establish a national policy on education. Therefore, national access initiatives—such as the series of programs in the United States collectively known as TRIO (Talent Search, Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centres, Student Support Services, and the Ronald McNair Post- Baccalaureate Achievement Program), which help students to overcome class, social, academic, and cultural barriers to higher education—could not be pursued in Canada. TRIO programs are mandated and funded by the United States federal government. 3 It would also not be possible for the Canadian government to initiate special university access programs for under-represented groups, such as was done by the United Kingdom’s Department of Education and Science (DES), through DES’s Letter of Invitation of August 1978 to selected Local Education Authorities (LEAs) requesting them to initiate preparatory courses as a basis of entry to higher education. 4 As we shall show later, state-wide programs such as the Education Opportunity Program (EOP), Higher Education Opportunity (HEOP), Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK) and the College Discovery Program Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 81 82 Access and Equity in the University (Discovery), 5 which provide access to higher education for educationally and economically disadvantaged residents of New York State, would be difficult to arrange in Canada. This is because there is no system in Canada comparable to the state university systems in the U.S. Neither is there any administrative unit for postsecondary education in Canada comparable to the LEA in the United Kingdom. Each Canadian university is an autonomous, public institution established as a private corporation by an individual act of the federal or provincial legislature. Canadian universities are independent institutions, each with its own board of governors and ultimate fiduciary responsibility for their institution; each university pursues its own independent interests, but within the general provincial or territorial educational framework. Despite the peculiar constitutional and administrative structure within which universities in Canada operate, after the United States, Canada leads the world in the participation rate in higher education. 6 However, the unprecedented growth in enrolment over the last thirty to forty years, has been mainly a consequence of policies that allowed more middle-class students, especially women, to enrol in universities and colleges, and not as a result of substantial increase in access for the poor and other disadvantaged groups in society. Prior to the 1960s, Canadian universities catered primarily to the dominant socio-economic groups in society. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, with the increasing sensitivity expressed in the public sphere toward the need for enhanced opportunities for upward social mobility, social policies were developed so as to include many of those groups that were under-represented in the universities. These policies included the development of several new universities, strategically located in various regions of the country; the expansion of several existing universities; the secularization of some previously private religious colleges and universities that were then brought into the public sphere; the introduction of the Canada Student Loan Plan (CSL) and other provincial student aid plans, and the maintenance of provincial funding formulae for universities, which ensured relatively low tuition fees. Nevertheless, accessibility to university has at least two major components: the participation rate and the social and demographic Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 82 University Access and Educational Opportunity 83 composition of the students who participate. The new students, who were enrolling in the university in ever increasing numbers, were mainly from the middle class. A substantial number of these students were women. Many of the new students were from outside the larger urban centres, who previously had to travel very far to attend a university; some were older students and some were students for whom the main barrier to university attendance had previously been lack of financial resources. However commendable these new developments were, which served to increase participation rates, it was clear that there were still many categories of people in Canada who were under- represented in the universities. These included people from low socio-economic background; Aboriginal peoples; African Canadians/Blacks and some other visible, linguistic, or cultural minorities; sole-support mothers; and people with disabilities. It was obvious that many of these potential students would not be able to gain admission to university by conventional routes. There is a long tradition at many Canadian universities of admitting adults who lack the normal matriculation requirements. 7 Such students, commonly referred to as mature students or non- matriculants, are admitted to university with varying degrees of academic restrictions. Those universities that admit these mature students have usually assumed that these students’ prior learning, obtained by formal means and through their life experiences, has given them the intellectual maturity to benefit from their studies without the interventions of any special academic or student support services of a non-financial nature. While these assumptions may be reasonable in the case of many mature students, these assumptions are obviously quite mistaken in most cases where students from disadvantaged backgrounds are concerned. For most disadvantaged students, accessing university in this way is quite futile since they usually lack the academic and other related skills required to survive the rigour of their university programs. Access to Univeristy for Disadvantaged Groups All disadvantaged groups in Canada have found access to university very restricted and problematic. However, the plight of Aboriginal peoples, in this regard, has been most acute. If these Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 83 84 Access and Equity in the University and other disadvantaged students were to have a chance of gaining admission to a university, and a reasonable chance of surviving there, special new access and student support services initiatives were needed. In 1970 the Manitoba government took a policy decision to establish a comprehensive recruitment, financial support, and counselling program for Metis and the working poor with the objective of assisting them to obtain a university education. Later, other Aboriginal groups and people from above the fifty-third parallel were included in the program. The program was partly financed by the federal government through its Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Special university access, or other opportunity programs, have since been extended to all universities and several other postsecondary institutions in Manitoba. Unfortunately, other provinces and territories have been very slow in following the province of Manitoba’s lead. For example, Ontario’s initiatives in the area of special access, or other opportunity programs, have been both relatively quite recent and limited. These initiatives, which began during the 1980s, have concentrated on providing special student support services at universities for people with disabilities, Aboriginal students, sole- support mothers; on issues related to the safety of women on university campuses; and on policies to promote employment and other equity issues for four designated groups: Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and women. However, in a recent discussion paper, which was put out by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, the government seems to imply that it recognizes that it has wider responsibility in the area of accessibility when it states: The [Ontario] government is committed to ensuring that all Ontarians who wish to pursue a postsecondary education have an opportunity to do so. A variety of factors affect the applicant’s opportunities. These include: 1) the availability of places and appropriate programs; 2) the ability of applicants to qualify for postsecondary programs; [my emphasis] 3) affordability by students; 4) the geographic distribution of facilities and programs. 8 Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 84 University Access and Educational Opportunity 85 The federal government’s policy on access has largely been limited to providing financial aid to students, and to ensuring employment equity for the four designated groups referred to earlier. Under the federal government’s equity policy, universities that wish to bid for federal contracts are required to demonstrate that their workforce is representative of members of these designated groups. The federal government’s expectation seems to be that this policy will in due course lead to increased university enrolment of Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities, and people with disabilities; in the case of women, the expectation seems to be that the government’s employment equity policy will result in increased university enrolment in programs such as engineering, physical sciences, mathematics, and doctoral degrees, areas in which women are currently substantially under-represented. Generally speaking, responsibility for special access and other opportunity programs for disadvantaged groups has been left largely to individual universities, with the province of Manitoba being the only exception to this practice. For example, the Transition Year Programme at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was described in a contemporary faculty report soon after it began as “a project totally new ... to all Canada, ‘an attempt at once daring, yet modest to respond to a social and educational responsibility’,” did not come about because of government initiative or policy. Instead it came about because of pressure from Nova Scotia Black community and Native leaders, the Dalhousie University Graduate Students Association with the support of progressive members of the Dalhousie University Faculty Association, and, of course, support from the university administration. 9 Similarly, the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto, which was described by the Ontario provincial Minister of Education, Universities and Colleges “as meeting social needs not met elsewhere in the system,” 10 came about not through some government policy, but through pressure placed on the university by Black students and Black community leaders with support from some progressive members of the University of Toronto’s faculty and, of course, the acquiescence of the University of Toronto administration. With the notable exception of the government of Manitoba, the role of governments has been largely limited to providing Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 85 86 Access and Equity in the University financial aid to eligible students admitted to access programs. However, even this did not happen in every case. For example, during the 1970s, there were several Ontario universities that enrolled students in preliminary year programs. It is true that many of the students enrolled in these programs were not from low-income or other disadvantaged backgrounds, but some obviously were. The government discontinued funding for most of these programs on the recommendation of a 1978 government report. 11 The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto was the only such program that continued to receive funding since, in the minister’s view, it was the only program that met social needs not met elsewhere in the educational system. There were times, however, when there was reason to be optimistic that the federal government would at least use moral suasion to help bring about a national policy on university access for disadvantaged groups in the society. One such time was in 1982 when a Special (federal) Parliamentary Committee was inquiring into the participation of visible minorities in Canadian society. Several briefs—including briefs from Dalhousie University’s Transition Year Programme and from the University of Toronto’s Transitional Year Programme, explaining the difficulties that Aboriginal peoples and some visible minorities were experiencing in gaining access to university and other postsecondary institutions—were presented to the committee. When the committee released its final report entitled Equality Now in 1982, it cited Dalhousie’s TYP as an “encouraging model” [for the nation]. 12 In 1986, the then federal Minister of State for Multiculturalism echoed similar sentiments when he visited the Dalhousie University Transition Year Programme. He described the program as a “model program for the world to see and learn from.” 13 Notwithstanding these platitudes, there is still no national, and except for Manitoba, even provincial policy that specifically addresses the issue of access or opportunity for disadvantaged groups. These matters are left largely to the goodwill of individual universities! While several Canadian universities see the need for special access and opportunity programs as both important and urgent, Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 86 University Access and Educational Opportunity 87 many see such programs as peripheral to the university’s mission. Given the autonomy of universities, their governing structure, their history, and the fact that the period since the late 1970s has been one of increasing financial stringency with governments reducing their financial support to universities and other public institutions, it is not surprising that there are relatively few special access or opportunity programs in Canada for the general population. Nevertheless, a 1989 report at the University of Toronto, which studied accessibility of Native students to Canadian universities generally and, more specifically, Native students’ access to professional programs, identified more than seventy programs serving Native students. The report classified these programs into five categories as follows: (1) Special Access Programs, meaning programs designed to prepare students to gain initial entry to a university degree, diploma, or certificate program; (2) Special Professional Programs, meaning programs that assist students to gain admission to professional studies; (3) Native Studies Programs, which study the language and culture of Native peoples; (4) Arts and Science Programs, meaning arts and science degree, diploma, or certificate programs offered by or in association with Native Colleges or Native communities; and (5) Special Student Support Services, meaning programs developed to support students in pursuing their academic goals. 14 Fifteen programs were classified as special university access programs. Natalie Sharpe, of the University of Alberta, also did a Canada- wide survey in 1989 of university Native transitional year and other special access programs serving Native students in postsecondary institutions. 15 Her survey identified most of the same programs identified in the University of Toronto Special Report. However it also identified University and College Entrance Programs (UCEP) designed to facilitate Native entry to university and other postsecondary institutions that were not mentioned in the University of Toronto Special Report. Most of the UCEP were community based. Only four programs listed by Sharpe fit what she calls the “classical model of a university transitional year program.” 16 She defines a transitional year program as one that offers students a combination of remedial skills courses, developmental courses, regular university Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 87 88 Access and Equity in the University introductory courses, and appropriate tutoring and other student support services. This writer’s own research 17 has shown that access and other educational opportunity programs at Canadian universities are targeted overwhelmingly at Aboriginal students, mostly to facilitate their entry to professional faculties, and to provide student support services. The writer was able to identify only four special access programs that were not designed exclusively for Aboriginal students. These were: the Mature Student Centre at Brandon University; the University of Manitoba Access Program (UMAP), the Transition Year Programme (TYP) at Dalhousie University, and the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto. However, all of these programs have significant Aboriginal enrolment. Most special university access programs are located in western Canada; they were developed in the 1970s and 1980s, largely in response to the heightened interest in Aboriginal self-government. There was a recognition of the inadequacy of existing educational opportunities, especially at the university level, to fulfil the aspirations of Canada’s Aboriginal population to have the professional and other skilled workforce to service their own communities. However, there were also other factors influencing the push toward greater university access for under-represented groups. These influences included the lingering effects of the egalitarian ideals of the civil rights movement of the 1960s; the human capital theory, which was in vogue at the time; the increasing affluence of the 1960s and 1970s, and the fact that all provincial governments were still increasing expenditure on education up until the late 1970s. Conclusion Although there has been significant increase in the participation rate of Canadians in university education over the last forty years, access remains restricted and problematic for some groups of potential students. The way university education is administered in Canada precludes the federal government from setting or enforcing regulations that would achieve university access for all individuals wishing to attend university. The fact that there is no provincial university system comparable to the states’ university Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 88 University Access and Educational Opportunity 89 system in the U.S. makes it more difficult for the provincial governments to set and enforce regulations that guarantee access to university for all groups wishing to go to university. The Canadian situation contrasts with the situation in the United Kingdom and the United States where the national, state, and even local government with a direct role in postsecondary education are able to fulfil that role. The result is that in Canada, special university access initiatives for disadvantaged groups are left largely to the discretion of individual universities and their communities. As a consequence, relatively few access and opportunity programs have been established in Canada. Most of those that exist are located in western Canada and were designed to meet the urgent needs of the Aboriginal communities for university-educated Aboriginal peoples to service the labour force needs of their emerging self-government institutions. Notes 1. Keynote speech to the National Conference on Technology and Innovation, Toronto, Ontario, January 13, 1988. 2. Department of the Secretary of States of Canada, Access to Excellence: Being Canadian …Working Together for Post-Secondary Education (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1988). 3. The primary purpose of TRIO is to prepare disadvantaged persons for entry, retention, and completion of postsecondary education. The name TRIO dates to the 1960s when the first three programs were introduced. Upward Bound, the oldest program, was created in 1964 under the federal Economic Opportunity Act. Talent Search was established by the Higher Education Act of 1965. Subsequent amendments to the Higher Education Act, beginning with the 1968 legislation, added the other three programs. 4. See Gareth Parry, “From Patronage to Partnership,” Journal of Access Studies 1, no. 1 (April 1986):43–71 5. SEEK, the College Discovery Program, EOP, and HEOP were established by New York State legislation between 1966 and 1969. The College Discovery Program was already in existence at community colleges and was continued by the 1966 legislation. SEEK began operation at City University of New York (CUNY), EOP began at State University of New York (SUNY). The 1969 legislation established HEOP at independent colleges and universities. 6. Report: Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education (Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1991):93. 7. Some universities, for example, the University of Toronto, require students proposing to apply as mature students to successfully complete at least one Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 89 90 Access and Equity in the University pre-university or bridging course with at least average academic standing as a condition of being considered for admission. 8. Ministry of Education and Training, Future Goals for Ontario Colleges and Universities: Discussion Paper, (Toronto: Ministry of Education, July 1996):9. 9. Please see Dalhousie University, Transition Year Program (Halifax: Dalhousie University, n.d). 10. Letter to Dr. James Ham, president of the University of Toronto from Dr. Bette Stephenson, Minister of Education and Minister of Colleges and University, July 31, 1980. 11. Please see OCUA Advisory Memorandum 77-11, “Funding for Special University Programs at the Interface,” Ontario Council on University Affairs, June 1978. 12. Dalhousie University, Transition Year Program (Halifax: Dalhousie University, n.d.). 13. Ibid., 2. 14. University of Toronto, “Report of the Special Committee on Native Canadian Students” (Toronto: University of Toronto, May 27, 1989). 15. Natalie Sharpe, “University Native Transitional Year Programs: A Canada- Wide Survey,” Native Student Services, University of Alberta, June 29, 1989. 16. Ibid., 1. 17. Keith A. Allen, “Special University Access Programs: A Comparative Study,” forthcoming. References Allen, Keith A. 1996. “The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto: A Life-line for Blacks Seeking a University Education.” In Educating African Canadians, edited by Keren S. Brathwaite and Carl E. James. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company. ______. Forthcoming. “Special University Access Programs for Non-traditional Students: A Comparative Study.” Allen, Keith A., and A. Martin Wall. Unpublished research. “Making University Education Accessible to Non-traditional Students: A Case Study of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto 1977/78–1985/ 86.” Anisef, P., Norman Okihiro, and Carl James. 1982. The Pursuit Equality: Evaluating and Monitoring Accessibility to Post-Secondary Education in Ontario. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education. Banks, Olive. 1968. The Sociology of Education. London: B.T. Botsford, Ltd. Bennett, Kathleen P., and Margaret E. Lecompte. 1990. The Way Schools Work: A Sociological Analysis of Education. New York: Longmans. Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education. 1991. Report: Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education. Stuart L. Smith, M.D., Commissioner. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 90 University Access and Educational Opportunity 91 Dalhousie University. n.d. Transitional Year Program. Halifax: Dalhousie University. Department of the Secretary of State of Canada. 1988. Access to Excellence: Being Canadian … Working Together for Post-Secondary Education. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services. Hernandez, Oscar. 1999. “Investing in Equal Opportunity in Excellence.” The Council Journal (Spring):15–17. Office of Aboriginal Student Services and Programs. n.d. First Nations House Organizational Profile. Toronto: Office of Aboriginal Students Services and Programs, University of Toronto. Ontario Council on University Affairs. 1977. “Funding for Special Programs at the Interface.” OCUA Advisory Memorandum 77-11. Toronto: Ontario Council on University Affairs. Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. 1996. Future Goals for Ontario Colleges and Universities: Discussion Paper. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education. Parry, Gareth. 1986. “From Patronage to Partnership.” Journal of Access Study 1, no. 1 (Spring):43–53. Pike, Robert M. 1970. Who Doesn’t Get to University and Why: A Case Study of Accessibility to Higher Education in Canada. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Porter, John, Marion Porter, and Bernard R. Blishen. 1982. Stations and Calling: Making It Through the School System. Toronto: Methuen. Sharpe, Natalie. 1989. “University Native Transition Programs: A Canada Wide Survey.” Native Student Services, University of Alberta, Edmonton. Special Committee on Native Canadian Students. 1989. “Report of the Special Committee on Native Canadian Students.” J.E. Chamberlain, chairperson. Toronto: University of Toronto. University of Toronto. 1978. “Funding for Special University Programs at the Interface.” University of Toronto Brief in Response to OCUA Advisory Memorandum 77-11. Toronto: University of Toronto. Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 91 Ch 04-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 92 Introduction This essay describes some of the ways (particularly non-academic) in which the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto provides educational access to a remarkable and diverse group of students whose lives have typically been characterized by inequality and lack of access to the various “goods” (in both the material and non-material sense) offered by our social and economic systems. The Transitional Year Programme is a university access program for students with high academic potential and strong motivation who lack the formal background, skills, and confidence to qualify for university admission. The program has its roots in the Black community in Toronto. It emerged out of two community summer programs in 1969 and 1970, which prepared a small number of “educationally disadvantaged” Black, Aboriginal, and working- class students to enter university. It has since expanded to a full- year, full-time program that actively encourages applications from members of the African Canadian/Black communities, members of First Nations communities, from sole-support parents, and people from working-class families of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. TYP students lack the formal qualifications for university entrance, and thus they are “different” from other students. Thus it is important to develop academic and non-academic systems and supports that will ultimately minimize (if not neutralize) the Chapter 5 93 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality Rona Abramovitch Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 93 94 Access and Equity in the University inequalities and maximize the considerable talents and skills possessed by the students. It has been suggested (Payne and Lyman 1996), however, that it may be unrealistic to expect education to equalize opportunity for students whose lives outside of the educational system reflect “anything but equal opportunity.” School typically offers too little contact to make enough of a difference for most students, particularly those experiencing multiple barriers and inequities. And access to university education, the basis for this essay, may come too late to equalize economic and social participation. Despite this, many of us remain committed to access education at the postsecondary level and to the premise that with enough thought and care put into the process, it is never too late to provide at least some opportunity to create equality and social justice. Clearly there are substantial challenges involved in access education. Just as all things are not equal in society, it is clear that all things are not equal in education. And just as equalizing opportunity in society poses difficult problems, so does finding appropriate ways to provide access education that really work. The difficulties in meeting the challenges can lead to a questioning of or tension regarding the relationship between access and excellence. Does the need to provide more and different support, to allow more time, to “make allowances” for special circumstances mean that we are compromising excellence? The basic premise of this essay is not only that the challenges can be met, but that by meeting them excellence need not be compromised. In fact, I want to argue that in meeting these challenges, excellence is being enhanced. We are enabling some of the very best students to participate in university life. We are thereby enhancing the educational experience for others at the university. The diversity represented by those involved in access education must not only be acknowledged and “accommodated,” but also be recognized as an important contributor to excellence. The Labels Thus far I have used the term “access education.” By that I mean education made available to able students who would otherwise not gain access to university, given their background and formal Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 94 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 95 qualifications. They require “access education” as a route to “actual education.” Many labels have been used to describe students requiring access programs. Some of the most commonly used labels are: at- risk, under-prepared, non-traditional, academically or educationally disadvantaged, or latecomers. While some of these terms (e.g., non-traditional, latecomer) are somewhat more neutral than others, all of them suggest a person who is different from the “traditional” university student in a less than positive way. A similar pattern is found with respect to the descriptions of the actual education these students are thought to require. In this context, terms such as “special education,” “learning support,” “learning assistance,” and “supplemental instruction” are often used. Once again all of these suggest deficiencies that need to be addressed. However, in looking through the literature one finds that there has been a recent shift in the most frequently used terminology. Over the last several years, the term “remedial education,” which was one of the most frequent designations, has been replaced by the term “developmental education.” On the positive side, Higbee (1996) points out that the definition of develop includes “to evolve the possibilities of … to promote the growth of.” Remedy, on the other hand, is defined as a “medicine, application, or treatment that relieves or cures a disease … something that corrects or counteracts an evil.” The term “developmental” is clearly more positive than the term “remedial.” However, developmental usually means going from something less to something more, from something simpler to something more complex. Thus we are still seeing a label with a less than completely positive connotation, and which is hardly respectful of the often very impressive informal learning experiences most access students have had. Lundell and Collins (1999) provide a critique of this label. They point out that if the goal of developmental education is to “bring something into being for the first time,” the term implicitly includes the idea that what is already there is somehow unfit for the new environment. They have an alternative suggestion, which is that access students can be seen “as individuals who are traversing the territory of new communities while retaining and bringing their previous strengths and identities into higher Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 95 96 Access and Equity in the University education” (Lundell and Collins 1999:11). This is a much more satisfying view, which of course defies the application of a simple label. Student Characteristics Resisting the use of labels, particularly negative ones, to describe students in need of access programs does not relieve us of the responsibility of understanding who these students are and what characteristics they might share. If one starts with the assumption that these students are unlikely to be adequately served by a postsecondary education system designed for those who have completed secondary school with high enough grades to enter university, then one has to decide who the access students are and what their unique needs might be. The following is an attempt to describe at least some of the attributes likely to be shared by access students. It is not meant to be exhaustive, and not all students will necessarily possess all attributes. First and foremost, it is important to remember that these students have established identities. In many cases their sense of identity will be challenged by the transition to university. Many experience the equivalent of cultural conflict. In some cases, they find themselves in conflict with members of their personal networks. Those in their networks may be hostile in the first place to their attempt to access university, or initial support may turn to hostility when the magnitude of the work becomes apparent or when students are perceived as “changing” in some way. They may not all be experiencing financial difficulties, and more traditional students are not exempt from poverty. However, financial constraints are, on average, very likely to be a serious consideration. Other considerations tend to be complex lives, with multiple demands from dependents; past problems still to be resolved; past issues that have been resolved but resurface due to the stress of trying to be a student again; issues of disability or trauma. Many students will find it difficult to create enough time and space in their lives to be adequately responsible students. Related to this is increased vulnerability to personal crises that can then impact on the educational experience. There may be increased vulnerability simply because of fewer financial or concrete resources to deal with crises or less buffering in terms of personal networks and supports. Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 96 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 97 Students are likely to have expectations and experiences different from recent high school graduates (Craig 1997). Some of these will be positive. Many will have travelled, lived independent lives, had interesting jobs. They really want to be in university. Their motivation is very high and their goals are often knowledge- based rather than purely instrumental. However, they will also have been more likely to experience poverty, abuse, and serious personal setbacks. Many will have had little or no successful experience with any academic system. One consequence of these negative educational experiences in the past is that many find it difficult to seek help once they return to education. They may be uncertain about the purpose, structure, and organization of the university. They are almost certainly unfamiliar with many university procedures. They are likely to have little or no knowledge of university support systems or how to access them. When and if they try, they often find that the support services and systems are “not for them.” They often lack confidence in their ability to study and learn. By definition, their formal academic preparation will be different from (and typically “less” than) the students who are recent high school graduates. However, beyond academic preparation, there are issues of understanding faculty expectations, and the relevance of course materials and curriculum to their life circumstances and experiences. Thus, regardless of the label one attaches to either the student or the educational process, students requiring access programs are also likely to require thoughtful modification of existing university programs and accommodations of various sorts. However, before designing modifications and accommodations, it is very important to go back to the view of these students as “fully formed individuals, and not merely as under-prepared individuals …” It is important to see them as people “who are traversing the territory of new communities while retaining and bringing their previous strengths and identities into higher education.” This means reflecting on and taking seriously the point that students come with a wealth of life experience and informal learning. It also means recognizing the centrality of the point that students have established identities, which are often challenged by the transition; that they often experience cultural conflict. Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 97 98 Access and Equity in the University Lundell and Collins (1999) suggest that a potentially useful way of thinking about these issues can be found in the work of Gee (1996), who writes about primary and secondary “learned discourses.” According to Gee, a learned discourse “is a way of speaking/listening and often too, writing/reading in specific social languages, as well as acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing, with other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies” (cited in Lundell and Collins 1999:12). One’s “primary discourse” is acquired at home as a child. It can be good preparation or little or no preparation for the secondary discourse of school; it may even be “anti-preparation.” Gee describes access students whom he labels “authentic beginners” as “people … who have come to learning sites of any sort without the sorts of early preparation, pre-alignment, in terms of cultural values and sociocultural resources that more advantaged learners at those sites have” (cited in Lundell and Collins 1999:14). He sees these “authentic beginners” as students whose primary discourse was basically not compatible with the secondary discourse necessary for academic success. This means that the authentic beginner must acquire (in addition to academic skills) the required discourse. While this rings true to some extent, it unfortunately only brings us back to the concept of advantage and therefore of disadvantage. This analysis does, however, suggest the need to think not only about what we teach and how we teach, but also to pay close attention to the discourse or culture of postsecondary education and institutions. We must understand what is implicit in the system that we see as necessary for success. We must then ensure that we transmit this to students in ways that are meaningful, so that they can acquire the necessary “discourse” to successfully navigate the university environment. Curriculum and Pedagogy In terms of what and how we teach, the discussion above suggests building a curriculum that makes extensive use of students’ life experiences and informal learning in a nurturing way. It is likely that students will experience inconsistencies between what they know and have experienced and what they read and what is being taught. It is important to help students to see relationships between what they are learning in school and their lived realities so that Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 98 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 99 they can increasingly have faith in both themselves and in their education. It is important to acknowledge and help resolve the inconsistencies. It is also important to affirm the very real scholarly contributions students make as they bring a different perspective to the learning process. Teaching access students should always be a process in which the teachers are true learners and where what is learned from one cohort of students informs the teaching of the next cohort. Since conflicts will inevitably arise, teachers must be willing and able to help students identify and understand the conflicts and actually make use of them in the teaching-learning process. Thus when the written word in a published book is clearly at odds with a lived experience, it is imperative that both the word and the experience be understood and validated. Further, everyone must understand that this is a process that will take time, energy, and patience, one through which different people will move at different speeds. A useful concept in this context is andragogy: the science of adult learning or adult education (Knowles 1980). Adult education is self-directed; it is the education of equals. It means that both student and teacher take joint responsibility for the educational process and its outcomes. It means that the roles of student and teacher, while different, are not fixed. Andragogy stands in opposition to pedagogy, which is an educational process that is teacher-directed, and basically education that flows from above— from teacher to student. There is no doubt that those engaged in access education will be more successful (and derive much more from the process themselves) if they engage in andragogy rather than pedagogy. Beyond Curriculum and Pedagogy It is probably very clear by now that an important thesis in this essay is that academic skills are a necessary but insufficient aspect of access education. Access education is not simply the acquisition of subject matter, but many other things as well. Successful access education involves establishing or re-establishing personal identity, developing purpose, and integrating academic skills with social relationships and with personal identity and personal success (Higbee 1996). Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 99 100 Access and Equity in the University Unsuccessful access education (i.e., student lack of success in a program, or attrition) is typically due to personal, social, and financial problems and not often for reasons of academic inadequacy (Gold et al. 1997). Students leave programs when they cannot find meaning or purpose in them or when they are not given the tools to successfully negotiate the implicit and explicit rules of the system. They remain when they are integrated personally and socially as well as academically. The TYP Experience First and foremost it must be understood that access education is not simply a matter of admitting people and then providing instruction. One could, of course, admit students who simply needed a little bit of “extra” instruction. This might increase retention and success rates, but would defeat the goals of the process. If we are going to provide access to those who really require access education (rather than some academic bridging or other help), then we must do more than just “add students and mix.” We do, of course, pay close attention to the content of our curriculum and our pedagogical approach(es). This has meant such things as including writers from a variety of cultures and backgrounds in literature courses; encouraging life experiences as legitimate topics in effective writing; ensuring that class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability are part of the analysis of whatever aspect of knowledge or knowledge construction is being addressed. It also means paying attention to and accommodating differences in learning styles. In addition, students must have adequate financial aid. One cannot be a successful student and also worry about the next meal, eviction, child care, or a lack of warm clothing; one cannot be a student if one can’t visit a parent’s sickbed or deathbed, even if that means travelling halfway across the world. This means that at least some access students will be “expensive.” Most TYP students are dependent on the financial aid provided by the government and the university. The University of Toronto has a financial aid guarantee that states, “No student admitted to a program at the University of Toronto should be unable to enter or complete the program due to lack of financial means.” Like Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 100 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 101 any policy, this one has to be interpreted in the context of particular student circumstance and need. For TYP students, this means that the level of support has to provide for both “basic” needs—and needs that keep the soul as well as the body alive. Thus we find ourselves paying attention to the welfare of the families of the students, occasionally providing for emergency airline tickets, dealing with the cost of moving and setting up house, attending to legal matters. It may be useful to think in terms of architectural and structural metaphors when thinking about “building” an access program. First, we need to build the house/home. The basic building blocks of this house are the appropriate faculty, curriculum, and financial supports. But it is important to keep on building from there. We need to create maps to navigate the system; build scaffolding so that students can be supported and “hang on”; build bridges so that resources are available after the transitional or access year; create living walls for humanity, spirituality, breathing. We have recently introduced a TYP course that is meant to provide a map or blueprint for students to help them “navigate” the university. This course provides students with information on what services are available to them and how and when to access services. It tries to orient students to the kinds of expectations that faculty and others will have of them and to teach students the language and behaviour they need to “make the right impression.” It tries to demystify the more bureaucratic aspects of university life. It also provides a series of sessions on learning skills: note-taking, exam and essay writing, time management, memory and concentration, etc. Over the last few years, we have tried to build effective scaffolding. This has meant looking for ways to allow students to continue to “hang on” even in the face of difficult circumstances. Some examples include having graduate students in counselling and social work doing their placements in the program and thus providing TYP students with “in-house” support for personal and other problems. We have implemented a buddy program in which current students have access to TYP alumni who can answer questions and provide successful role models. We have found private funds for a First Nations mentor who spends about a day a week in the program. She is a support to the Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 101 102 Access and Equity in the University Aboriginal students and educates everyone in the program. Her role is to be a role model and provide First Nations students with a sense of pride and self-worth, which is essential for educational success. However, in addition to giving guidance to First Nations students, she helps the non-Aboriginal students/faculty/staff learn more about First Nations people and pedagogy. Other “scaffolding” includes providing a comfortable lounge where students can relax and study, a functional kitchen in which they can prepare food and eat, a computer lab that is open evenings and weekends, information about and access to legal advice when that is required, and in general, accommodation to difficult life circumstances. Our program is a full-time, one-year program. If students complete TYP successfully, they gain automatic admission to the university. It has become clear, however, that entering the larger university does not always mean leaving TYP. Over the years students have continued to access the faculty at TYP for academic help. More recently we have designated faculty time to this. Rather than informally working with former students when faculty had the “extra” time, we now have the equivalent of a full-time faculty member (approximately one third of three different people) who are dedicated to this activity. We have also tried to maintain our more informal connections. We are offering a summer course for university credit as another bridge to the larger university; we are providing a series of career seminars for our alumni as a bridge out of the university. We have established a fund for our alumni to help them find employment or go on to postgraduate education once they have graduated. The fund will pay for such things as interview clothes, application fees, courses to help prepare for specialized entrance exams. Also, our most significant fundraising has been to provide all students who graduate from the university (having started in TYP) with a Graduate Achievement Award, which is roughly the amount of debt they will have accumulated on their student loans as a result of having to do the extra year. Our “living walls” include such things as pizza or sandwich lunches for everyone once a month. The program provides funding for students to participate in athletic and recreation programs at the university. While tuition includes fees that give students access to the university’s athletic and recreational facilities, there are Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 102 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 103 often additional costs for instruction or materials that would otherwise be barriers to students’ participation. This year we hired a recorder teacher who comes to the program for two hours each Sunday to give lessons to the children of some of the students and then to some of the students themselves. We tell students that we expect them to return after their TYP year if they need help or advice. This means that even when the pizza lunches and music lessons are no longer available, TYP students know that their needs are still being considered in the program. Thus in addition to returning for academic advice, they often return for help with navigating the university system—and they are encouraged to this. Mediation as a Model One very clear implication of this discussion is that the formal aspects of the educational process must be seen as necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. Moreover, success must be determined not only by how well the student does, but also by how well the system is able to meet the needs of the student. If we are to build structures that work well for both the students and the system, it may be necessary to have, as part of the structure, something that can act as a mediator between the two, rather than to simply expect that the right structure will in itself be sufficient. Thus what is being proposed is that once the house, with its scaffolding, living walls, maps, and bridges has been built, we will still want a mediator to enable the educational process to work smoothly. To mediate is to act as an intermediary, especially to seek to resolve differences between two or more conflicting parties. It is to act as negotiator or peacemaker between the two opposing sides in a dispute and to bring about a settlement in this way. It is important to do all of this without suggesting blame or fault. Further, if the concept is to have real meaning in this context, it will not involve trying to fundamentally change either the student or the institution. The basic premise is that the student brings diversity and a richness of life experience that enrich the institution. Thus one would not want to turn the students into clones of other more “traditional” students. Similarly, the Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 103 104 Access and Equity in the University institution has been built to serve the needs of the traditional students and one would not want to interfere with this or make it work less well. One may want some integration, but not assimilation. Thus the goal is to ensure that the process of access education works successfully without doing damage to either the student or the institution and, where possible, enhancing both. Most of the mediation that is being envisioned is between the student and the institution. However, sometimes it will be between the student and the outside world. This is likely to include legal and government systems and sometimes the student’s own social/personal networks. As already noted earlier, for TYP this model requires that even after their TYP year students can use the program, or rather individuals within the program, as mediators for their continuing education at the university. However, the concept is relevant in the TYP year as evidenced by our attempts at providing scaffolding, living walls, and an environment in which students are encouraged to indicate what is and isn’t working for them. After the TYP year, a mediation model can mean many things, including academic counselling, help with financial aid, advice with respect to accessing and using student services, and sometimes assistance with respect to legal, medical, interpersonal, and other problems. It can involve working with students individually, often acting as an “interpreter” with respect to a situation or event. It can involve working with university staff or faculty, again often in the role of “interpreter.” It sometimes means writing letters on behalf of students, or helping students to write letters on their own behalf. It sometimes means enabling students to access appropriate advice from appropriate people. All of this continues to be necessary because, notwithstanding their success in our program, our students remain (and are encouraged to remain) somewhat outside of or different from the mainstream of the university. This often works to their advantage as faculty and fellow students recognize the contributions they make to the classroom and to student life. This, however, does not change the reality that the system has not been designed to deal with their particular issues and problems. Nor does it take into account that one can’t expect someone who has heard “no” so frequently to respond to a bureaucratic system in Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 104 Implications of Providing Access in a Context of Inequality 105 the same manner as someone for whom “yes” has been a typical answer. Thus we continue to advocate for students throughout their university careers in the form of ongoing mediation and negotiation. We attempt to avoid or at least minimize confrontation and conflict. And, in addition to doing this for individual students, there is an ongoing effort to take every possible opportunity to “educate” the broader university community about the value, challenges, and importance of “providing access in a context of inequality.” References Craig, C.M. 1997. “Empowering Nontraditional Students.” In Developmental Education: Enhancing Student Retention, edited by J. Higbee and P. Dwinell. Findlay, OH: National Association for Developmental Education. Gee, J.P. 1996. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 2 nd ed. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press. Gold, M.V., C.A. Callahan, M.P. Deming, T. Mangram, and M. Errico. 1997. “Reflections: Experience Commentaries by Urban Developmental Studies Students.” In Developmental Education: Enhancing Student Retention, edited by J. Higbee and P. Dwinell. Findlay, OH: National Association for Developmental Education. Higbee, J. 1996. “Defining Developmental Education: A Commentary.” In Developmental Education: Theory, Research and Pedagogy, edited by J. Higbee and P. Dwinell. Findlay, OH: National Association for Developmental Education. Knowles, M. 1980. The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy, 2 nd ed. Chicago: Follett. Lundell, D.B., and T. Collins. 1999. “The Centrality of ‘Discourse.’” In The Expanding Role of Developmental Education, edited by J. Higbee and P. Dwinell. Findlay, OH: National Association for Developmental Education. Payne, E.M., and B. Lyman. 1996. “Issues Affecting the Definition of Developmental Education.” In Developmental Education: Theory, Research and Pedagogy, edited by J. Higbee and P. Dwinell. Findlay, OH: National Association for Developmental Education. Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 105 Ch 05-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 106 The academic discourse on access is replete with hypocrisy and class bias. In this respect, it is interesting to note that since the 1970s the calls for access and postsecondary responses to these appeals have increased. During the same period, there has been a corresponding increase in the systemic barriers to the access of the poor, the poorly educated, and the generally underprivileged. Across Canada, university and college fees have increased significantly and the student financial assistance programs have been completely revised so as to make students the debtors of the major commercial banks rather than the recipients of grants (Anisef, Bell, Sweet 2001); increasing numbers of students come from immigrant families whose language of origin is not English, yet alterations in admissions criteria have meant that higher grade averages are demanded as is a high level of competence in English; daycare facilities have not kept pace with the needs of students who are parents; the demands of instructional technology are such that the individual student has to be personally equipped in order to function adequately. The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto and other similar programs of study are often cited as examples of how the university best accomodates the principle of access. Though the principle of access is well enunciated, it has hardly undergone any ideological or philosophical revision since TYP moved to the University of Toronto in 1970. Indeed, what has occurred is an apparent erosion of the fundamental principles of Chapter 6 107 Dimensions of Access to Transition Frederick Ivor Case Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 107 108 Access and Equity in the University transition. The founders of the program had as a major objective the return of students to their communities after they had earned their academic degree or degrees. In this context, transition is situated within the individual’s accumulation of knowledge and her or his degree of intelligent involvement in society. Transition is not an absolute related to standard university criteria of “progress” and “success,” and it is certainly not quantifiable in terms of a grade point average, nor is it measurable by degrees of acceptability in or to the corporate world of institutions. Furthermore, since originally there was active recruitment of TYP students in the various communities—Aboriginal, African Canadian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Caribbean—there was also, in the beginning, an ethos of community service among the students. Transition meant continued contact with the community of origin, study within the university, and the intention of returning to serve the community. There is no doubt that the initial vision has been obscured by the pursuit of “success” within the program, the university, and beyond. This pursuit of an undefined or at best ill-defined “success” leads to the inevitable trap of elitism often associated with the worst forms of class bias, discrimination, sexism, and racism within the university. Any program of access to transition needs to consistently seek to redefine its criteria of success. Furthermore the question must be asked: access to what? It is taken for granted that the university, because of how it is defined by senior academic administrators and because of what they conceive as its social and economic role in society, is of itself an acceptable objective in the life of ambitious, achieving, and imaginative individuals. These assumptions have to be examined carefully in the light of current socio-ethical questions of poverty, homelessness, hunger, and suicide. These have to be seriously questioned in the context of prevailing economic and technological trends. The university has a social and moral duty to re-examine these assumptions in the light of specific ethical behaviour and misbehaviour of the institution. It is not necessarily a “good thing” to have access to an institution that has done very little over the past fifty years to reflect in its teaching faculty the ethnic composition of its students. It seems hardly worthwhile to actively recruit “disadvantaged” students into a system of things that will cause them grief, humiliation, alienation, and isolation from their Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 108 Dimensions of Access to Transition 109 community origins. In the absence of fundamental reforms of curriculum and greater sensitivity toward the needs of students, the institution can serve only to miseducate and alienate the underprivileged persons whom it has so enthusiastically recruited. But the confused discourse on access to transition is not only a Toronto or Canadian problem. It is a phenomenon that is witnessed in many countries of the world where universities are wrestling with problems of conscience and consciousness as disparities widen between the haves and the have-nots on the macro as well as the micro levels of society. The publicity of the Centre for Educational Access and Community Development (www.tcd.ie/Trinity.Access/) at Dublin’s Trinity College informs us that “Tracking educational disadvantage is now a major priority for Trinity College …” and we cannot help but wonder what has brought about the apparently very recent awareness of “educational disadvantage.” However, Trinity College offers a network of programs in collaboration with secondary schools, access to mature students, young adults, and any others who have not been able to access university through the traditional channels. According to the publicity cited, “These various programmes have played a central role in raising expectations and awareness both inside and outside the schools in relation to the benefits of third level education.” At no point is the precise nature of those benefits even hinted at. It is simply taken for granted that everyone knows that a university education is worthwhile and serves some useful social, economic, and other function. Furthermore, we ask ourselves what and whose expectations are being raised. Does the institution count on gaining some kudos as a result of opening its doors to a few “disadvantaged” individuals? Does this recruitment of the oppressed of society resolve some human rights dilemma in which the university finds itself? Is Trinity College seeking social redemption? Is the intention to resolve the ethical question by transforming “disadvantage” into privilege? These are questions that those who are involved in access to transition should ask themselves from time to time. It is not only the relevance of the process of access that institutions should consider, but they should also attempt to understand the ethical foundations of this particular undertaking. Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 109 110 Access and Equity in the University In 1999, Lawrence Gladieux and Scott Swail completed a report on access for the College Board of the United States of America. The Virtual University & Educational Opportunity—Issues of Equity and Access for the Next Generation (www.collegeboard.org/ press/htm) is an important document because it questions the assumptions and nature of access. The authors of this work point out that the proliferation of computer technology in education and the corresponding expansion of distance education do not mean an equitable distribution of access, equipment, or resources. They produce evidence to show that there is a “digital divide” between African Americans and Hispanic Americans, on the one hand, and White Americans on the other; between the wealthy and the poor; between the college/university educated and those who do not enjoy this background. Furthermore, Gladieux and Swail point out that as the need to replace out-of-date equipment and programs arises, the costs of keeping up-to-date leave the poor far behind those who are capable of acquiring the latest technological advances. It is obvious that the divisive characteristics of the U.S. home market for information technologies have become more pronounced at the global level. The privileged often see their own social and economic realities as the human condition of all of humanity or of the entire nation to which they belong. Similarly, the decision-makers in our universities, who enjoy a very high standard of living, seem often oblivious to the difficulties of survival experienced by the majority of humanity and by a sizable section of our own society. In Cuba—as in Guyana, Senegal, and Madagascar—it is still relatively rare to find an individual who owns a personal computer at home. It is even more rare to find a printer or VCR in a home. Internet connection, faxes, photocopiers, scanners, and other resources are scarcely seen. There is severely limited access to cybercafes. Schools, universities, and other institutions are increasingly getting on-line through the use of unwanted and out- of-date IT garbage that has been donated to poor countries from the centres of technology, which have their eyes firmly fixed on the expansion of the software market. But connectivity remains a problem in countries where telephone communications are still rudimentary or where satellite connectivity presents the only possibility of Internet access. Of course, in this case, the costs are Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 110 Dimensions of Access to Transition 111 prohibitive. In many countries of the world, research institutes, hospitals, clinics, schools, and other institutions still do not have access to the Internet. So the World Wide Web is not quite worldwide, and access to the means of gaining information remains with the privileged. Tajikistan is a nation in Central Asia where the principle of access is taken very seriously indeed. The province of Badakhshan is a mountainous region where most hamlets consist of subsistence farmers who live a precarious existence on the edge of famine in climatic conditions that are excessively harsh. One of the priorities of the people of this region is access to education. Sparsely furnished schools are found throughout the province. They are staffed by courageous teachers, dedicated to their task despite appalling conditions of work: very low salaries; little or no heating in the schools during the winter; long distances to walk between schools on uneven terrain in order to make up their number of teaching hours. But despite these conditions—or perhaps because of them—there is innovation in the principle of access. The fundamental principle is that the peripheries do not necessarily have to travel to the centre and that the centre can indeed benefit from travelling to the peripheries. In this way, a number of eccentric centres can eventually be created with much dynamic effect on the evolution of education. The renewal of teacher education in Tajikistan has been moving forward steadily over the past few years as the eccentric centres become more confident in their ability to deliver in-service assistance to teachers isolated by the environment and economic conditions. In the area of IT, a mobile unit serves selected regions, bringing practical instruction to children, parents, and teachers who are taught by local teams of dynamic instructors. The students are expected to learn by heart all of the pull-down menu functions so that when they do have the rare opportunity of touching the laptops of the mobile unit, they are already fully acquainted with the possibilities of the software program in use. In this way, there is preparation of a significant section of the population for what they do not as yet possess individually or as a community. It is a careful preparation for the future when electricity, computerization, and satellite connections might become a reality. The instruction that is currently given creates knowledge Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 111 112 Access and Equity in the University accompanied by an appetite for the means of acquiring even greater knowledge. Hopefully, the preparation and the anticipation of access to IT are producing a population who will accept the ethical challenges of this means of acquiring knowledge as dynamic, positive individuals. Hopefully, they will be able to avoid the passive consumer relationship to IT that characterizes many current users. This access to knowledge will no doubt be transformed and made relevant before the opportunity arises to apply it on a significant scale. It will inevitably lead to a dynamic transition of a society whose culture is poetic, oral and written, and deeply rooted in significant linguistic peculiarities and a singular environment. In June 2001, Cuba completed the provision of electricity to every school in the country through the extensive use of solar plates, which now permit people of the smallest hamlets in the mountains to view educational programs on television or video and also to be able to use computers (Moya 2001). This is not only an exercise in nation building, but it is also the provision of access to the best that the nation has to offer in domains where the individual teacher might feel that she or he is lacking. In Cuba, a fundamental principle has been to provide formal education wherever there are children, and this means that in some cases there are schools consisting of one child and one teacher. Electricity and IT connectivity provide the opportunity of breaking out of the isolation of being the only student in a school, or one of very few. This is also a transition to the world of technology that exists beyond the mountain hamlets. In the school as community centre, the use of television and videos means that the entire community can benefit from the increasing number of educational courses offered on state-run television. The Cuban experience is the putting into practice of a type of equity engendered by national economic circumstances. Every child in the nation has access to the best that can be provided in IT while very few individuals have more than a radio or television set at home. In her work on IT and access, Bobbi Nicholson calls into question the “widespread perception that electronic technologies have the capacity to radically democratise public education by increasing access …” (http://www.cssjournal/nicholson.html). This reservation is no doubt appropriate in the particular socio- Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 112 Dimensions of Access to Transition 113 economic circumstance of the major industrialized countries where the proliferation of computer access is decidedly class-based. In Cuba, which has been the victim of a U.S. embargo since the early 1960s, access to computer technology is a reality wherever the state can afford it. In Guyana, teacher education has at last become an eccentric phenomenon in some parts of that vast country. In-service upgrading of uncertified teachers has been taken to the small communities that are badly in need of professionally educated and qualified teachers (Stabroek News, 2001). It became obvious that the College of Education could not serve the very diverse needs of the entire nation, so the solution lay in greater decentralization, demonstrating confidence in the peripheries. In this impoverished South American country, qualified teachers are seeking employment in other countries where conditions are far better. For Guyana, the consequence has been the recruitment of hundreds of unqualified teachers who might wait for many years before their selection to attend the College of Education situated in the capital. Attendance at college often means leaving family, community, and language group for two to three years. Even though the present timid approaches to access are fraught with problems of attempts at centralized control, there is at least an attempt in the direction of access to transition, which will transform hundreds of teachers into confident, qualified professionals. In the process, the reciprocity of ideas and the fact that the institution has had to exteriorize itself into the real and dynamic world of diverse communities should hopefully lead to transformations that are structural and philosophical. There is no widespread use of IT as the means of delivery of programs. However, it must be said that there is definite advantage in having the presence of tutors in communities far from the capital city. The lessons to be drawn from these examples are obvious. Successful access implies bringing essential elements of knowledge to the students wherever they are to be found and by whatever means are appropriate in the context. It implies the decentralization of the control of knowledge and the putting into motion of a process of epistemological change. The notion of the university as the centre and the source no longer holds validity, and the diversity of eccentric centres should be privileged even if such centres are Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 113 114 Access and Equity in the University homes. Access to knowledge is meaningful only if it permits the parties concerned to engage in dynamic transformation of that knowledge as well as the means of transmission. Particularly in the case of transitional programs, the teaching challenge should be the pursuit of new epistemologies engendered by the diversity of students recruited. This is the nature of the challenge that bell hooks has made in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (hooks 1994). bell hooks emphasizes the need for transformative, critical pedagogy that takes fully into account the needs and spaces of the students. There is doubt that the students’ extrainstitutional experiences and the intellectual energy of their desire to achieve are the forces needed to produce dynamic transformation. If the university transitional programs were less concerned with the social transformation of the students and the social image of the university, and more preoccupied with the opportunity for epistemological and social innovation, they would be more faithful to the assumptions and expectations raised by their existence. This implies that a diverse society could be well served by the introduction of transitional programs that are delivered by distance education methods. There are those for whom distance education means impersonal contact with a VCR, computer, radio, or correspondence course. It could be any or all of these combined, but the essential characteristic of transitional access programs is the human contact with a tutor or resource person. The community-based peripatetic instructor should become a common feature of the transitional programs so that the exchange of knowledge takes place in an environment that is conducive to the development of the student, the tutor, and the institution. The tutor brings the experience of specialized and specific knowledge into a context in which the student feels at ease and is able to establish meaningful associations with the total environment. Thus an environmental equity between tutor and student is created. For far too long, the professor in the hallowed halls of academe has been able to cloak ignorance and intolerance in the mystique of aging stones, echoing corridors, and dusty books. There is perhaps no more striking example of providing access to transition than the work of those teachers who carry learning into prisons and thus enter into an environment with its own codes, symbols, and rituals. In this case, the prison is Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 114 Dimensions of Access to Transition 115 the total classroom, and successful communication takes place if learning is approached as a reciprocal experience in which the teacher has to assimilate the discourse and the culture of the students in order to understand and be understood. In providing access to transition, universities should be concerned with the teaching environment in which transition takes place. There is an unavoidable dynamic between those seeking access and those who provide it. If the purpose of transition is not to be entirely subverted by the agendas of the institution, and if the students are not to be frustrated into abandonment or revolt, then there has to be recognition of the fact that teaching brings a diversity of realities in confrontation. Furthermore, there has to be sincere respect for the other in a manner that eliminates the hierarchical relationship based on the authority of assumed superiority. The learning space has to be neutralized so as to eliminate privilege. In Teaching to Transgress (1994), bell hooks writes “Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of transformative pedagogy” (hooks 1994:39). I would contend that this is best possible in a context where there is environmental and social equity. References Anisef, P., S. Bell, and R. Sweet. 2001. “Accessibility and Student Debt: The Shift from Public to P rivate Support of Higher Education.” OCUFA Forum (Spring):14–21. hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York/London: Routledge. Moya, H.L. 2001. Ggranma. Lunes 11 de juniodel, 8. Nicholson, B. “Inconspicuous Inequities: The Myth of Universal Access.” Stabroek News. 2001. “Ninety Trainee Teachers Doing Distance Education in Region Seven” (June 28). Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 115 Ch 06-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 116 Boundaries are all double-sided creatures. On the one hand, boundaries are touchstones. Without them people would lack markers by reference with which to make sense of and focus their daily activities and life aims, and institutions would lack standards for identifying their proper functions. At the same time, boundaries are barriers. This is evident regarding social and economic boundaries such as of class, race, or gender, which protect privilege and sustain oppression and exclusion. Boundaries are also barriers even when their origins are benign. Boundaries that make possible national life and projects can facilitate national chauvinism. Divisions of labour within a family or workplace not infrequently sustain arbitrary exercise of power. This contribution addresses the Transitional Year Programme with respect to the two-faced aspect of boundaries. The program was conceived precisely to overcome the boundary between people from educationally deprived circumstances and access to higher education, and its durability is proof that such boundaries can be successfully challenged. At the same time, this success is not final, in part due to the complex nature of the boundaries it has confronted. One of these boundaries is disciplinary. Universities in general, and the University of Toronto in particular, structure education in accord with the traditions of established, mainly departmentally based disciplines. These traditions determine acceptable modes of pedagogy, set methods of evaluation and grading standards, Chapter 7 117 TYP and University Boundaries Frank Cunningham Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 117 118 Access and Equity in the University and prescribe course content. Another boundary pertains to the relation between the university and its surrounding community. As is generally recognized, a university should be providing students with skills and knowledge for which there is demand in the broader community. However, universities also insist on autonomy regarding staffing, curriculum, and teaching methods. The alternatives to university determination of its educational affairs are for governments to dictate curricular and staffing matters or for these to be determined by private-sector institutions. Canadian universities have resisted relinquishing their discretion over internal affairs to governments. Departments have continued to insist on being at least the loci of first decision-making regarding matters of staffing and curriculum within the university on the grounds that they are the closest to the standards, traditions, and directions of their subjects. When divisions of the university are charged with catering to private-sector interests (as of Bay Street legal firms or the pharmaceutical companies in recent cases at the University of Toronto), the University of Toronto responded by denying external control and/or taking measures to insure against it, not by relinquishing its autonomy. There are, therefore, good reasons for the university to defend each of these boundaries. Knowledge and intellectual skills take decades if not centuries to evolve, and departmentally based disciplines are structured and practised in the difficult art of their transmission. Even in the 1960s when university student rebellions forced curricular reforms, these typically involved adding new courses or components of courses to existing offerings rather than completely dismantling the “canon.” Yet, in the course of TYP’s history at the University of Toronto, it is these boundaries that TYP has called into question. In the rest of this contribution, I shall reflect upon two instances within this history when the program found itself wrestling with problems generated by what I take as the inescapable tensions thrown into relief when university boundaries are challenged. The stories I select are ones in which I, myself, was involved (passively in one case and more intimately in the other). My aim in retrieving them is not historical or to open old wounds, but to see what lessons can be learned from them for the continuing success of TYP or efforts like it. Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 118 TYP and University Boundaries 119 The Tensions of Empowerment In the spring of 1997, TYP organized a day-long workshop focusing on its educational efforts with respect to Aboriginal peoples. First Nations (including Metis) students in the program and some of the (very few) First Nations university teachers and researchers from Canadian universities were in attendance, along with TYP administrators and lecturers and some academics from the University of Toronto who wanted to learn how the program’s efforts to meet the educational needs of Aboriginal students could be sustained as the students graduated from TYP into the university’s courses. One of the topics discussed at the workshop concerned the question of what skills and knowledge the program should strive to impart, especially to its Aboriginal students. Some participants strongly maintained that in preparing students for success in future university studies, TYP had been unwittingly complicit in cutting them off from their already tenuous roots in the traditions of their Aboriginal cultures. It was further argued that to the extent that the program took the current course offerings of the university as given and constructed its own courses as junior versions of them, it was forsaking an opportunity to try to transform an academic culture that would profit from incorporating Aboriginal world views that were so far ignored or, worse, actively denigrated within it. (Prominent among the examples adduced is a holistic, egalitarian, and spiritual understanding of nature.) The boundary challenged in this discussion was the disciplinary one referred to earlier. The academic disciplines had been formed to explicate, work within, and transmit theories, world views, and modes of thought inherited mainly from European traditions, and these were thought to be, at best, incongruous with Aboriginal traditions and, at worst, actively hostile to them. Aboriginal and other TYP students should not be forced to accept this boundary as a way of gaining entrance to the university, and if possible, university academic culture should be transformed so that there would be no barrier between it and Aboriginal cultures. As I recall the discussion, nobody directly contradicted the spirit informing these sentiments, though some of the Aboriginal students allowed that they had found it rewarding to learn subjects Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 119 120 Access and Equity in the University and theories in the mainstream, European traditions. This admission was taken by some at the workshop as evidence of the dangers of cultural assimilation. Others urged that one mandate of TYP was to prepare students for success in the university as it is and—assuming that it is unrealistic to transform the institution, at least in the short time frame of TYP student needs—it would be doing these students a disservice not to provide them with skills and knowledge pertinent to the courses they would shortly be encountering. The tension between these two perspectives was not overcome in the workshop, and I am sure that it has been wrestled with more than once in the history of the program. One intervention that struck me as useful was by Georges Sioui, then dean at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. On a larger scale, this institution confronts the same problem, since it aims to preserve and transmit First Nations traditions while providing a university education that will prepare students, not all of whom will be able or wish to return exclusively to self-contained Aboriginal communities. The problem, as Dean Sioui conceived it, is one of empowerment: Aboriginal students need skills for survival in the non-Aboriginal world (one kind of empowerment) while they also need the strengths of their own traditions (another kind of empowerment). His view was that the tension facing an institution like his college or TYP in providing both sorts of empowerment cannot be completely overcome, but that one is not stuck in a strictly either/or situation. Being aware of the tension, it is possible, if never in a completely satisfactory way, to educate Aboriginal students so that they are empowered in both senses. In addition to concrete measures of curriculum design and teaching methods to meet this problem (different sorts of courses, explicit raising of the topic in classes, and so on), there are some preconditions conducive to meeting it. These relate both to the university as a whole and to minority student bodies—not just Aboriginal students but also Black students or students from working-class backgrounds. The preconditions I have in mind start from the general orientations and values brought by the university and by students to the challenge of empowerment. The university might view itself with respect to Aboriginal students (and some others) in two very different ways: as an Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 120 TYP and University Boundaries 121 extension of the residential schools with a mandate to facilitate assimilation of the students into Canadian life and culture as defined by its dominant, European-inherited tradition, or as an agent of compensatory justice, charged with helping to restore to the students the dignity and opportunities denied them in the history of European conquest of the continent. Even in the most charitable (and strained) interpretation of the motivation for the residential schools, it is generally recognized that they failed to empower Native students in any way at all. I speculate that a main cause for this—one that would be at work even if the actual teachers and directors in the schools had all been well intentioned and honourable people—is that there is a connection between the two kinds of empowerment under consideration. Nobody comes to university as a blank tablet, waiting to be inscribed with useful knowledge and skills. Instead, students arrive with values, aspirations, self-identifications, and aptitudes shaped by many things, not the least of which are the cultures of their traditions. This is often invisible to teachers, staff, and administrators of the university because their own traditions already pervade it. But to the extent that students find no resonance with their traditions, their learning experience, including to acquire the empowerment of survival skills in Canadian society generally, will be diminished. A university sincerely committed to compensatory justice will take account of this and actively work to retain and restore the dignity and empowerment of their cultures to Aboriginal students (and those of others to whom these comments apply). There is no mystery about how to accomplish this: Aboriginal studies courses and programs should be strongly supported; features of Aboriginal history and world views should be included in mainstream courses wherever appropriate; proactive and sustained efforts should be made to hire Aboriginal professors. These measures would not require an utter transformation of the university and to this extent would not satisfy the strongest critics at the TYP workshop, but, entered into and sustained in the right spirit, they would help to address the tensions of empowerment. I feel confident about these recommendations regarding the university’s orientation, having been part of it for my entire professional life. I am less confident regarding orientations Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 121 122 Access and Equity in the University conducive to addressing the tensions on the part of students themselves. However, I am helped by discussions at a recent conference of the Canadian Philosophical Association, which brought together some non-Aboriginal philosophers with young Aboriginal philosophers and some elders. At this conference (held in the summer of 2001 at the First Nations House in Winnipeg) there was almost as much dialogue between the elders and the Aboriginal philosophers as between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal participants. All of the Aboriginal participants knew of individuals from their communities who thought that to succeed in the mainstream society, they would not only have to take advantage of what educational facilities afforded them but also accede to pressures for cultural assimilation. From such an orientation, it seems unlikely that any result except loss of contact with Aboriginal traditions could result. The fear that non-assimilation would hinder empowerment in the sense of success in the mainstream society would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. An alternative to this orientation was expressed by an Ontarian, an Anishinabe philosopher (now teaching in the United States) who called himself a “word warrior.” His aim in mastering the reasoning, theoretical, and argumentative skills provided by an education in philosophy was not just or even primarily to gain academic employment (though he was not at all unhappy to have succeeded in doing so). Rather, he thought that by acquiring these skills he could, on the one hand, more effectively contribute to the continuing struggles of his people to achieve social justice and, on the other hand, he could find potential areas of rapprochement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal world views, thus helping the two cultures to understand and learn from one another. I speculate that the tensions of empowerment that attend challenging disciplinary boundaries are best confronted when the universities approach this task committed to compensatory justice and to the students as word warriors (or, depending upon academic discipline and student background, some analogue thereof). Opened and Closed Ivory Gates The impetus for establishing TYP came not from within the university but from outside of it, mainly from Toronto’s Black Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 122 TYP and University Boundaries 123 communities, as described in other contributions to this collection. That the university reacted positively to this initiative is evidence that traversing the boundary between it and communities in the city is possible. However, the ambition of the program in its first half-decade was not just to open a gate to the university but to keep it open. This was achieved by establishing a Policy Committee that participated in program governance and included people from the constituencies in the city whom the program was meant to serve—hence, given its inception, largely from the Black communities. In its first years, it became evident that the mandate of TYP was very challenging. Its students were not Grade 13 graduates from the mainstream middle classes who just needed a bit of tutoring to gain university admission. They were from cultural and class backgrounds very different from those of the typical student, and their prior educational opportunities had not been conducive to university study. Moreover, the teaching and administrative staff of TYP included few who had experience with the sort of educational task with which they were charged; the program was ambiguously located from an administrative point of view (housed at Innis College, but not under Innis administration), and its budget was small and precarious. In these circumstances, it should have surprised no one that there were persisting criticisms on the part of many students and some staff. These criticisms came before the Policy Committee, which in the spring of 1976 commissioned a review of the program. A committee, chaired by Professor Frederick Case (and of which I was an external member), interviewed students, instructors, and staff. We heard much praise for the aims of the program and a plea to strengthen and continue it. We also heard many complaints, ranging from what at the time I considered minor administrative matters (later, as a university administrator myself, I discovered that the line between “major” and “minor” is blurred in university administration) to allegations of overtly racist attitudes on the part of some instructors and staff. The core grave complaints derived from perceptions that the teaching methods and the content of many courses were, in a systemic more than in a deliberate way, ill attuned to the racial, class, and ethnic backgrounds of students in the program. Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 123 124 Access and Equity in the University This concern was also expressed, with various degrees of radicalness, by members of the Policy Committee. Publication of our report, in which the complaints were recorded and recommendations were made for how to address them, prompted a consternated university administration to commission its own review of the program, chaired by the late Harry Crowe, then dean of Atkinson College at York University. His report lambasted the program, focusing on what he saw as the pernicious efforts of the Policy Committee, which, he alleged (without documentation), had been infiltrated by “Moscow-oriented” Communists, to turn the program to a Marxist agenda. (The vehemence of Professor Crowe’s criticism of the community members of the Policy Committee later prompted me to speculate that they were, however improbably, associated in his mind with the United Church lay members of the Board of United College in Winnipeg, which eighteen years earlier had dismissed him from the college in a high-profile case, not without its own political overtones.) The Crowe Report’s conclusion that TYP should be abolished generated a lively and sometimes acrimonious debate in the university and, in the heady days of campus politics of the times, found its way into the popular press, as all three Toronto papers endorsed closing the program, mainly citing the Report’s depiction of the Policy Committee as irresponsibly radical and Communist infested. The result was a decision by the university to retain the program, but to disband the Policy Committee and place primary administration of TYP in the hands of a centrally appointed director, advised by a small group of other academics. In making this decision, the university distanced itself from the extreme attacks on the Policy Committee, citing instead “administrative chaos,” as then Provost Donald Chant put it (University of Toronto Bulletin, June 11, 1976). In effect, non-university communities opened a gate to the university, which then closed it. That the university has maintained TYP is certainly to its credit, but to my mind something valuable was lost when the Policy Committee was dismantled. In support of this view, one might appeal (hoping it is not too risky in light of the 1976 charges) to the authority of Karl Marx, who challenged a dominant, unidirectional view of education by insisting that the “the educator himself needs educating.” Marx was referring to Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 124 TYP and University Boundaries 125 social theorists advocating reform of society by educating ordinary people about their theories, but who in an elitist way fail to understand that they themselves needed education. The implication is that this education must derive in part from insights gained in the political, work, and general life experiences of those the theorists aspire to educate. In fact, despite denunciations of TYP’s Policy Committee, the university did learn quite a bit from it. Prior to complaints by community members on the Policy Committee, TYP focused on the “canon” of topics traditionally offered in university courses. After 1976, however, the program increasingly integrated material into its curriculum of the sort the Policy Committee had been prescribing. For instance, its core literature courses feature works by and about people from communities the program addresses, and staff from First Nations have been employed to address special needs and interests of Aboriginal students. Today it is fair to say that courses oriented in these ways are at the centre of TYP’s offerings and, to all accounts, this has had the effect desired by the Policy Committee—namely, to facilitate student acquisition of academic skills and aptitudes by relating their work in the program to the world as they have experienced it. As in all educational undertakings, that of the educators must be an ongoing process, which therefore requires continuing exposure to the values and ideas of the communities TYP is meant to serve. This can be partly achieved through feedback from students in the program, and partly through informal contacts in the relevant communities enjoyed by some in its teaching and administrative staff. More ambitiously, I wonder if enough time has lapsed since the 1976 Spring of the Long Knives to allow for reconstituting an analogue of the community-based Policy Committee. It might be objected that to allow members of non-university communities to participate in a systematic and ongoing way in curricular and staffing deliberations would threaten university autonomy. We resist this in the case of the business community and the government at the level of faculties and departments, so why allow it in the case of TYP? One appropriate observation is that government and business representatives are included in the university’s top governing body, its Governing Council. It should Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 125 126 Access and Equity in the University also be noted that among the courses in which TYP students must succeed for entry to university are those offered by departments and subject to approval by standard departmental and faculty procedures. A more general reply is suggested by reflecting on the limits of university autonomy, which is less absolute than it is sometimes portrayed. Though its closed gates block participation of external community representatives on such things as faculty curriculum committees, the walls surrounding the university are low enough to be seen over. This provides divisions of the university with knowledge of what sorts of education are in demand by the constituencies about which they care, and to make academic decisions accordingly. Whether this is objectionably autonomy threatening depends upon why the divisions care about such constituencies. It is one thing if the concern is just to make potential funding sources happy, but another if the aim is to provide an education useful for students in their postuniversity pursuits. In the latter case, responsiveness to the needs of extrauniversity constituencies is objectionable only if the constituencies are narrowly selected and if the university attends only to their needs in its academic planning. Knowledge of the needs of most of the constituencies with which the university interacts is probably well enough acquired in informal and indirect ways. There are ongoing associations between it and them, as, for example, through the university’s professional faculties, and of course there is a multitude of personal connections due to shared class origins and common social and family circles. It is partly because these opportunities for educating the educator are lacking in the case of TYP’s constituencies that direct community involvement is called for. Such involvement is appropriate since in, so to speak, straddling the university and certain target communities outside of it, TYP’s offerings and modes of delivering them are already in a certain sense joint projects of these communities and the university. Also, as in challenging the disciplinary boundary discussed above, much depends upon the attitudes the university and community bring to a joint undertaking. From the perspective of the communities TYP aims to serve, it is likely that, in part because the program heeded advice of the Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 126 TYP and University Boundaries 127 earlier Policy Committee, sufficient trust exists that a new association could be entered into in a non-confrontational spirit. From the university’s side, it is to be hoped that its professional educators are open to being themselves educated. Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 127 Ch 07-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 128 I CAME TO TYP IN THE FALL OF 1988. I REMEMBER IT CLEARLY. IN RETROSPECT, I think TYP chose me because it was seemingly by chance that I even became aware of the program. These days I tend to believe that nothing in life happens by itself. I was so determined that I was going have a university education—it was as if by sheer force of will that the opportunity found its way to me and me to it. It hardly mattered that I was becoming a very experienced dishwasher with a Grade 9 education. If that was how some saw me, I always managed to alter the reflection I saw in their eyes to the one I had of myself—someone with a dream. Charis Newton was an English teacher who was assigned to me as part of an eight-month on-the-job training program. Although there was no English upgrading requirement, I specifically asked for it. How could they say no? The program already included math as a core learning component. One of the first steps for Charis was to give me an aptitude test. I remember getting my spelling results back—I was disappointed that I had gotten two or three wrong out of fifty. The look on her face was priceless. In addition to the score itself, I think she was interested in the fact that I was more concerned with how many I had wrong than with how many I had right. It wasn’t long before Charis was encouraging me to apply to TYP. Charis is African Canadian and was knowledgeable about TYP as an access route to the University of Toronto. A l u m n i V o i c e s 129 TYP Has Opened Doors for Me Thomas Howe (TYP 1988–1989) Ch 07-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 129 130 Access and Equity in the University TYP opened many doors for me. From an educational standpoint, I was able to achieve goals I had set out for myself ten to fifteen years before. Although I did not graduate from law school, I left university satisfied that being a lawyer was only a means to an end. The underlying goal I have always had was to find a way to help change things for the better for Aboriginal people in this world. Whether I could do my part as a lawyer, as an academic, or by working in a First Nations community organization, all I wanted were the tools I would need to help me work for change. TYP believed in me, I believed in me, and the doors would always open just wide enough for me to sneak in if I had to. I was the first person in my family to graduate with a degree in anything. I have over thirty nephews and nieces, and I now have two children and three stepchildren. They now have someone they can look to as an example of the value of getting a quality education. I take every opportunity I can to let them know how I feel about pursuing educational goals. My mother always spoke of things from a very broad perspective. In my estimation, she was very much a visionary. She was the first person to introduce me to concepts about “generational” change. For example, her generation experienced the Indian residential school system, but she decided that she was not going to be a victim for the rest of her life. She believed that people just need a little push, some guidance, or the right tools and they could make a fundamental change in their life for the better—on their own terms. I wear this principle of empowerment like a second skin—it is how I feel and sense the world around me. It is also the lens through which I choose to view the world and the people in it. My mother also believed that she could improve the quality of her life so that the quality of her children’s lives would be that much better. And now I look to my children’s lives and I ask myself whether I have continued with my mother’s legacy of breaking those cycles of abuse. When I was a child, I saw and experienced different kinds of abuse; these have all had an impact on me. However, I was able to find enough healing in my life so that by the time my first daughter, Jodi, came into this world, all she has ever known are two parents who love her. Jodi can get busy with becoming the person she was put here to be and not have to be hindered by the scars of abuse. Jodi is a continuation of my mother’s legacy of change, which I have fully embraced throughout all my travels. Ch 07-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 130 TYP Has Opened Doors for Me 131 For me, TYP symbolizes much of what was good and strong in my mother that she gave to me. That is why I choose to think of TYP as home. TYP does not say, “I will do it for you.” Instead it says, “I will give you the skills so you can do it for yourself.” Nor does it say, “I will take you there.” Instead it says, “I will open that door for you, but you have to step through it.” In the most profound way, TYP has helped me achieve my most precious goal in life. It has given me some of the tools I need to carry forward my mother’s legacy of promoting a better life for those around me. When I think back to the blur that was my year at TYP, I can remember a few things that stood out in my thinking at the time. One thing I remember wondering was why there was room for only fifty people in the TYP, and why there were not more programs like this one. For every one of us, I was sure that there were 100 more who would love to have the opportunity that TYP was giving to us. I remember thinking it was too good to be true. Here I was being given a shot at university entrance with less than a Grade 10 formal education. How could TYP justify giving me that chance? The answer is in fact one of the program’s strongest virtues as an access program— it puts real value on a person’s life experience and translates that into an academic variable with real currency. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the academic world does not see it that way. That realization— that TYP was aTYPical, an anomaly in the academic world because it puts tangible value on something deemed an intangible—is part of the answer to my earlier questioning of why there were not more programs like TYP. Another of my questions while I was in TYP was why there were no Aboriginal instructors in a program that encouraged Aboriginal people to apply. I was always pleased that the content of some of the course matter was indigenous to me, but felt that in some ways this was cosmetic and perhaps the institution’s best attempt to make the program “Aboriginal friendly.” It was personally gratifying to me when Maureen FitzGerald spoke about that at our Thirtieth Anniversary. She recalled my criticisms of that time and place, and it was not until that day that I realized that those criticisms were part of the driving force behind the existence of TYP’s current Aboriginal faculty. In fact, this is also one of TYP’s strengths as a university access program. It is willing to listen to a need. Not just to the needs expressed Ch 07-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 131 132 Access and Equity in the University by its own voice or to the needs of the voices of the political forces that be, but especially to the passionate voices of those who pass through its program. It is able to do this through such vehicles as its alumni program and particularly through a conscientious faculty and staff. The degree to which TYP stays connected to its students, past and present, is the degree to which it will remain true to its purpose as a university access program. TYP has changed my life. If I had not found my way to the program, I am reasonably certain that I would have eventually achieved some of my academic goals, but whenever I think of TYP, there is a sense of warmth and security that comes over me that is a little difficult to describe. The people who teach in the program believe in the people who sit in their classes. That is why if someone asked me to describe TYP in a word, the word would be hope. TYP conspired with the hope I already had to help me overcome the barriers of an educational system that is not meant for people like me. That system had, for the most part, already given up on me. When the day comes that there are no more administrators, faculty, and staff that I personally know in TYP, I hope that the spirit of TYP will remain so that the feeling I get whenever I walk through its doors will always be there waiting for me. I sincerely hope that I am not the only one who has been touched in this way by the people of TYP. Ch 07-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 132 I WAS BORN IN THE SMALL WEST AFRICAN COUNTRY OF GAMBIA, THE ELDEST child in my family. During my childhood, Western education was considered by the elders of my village as contradictory both to our Islamic and traditional values. Furthermore, my people considered Western education a luxury and a “White man thing.” Most significantly, however, in my country Western education was perceived to be a highway leading to alcoholism, deceit, immorality, and alienation of village youths from their traditional, social, and cultural values. In fact, in a society where children were brought up to help their family in raising livestock and working in agricultural production, Western education was not a priority for most parents. My parents, however, were the exception to this agrarian traditionalism. My parents, particularly my father, saw the rigidity of our village social structure as an obstacle to progress and cultural dynamism. As a result, my father broke with the tradition of the village elders and sent me to a school five miles away from my village. When I was registered at Sibanor Primary School, my father was alienated from some of the village elders, and even from some of his friends and brothers. Luckily for me, however, rather than weakening my father’s inner strength, the alienation strengthened his heart. His belief that he had done the right thing also gave me the courage to work even harder at school. With the help of my mother, Dad produced enough groundnuts (the main cash crop in the Gambia) to A l u m n i V o i c e s 133 The TYP Route to a Ph.D. Paul Bakary Gibba (TYP 1993–1994) Ch 07-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 133 134 Access and Equity in the University sell for the hard currency that was needed for my school fees and school uniform. As I had no means of transportation, I had to walk to and from school each day. This routine of walking to school continued until I wrote the Common Entrance Examination. Upon passing this exam, I was admitted to St. Edwards Junior Secondary School in Bwiam— almost fifteen miles away from my village. It took me three years of cycling to and from school to complete my secondary education. The reason why I had to cycle to and from school was purely an economic one. In the absence of farm machinery, many hands were needed to produce enough groundnuts to pay for my school expenses. As the oldest child in my family, I had to help out on the farm, especially when my siblings were too young to help. My participation on the farm was necessary because my parents could not have supported me financially without their groundnut farm and our collective painful endurance of labour. The money earned from the farm was sufficient to cover my school expenses, but it could not be stretched to include motorized transportation as well. Although I had very limited time for study and assignments, I did manage to maintain good grades in school. When I passed the West African Examination Council’s School Leaving Certificate Exam, I was admitted on a scholarship to Nusrat High School in Serre-Kunda, a town located only a few miles from the capital city of Banjul. Three years later, I wrote the exam for the General Certificate of Education, Ordinary Level. This time I was not lucky to win a scholarship and my parents could not afford the tuition fees for the Sixth Form (Grade 12), where I would have taken the Advanced Level Exams. I had no choice but to end my quest for higher learning in the Gambia and join the workforce. In the mid-1980s, I immigrated to Montreal, Canada, where I was employed in various unskilled and low-paying jobs. In 1990, I lost my job and once again decided to seek greener pastures elsewhere. I came to Toronto where I joined the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades Union (Local 1891). As a member of this Union, I did asbestos removal, construction, and demolition work for a number of Toronto contractors. It was while working as an asbestos remover in the summer of 1992 that I was first exposed to the University of Toronto. My employer signed a contract with the university to remove asbestos Ch 07-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 134 The TYP Route to a Ph.D. 135 from one of its downtown campus buildings. During this engagement, I was exposed to the university students, and the mere sight of their backpacks convinced me that I could become one of them. Luckily, my desire to go back to school was encouraged by an advertisement in a community newspaper about the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto. The advertisement announced that disadvantaged adult students could use this program to access university. I applied and was admitted to TYP in September 1993. I decided to attend TYP because it was the only avenue to university available to people of my background. TYP is a program that understands and caters to the academic needs of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have not been prepared for the traditional route into university. It has opened and continues to open the doors of institutions of higher learning, particularly the University of Toronto, to students who would otherwise be denied entry through the “normal process.” TYP has a tremendous impact on the lives of countless students like myself who are determined to acquire higher education by entering institutions like the University of Toronto through the “back or front door.” TYP has assisted me in achieving my personal goals in many ways. Most importantly, however, it has provided me with the right tools of survival in the competitive academic world. The rigorous training, academic support, camaraderie, family life atmosphere, and the TYP faculty’s support of alumni, which are all characteristics of the program, have helped to mould me into the successful student I am today. In fact, the value of TYP as a university program cannot be measured in quantity, but rather in quality—an aspect in which it is unrivalled. As one of the students who made the most out of the TYP experience, I received the TYP Literature and Maxine Noel Awards in 1994. In 1997, I graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. (Hons.) with Distinction and received the Sheila Godsoe Scholarship from TYP and the New College Registrar’s Graduation Award for the Humanities. I also earned an M.A. in history in June 1999 and continued to do a Ph.D. in Sub-Saharan African history, European imperialism, and Caribbean history, all at the University of Toronto. In my first year of the Ph.D. program (1999–2000), I was the first recipient of the Carmen Brock Fellowship, and this honour was repeated in my second year (2000–2001). Having completed my comprehensive exams in October 2001, I am now preparing to go to Ch 07-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 135 136 Access and Equity in the University the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Great Britain, and Barbados to conduct research for my dissertation on West Indian Missionaries in West Africa. Once again, during my fieldwork, I will be drawing on my TYP experience, an experience that has exposed me to people of different cultures and backgrounds. Ch 07-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 136 CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING ACCESS AND EQUITY Part Three Part Three Part Three Part Three Part Three Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 137 Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 138 Diversity is most fully realized when it is made visible and present through actual associations among human beings in all their variety. (Rudenstine 1996:2) In a case of discrimination brought against the University of Michigan for its affirmative action program, Judge Patrick Duggan, of the Federal District Court in Detroit, recently ruled that the university had violated the United States Constitution with its two-tiered admissions system, which from 1995 to 1998 granted to White and minority applicants entry to the university under different criteria. But, according to the judge, the current (since 1998) policy of the university in which Black and Hispanic applicants are given a 20-point bonus on a 150-point scale, was perfectly legal. He stated that “A racially and ethnically diverse student body produces significant educational benefits such that diversity, in the context of higher education, constitutes a compelling governmental interest. Although fixed racial quotas and racial balancing are not necessary to achieving that goal, the consideration of an applicant’s race during the admissions process necessarily is” (The New York Times, December 14, 2000, A32). 1 In Canada, we have not yet had the occasion where access programs have been challenged in court. Nevertheless, as in the United States, a number of universities in Canada have been concerned enough with having a “racially and ethnically diverse” student body that, like the University of Michigan, they have Chapter 8 139 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy Carl E. James Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 139 140 Access and Equity in the University introduced “access programs” through which they have admitted, among others, Aboriginals and other racial minority group members. But what does diversity actually represent? Is it merely having different racial (i.e., colour) bodies in the university minus their particular interests, needs, and aspirations? Is Judge Duggan’s assertion about the “significant educational benefits” that a diverse student body produces evident in an institution’s attempts to diversify its student population? And, in such cases, who benefits? In this paper, with reference to studies and essays about people of colour who report on their experiences in universities, I propose to show that while the student population on university campuses is becoming increasingly diverse, particularly in terms of racial and ethnic minorities, 2 universities remain exclusionary. University programs, including curricula, courses, texts and content, pedagogical approaches, and assessments, insofar as they continue to be informed by Western European middle-class norms, values, expectations, and traditions, have contributed little else but provide entry to minority students. Diversity, then, represents nothing more than a public relations enterprise that is expected to yield moral support and benefit for these publicly funded institutions—a way of legitimizing and justifying their continued claim to government funding. Hence, the diversity in knowledge, needs, interests, and aspirations that racial minority students bring to the academy remain negated and/or ignored, resulting in struggles to negotiate a relevant and acceptable education process. In the Canadian context, the institutions’ discourses and practices of diversity are informed by the state’s multiculturalism ideology, which construes diversity to mean the “Other ethnic group”—the non-English and non-French people—in other words, racial and ethnic minority Canadians. So non-White bodies are imagined to represent part of the diversity in Canadian society, which claims to be colour-blind, and where race is considered to have no bearing on the social and educational participation and attainment of individuals (James 1999). As a “raceless state” (Goldberg 2000), then, it is taken for granted that the norms, values, and principles by which the state operates are neutral and fair, and therefore citizens are able to participate fully in the society and institutions uninhibited by cultural barriers. Hence, in cases where race is identified as a factor that has contributed to individuals’ treatment, they will be defined as individual concerns Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 140 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 141 and not systemic or structural. Consequently, it is left to individuals to establish how the structures and systems in which they participate affect them. It is on this paradigm of cultural freedom and equality that educational institutions operate, especially as part of the state’s apparatus to advance the values that will ensure consensus among and integration of the members of society. Therefore, in pursuing the idea of consensus and integration, educational institutions will, in effect, be doing more than “integrating” but rather “assimilating” the immigrant and minority members of the student body (Dei 2000; James 1999). Accordingly, educational institutions like universities, even as they initiate admissions programs that appear to take into account barriers to educational opportunities for minority Canadians, will produce and reproduce the marginalization of these same minority students as they pursue, in good faith and determination, postsecondary education. As Henry and Tator (1994:86) write, “the university has generally used the same approach as other liberal institutions by initiating conservative actions which do little to change the status quo.” In choosing to examine the experiences of racialized students in the academy, I am signalling the salience of race as a factor in the experiences of students. I share Dei’s (2000) contention that identity dimensions are differentially salient according to context. Therefore, in universities, with their claim to cultural and political neutrality and colour-blindness, race is particularly salient; consequently “to ignore race difference and the social practices and actions engendered by race categorization is to deny the individual-social subject connection and to ‘neutralize a person’s experience ... as situated in broader socio-political contexts” (Dei 2000:30). In this discussion, I reason that the political, cultural, and educational contexts of universities, largely informed by Eurocentic, middle-class, patriarchal norms and values (Henry and Tator 1994; James and Mannette 2000), operate in ways that negate the racialized experiences of the new insiders, and in doing so, reinscribe them as outsiders, even as they endeavour to establish themselves as legitimate and equal participants in the institutions. A useful way to proceed is to understand how universities have historically taken up the concept of diversity. I do this in the following section. Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 141 142 Access and Equity in the University Diversity Discourses within Universities In his January 1996 report on “Diversity and Learning,” the president of Harvard University, Neil L. Rudenstine, stated: The word diversity has been overused in recent years, often to the point of cliche. That is unfortunate because the term has an important history. ... The word and the idea began to appear in discussions of education at least as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Over the last century and a half, the significance of diversity to the process of education has been increasingly recognized. (Rudenstine 1996:3) Rudenstine notes that in the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill argued that there are benefits to bringing “human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar” (Rudenstine 1996:3). Additionally, in his book, On Liberty, Mill contended that “diversity of opinion” is advantageous, but, as Rudenstine writes, “It is not enough, moreover, for a person to read about or ‘be taught’ the opinions of others on a given subject,” for, as Mill also asserted, “to do justice to the opinions and arguments of others we must have contact with them, interact with them, hear from them, listen to them articulate and defend that which they believe in earnest.” We must get to “know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” And we must get to feel “the whole force of the difficulty” that individuals encounter and wish to have knowledge about (Rudenstine 1996:4). Rudenstine also recalls John Newman’s concept of diversity within university to be like “the world on a small field” with individuals coming “from different places, and with widely different notions,” having to make adjustments, defining new interrelationships, establishing rules and norms, so that the institution “could in time become unified in spirit, with ‘one tone and character,’ [and] through a process of association and mutual education, unity would eventually emerge from differences” (Rudenstine 1996:4). In summarizing his historical account of diversity, Rudenstine suggested that the ways in which Mill and Newman conceptualize diversity “are not mere extras; they are integral to true learning at a profound level. They are not dispensable. They shape some of the fundamental ways in which Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 142 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 143 knowledge itself is generated, tested, and transformed into understanding” (Rudenstine 1996:4). Rudenstine goes on to state that “education and learning are human and moral processes concerned ultimately with values and effective action. They are most tested when individuals engage others whose ideas, passions, experiences, and beliefs differ from their own” (Rudenstine 1996:7). From these reflections, it is not surprising that Rudenstine would affirm that as important and influential institutions in society, universities have the responsibility to encourage diversity within the institutions, for in doing so they contribute to the education of citizens, and their capacity to study, live, and work in a diverse and democratic society. And quoting Charles Eliot, the former president of Harvard (for forty years), Rudenstine further remarks that being educated in a diverse environment contributes to “the intimate dependence of each human individual on a multitude of other individuals, ... a dependence which increases with civilization and the development of urban life” (Rudenstine 1996:7). It is important to note the emphasis that this liberal notion of diversity places on individualism, the interdependency of individuals, and the idea that through mutual education and interactions, individuals will become “unified in spirit,” in their knowledge, and in their perspective on life. Difference, then, which is an unavoidable part of diversity, is expected in time to be expunged, thus bringing about similarity or commonality among individuals. The idea, therefore, is to contest diversity and difference and from the “diverse” student body construct commonality and “unity.” Indeed, this is a long-standing mission of universities; specifically, in their role (or under the guise) of providing “higher education” to students, they seek to assimilate the students into the norms, values, and ideology that the university holds dear, thus maintaining the status quo within the university and in society generally. Hence, after much is said about recruiting a “diverse population” of students, those who are admitted to the university are largely those who are perceived to be able to “fit” the cultural mould of the university once they are allowed in. A corollary to this conceptualization of diversity is the inevitable push for consensus and uniformity in knowledge as Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 143 144 Access and Equity in the University universities seek to maintain their traditional role as the keepers and arbitrators of what counts as “legitimate knowledge” (James and Mannette 2000). Hence, for individuals who have traditionally been excluded from postsecondary institutions, and whose knowledge has not been considered legitimate, having their knowledge validated and/or inserted into the discourses of these institutions will be difficult or will likely never happen. What emerges, then, is that while universities espouse interest in diversity, and while students are encouraged in their essential differences—i.e., differences that are understood to contribute socially and politically to the enhancement of the university—there is still the expectation that in time the differences will disappear. As a consequence of this process of homogenizing students, those who are “different” are conceptualized and administered solely in group terms, thus ignoring, negating, and erasing the diversity within and between racial groups (in terms of class, gender, language, generations in Canada, etc.). As Patricia Monture- Okanee (1995) points out with reference to her experience within the academy, what it means to be an Aboriginal woman who is a Mohawk clan member and lawyer in the academy is reduced to the generic and manageable category, “Native.” Making University Accessible, Making the Student Body Diverse It is a revealing commentary that in their attempts to “diversify” their student bodies, a number of Canadian universities have resorted to initiating “access” programs. 3 These initiatives might be considered to be the universities’ attempts to promote social justice, 4 enhance equality of opportunity, and provide historically excluded students with the knowledge and skills that would enable them to participate fully and effectively in society. 5 But, more importantly, the initiation of access programs speaks to the fact that inequality and systemic discrimination within the university have operated to maintain a fairly homogeneous population of university students. Hence, the issue is not only about racial minorities gaining entry to university, but also about addressing the systemic problems that have accounted for their absence from these institutions in the first place. Also, it is about changing the hegemonic culture of the institution to accommodate Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 144 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 145 and indeed systemically represent the diversity not just of bodies, but of the interests, aspirations, pedagogy, knowledge, and expectations of the new insiders. But James Hall’s (1990) advice to participants at the conference on “Strategies for Improving Access and Retention of Ethno- Specific and Visible Minority Students in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Institutions” gave no indication that changing or diversifying university programs is also necessary for having a diverse student population. In his keynote address, Hall said, “The challenge ... of diversity ... is upon us. ... There are four things that I identify, four reasons that motivate institutions to do something about this diversity. ... It is good for education, it is the proper Christian thing to do, it is mandated, ... [and] it is good economics” (Hall 1990:2). It is quite telling that the reasons put forward point to the moral and economic benefits that might be derived from diversity. Undoubtedly, Hall’s reasoning, like those of Judge Duggan and Rudenstine, are informed by the corporate structure and cultural hegemony through which they have come to view the role and function of universities and the perceived benefits that can accrue when diverse bodies interact in these educational institutions. But the question to which we might return is, who benefits? If there are no cultural changes—no systemic changes in terms of programs, curricula and faculty members, for example— then the universities will have benefited both morally and financially because they would have brought onto campus students who represent the diversity needed for good public relations and the “new market,” while maintaining the status quo. In this context, then, the experiences of minority students will be reflective of the fact that the institutions remain inaccessible, ill equipped, unprepared, disinterested, and insensitive to their needs, concerns, interests, and aspirations. Indeed, studies indicate this to be the case. Take for instance, a study I conducted (James 1997) of the experiences of racial minority students who had negotiated the admission process to a university faculty with an access program that was supposedly established to remove systemic entry barriers to the university. The ten (equal number of males and females) participants in the study were third- and fourth-year African Canadian education students, some of whom entered the education Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 145 146 Access and Equity in the University program through the access initiative program. They reported that they were often ambivalent and conflicted about responding to questions that asked them to identify their race, ethnicity and/ or any other factors that might have operated as barriers to their obtaining the necessary entry requirements. Respondents said that they contemplated long and hard about what they should write, and how they should write about themselves in ways that did not make them sound like they were “begging,” because to be perceived as begging would not earn them the respect of the admissions personnel. Many of the respondents suggested that this was a very stressful process because in addition to being uncomfortable with having to declare their identities to fit one or more of the ascribed homogenizing identity labels, they were also unsure and hence skeptical of the use the university would make of what they wrote. They certainly did not wish to convey the idea that they were incapable of doing university work and hence jeopardizing their chances of gaining entry. The ambivalence and struggles that these Black students experienced in their negotiation and navigation of the entry process through the access program indicate how much they were concerned with and, more precisely, doubted the capacity of the university admissions people to appropriately interpret their stories and read their files in ways that would affirm their qualifications and competence to do university work. Their ambivalence and skepticism are reflective of their questions about the sensitivity and readiness of the university to address their interests, and the place of racism and discrimination in continuing to inform the university’s policies, procedures, and programs. For these reasons, they had little confidence in the access rhetoric of the university and its commitment to having a diverse student population. Clearly then, the access programs, as initiated, have been limited in facilitating the entry of minority students in ways that give them hope and encouragement that the university is ready for them. Instead, in many ways, access programs have served to reinscribe the very barriers that they were expected to remove. So in the absence of systemic changes to the admissions process— changes that would reflect support for the particular situation of minority students—only some minority students, particularly Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 146 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 147 those who are able to successfully negotiate the existing structures of universities, will gain entry. The students enter contexts in which access programs, like employment equity and affirmative action, are considered to be “reverse racism”—a belief that unqualified people are taking places from more qualified university applicants primarily on the basis of their race, refugee status, social, and other factors. On this point, one respondent said to me with considerable irony that, “There’s already an access program for White people; that’s the regular program.” A similar comment was recently echoed by a Black student at the University of Michigan who gained entry to that university through its affirmative action program. He said that many universities currently have affirmative programs based on race, “but only for Black athletes” (“60 Minutes,” November 2000). These admission dilemmas of minority students are further manifested in their experiences once inside universities, particularly as they assert their rights to be partners in their education process while struggling against erasure and exclusion signified in questions about their legitimate presence. These experiences are explored in the following section. Inside Experiences: The Struggles to Be Recognized and Heard While we are perceived as privileged insiders receiving a postsecondary education, at the same time we remain outsiders, in that we are essentially excluded from course content, pedagogy and program development—in short from full participation in our own educational process. (Proudfoot 1996:254) In the study to which I referred above (James 1997), most of the African Canadian education students I interviewed indicated that claims of “reverse racism” and questions about their qualifications for university were issues with which they grappled throughout their time in university. For those who did not even apply through the access route, by the very fact they were racial minorities and such a program existed in the faculty, if not the university, they were perceived to be “access students,” and were often treated disrespectfully by their peers and professors alike. Skin colour Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 147 148 Access and Equity in the University was used as a signifier of access, yet another characteristic in the social construction of Black students. This social construction plus their awareness of the university’s rhetoric that only the “most qualified” were admitted to the university, contributed to the pressure that respondents placed upon themselves to prove that they were qualified, legitimate, and worthy students. For this reason, they were in constant fear of not getting good grades, which in turn produced much anxiety. Contributing to their fears and anxieties regarding grades were, as they maintained, the low expectations that professors held of them, and professors’ doubts about their abilities to perform well academically. These doubts were signalled in some cases by questions about the authenticity of the work they handed in. To counter these negative perceptions, the respondents said that they worked “twice as hard as everyone else to show that [they] were capable” because they did not wish to validate the stereotypes that were held of them (see also Proudfoot 1996). The issue of merit, that is, having the necessary qualification for entry into university and once in university obtaining good grades, was something that many racial minority students had to confront. Specifically, as Schenke (1993) found in her study of the experiences of “access students,” they had to deal with their peers and faculty members’ lack of recognition of the historic and systemic practices of exclusion that are rooted in institutionalized racism, and the belief that being properly qualified equates with high academic standing and individual achievement regardless of social difference. This lack of recognition of how racism operates to limit educational attainment and thus the need for reformatory measures was expressed in one of my classes a few years ago by a third-year White male student, who in a discussion of employment equity angrily said, I am tired of all this racism bullshit. I’ve never been handed anything on a silver platter. ... This is fuckin’ scary. You’re not good enough to get in like others. ... What about meritocracy? What about the esteem of people? You’d be seen as an equity quota, as a number. [Employment equity] undermines what has been accomplished. ... It creates animosity and downright hatred. ... I’m fed up of this bullshit. Is this what we call progress? (James 1995:50) Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 148 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 149 Upon making his feelings known, the student left the racially mixed class without allowing us the opportunity to engage with his comments. It is possible that his frustration and anger were motivated by his belief that his rights to education and, hence employment, had been violated, that academic integrity had been compromised, and that his career attainment had been thwarted by the unfair advantage given to racial minority students (James 1995). Relatedly, in reflecting on his experience in university in a faculty with an access program, Marc Proudfoot, an African Canadian, writes: The fact that the legitimacy and merit of African Canadians’ participation in university is often questioned, has profound psychological effects on our educational experiences. We feel silenced and disillusioned. The silence is created and fostered when we are the recipients of such questions as: “How can you expect change overnight?” “Things take time, you know.” Or “Why are you so critical?” We become silent because of the negative responses we receive when we threaten the complacency of those who do not usually look like us. We are silenced by the contradictory messages we get; when we are told out of one side of the mouth that we belong, while out of the other side of the mouth they tell us to “be quiet.” (Proudfoot 1996:254) Proudfoot goes on to suggest that these negative messages, questions, and expressed anger by their White peers are not always met with silence. (I will return to this issue later.) Racial minority students do respond or, in other words, resist attempts to silence and erase them. They too are just as likely to express, as Proudfoot puts it, their “internalized frustrations or unbridled anger” (Proudfoot 1996:254). These experiences and responses of minority students are corroborated by the findings of other studies (Calliste 2000; James 1997; James and Mannette 2000; Monture-Okanee 1995). Even in cases where the qualifications of some racial minority group students were not in doubt, White students still resented the presence of the minority students on campus because they perceived that the minority students “did not naturally belong Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 149 150 Access and Equity in the University here,” and hence were “encroaching” on their space (Bellamy and Anisef 1994:21). This finding by Bellamy and Anisef was based on their study of students’ experiences at the University of British Columbia where the “intolerance” was largely directed at Chinese students who were considered different. Evidently, left unaddressed, these attitudes and behaviours among students are likely to fester, and in turn contribute to a negative learning environment filled not only with “animosity and downright hatred,” but, as the student said, also with stressful, dissatisfied, alienated, and unsuccessful students. Evidently, experiences in graduate school are no different for minority students. In a study of graduate students at York University, Michael Ornstein (1996) found that over one quarter (26 per cent) of the graduate students who were African or Black felt that they were disadvantaged in their studies as a result of their race. Concerns about their disadvantages were also cited by 11 per cent and 14 per cent of South Asians and East Asians, respectively, as well as 7 per cent of Middle Eastern and 6 per cent of First Nations students (Ornstein 1996:13). He quotes one student as saying: I believe that the faculty I am currently attending does not offer a variety of courses that cover race and gender issues, i.e., it is not an important element to consider when completing an MBA degree. Also I believe that there are serious employment equity problems at York FAS. Their current staff is reflective of the business world reality. There are very few women in positions of power and fewer visible minorities with any authority. As with all faculties, administration is riddled with politics and nepotism. I strongly believe that equitable policies will not be enforced or effective until the positions that dictate/develop these practices are filled by individuals who understand what equity means. (Ornstein 1996:36) With reference to her years in the university in which she is currently a graduate student, Maxine Bramble (2000), in her essay “Being me in the Academy,” writes: The image of university I had was supported by the information package I received with my acceptance letter. The package promoted Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 150 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 151 the university as a place where students explore issues of personal interest with the guidance of professors, where differing ideas can be expressed and where people’s voices are listened to. It seemed to indicate that the university is a place where diversity thrives and where difference in terms of ideas and bodies are accommodated. (Bramble 2000:271) She goes on to state that in the graduate program orientation sessions she attended, a university personnel spoke of the university and the specific faculty in terms of the image she had cultivated—a place that promotes equity and accommodation of difference and diversity. But in her first graduate class, Bramble saw differently. She writes: In September 1997, I sat in a classroom with eight other graduate students and a professor, in the first session of a year-long seminar. As a standard operating procedure, we each introduced ourselves, including in our introduction, information about our background, intended area of interest, and the focus of academic work we have done in the past. As I sat listening to the other students’ introductions, I carefully planned my own so that I/it would sound articulate. I opted to go last and stumbled through my well-rehearsed introduction in a less than articulate manner. I spoke about my academic background, my previous work on Caribbean sayings and proverbs and about my plan to continue working in this area. Later that day, as I reflected on the seminar proceedings, I remember thinking that the person I introduced and personified in that class really wasn’t me. (Bramble 2000:273) Bramble explains that the person she introduced was not her because the “self” that she presented was defined solely in terms of “academic interests and background.” She writes: “The identity categories that I generally used to define myself were absent. These categories: black, working class, Caribbean, and of course, woman, do not constitute all of who I am, but are central to my sense and way that I experience life” (Bramble 2000:273). In fact, as Bramble states, the identity available to her was that of “graduate student.” And to be a graduate student meant that she had to act as if markers of identity such as race, class, gender, Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 151 152 Access and Equity in the University ethnicity, and culture were absent, “invisible or were of no significance to my inter/actions in the seminar. The unstated rule seemed to be: Leave all talk about identity, and by implication talk about difference, out of your discussions because it interferes with intellectual work” (Bramble 2000:274). In the same essay, Bramble also tells the story of a class discussion in which she argued that “knowledge production is situated in bodies” and that has a bearing on the research method one employs and, by extension, the interpretation of data. For this idea, she was “accused” of essentialism by a colleague. In challenging this essentialist idea, Bramble conceded that identities are not fixed, but she wished to introduce into the discussion the idea of insider/outsider differences in research, and to challenge the notion of “objectivity.” She pointed out that while “insiders” and, in this case, non-Whites have particular information to offer to any research process, she found “it interesting that the charge of essentialism and the accompanying anti-essentialist position is popular at a time when universities are grappling with the concept of equity and are talking about accommodating differences and diversity” (Bramble 2000:278). Implicit in Bramble’s story about her colleague’s challenge of essentialism is how certain discourses conspire to silence minority students. Talking about how “some of his graduate classes were painful and intimidating as [he] sat through them witnessing which student would next upstage the one who spoke previously,” Luis Aguiar (2001) suggests that such interactions contributed to “immigrant working-class students” like himself feeling disadvantaged and “silenced” since he was unprepared to participate in such discussions. He contends that rarely is this pedagogical format, which is reflective of the cultural capital of bourgeois students and faculty members, recognized as exclusionary. “For these reasons,” Aguiar goes on to state, “I never felt at ease or secure in my sense of belonging to the sociology department” and, as a result, he distanced himself from the department, withdrew from university activities, and carried out his work “according to my own meaning of university education.” Aguiar’s story is quite compelling, for while as he indicates, he is “White” and Portuguese, he argues, borrowing Sivanandan’s (1990) metaphorical concept of “Black” as a “political colour,” that Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 152 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 153 his experiences as a Portuguese “in white academia” parallel those of people who are phenotypically black. 6 In this regard, he writes: The university is not just about gaining professional legitimacy. It is also about navigating a foreign culture, a culture of whiteness. Historically, of course, the university has been a white institution with clear preferences for and privileging of a specific “race” (white) and gender (male). Still today, the legitimacy of the university is accepted with little reflection on the class and racial biases it expresses. ... [Its] normalizing process is largely unidentified and goes unchallenged. (Aguiar 2001:186) Aguiar asserts that his lack of knowledge and awareness of the culture of academia and his experiences of “otherness” contributed to his “sense of dislocation” and feelings of being an “imposter” in a “very privileged and exclusive milieu where [he was not] quite sure of the rules and practices of belonging.” He refers to these feelings as the “imposter syndrome.” A significant aspect of this syndrome is fear—fear of being discovered or exposed. Other important feelings also emerge to take over one’s psyche. There are the numerous bouts with confidence and whether or not the next time I will finally be denounced as an imposter in a place that is not my own and revealed to be incompetent and incapable of thinking in scholarly fashion. These feelings repeat themselves perpetually, as do the need to “prove” over and over again that one belongs in academia. (Aguiar 2001:189) The themes of belonging, silence, and voice are also captured in Kyo Maclear’s (1994) essay about the “recurring ordeals” that non-White students encounter in their attempts “to speak across historically produced ‘differences’.” Maclear, a Japanese Canadian, writes that her experience as a graduate student ranged “from the frustration of being passively and paternalistically listened to; to feeling like a freak sideshow whose stories are used to satisfy curiosity, or worse, uphold the myth of inclusion; to carrying the burden of having to ‘disclose more’ for the purpose of educating” (Maclear 1994:7). The classroom in which these discourses take Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 153 154 Access and Equity in the University place is not a safe place; this idea, says Maclear, is a “dangerous illusion” for there is an unequal power dynamic in the relationships and interactions in the classroom that make it an “uncomfortable and risky place to be” (Maclear 1994:7; see also Razack 1998). 7 So for racial minority students to “come to voice,” as Maclear puts it, requires that they fashion strategies that enable them to negotiate “gingerly between two prevailing forces: The censuring of non- dominant dissenting voices; and the often equally marginalizing coercion to speak” (Maclear 1994:7). Maclear argues that “coming to voice” is different from “being silenced” or “unheard.” She interprets silence to be when minorities actively decide “not to enter the marketplace of bidding” to “prove intellectual mastery and competence” (Maclear 1994:8). Silence, she continues, is not just about “lost voice,” “voicelessness,” or “lack of social identity from which to act.” For racial minorities, it is also about resistance and subversiveness. It is about the material situation and the dominant academic discourses within universities that marginalize minority students even before they open their mouths. So despite, as she says “our commitment to participate in politically engaged intellectual projects, there are times for one reason or another we are battle- weary, or suspicious of the way we are being set up to speak, and we allow our voices to fall into a stubborn silence” (Maclear 1994:8). She ends her essay with the following question: “Given the material realities of racism, sexism and other forms of oppression, can we ever separate silence from mechanisms of dominance that force us to ‘be quiet’ or that ‘silence us’? Can we ever freely choose silence?” (Maclear 1994:11). Many of the questions that students like Bramble, Aguiar, and Maclear raise, as well as the factors that inform much of their experiences, represent the extent to which faculty members are sensitive and prepared to respond to the different needs, interests, knowledge, and aspirations of these new university students. The experience of Bramble is instructive. In a department that was “one of the largest in the university,” she was unable to find a professor there “with a substantive knowledge of the Caribbean” who was able to supervise her MA thesis on “Caribbean sayings and proverbs.” A professor of Caribbean origin from outside of the department was permitted to sit on her committee, but not Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 154 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 155 before she petitioned the graduate program director for permission for him to do so. She recalls the graduate program director’s reluctance and his suggestion that she “did not require someone with substantive knowledge of the Caribbean to be on the committee” (Bramble 2000:279). That there were no professors in Bramble’s department to work with her is an indication of the readiness and willingness of universities to cater to the needs and interests of the new insiders. It is not enough to have “supportive” faculty members, as Bramble did, for like their peers, these new insiders should expect and must receive support and direction from faculty members who are relevant and related to their area of work. It is reasonable for the new insiders to actively advocate for diversity among faculty members, both in terms of bodies and research interests or expertise since they have experienced the extent to which homogeneity serves to limit the kinds of work that they can undertake, the professors with whom they are able to work, and the content and possibilities of courses that are mounted. But as in the case of Bramble and others (see Calliste 2000; James 1997; James and Mannette 2000), expecting otherwise or advocating to change such a situation can have unfortunate consequences. For example, in her essay on surviving the contradictions of academia, Patricia Monture-Okanee (1995:81), a Mohawk, writes that at one time she risked her safety in the university she attended in an attempt to influence the content of her course on Aboriginal peoples. She said that not only were her courses on Aboriginal peoples taught by non-Aboriginals, in some cases, as in one anthropology course, the course materials were written by non-Aboriginal peoples, and even “the guest speakers were non-Aboriginal people.” After a number of students “confronted the teacher” and expressed their concerns, they were “excluded, denied and marginalized.” It is important and germane to be concerned about the homogeneity of faculty members and teaching assistants who are available to work with the growing and diverse needs and interests of students, not only the new insiders but all students who will and must be exposed to diversity in knowledge, pedagogy, texts, course content, programs, and so forth that come with diversity in the student population. This exposure is not to Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 155 156 Access and Equity in the University cultivate tolerance but acceptance of diversity and differences. It is a matter of rights and entitlement to equitable treatment and equality of opportunities. But though a crude measure, the diversity and representation of faculty provide some indication of what we might expect. On this question of faculty diversity and representation, Maurice and Frideres (1999), in their examination of the “visible minority” population at the University of Calgary, found that about 11 per cent of the faculty members were racial minorities, and that there was a racial minority faculty/ student gap of about 12 per cent. The researchers suggest that the low representation of racial minority on faculty might be due to the fact that universities tend not to encourage employment applications from, and actively promote the hiring of, racial minorities. Accordingly, they recommend that there is a need for more racial minority faculty members who can also act as role models for racial minority students, and to realize this goal, universities should encourage and train racial minority students so that they qualify for faculty positions. Universities, they advise, should aim to have representations of racial minorities on the faculty that are relative to the racial minority student population. 8 Toward the Accommodation of Diversity within Universities Although the doors to universities appear more open than they were before, there is still no assurance that the activities beyond the door will guarantee us the quality of education that the university purports to give to everyone. In other words, being inside the institution doesn’t ensure that our freedom, mobility, growth, and intellectual sustenance will be catered to in a manner that appropriately reflects our experiences as African Canadians (Proudfoot 1996:252–253). The fact that I’m in university, does it mean that the system (i.e., mobility, merit, etc.) works? Am I an example of the system “working for anybody”? Can one discredit a system which has benefited a working class kid from immigrant background with no family history of education ...? (Aguiar 2001) Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 156 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 157 By way of concluding, I return to Rudenstine’s (1996) discussion on diversity in the university. Recall that Rudenstine and the scholars to whom he refers argue that diversity in university is exemplified by having people who are “dissimilar,” “coming from different places, and with widely different notions” learning in the same classrooms and in the same institutions. The view is that “integral” to students’ learning is having them hear the “diverse opinions” articulated by the very people in whose bodies these opinions are housed, and altogether engage with the differences. But while these scholars, on the one hand, argue for diversity and rightly acknowledge that in time adjustments will have to be made and new rules and norms established, on the other hand, they suggest that out of this knowing each other and knowing about their interdependence (students, professors and administrators alike), “unity” will emerge. One interpretation of this argument is that, besides bodies, seemingly, there is something incongruous about diversity in knowledges, ideas, voices, and aspirations coexisting in an institution that historically has been the guardian of the moral values and codes of the society and arbitrator of the knowledge on which education and learning are structured. 9 Hence, to preserve education and knowledge as they have been understood, legitimized, and practised over the years, universities, exercising the power and control by which they have traditionally operated, will seek to forge commonality among students, thereby homogenizing them. In the process of homogenizing students, the imperialist cultural power of universities, which is premised on the ideology of White supremacy, patriarchy, classism, and ableism, and which previously operated to exclude minority students, today functions to colonize, marginalize, and silence them now that they are allowed inside. The institution, then, even with these new insiders, does not lose its uniqueness and its ability to influence their ideas and beliefs. In so doing, the status quo within universities and in society in general is protected and preserved. It is little wonder, therefore, that the experiences of racial minority students as discussed above reflect disillusionment, frustration, contestations, and conflict as they seek to exercise agency over their lives and their learning. For many of these students, the university is a site of struggle, a place into which they must struggle to enter and, Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 157 158 Access and Equity in the University once inside, they must continue to struggle to have their voices heard or to remain silent, to have their work recognized, and to be seen as competent. They confront questions of identity, challenges of “disembodiment,” as Bramble aptly refers to her experience as a graduate student, and the impediments of erasure. In each of these encounters or interrogations, they are forced to reflect on the haunting issue of whether the academy is a place where they belong. The diversity and difference that are to be found within universities and that in particular relate to the presence of racial minority students are, no doubt, disruptive of the notions of neutrality, objectivity, meritocracy, scholarship, excellence, and colour-blindness that have traditionally characterized the claims of these institutions. They are disruptive insofar as the visible diversity of bodies are reminders of the fact that these institutions produce and reproduce gender, race, ethnic, and class hegemonies. Nevertheless, these diversities must be maintained, and in doing so, universities must make structural, not cosmetic changes, particularly if they are to make their resources and services fully accessible to historically excluded students (James and Mannette 2000). With regard to recruitment programs, universities will have to do more than merely enable applicants to gain entry, for once in university, students must be provided with an academic environment in which the curricula, pedagogy, and social relationships are conducive to their learning, welcoming of their participation in all areas of university life, and responsive to their needs, 10 interests, and expectations. Universities must not only ensure equality of opportunity but, equally and probably more significant, equity. That is, universities must ensure that the student body is not merely representative of the population it serves, but that the programs provided are also just in that they acknowledge the experiences and expectations of the students as informed by their social conditions. One way in which universities might cater to the new insiders is to take into account post-university possibilities, for as Anisef et al. (1999:21) found, the educational credentials do “not sufficiently address the needs and issues of immigrants and racial minority members of our society” in terms of employment opportunities. To do so, they suggest, “universities will need to take a greater interest in Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 158 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 159 the employment welfare of graduates. One way for this to happen is to promote the use of co-operative education programs” and, in that regard, to employ the resources of ethnic minority and immigrant communities so that the work experience of students may be expanded and enhanced. I share the conclusion of the researchers, that is: If higher education is to enhance the goals of a learning society, universities will need to develop strategies that extend beyond campus boundaries and traditional modes of program delivery to respond effectively to the educational needs of minority and immigrant graduates. ... Efforts to modify the culture of universities may be sought in a number of ways ... including expanding the university’s engagement with community agencies that serve racial minority and immigrant groups in ways that help bridge the school- work transition process. (Anisef et al. 1999:21–22) Having a diverse student population requires, therefore, that universities become places or structures that not only bring many people with their different ideas, beliefs, knowledges, learning styles, and so forth together, but that they become dynamic structures and spaces that allow for the continued existence, maintenance, and promotion of difference. Such spaces will enable and encourage dialogue, and be responsive to active, oppositional, and collective voices and challenges that seek to transform the colonizing, exclusionary, discriminatory, and oppressive structures into educational structures and practices that provide empowerment (Mohany 1993). This means that institutions must be prepared to engage in examining their practices, accept accountability for the structural factors that mitigate against having full participation of a diverse population of student and faculty, and implement necessary changes. Until these changes are introduced, it is understandable if we feel ambivalent about the increase in the number of racial minority students on university campuses, for in the current chilly climate, it is difficult for them to fully participate in the teaching and learning process in order for them to realize their aspirations. Ironically, it is from universities that research about the experiences of racial minorities in these institutions emanate. And Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 159 160 Access and Equity in the University while the researchers, students, and professors tell the stories of the need to put in place systemic changes that will address the issues that are identified by minority students, we see little to no changes. Obviously, it is time to pay attention to these studies and voices. Universities should become leaders in providing access and enabling students, with all their differences, to fully and equitably participate in the life of the university until they satisfactorily and successfully complete their education and realize their aspirations. Notes 1. This is one of many cases challenging affirmative action programs. The plaintiff in this case was a twenty-three-year-old female who was denied admission in 1995, but as the New York Times (December 14, 2000, A32) reports, she eventually “attended the university’s less-prestigious Dearborn campus instead of the flag ship at Ann Arbor.” It is said that there is likely to be an appeal. 2. While the term “diversity” indeed means having individuals within institutions that represent the mix of Canadians in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, citizenship, immigrant status, sexuality, political positions, etc., my interest here is in diversity pertaining to racial minorities, and the racialized experiences of Black university students in particular. In doing so, I am not negating the diversity to be found among Black people as a racial group. Certainly no group is homogeneous, but I wish to examine some of the particular experiences of Black students. 3. An examination of access programs across the country indicates that they vary considerably in terms of how they define and operationalize access. For example, at the University of Toronto and York University, there are access initiatives that enable students to participate in undergraduate and professional programs leading to regular degrees. In terms of special programs, there is a non-degree “pre-law” program at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College that attracts Native law candidates from across the country. And at the University of Western Ontario, there is the Graduate School of Journalism’s communication program for Native students. Native studies programs also exist at Trent University and University College of Cape Breton. Some universities have support systems for minority students in regular degree program (e.g., University of Toronto and University of Manitoba). These programs are relatively recent, although the transition year programs at Dalhousie and University of Toronto date back to the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s when Blacks and Native peoples were demanding human rights and equality (Allen 1996; Calliste, 1996; James and Mannette 2000; Mannette 1990). Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 160 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 161 4. It should be noted that these university initiatives coincide with the political actions of minority group members specifically in their demand for equity and equal access to resources, which have resulted in the shifts in government policies, practices, and programs, and which in turn have led to such things as contract compliance and employment equity. 5. It is worth noting here that in a study of undergraduate students from Toronto’s “Jane and Finch” (working-class) community, it was found that attending university was perceived as providing them hope and the opportunity to get a postsecondary education so they can give back to their community. It was a study of immigrant and refugee students who participated in the University Path Program (a component of the then North York Board of Education/York University Partnership Program) while attending high school in the area. Through this program, the students were supported in their aspirations to attend, and eventually gained entry into, York University. What was most striking in the students’ responses was not only their gratitude for the opportunity to attend university, but that in doing so, in the word of one respondent, they would be able to “pay back ... return my dues” to their “community/ies” as defined in geographic as well as ethnic and racial terms, and to their adopted country (James and Haig-Brown 2001) 6. As “Black” people since immigrating to Canada, the “Portuguese,” Aguiar (2001) writes, “are segmented into specific jobs ghettos and residential neighbourhoods, perform poorly in school, are subjected to streaming, criminalized by the media, and possess an ‘exotic’ culture of food, customs and tradition. ... They share these ‘characteristics’ with blacks in Canada.” He acknowledges that scholars have rejected this conceptualization “because it evokes a binary reading” of social locations. Furthermore, conscious of the problematic use of the concept, he insists that he does not wish to imply that “black students’ experiences can be homogenized under mine.” Nevertheless, he states that the concept captures for him his experiences and the underlying political reality “of power, domination and resistance in our society.” 7. Similarly, Razack (1998:206) makes the point that the academy is “anything but comfortable.” In fact, the number of incidents involving racial minority students, and Black students in particular, indicate that the academy has become “less physically safe.” 8. But as Calliste (2000) demonstrates, the presence of minority faculty in universities that have “remained bastions of white male power and privilege” (Calliste 2000:145) is no indication that they will be able to effectively support and guide minority students. At best, as Calliste said of Black and Aboriginal faculty members, they are likely to be “treated exclusively as resource people, which is another form of exploitation” (Calliste 2000:156) and are not likely to experience the privilege of the academy like their White peers. Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 161 162 Access and Equity in the University 9. Correspondingly, Howard Ramos suggests that university is an etymology that stems from “universe,” which is an attempt to account for all things and peoples coexisting within one state or place. The idea of coexistence is accompanied by an expectation that people will conform to a single dominant model or structure. Hence, all the many ideas, voices, opinions, knowledges, in essence, the people within the university now existing under the dominant structure, lose their uniqueness and ability to work beyond or outside of that which has been established. The reality is that universities try to incorporate or synthesize difference to fit the existing structure, for accepting differences that go beyond or challenge the status quo would undermine its function (Personal conversation, December 2000). 10. Resources such as counselling and financial support—bursaries, and not just scholarship—are likely things that universities should be providing if they are to meet the needs of minority students so that they are not further disadvantaged, especially by lack of finances. References Aguiar, Luis. 2001. “Whiteness in White Academia.” In Talking About Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity and Language, edited by C.E. James and A. Shadd, 177–192. Toronto: Between the Lines. Allen, Keith. 1996. “The Transitional Year Program at the University of Toronto: A Life-Line for Blacks Seeking a University Education.” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James, 234–250. Toronto: Our Schools/Ourselves, James Lorimer & Co. Anisef, Paul, Robert Sweet, Carl James, and Lin Zeng. 1999. “Higher Education, Racial Minorities and Labour Market Outcomes in Canada.” Paper presented at the Non-traditional Student Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Bellamy, Leslie, and Paul Anisef. 1994. “Post Secondary Education and Visible Minorities: Racial Intolerance on Canadian Campuses.” Unpublished paper. Toronto: York University. Bramble, Maxine. 2000. “Being Me in the Academy.” In Experience Difference, edited by C.E. James, 271–282. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Calliste, Agnes. 2000. “Anti-Racism Organizing and Resistance in Academia.” In Power, Knowledge and Anti-Racism Education: A Critical Reader, edited by G.J.S. Dei and A. Calliste, 141–161. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. ______. 1996. “African Canadians Organizing for Educational Change.” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James, 87–106. Toronto: Our Schools/Ourselves, James Lorimer & Co. Day, Richard. 2000. Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 162 Becoming “Insiders”: Racialized Students in the Academy 163 Dei, George J.S. 2000. “Towards an Anti-Racism Discursive Framework.” In Power, Knowledge and Anti-Racism Education: A Critical Reader, edited by G.J.S. Dei and A. Calliste, 23–40. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Goldberg, David T. 2000. “Raceless States.” Paper presented at the Conference “End Racism Activism for the 21 st Century” (ERA21), Vancouver, November. Hall, James. 1990. “Proceedings of the Conference on Strategies for Improving Access and Retention of Ethno-Specific and Visible Minority Students in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Institutions.” Toronto: Ryerson Polytechnical University. Henry, Frances, and Carol Tator. 1994. “Racism and the University.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 26, no. 3:74–90. James, Carl E. 1995. “Reverse Racism: Students’ Response to Equity Programs.” Journal of Professional Studies 3, no. 1:48–54. ______. 1997. “Contradictory Tensions in the Experiences of African Canadians in a Faculty of Education with an Access Program.” Canadian Journal of Education 22, no. 2:158–174. ______. 1999. Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing. James, Carl E., and Celia Haig-Brown. 2001. “‘Returning the Dues’: Community and the Personal in a University-School Partnership.” Urban Education 36, no. 2:226–255. James, C.E., and J. Mannette. 2000. “Rethinking Access: The Challenge of Living with Difficult Knowledge.” In Power, Knowledge and Anti-Racism Education: A Critical Reader, edited by G.J.S. Dei and A. Calliste, 141–161. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Maclear, Kyo. 1994. “Not in So Many Words: Translating Silence Across ‘Difference.’” Fireweed no. 44–45 (Summer):6–11. Mannette, Joy. 1990. “Cross Cultural Education and the University.” Paper presented at the Conference of the Association of Ombudsman of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AOUCC). Laval University, Quebec City, June. Maurice, Sebastian, and John Frideres. 1999. “Faculty/Staff and Students: Status of Diversity at the University of Calgary.” Unpublished paper. Calgary: University of Calgary. Mohany, C.T. 1993. “On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s.” In Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence, edited by B.W. Thompson and S. Tyagi, 41–65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Monture-Okanee, Patricia. 1995. “Introduction: Surviving the Contradictions: Person Notes on Academia.” In Breaking Anonymity: The Chilly Climate for Women Faculty, edited by The Chilly Climate Collective, 11–28. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 163 164 Access and Equity in the University New York Times. 2000. “Affirmative Action Plan Is Upheld at Michigan: Judge Cites Benefits of Diverse Student Body.” (December 14):A32. Ornstein, Michael. 1996. A 1995 Survey of Graduate Students and Contract Faculty at York University. Toronto: Institute of Social Research, York University. Proudfoot, Marc. 1996. “Access? Sure, But into What?” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James, 251–255. Toronto: Our Schools/ Ourselves, James Lorimer & Co. Razack, Sherene. 1998. Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Schenke, Arlene. 1993. Being “Access”/Doing Change: Confronting Difference in Teacher Education: A Reading of Teacher Candidates Experiences. Toronto: York University. Sivanandan, A. 1990. Communities of Resistance: Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism. London: Verso. “60 Minutes.” 2000. ABC Television, New York (November 12). Walcott, Rinaldo. 1997. Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada. Toronto: Insomniac Press. Ch 08-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 164 Abstract This paper presents an Aboriginal perspective on the Euro-western educational system that Aboriginal children and adult learners have experienced. It is based on data used in my doctoral thesis, as well as more recent data collected from Aboriginal alumni of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto. Aboriginal peoples in Canada have experienced brutal and dehumanizing polices based on Eurocentric ideologies, but Aboriginal peoples continue to look for space that will enable them to participate as Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society. This study found that TYP is one program that encourages and supports the Aboriginal students as they journey to higher levels of Western education. Today I will begin this presentation by introducing myself in the language of the Onyota’a:ka (People of the Standing Stone). Onyota’a:ka is known in the English language as Oneida. Shekoli swa kwe k∧. Ukwehonwe ne i. Onyota’a:ka tsi twa ka tuh ti. Tsyot s∧ nit ne Hotinishonee ne yu kyats. Khale s∧ Ka li wi saks ne tsi kyatuhe’ yu kyats. Eileen Antone ne ah slon ni kek ne yu kyats. A no wal ni wa ke ta lo t∧. Greetings, everyone. I am one of the Original people of North America. I come from Onyota’a:ka. Tsyot s∧ nit is my Longhouse name and Ka li wi saks is my research name, meaning “She Who Gathers Information.” Eileen Antone is my English name. I belong to the Turtle clan of the Oneida nation. Chapter 9 165 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto Eileen M. Antone Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 165 166 Access and Equity in the University It is a great opportunity to bring Native 1 perspective to this access and equity conference. The information I will share with you today is based on my previous thesis research and my work at the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto. For the Aboriginal peoples in Canada, access and equity education is a relatively new phenomenon. For example, I am a recent graduate of the Doctor of Education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. My thesis is called “In Search of Voice: A Collaborative Investigation on Learning Experiences of the Onyota’a:ka.” As we gather and bring our minds together concerning access and equity in education, I want to acknowledge the eagle feather that I have brought to share with you. In our Native communities, the eagle feather is a symbol of love, honour, gratitude, and respect. Moreover, our Elders tell us that when we use the eagle feather, the Creator is honoured in the highest form. Therefore, I raise this eagle feather today for the love, honour, gratitude, and respect that we have for the Creator in bringing us all together to share with each other. During my investigation into the educational process of Aboriginal peoples, I was repeatedly reminded that many of the students who attended the Euro-western schooling system were denied the opportunity to continue using their original languages in their school journey. As language is a principal mechanism that transmits the culture to each generation, transmission of our culture is deeply affected. Many of our people have lost the ability to speak our traditional languages to the extent that very few fluent speakers are available for our young people to emulate. The Onyota’a:ka people who were participants of my thesis study are part of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Onyota’a:ka people now reside in a community located in southwestern Ontario, along the banks of the Thames River in the Township of Delaware, Middlesex County, approximately twenty miles southwest of London, Ontario. The total population is approximately 4,105 with the on-reserve population at about 1,750. The Onyota’a:ka community is governed by an elected council of one chief and twelve councillors, who serve a two-year term. Again I say, “Shekoli swa kwe k∧.” It is critical that I bring you greetings in my traditional language, the language that the Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 166 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 167 Creator gave to my ancestors to pass down to all generations of Onyota’a:ka people. It was because of racist and Eurocentric government policies that I was not taught the language of my people. According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People (1996) and Dickason (1992:165), schools operated by religious missions were introduced in the mid-1600s in the French New World. These schools were started for the specific purpose of indoctrinating Aboriginal peoples into a Christian, European world view, thereby “civilizing” them. Missionaries of various denominations played a role in this process, often supported by the state. By the middle of the nineteenth century, assimilationist education became the norm for the Aboriginal peoples in Canada. According to Francis (1992:201), assimilation policy and education embracing the assimilation view became the tool to “preserve Indians as individuals by destroying them as a people.” One way to destroy the First Nations of Canada was to negate the language they used to communicate with each other. Battiste (1998) calls this “cultural imperialism.” In my own case, the teachings of the Euro-western school system led me to believe that only the language of the dominant culture was valid and acceptable. Many of our parents and grandparents experienced the oppression of these policies. Many believed that it was better for them not to teach their children and grandchildren to speak the beautiful language that carries our cultural values and beliefs. After Confederation in 1867, the Canadian government instituted this oppressive belief system when they chose to eliminate the “Indian problem” by eliminating the Indian way of life. Education and training were the tools employed to rid the Euro-western society of their “Indian problem.” My doctoral thesis, “In Search of Voice: A Collaborative Investigation on Learning Experiences of the Onyota’a:ka,” is based on both personal experience and on a case study of the Oneida nation of the Thames and their experience in the formal Euro-western educational system. My primary data came from the perspectives of Onyota’a:ka people and their personal learning experiences. As an Onyota’a:ka First Nations teacher educated in the conventional Euro-western educational system, I felt there was Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 167 168 Access and Equity in the University something missing after my experience in this system. My training did not feel complete. I knew what was required pertaining to the Western perspective, as this is the basis of my training, but what about the Aboriginal perspective? The imposition of Euro- western education in Aboriginal communities negated the traditional way of education within each Aboriginal nation, including the Onyota’a:ka. During my research, I came across a poem entitled “Education” by Arthur Solomon, an Anishnawbe spiritual teacher (Solomon 1991:79). In this poem Art Solomon refers to “compulsory mis- education” that ruptured the circle of life. He states that the circle has to be repaired by the spiritual rebirth of the Aboriginal peoples. The message of this poem broke the spell of Euro-western concepts that had led me to believe that the Native ways of learning and teaching were insignificant. His assertion that education became “compulsory mis-education” for the Native peoples under colonialism has challenged and empowered me to search for ways that would restore the circle of life and the continuity of learning for all Aboriginal peoples, including myself. The message in this poem rekindled my connection to the Native concept of the sacredness of life, which has sustained the Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years. Release from the binding spell of Euro-western ways has enabled me to lift the Aboriginal world view to a primary position of inclusion and equality in my own life and in my teaching. In order to understand the power of Art Solomon’s words in this poem, it is necessary to understand some of the policies that the Aboriginal peoples experienced. After the War of 1812, European settlers felt that the Native peoples stood in the way of Euro-western progress and settlement. Between 1814 and Confederation, there were many treaties made with the indigenous peoples of British North America. At the same time, public policy toward the Native peoples was being established. Richardson writes: “To put it bluntly, the authorities who formulated these policies were contemptuous of [A]boriginals, and determined that they should not interfere with the process of European settlement” (Richardson 1993:53). Nine years after Canada became a nation, the British colonial laws concerning the Aboriginal peoples were combined to form Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 168 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 169 the 1876 Indian Act. This Act relegated the indigenous peoples of Canada to the status of minors, and treated them as wards of the state (Richardson 1993:50). After the 1885 Metis rebellion, the centralizing tendencies of the federal administration of Indian Affairs increased. This continued until 1951. Dickason states that: “The department assumed more and more control over the lives of Amerindians, until they did not have a free hand even in such personal matters as writing a will. …” (Dickason 1992:319). She elaborates: As the power of the [Indian] [A]gents [people employed by the Department of Indian Affairs to make sure the Indian people followed the rule of the government policy with regard to Indian people in Canada] grew, it became steadily more arbitrary. Their duties accrued until they were expected to direct farming operations; administer relief in times of necessity; inspect schools and health conditions on reserves; ensure that department rules and provisions were complied with; and preside over band council meetings and in effect, direct the political life of the band. (Dickason 1992:319) As Dockstator (1993:131) points out, the Indian Act was created primarily to separate distinctly Aboriginal powers of self- government from the mainstream of Euro-western society. The separate Aboriginal system could exist only in the form permitted by the Indian Act. The second function of the Indian Act was to support the existence of the separate Aboriginal system until all Aboriginal peoples were assimilated into mainstream society. Smith (1993:38) states that Aboriginal peoples were “guinea pigs in a deliberate experiment in social engineering that went disastrously wrong.” He explains that the experiment on social engineering “was a strategy mounted by Church and State to undermine the foundations of the societies that once flourished here ... a way station on the road to [Aboriginals] becoming brown-faced white people.” In the period of early contact, well before the establishment of the Indian Act, the Aboriginal peoples entered into treaties with the Euro-western people on a nation-to-nation basis. During these treaty negotiations, Native peoples realized that, although they were passing on their own cultural ways, it was also necessary Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 169 170 Access and Equity in the University to learn skills that would allow them to coexist with the other society occupying the land of Turtle Island. Dickason states that: When Amerindians had asked for schools during treaty negotiations, they had envisioned them as a means of preparing their children for the new way of life that lay ahead. They had in mind a partnership with whites as they worked out their own adaptations, and saw educational facilities as a right guaranteed by treaty, by which the government had promised to preserve Indian life, values, and Indian Government authority. (Dickason 1992:333) However, the vision of the Native peoples to protect their Aboriginal choice was eventually suppressed by the European world view of power and governing authority (Henderson 1995:250). In the course of this suppression, when the federal government realized that education was the most expensive facet of Indian administration, they decided to turn the education of Native students over to the missionary branches of various churches (Dickason 1992:333). The vehicle used by the churches to carry out the mandate of the government was the residential school. The ideology of residential schooling was segregation. Until the assimilation process was completed, the education of Indian children was to occur in separate schools away from the White population and away from their own people. In these church-run residential schools, the children were removed from their families and communities for long periods of time. Many of the children were forced to lose the cultural norms, values, traditions, and language of their people. At the same time as these residential schools were operating, there were also a number of on-reserve elementary mission day schools in existence. Dickason (1992:334) states of the school system for Aboriginal peoples: “At first, education was not compulsory; however, agents could and did apply pressure on parents, usually in the form of withholding rations, to persuade them to part with their children.” Although the Indian agents did apply pressure on parents to send their children to school, school attendance did not become compulsory until 1894. This is when Hayter Reed, the Indian commissioner from 1888 to1895, amended the Indian Act to enact Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 170 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 171 this decision. Later on, in 1920, Duncan Campbell Scott, deputy superintendent of the Indian Affairs department, again amended the Indian Act to strengthen compulsory school attendance in order to make sure that all Native children between the ages of seven and fifteen attended school. It was in 1920 that Scott told a House of Commons committee: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. ... Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question” (Smith 1993:38). Smith (1993) states that the official national policy at this time was no more Indians (emphasis mine). As well as the year of enforcing compulsory education, 1920 was also the year of compulsory enfranchisement. The latter allowed the government to strip legal Indian status from individuals whom it considered to be no longer living in “the Indian way.” If an Aboriginal person had a well-paying job, that individual was forced to enfranchise. Enfranchised people were given the right to vote, join the army, drink in a public place, pay taxes, and obtain a university degree, while Status Indians were denied all of these Euro-western rights. Although compulsory enfranchisement remained in practice for only two years, it was again reinforced in 1933 until 1951. Compulsory education continued to be enforced throughout the years. Battiste states that: [W]hen another culture is imposed upon children, when another language is imposed upon them, when the values and cultural mores of a particular group of people are imposed upon another culture, then that is a process of what I call cognitive imperialism and we have been subjected to this cognitive imperialism from the very time formal schooling began among our people. (Battiste 1992:232). She explains that: [I]mperialism is not just language based. It’s just not taking a language and imposing another language on people. It’s changing a whole way in which people see things. The language is built around relationships and the relationships of people to each other are more important than anything else. The social relationships are the Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 171 172 Access and Equity in the University foundation of the community. ... When we begin to take that language away from the people, [and] we replace it with this other language called English, we tear the people away from the very rudiments of that language in terms of the relationships of people to each other, the relationship to the universe, their relationships to the animals and the plants. We take away their interconnectedness and we leave them empty, lost and alone. (Battiste 1992:243) During my thesis journey, I found (and I was, in a sense, not surprised) that the Euro-western schooling system failed to meet the needs of the Aboriginal peoples. It also failed in its attempt to get rid of the non-Aboriginals’ “Indian Problem.” However, the Aboriginal peoples have survived the colonization process. Battiste (1998:16) states: “In Canada the old colonial order and its preoccupation with assimilation of Aboriginal peoples to British ways has been replaced by a new constitutional order that respects Aboriginal rights.” She goes on to state that: According to Queen v. Cote (1996:48), the Supreme Court of Canada is refusing to protect the historical idiosyncrasies of Canadian colonialism and its injustices, and is actively seeking to achieve the noble constitutional goal of preserving the integral and defining features of distinctive Aboriginal societies. (Battiste 1998:16) My original study regarding Aboriginal education was concerned primarily with the elementary and secondary experiences of the participants from a rural community. Based on personal observations and interviews with Onyota’a:ka community members, I concluded that the silencing of Aboriginal voices was a result of the Euro-western school experience. This silencing was manifested in the suppression of the Onyota’a:ka language; the invalidation of the traditional cultural ways; the transformation of the mind through formal education; the negation of traditional Aboriginal education; the undermining of traditional Aboriginal knowledge and values; and the lack of positive identity development. In my research, I found that language and culture are intertwined and are very important to the Onyota’a:ka people. Another finding was that a strong Native identity is imperative Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 172 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 173 in order to sustain a balance between Native society and the mainstream society (Antone 1997:195). This present study pertains to Aboriginal education 2 at the postsecondary level, particularly the education of the students who have accessed the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto. The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto was started thirty years ago as a special access program for adults from the Black community of Toronto who did not have the formal educational background to qualify for university entrance. Since then, this program has developed to include students from the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, as well as students from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. Many of the students are from the low-income working class, and there are also many single mothers. This access program is a one-year, full-time course of studies leading to admission in an Arts and Science degree program. The Transitional Year Programme consists of one full course and eight half-courses. The full course is an option course selected by the students from a number of introductory courses offered by the Faculty of Arts and Science. One half-course is a special TYP section offered by the Department of Philosophy. The other seven half- courses have been specifically developed for TYP students. They are Composition I and II; Stories and Legends in Literature; Literature and Culture; Introduction to University Studies; Quantitative Reasoning; and Reasoning in the Sciences. As well as the regular classes, students attend seminar discussions and tutorials designed to provide thorough instruction in the subject matter. Introduction to library research skills and effective study skills are also part of the students’ instruction. The expectation is also that students have or will develop competence in computer skills, primarily in word processing. My initial involvement with this program began in July 1999 as a faculty member in a full-time, tenure-stream assistant professor position. In this position, I became the faculty adviser to the students taking the Arts and Science Faculty’s Aboriginal studies course. I met each student in the group on a weekly basis to discuss and work on any problems that may have arisen throughout the week. We also met once a week, as a group, to Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 173 174 Access and Equity in the University review the content of the Aboriginal studies course. At the request of the Aboriginal students, our weekly group meeting began with a sage smudge and an opening prayer. The sage was our medicine of choice as it includes both men and women. Women’s sage is one of the scared medicines that can be used by all people at any time. The Elders tell us that sage prepares people for ceremonies and teachings, for releasing what is troubling the mind, and for removing negative energy. The teaching in Aboriginal society is that if a woman is in her moontime (menstrual cycle), she is not to take part in the use of sacred medicines. According to the teachings, the moontime is a time of power, second only to the ability of the Great Spirit to give life. That is how strong the power is. Using the sage enabled all the students to participate in the opening ceremony of each class. It was also my pleasure to be able to teach the Literature and Culture course. The literature for this class came from a variety of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers. This class gave us the opportunity to do a critical study of different forms of literature, with the objective of enhancing understanding of the purpose and value of literature in society. The focus was on the connections of the works studied to the cultures and societies from which they emerge. This diversity gave us a view of the many different issues and problems encountered by people of various cultural groups. As my past involved a return journey to higher levels of the educational system, I was interested in knowing whether the barriers to education for Aboriginal peoples had changed. As the faculty of TYP is committed to “Making Excellence Accessible” to a diversity of students, I felt that this would be an excellent opportunity to work with Aboriginal students in relation to Aboriginal education at the postsecondary level. I began a study called “Transition of Aboriginal Students to Academic Success.” At this time, I will give a brief initial summary of my data. Twenty-two Aboriginal alumni volunteered to participate in this study: fifteen women and seven men. The age of the participants ranged from twenty-five years to fifty-seven years old. The TYP alumni in the study graduated from TYP between 1983 and 2000. All of the participants, except for three, started and attended urban schools. Six completed a secondary school Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 174 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 175 diploma, and sixteen left the secondary system before they finished the course requirements. In analyzing the data, I concluded that many of these Aboriginal students had the same kinds of experiences as the participants in the earlier study I worked on. These students had no exposure to their traditional languages or culture in the school system. It has been through intense studying of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada that I have learned that the school systems had been designed to systematically exclude the Aboriginal educational context of First Nations students. Hampton (1995:37) states: “Western education is hostile in its structure, its curriculum, its context, and its personnel.” One student in the TYP study who attended a Catholic school commented on her school experience, “Everybody was supposed to be the same.” This statement is the result of education based on a system that was not inclusive of Aboriginal people. Hesch (1995) relates that in addition to racism, there are four underlying ideologies that are aspects of this exclusion. The first ideology about which he talks is possessive individualism. Students are taught to think only of themselves as individuals, as consumers, without any necessary relation to neighbours and extended families. The second ideology that Hesch (1995) refers to is the Tyler rationale. The fundamental organization and culture of most classrooms are based on this rationale and is ideal for individual instruction, not collective holistic learning. The desks are placed in straight rows so the only interaction is with the teacher at the front. There is a lot of structure; everything is organized, planned, and sequenced. Giroux (1988:37) explains that the “events in the classroom are governed by a rigid time schedule imposed by a system of bells and reinforced by cues from teachers while the class is in session.” This kind of ideology was contrary to the circle teachings of the Aboriginal peoples where everything has a time and purpose. The third ideology underlying the Euro-western school system, according to Hesch, is the canonical curriculum. This philosophy is based on governments’ historical practice of excluding people’s lived cultures from the school curricula (Hesch 1995:182). Hesch (1995) explains that the canon refers to those “Great Books” by European writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer, or it refers Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 175 176 Access and Equity in the University to the histories of the Euro-western wars, kings, and queens. These topics are considered to be worthwhile and safe curriculum content. This hegemonic curriculum involves hierarchically organized bodies of academic knowledge appropriated for the purposes of individual competition. This has the effect of marginalizing other kinds of knowledge (Connell et al. 1982:120). The basis of Aboriginal epistemology was co-operation. One participant from my first study stated, “The education I experienced tried to make me somebody else. This was a somebody else education.” Meritocracy, as per Hesch’s concept, assures that only the “best and brightest” reap the rewards of schooling. According to Hesch (1995:182): “The primary requirements for success are individual effort and intelligence. The purpose of schools is to distribute knowledge to those who are able to use it most effectively so that they can contribute to society.” The ideology of these four underlying concepts that form the basis of the Euro-western curriculum makes learning a difficult process for Native students as there is no place for them in this type of curriculum. A number of Native students do not realize that it is racism and the four Eurocentric underlying principles of the curriculum that make them feel inferior regarding their competence to learn. Although the Aboriginal peoples in Canada have experienced some of the most brutal policies based on Eurocentric ideologies, they continue to look for space that will provide tools enabling them to participate as Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society. For a few who continue this search, the TYP program has become a place where, for the most part, they can have a fairly positive academic experience. Most of the students I interviewed indicated that the TYP program helped them to get to know the Euro- western university atmosphere. Attendance in this program enabled them to dispel their sense of mystery concerning the university. For the most part, they felt the faculty with whom they had to deal was sensitive to Native issues. There were a number of positive comments stating that their experience in the TYP program gave students a sense of confidence that they could accomplish what they set out to do. Many commented on the support and encouragement they received from the faculty Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 176 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 177 regarding academic and financial concerns. They were also impressed with the way their peers supported each other through group work. Group work enabled the Aboriginal students to use co-operation, which is a fundamental principle of the Aboriginal world view. Although there were many positive comments concerning the TYP program, there were also various areas of the program that had caused some concern for the students throughout the years. An area of unease that was mentioned several times was the social tension that arose because of cultural differences in communication among the diverse students. There was also misunderstanding in the dialogical relationship between Aboriginal students and instructors. In adult learner situations, it is necessary to relate as equals, and to recognize that students come with experience and knowledge, and that when they are asked to perform in the classroom, they may not just regurgitate what they have been told. For example, one of the students described an incident that took place in the classroom. “I started giving a teaching and [the teacher] gets up and yells angrily, ‘You’re wrong. The teaching is the way I taught you on the board.’” The Elders tell us to be respectful of what people tell us, and to listen and take what you need. They also tell us that there is not just one way to see or do something. When you offer a teaching, it needs respect. Several students from the early years of the program also mentioned that they were bothered by the fact that there were no Aboriginal professors or counsellors at TYP when they attended this facility. The TYP has already corrected this omission by having hired me for the position of instructor/faculty adviser and Lee Maracle, an Aboriginal writer, as part-time instructor/mentor. Others regretted that they were unable to bring themselves to use the resources available to them. Although the program is very supportive and encouraging to the students while they are at TYP, several of the students also mentioned that when they became lost in their first year in their Arts and Science programs, they wanted to turn to TYP faculty for help, but the faculty members were so busy with the next group. There has already been a response to this problem. We now have in place three faculty advisers, who are each assigned to several students, to assist them in finding their way around Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 177 178 Access and Equity in the University their new colleges and the services offered there. These faculty members also offer the students assistance with their academic work. The conclusion to this summary of my research is that the TYP program is an excellent stepping stone for the Aboriginal students to higher levels of education. The TYP program gives support and encouragement to the Aboriginal students as they struggle to incorporate their experience and knowledge into the academic expectations of the university milieu. In Ukwehuwe tradition, we begin and end with thanksgiving. In closing, I give thanks to Creator for all the medicines that grow upon Mother Earth, for the waters that give life to all living things on the earth for the birds and the animals, for the wind and the rains, for the sun, the moon, the stars, and the four helpers of the Creator. We gather our minds together into one, and raise the eagle feather to the Creator and say Yaw∧ko. Meegwetch. Thank you. Notes 1. “Native” is used interchangeably with “Aboriginal” where “Aboriginal” is used as an inclusive term to include all Aboriginal peoples in North America, including Status and non-Status Indians, Metis, and Inuit. The collective name for the original people of North America has gone through several modifications with the changing political climate. As an individual, I have experienced these changes and am quite comfortable using the word “Native” to talk about my work and all my relatives. I also use the term “First Nations” interchangeably with “Native” and “Aboriginal.” The term “Indian” is legal terminology used in legislation such as the Indian Act, which governs the First Nations people of Canada. The word “Indian” will be used in direct quotes. 2. The interviews for this study were conducted in collaboration with Kimberly A. Fraser, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto as part of a larger TYP alumni study. References Antone, Eileen M. 1997. “In Search of a Voice: A Collaborative Investigation on Learning Experiences of the Onyota’a:ka.” Doctoral thesis, OISE/University of Toronto. Battiste, M. 1992. Presentation made to the Royal Commission at Eskasoni, Nova Scotia, June 7. Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 178 Aboriginal Students in the Transitional Year Programme 179 _____. 1998. “Enabling the Autumn Seed: Toward a Decolonized Approach to Aboriginal Knowledge, Language, and Education.” Canadian Journal of Native Education 22(1):16. Connell, R.W., et al. 1982. Making the Difference: Schools, Families, and Social Division. Boston: Allen and Unwin. Dickason, O.P. 1992. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding People from Earliest Times. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Dockstator, M.S. 1993. Towards an Understanding of Aboriginal Self-government: A Proposed Theoretical Model and Illustrative Factual Analysis. Thesis. North York: York University. Francis, D. 1992. The Imaginary Indian. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. Giroux, H.A. 1988. Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. Grangy, MA: Bergin and Garvey. Hampton, E. 1995. “Toward a Redefinition of Indian Education.” In First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds, edited by Marie Battiste and Jean Barman. Vancouver: UBC Press. Henderson, J.Y. 1995. “Treaties and Indian Education.” In First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds, edited by Marie Battiste and Jean Barman. Vancouver: UBC Press. Hesche, R. 1995. “Teacher Education and Aboriginal Opposition.” In First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds, edited by Marie Battiste and Jean Barman, 179–207. Vancouver: UBC Press. Richardson, B. 1993. People of Terra Nullius. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 1997. For Seven Generations: An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Ottawa: Libraxus. Smith, D. 1993. The Seventh Fire: The Struggle for Aboriginal Government. Toronto: Key Porter Books Ltd. Solomon, A. 1990. “Education.” In Songs for the People: Teaching on the Natural Way, edited by M. Posluns. Toronto: NC Press Limited. Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 179 Ch 09-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 180 Abstract Based on my personal experience as a TYP alumni and U of T graduate student, as well as on interviews conducted with TYP students, I propose that a successful transition to university for non-traditional students requires more than just an upgrading of academic skills. It requires a support system to facilitate the internalization of the academy’s rules, norms, and values. The TYP, in its role as students’ first introduction to the university community, acts as a secure base for its members, enabling a process of socialization, psychological reorganization, and skill development. Students at TYP acquire access to academic role models that, over the course of the TYP year, are internalized and transformed into a sense of academic self-efficacy. This process enables students to begin to develop an empowered awareness of their own potential, as well as of the offerings available to them through their new sense of membership within the academic community. This process is hypothesized to continue throughout the individual’s academic career, such that there are socialization processes, changes in self-concept, and increased awareness of possibilities as new academic milestones are confronted. Critical for the continued success of non-traditional students beyond the transitional year is ongoing, though differential, access to academic role models, and instrumental and social support. This model is not proposed to be reciprocal for students who prematurely drop out (versus consciously chosen departures) of their educational Chapter 10 181 From Outsider to Insider: Toward a Model of Transition for Non-traditional University Students Carolyn Stallberg-White Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 181 182 Access and Equity in the University program; rather, lack of financial, child care, and other instrumental resources are posited to account for such thwarted transitions. It is a wonderful pleasure and my privilege to speak to you about the important topic of how to help individuals succeed in their non-traditional transition into university. The ideas I am about to share are based on my own experience as a non-traditional TYP student, on my ongoing experience as a graduate student at OISE/University of Toronto, as well as on the rich insights generously provided by TYP students during a research project I was involved in with the help of Nicole Sommersell, which was spearheaded by Professors David Livingstone and George Dei, and by TYP’s director, Rona Abramovitch, and supported by TYP staff and faculty. This project investigated informal learning in TYP for the national New Approaches to Life-Long Learning (NALL) research project for which the data was collected between 1998–2000. However, I am about to take great liberties with the data from this study by using some of it to support my own contentions about what is needed to help individuals transition from “outsider” to “insider” within the university. To do so, I will address four main points: 1. Transitioning into university for non-traditional students requires more than just academic upgrading. 2. Non-traditional students have a knowledge base that should be acknowledged, respected, and utilized within the academy. 3. A successful transitioning program works because it supports students, socializes them into the university milieu, while fostering academic and personal development. 4. Transitioning does not end when the TYP year is over. Regarding the first point, typically the completion of high school with the required courses, at the required grades, leads to a diploma and qualifies a student for applying for admission to university. An individual may have many other positive attributes, of course, but without the required academic credentials, the gates to the university are closed. As we know, not all people who Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 182 From Outsider to Insider 183 could benefit from university have the requisite academic requirements to apply. Here at the University of Toronto, fortunately, there are opportunities for these “non-traditional” students to upgrade academically. Again, if these students score sufficiently high grades, they can qualify for admission to a degree program. So far, getting into university seems relatively straightforward: those who have academic prerequisites have access to university and those who do not, need to get them. But as we know, the process of accessing and completing a university education is much more complex than whether or not you have taken a particular set of courses and received sufficient grades. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, to propose a solution (i.e., academic upgrading) at the same level of the problem (i.e., lack academic credentials) is wholly inadequate. The underlying factors, or what leads to a successful academic credential, are much more complex than a numeric index—like the number of courses passed or the grades received—can reveal. There are students who cannot afford child care or whose child keeps them awake before the final exam; who are harassed or discriminated against because of their skin colour, accent, or ethnicity; who, upon entering a classroom, replay the sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of a school vice-principal. There are students who recall the failure of earlier school days; who wrestle with a learning disability or chronic illness; and who have experienced incarceration, drug/alcohol abuse. Some live in poverty, in a noisy, crowded home, waiting with baited breath for their next OSAP cheque; some are individuals who may experience isolation, reduced self-esteem, lack of confidence, and financial or other stress in addition to academic upgrading. All such students need support, confidence boosting, acceptance, role models, and a place to belong so they can fulfil the dreams that may have been stolen from them. The Transitional Year Programme has always recognized that while academic survival skills are essential for its students to acquire, this is best done within a supportive, caring environment that honours their experiences and background. A founding faculty member of TYP, Keren Brathwaite, told Nicole, who was working in the NALL project, that TYP provides students who have acquired vast stores of informal knowledge an opportunity to Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 183 184 Access and Equity in the University apply and expand that knowledge within an academic setting. Another TYP staff member repeated the following analogy, which was felt to represent TYP’s philosophy. “Picture a little circle inside of a large one. The little one represents ‘school’ knowledge, while the larger one is life experiences and all other types of knowledge. The TYP aims to tap into the students’ ‘large circle’ and tie it into academia as much as possible” (NALL/TYP interview). As a result of the NALL research project, we learned that 90 per cent of TYP students surveyed believed that their TYP instructors did indeed value students’ informal learning (IL) compared with the 60 per cent of non-TYP students who believed that their U of T professors valued IL. Most respondents felt that IL was part of the TYP milieu: “I don’t think they ever really let us forget,” reported one student, “that we all came in [t]here with something. I can’t pinpoint it or who helped exactly, but at times when I thought I wasn’t university material they reminded me that with all of the experience I had raising kids and with other life experience that I could do it. It was probably part of the orientation speech and carried all the way through.” While the students continued their studies at U of T, the value placed on non-traditional ways of knowing appeared to depend on a particular professor or teaching assistant (TA). Thus, in spite of TYP’s attempts to validate their students’ wide knowledge base, the rest of the university community may not support or may even penalize students for it. The consequences of sharing these “different ways of knowing” can be so extreme as to threaten a student’s ability to get the grade required for post-TYP admission into U of T’s degree programs. For example, a TYP faculty member recounted when “A student wrote an essay on agriculture in the Caribbean, using some of her own experiences as reference. She got a D minus because the TA thought she was making it up. Instead of helping her or inquiring about where the information came from and encouraging her to validate it with written sources, they choose not to believe her at all. … The weaknesses of our students [linguistic, academic] and ignorance on the part of the TA both contributed to this situation” (NALL/TYP interview with TYP staff). Another example of failure to accept different ways of knowing was provided by another faculty member, who recalled Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 184 From Outsider to Insider 185 a situation when a U of T professor assigned a history paper on the topic of whether the Europeans’ damage to the First Nations people was intentional or not. The TYP instructor told us that From helping students with this topic, I learned about the handing out of disease-ridden blankets from the Europeans to the First Nations people. This was told to the student through [500-year-old] oral history in stories and songs. There was no documentation to be found on the subject. I inquired about citing such information in their papers to a friend in the History department who said the students should say they felt it was factual (cite the stories), but the professor was still somewhat skeptical. He thought the student was expressing feelings [as] opposed to legitimate historical facts. I later spoke with [a colleague] who ‘clued me in’ on the truth of widespread distribution of such blankets. (NALL/TYP interview with TYP faculty) So clearly, there is more work to be done within the academic community to legitimize non-traditional students’ informally learned knowledge base and to encourage its reproduction. Thus, another important function of TYP is to help non- traditional students internalize the academy’s rules, norms, and values, and in some ways to try to depersonalize it. Individuals typically come to TYP without having had access to academic role models. They are often the first in their families to go to university and, as a result, do not have access to the kind of “inside” informal knowledge of the educational process that many traditional students do, which combines with their lack of formal academic training to make non-traditional students feel insecure, anxious, and out-of-place. Doubts and questions of confidence are common concerns for many university students, but for those from a traditional background, they can be countered with reassurance from parents, siblings, or friends who recount their own feelings and experiences with university. Such students are reminded of their academic preparation and successful admission by the university selection committee. For non-traditional students, these insights and reassurances have to be found in other places for they are not a part of their family traditions. The TYP tries to respond to these non-academic factors, and gives students confidence and the opportunity to prove that they Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 185 186 Access and Equity in the University can perform academically. “When I began [in] TYP,” one student told me, “I was uncertain about what I would do after. I was waiting to see how things would go. I didn’t really know if people would like it, or if I’d do well. I wasn’t 100 per cent sure if I’d be going to university. It was more of a trial for me. Well, having left school in Grade 10, and gone through the years since then [as] a high school dropout, would you not feel a little insecure or somehow inferior to people who had that [university] education? [As a result of TYP, I’ll be] going through first year. [I’m] starting to feel that I can do it, that anyone can do it if they want to.” Another student said “I was an outsider if I were to go straight into university. Now I’m an insider trying to fit into university. I would have been confused about how it functions as a system, how to choose courses, what prof’s good. For example, now I’m taking a B.Sc. as a result of my TYP experience rather than a B.A. because I know [I perform better on] in-class tests, multiple choice exams, etc., rather than essays.” While only 40 per cent of TYP students surveyed had academic role models at home, 90 per cent said that they had access to academic role models at TYP, with 70 per cent also finding role models within the rest of the U of T. All of the students said they participated in formal academic tutorials within TYP, and 90 per cent did so within the U of T. However, only 40 per cent of students sought out their U of T professors or tutors outside of class, while 90 per cent did so within TYP. Informal study groups were formed with TYP students for 90 per cent of those surveyed, while 10 per cent formed groups with their non-TYP peers. Also, students were significantly more likely to feel connected at TYP than at the U of T, whether it be with fellow students (90 per cent versus 40 per cent), faculty advisers (100 per cent versus 40 per cent), tutors (100 per cent versus 60 per cent), or instructors (100 per cent versus 40 per cent). Students reported that TYP faculty encouraged them to approach them at any time to discuss formal and informal concerns. Students felt cared for and supported both in and outside TYP’s office/classroom hours. One student summed it up by saying, “I can’t even imagine this process without that experience. Being a student, going through that whole re-entry thing, I needed to do so in a safe, secure way. Had I just jumped right into it, I never would have survived. There’s just really strong Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 186 From Outsider to Insider 187 roots [at TYP].” As a result of experiences like this, 90 per cent of students planned to stay in contact with TYP during their university years, whether to access continued tutorial assistance and computer resources or to participate in TYP’s very popular pizza lunches. Most notably, each student expressed a desire to stay in touch in order to continue the special relationships formed at TYP. Conclusion I began this presentation by telling you that I would focus on the important topic of helping non-traditional students transition into university, but I have not yet shared with you why I think this is a truly important topic. There have been many examples of the positive and powerful directions that TYP alumni have embraced; many people, causes, and lives have improved as a result of their non-traditional opportunity to learn and develop. We need to foster these different voices, these non-traditional minds, because, returning again to Einstein’s observation, the educated, powerful voices of the past that have led our society through some very precarious social, economic, and environmental situations are not the voices that are so urgently needed now to cope with society’s ills and to bring about a brighter future. The TYP and programs like it have a critical role to play in the development of human potential, as do we all. But students continue to face challenges after they leave TYP, and the university should increase its mandate to acknowledge this fact. It is not sufficient for us to say to the non-traditional student “Your academic upgrading is completed. Therefore, what is required for success in university is now within you and it is solely up to you whether or not you succeed.” The university still loses too many of its TYP alumni through premature departures or dropping out, primarily due to the economic and social realities of being a non-traditional adult student. I would like to end my presentation with a quotation by the writer George Eliot, who said that, “It is never too late to become what you might have been.” And TYP recognizes that we can’t do that alone. Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 187 Ch 10-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 188 In this paper I want to address issues of funding minority students in graduate studies in Canada. Specifically, I want to take as my problematic the attainment of graduate assistantships among minority graduate students. My entry point into this discussion follows from the graduate and teaching assistant strike at the University of Toronto in the early part of 2000. For the most part, the contentions that led to the strike centred on pay equity and increased access to additional appointments for graduate students. The concerns about pay equity resulted from the discrepancy between the income of graduate students at the University of Toronto compared to other universities in Ontario whose graduates earn higher wages and receive more benefits. For most minority students, however, the major issue remains that of attaining graduate assistantships in the first place. It has been established that one of the hallmarks of a great university is its contribution to original research. In this regard, the quality of its graduate programs is instrumental in the pursuit of academic excellence (Task Force on Graduate Student Financial Support 2000). This point is especially emphasized at the University of Toronto in its drive to attract “the brightest and the best” graduate students who will rise to its academic challenge. However, the university has not met its obligation in supporting all graduate students. Its neglect is especially noticeable at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Every year at OISE/UT, 800 graduate Chapter 11 189 Minority Graduate Students and Funding: What Do We Know? Roslyn Thomas-Long Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 189 190 Access and Equity in the University students vie for only 181 available graduate assistant positions, which leads one to ask where does this leave the unlucky majority? Graduate assistantships are very important and play a pivotal role in the developmental needs of graduate students. They provide not only training for graduate students, but also experience in discipline-based pedagogy. Likewise, graduate assistantships are one of the primary means of socializing graduate students in the culture of research (Simpson and Smith 1998:86). Minority students tend to have more difficulty than other graduates in securing graduate assistantships. In this sense, the lack of institutional support in terms of provision and allocation of graduate assistantships puts minority students at an enormous disadvantage when they apply for future jobs in academia. As a minority graduate student at OISE/UT, I am particularly interested in the effects of inadequate allocation of graduate assistantships on this student population. The enormous discrepancy between available funds and students’ needs have serious consequences for minority graduate students. The lack of graduate assistantships affects students psychologically, economically, and academically. Psychologically, lack of funds means that one’s ability to concentrate is impaired in the face of financial constraints. Economically, it means that students’ survival in their program is threatened or they take longer to complete their programs or drop out entirely. Academically, students are unable to take advantage of career development opportunities such as presenting their work at conferences and utilizing mentorship opportunities from professors. Consequently, the lack of graduate assistantships detrimentally affects the quality of students’ academic experiences and future career prospects. Without institutional support, minority graduate students face a constant struggle for survival. This paper provides an analysis of the nature of funding in a graduate faculty through the use of experiential knowledge and narratives of minority graduate students. The paper also endeavours to explore change possibilities for making funding more accessible and equitable for all students. Perceptions of Representation Using the graduate assistants strike at OISE/UT in 2000 as my case in point, I was amazed at the extent to which few minority Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 190 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 191 students held graduate and teaching assistantships. For example, I attended a popular class on indigenous knowledges at OISE/ UT 2000 that consisted of predominantly (about twenty-two) minority graduate students. Of that total, only two students held assistantship positions. The fact that these students are not represented in the attainment of graduate assistantships speaks to the degree to which minority students are being overlooked in universities. Minority graduate students strongly believe that inequities are easily apparent when one compares departments, such as Sociology in Education and Equity Studies (SESE) to other departments. In comparison to its counterparts, SESE employs more minority graduate students as graduate assistants, but it is also one of the few departments in the university to employ more minority faculty members. Typically, minority students are drawn to this department because it offers courses that support their area of interest, as well as the possibility for mentoring relationships with minority scholars. On the other hand, this department is severely underfunded since most graduate students do not hold any kind of assistantships. For many, it draws attention to what knowledge is valued and privileged in the academy and who are the gatekeepers of such knowledge. If the university is in the business of knowledge production, the fact that these departments are underfunded speaks to their “marginalized” status within the university as a whole. The university, like the state, responds in various ways to minority struggles (whether it crushes, appeases, or co-opts them) in accordance with the group’s economic, political, and social power (Calliste 2000:145). Since minorities on the whole have less economic and political power within academia, they are not in a strong position to navigate their graduate school career in the same manner as non-minority students. The dominant group may utilize various processes of social closure that consolidate their position. Social closure processes include gatekeeping and sponsorship mechanisms, and the application of rules, including seniority rules, and the construction and maintenance of barriers, which make it very difficult for “outsiders” to maximize their potential and to be very productive (Calliste 2000:145). For some, gaining employment to these prestigious positions is seen as elusive. Many have opted entirely out of the application process, Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 191 192 Access and Equity in the University which they view as a waste of their time. In most cases, minority students are able to secure funding only in the upper years (usually the third year) of their Ph.D program (personal communication with minority female student 2000). One of the lucky minority students who obtained a graduate assistantship explains that she is one of the few among her colleagues who hold a graduate assistantship and although she feels privileged, she also feels guilty about it. She views the process as inherently exclusionary, starting with the application process. For instance, Ph.D students are favoured as well as those who hold a teaching certificate to work as teaching assistants in the teacher education program. She feels that even if minority students attain graduate assistantships, they are not always viewed as legitimate because they constantly have to prove their suitability for the position. “One must be a member of a powerful and privileged group or at least be perceived as having ‘personal suitability,’ being able to ‘fit in’ at the institution to help maintain the status quo” (Calliste 2000:146). According to Breton (1979:283) as quoted in Calliste (2000): One’s competitors for scarce resources are not simply other individuals; they are “Outsiders,” members of another collectivity. What counts in “taking advantage of opportunities” is not so much individual skills ... as the effectiveness of the social organization for the control of (work) domains and of access to them developed by the group with which one is affiliated. Discrimination in universities, as in other organizations, is partly the result of power struggles and unequal power relations. In capitalist, racialized, and gendered societies such as Canada, racism, sexism, and classism interact and compound oppression (Calliste 2000:146). So although minority students might receive some degree of departmental support in terms of their research interests, they are penalized through inadequate funding. Making the case for greater representation of minority graduate assistants is problematic for some students. They are quick to point out that minority students are not the only ones who are feeling the effects of underfunding. While this might be true, generally minority students bear the brunt of fiscal constraints. When it comes down to the matter of who gets Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 192 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 193 employed, overwhelmingly non-minority students dominate the graduate (and teaching) assistant population. There is the perception among the dominant group that since racialized minority groups are “well represented” in this faculty, the case for more equity initiatives is not a priority. In one meeting on equity initiatives at the university, a male White student was overly concerned about the “backlash of reverse discrimination” and the resulting effects of “mediocrity” if equitable measures were implemented. So there is the perception that if institutional policies advocate equity in hiring practices, the result will be the hiring of less capable employees. But one must first question this student’s meaning of “well-represented” or “mediocrity.” This remark is obviously motivated by the need to protect his privilege, and so by equating equity with mediocrity, it absolves the dominant group’s complicity in this process of selection. It is striking that OISE/UT has one of the largest populations of minority students on the University of Toronto campus. However, across departments, these students are conspicuously absent as graduate assistants. One student remarked on the fact that OISE/UT’s large minority population only adds to their devaluation and marginalization within the university (personal communication 2000). Like most educational institutions, OISE/ UT has taken certain measures to produce a written policy to promote equity and access in its hiring practices. Westmoreland- Traore (1999:52) notes that with few exceptions, most educational institutions have policies and offices responsible for multiculturalism, educational equity, or anti-racism; in practice, however, there is a growing gap between the policy and the practice. For instance, there is a lack of data on the minority student population and there is no data on the allocation of graduate assistantships. Without such data, it is very difficult to implement policies based on which department is experiencing a shortage or where more minority students can be allocated. One of the difficulties in adequately addressing issues of under- representation, however, is that the traditional discourse on equality in the academy is premised on classical liberalism. In this framework, rights and opportunities may not be assigned by ascribed personal or group characteristics such as race, sex, religion, or physical ability. Instead, such opportunities are to be Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 193 194 Access and Equity in the University distributed by individual merit and personal accomplishment. What is discounted in this framework is the way in which the hidden curriculum (such as the climate and tone of the campus/ department, recruitment materials, and processes) excludes minorities from being recruited into these positions (Calliste 2000:149). Those who use the liberal framework tend to rely on formal equality because it is embedded in the administrative and legal processes, which are viewed as neutral, objective, and merely common sense. In this scenario, these processes have come to be viewed as natural. Under such formal terms, classical libertarians believe that the role of the university is to ensure equality of opportunity. In order for one to claim discrimination or under- representation, it must be shown to be direct and intentional. Furthermore, they postulate that under-representation does not constitute discrimination and that concerns about under- representation build non-merit criteria into academic decisions (Prentice 2000:199), echoing the concerns of my colleagues. This reasoning has the effect of “blaming the victim” and attributing minorities’ absence to their lack of personal achievement and inadequacies. The use of naturalization of the status quo permits those who critique the discourse regarding under-representation to avoid the important reality of how power has been, and currently is, distributed. The view that individuals are inextricably raced, sexed, classed, and otherwise marked by social divisions are conveniently ignored or overlooked. Feminists (Smith 1987) and anti-racist theorists (Dei 1996), on the other hand, point out that a more fruitful analysis should start from the position of individuals’ actual inequities and the structural unequal material conditions that construct and constrain the marginalized (Prentice 2000:198). Under this framework, if we were to examine the structural and social processes (in funding mechanisms), then we can arrive at a fuller understanding of how policies work to undermine minorities. This substantive equality argument is seen as particularistic and non-universal by their opponents whose perception of equity initiatives is viewed in terms of representing special interests and therefore contrary to the public good (Prentice 2000:198–199). Therefore when racial minorities try to explain their subordination in structural terms, they are perceived as antagonistic to the academic enterprise. Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 194 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 195 Believing that the system is neutral, critics reinterpret their complaints as being about the demolition of postsecondary institutions (Prentice 2000). Equity seekers are seen as serious threats to the main business of the university and to how things have always been done. Quite rightly, however, equity campaigns are needed to highlight the exclusive nature of academia. The attempt to build an inclusive university challenges the academy’s everyday practices, from textbooks to hiring practices (Smith 1987). What we cannot ignore is that institutional practices and policies that may be seen as neutral and natural have adverse effects on minority bodies, if we were to employ the human rights assumption that discrimination can exist without intent and that differential treatment can occur without conscious design (Prentice 2000:199). It is important to note that these two discourses on equality are not symmetrical or socially valued equally (Prentice 2000:200). It is essential that we utilize the principle of actual inequality as our starting point in addressing issues of representation and inclusion in the university, for otherwise we risk adopting dominant frames of references and analyses in which the minority subject becomes invisible. In continuing to ignore the problem, we run the risk of reproducing exclusionary practices that are seen as natural and, therefore, no substantial structural changes will be realized. Eventually, the university will continue its governance as though it is “business as usual.” We need to take into account the fact that discrimination may be direct and intentional as well as indirect, impersonal, and unintentional. Financial Support Discourse The discourse on minority graduate students’ financial support is quite sparse. Empirical research on this subject is virtually non- existent. In studies where funding issues are examined, they tend to utilize an economic investment model focusing on financial allocation to various departments. These studies employ a macro– approach, which does not discuss social processes. Needless to say, they do not account for student voices, those whom the policies will ultimately affect on a micro level. So what do we know about minority graduate funding? This is the challenge of this paper. Speaking for myself and most of my colleagues, the vast majority of the minority graduate student population exists Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 195 196 Access and Equity in the University on student loans and, in the case of international students, on family support. Many work outside the academy in order to support themselves and their families. Working outside academia has serious consequences for academic and professional reasons. It limits students’ ability to participate in academic life, not to mention the fact that lack of academic experience such as teaching and research assistantships is a preclusion to an academic career. In fact, the lack of funding is one of the primary reasons why students take far more than the required four years to complete their Ph.D. In the case of international students, they exist on the scholarships from their home countries, which do not adequately account for major living expenses such as rent, food, and clothing. Many Canadian universities such as the University of Western Ontario and the University of Alberta offer international students scholarships and jobs as part of their academic experience. However, the University of Toronto, one of the largest and richest universities in Canada, offers no such incentives. This has the effect of making the University of Toronto a less attractive destination for international and local graduate recruits. Most minority graduate students feel that little will change in the university’s lack of financial support (Personal communication 2000). Since the university has enough funds to finance itself, tuition fees from international students are not a financial priority. Likewise, there are many Canadian students who are eager to attend this prestigious “Harvard of the North” institution. Since demand outweighs supply, minority graduate students feel that administrators have become complacent about the issues of their financial support. The financial dilemma places students in a contradictory position within the institution. On the one hand, they feel shortchanged and, on the other hand, they are obliged to continue in the institution because they are committed to completing their degrees, given the personal and financial investment already expended. Minority students continue through sheer self- perseverance and determination. Carty (1991:13) provides a candid illustration of the life of racialized graduate minority students. She notes: Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 196 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 197 Besides, being a student without financial support meant that I had to work throughout my post-secondary education, oftentimes doing both on a full-time basis. In graduate school this was not unusual for most of the “non-white” students, especially those of us who were “fortunate” enough not to be designated as foreign students. Now in my post-student life, I often wonder how I managed to work, be fairly active in departmental student politics, remain actively involved in my community and still complete my doctoral studies in average time. Minority students are therefore familiar with self-directed study and goal setting. The issue remains how do they progress from being apprentices to faculty members in a relative time span as compared to their non-minority colleagues. Consequently, minority students who have attained graduate assistantships outside their home departments continue to remain in contact with the faculty because their studies are most supported there. In academia, it seems that the only way to gain credibility is to acquire the language and methods of the dominant. Those who reject this notion are penalized as reflected in the fact that minority graduates whose research concentrates on minority issues are less valued. This chilly climate is a primary source of marginalization, which is not always transparent. Turner and Thompson (1993) suggest that a subtle but critical source of marginalization is a professional environment that fails to support women and minority students. Many believe that while discrimination might be an issue in hiring, their funding difficulties are attributed to structural processes that are less favourable to the minority student. For instance, most faculties, even when they support studies from the South, have a Eurocentric agenda whereby they stand to gain global recognition and more funding for such projects. The knowledge produced tends to be viewed as an appendage to that of the North, and always unequal. It is possible that the kind of racism these students encounter is much more subtle because they are denied access to information networks. According to Moyer et al. (1999:608–609), a notable barrier for minority students is symbolic racism whereby overt forms of prejudice are condemned while access to sources of support, information, and other resources are informally denied. Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 197 198 Access and Equity in the University Informal networks through which information is shared and passed among professors and students exclude minority students. As one colleague remarks, “We tend to pick up on these bits of information when deadlines are already passed or too close to do anything about it.” It appears that minority graduate students’ condition is due to structural processes at the institutional and departmental level, which I will now examine. Institutional Factors The way in which funding is organized in terms of accessing graduate assistantships is quite biased. The university’s funding formula favours the natural and physical sciences, which are funded generously, but, in contrast, the social sciences and humanities are allotted considerably less. The funding distribution reflects government policies that increasingly stress collaboration with the private sector. Therefore, where there is a close fit between the curricula and the workplace, funds are much more easily attainable. Typically, faculties such as business management, law, and the physical and natural sciences are favoured. In this sense, the vision of the university as an arena for the pursuit of liberal education is increasingly devalued. The university administration might argue that the government (federal and provincial) has increasingly decreased its proportion of funding to higher education and as a result it is forced to pursue other means of raising funds. Typically, this means tuition hikes and forging links with the private sector (Newson and Buchbinder 1991; Slaughter and Lesley 1997). This reasoning is not without empirical evidence. The proportion of government expenditure for education fell from 22.2 per cent in 1970 to 16.7 per cent in 1975. In the 1980s, universities were forced to juggle increases in student enrolments with decreases in government funding. All provinces except Prince Edward Island saw a reduction in the grant per student between 1976–1977 and 1986–1987, ranging between 14 and 28 per cent. At the provincial level, even when grants were increased, they did not keep pace with inflation or enrolment increases (Hardy 1996:22). Recently, the introduction of deregulation of tuition fees exacerbates the problem as the various levels of government reduce funds to universities. While this is the case, universities have a moral Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 198 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 199 obligation to ensure that one of its best resources, graduate students, are accounted for equally and fairly. Indeed, the university funding distribution reflects the new market-oriented policies whereby faculties compete for monies, through external grants, endowment funds, and university partnerships with the private sector (Slaughter and Lesley 1997:72). In this pursuit, graduate students whose research interests do not reflect this direction are the obvious losers. Ultimately, the issue remains that of who gets defined as an academic and who is granted certain academic privileges. What this means for minority students is that they end up with outstanding academic credentials but with very little experience in terms of research or teaching in their discipline. This puts them at an enormous disadvantage in the academic labour market, a point that is stressed in the University of Toronto’s Task Force on Graduate Student Financial Support report (2000). According to Smith (1998), K.S. Smith (1993), and Smith and Simpson (1992), institutional policy such as the provision of teaching assistantships has a positive influence in the attainment of faculty positions once students graduate. Clark and Corcoran (1986) provide evidence that successful, tenured women faculty had the opportunity for socialization experiences with advisers and colleagues. It is well known that educational administrators expect new faculty recruits to bring with them much of what they need to know about being faculty members, such as prior socialization in research and teaching as well as their own program of research already in progress. Despite these well-documented socialization experiences and expectations, minority graduate students continue to experience isolation, a lack of faculty mentoring, and a lack of collegiality with other doctoral students, despite the fact that they excel in their course work (Turner and Thompson 1993:366). Successful socialization and the provision of mentorship cannot exist without active institutional policies that foster the development of minority students. Institutional structures are necessary for meaningful graduate experience and transition. The university does not have a comprehensive mentoring policy so this work is done through individual negotiations with a faculty member or through some professors’ goodwill. James Blackwell (1989:11) succinctly underscores this point as he comments: Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 199 200 Access and Equity in the University Those who teach are often guilty of subconscious (though sometimes conscious and deliberate) efforts to reproduce themselves through students they come to respect, admire, and hope to mentor. As a result, mentors tend to select as proteges persons who are the same gender and who share with them a number of social and cultural attributes or background characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and social class. Because minorities are presently under-represented in faculty positions, such practices inevitably result in the under selection of minorities as protegees. In adding to Blackwell’s commentary, part of the problem is that mentoring is not evaluated highly in academia. For instance, faculty members are not reviewed for their mentorship efforts during evaluation for tenure. Given this lack of institutional support, most professors prefer to expend their energy on areas that are more highly valued, such as publication. We cannot ignore the influence of race, gender, and social class as contributing factors to these practices. White, middle-class males are most likely to be proteges. In fact, historically, the socialization of graduate students has been controlled by the prevailing culture, which until recently, has been overwhelmingly White and almost exclusively male (Turner and Thompson 1993). Although Blacks and other minorities have made some inroads into university faculties, their numbers are quite small (Turner and Thompson 1993:357). It is not surprising that minority students who had mentors initiated the process. Minority students warn that mentoring experiences are not always positive. When minority graduates attain positions of assistantships, the atmosphere is not always welcoming for them. One minority graduate assistant tells of the subtle forms of stereotyping and women-unfriendly environments she encountered whereby the professor in charge complained about not having control over whom she hires, and at one point she was forced to work beyond her contract since her reputation was being threatened. Having done an excellent job, she was asked to renew her contract with the department, which she promptly refused. So there is an assumption that minorities’ abilities must be proven first before they can gain acceptance from peers. Therefore, it is not surprising that non- minority women tend to have more opportunities than women of Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 200 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 201 colour for apprenticeship opportunities, such as research and teaching assistantships, coauthoring papers with a faculty member, making presentations at professional conferences, and being introduced by a faculty member to a network of influential academics who could provide support for students at entry-level jobs (Turner and Thompson 1993:361). It stands to reason that if minority graduate students are not receiving adequate training, then they will be streamed out of prestigious jobs in academia. This will only continue the chronic shortage of minority faculty members in higher education institutions in Canada and North America. One of my colleagues laments the lack of “Black rising stars” in her department. My response is that stars do not appear out of anywhere. “Stars” have had adequate funding and mentoring opportunities, which gave them access to vast resources that would not otherwise occur on one’s own. Universities exercise unique control over “which women and men are admitted, at what point students have achieved the standards required to earn degrees and credentials, and which academics will be hired, promoted and published” (Stalker and Prentice 1998:12). With this in mind, even if there were a huge influx of minority faculty stars, the funding climate would not be changed drastically since the structures would have remained fundamentally the same. Hill (1991:44) notes that marginalization is perpetuated if new voices are added while the priorities and core of the organization remain unchanged. In their studies on the career development of tutorial assistants, Simpson and Smith (1998:91) conclude that the success of graduate students in securing faculty positions is dependent on disciplinary factors combined with institutional policies that provide graduate students with teaching opportunities. This includes opportunities for workshops, faculty mentorship, and individual consultation with senior faculty. There is, however, an increasing attention being given to the lack of diversity in faculties across campuses in North America (Mickelson and Oliver 1996). Some researchers attribute this deficiency to the “leaky pipeline theory” whereby at each stage of the academic ladder, minority students’ numbers steadily decline (Brazziel 1988; Kulis et al. 2000). Educational planners believe that minority faculties are needed to reflect the diverse Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 201 202 Access and Equity in the University population on campuses as more minority students pursue higher education. In one study on the retention of Black graduate students, Blackwell (1988) concludes that since Black faculty members play a crucial role in the recruitment and retention of Black students, their severe under-representation among faculties has widespread implications for postsecondary institutions (Blackwell 1988). Despite rhetoric about improving equality of opportunity for minority faculties, there is very little documented literature on how graduate schools may effectively prepare minority students for faculty positions. Concerns about diversity are only bland talk if no concrete policies are implemented to reflect a diverse faculty population. Departmental Factors The graduate application process provides some insights into how graduate assistantships are allocated. The selection process favours those with experience, who have published, and whose experience and interests are matched with a faculty member. In other words, your value to the department is assessed. Likewise, those who are members of the union CUPE Local 3907 are given priority. The obvious losers are Master’s students who have less experience and are less published. One might ask what provisions are being made for the less experienced. How can they attain the necessary qualifications? In fact, most graduate students tend to take the graduate assistant application forms at face value. For instance, they are unaware that presenting one’s work at conferences counts as publication, so they do not fill in this area. Since the ranking process places enormous value on this criterion, they are at a severe disadvantage in the final selection. And what about the matching process? Does this mean that if a student does not have a matched professor, she or he is left without the benefit of a graduate assistantship throughout his or her graduate career? Another important consideration is how we address issues of foreign employment and publication. For instance, are experiences and publications from the South valued as highly as those from the North? Likewise, if the minority body originally comes from the South, as opposed to having lived in Canada and conducted the research in the South, is that work valued equally? In order to address these issues, the CUPE Local 3907 organized a seminar, Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 202 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 203 to give tricks and tips on filling out a graduate assistant application form. When an institution feels compelled to organize a seminar on filling out an application form, it shows that the process is non-transparent, non-comprehensive, and highly exclusionary. To be fair, OISE/UT administration is fully aware of the acute funding shortages to its students and have taken some measures to alleviate this problem. The implementation of teacher education program assistants (TEPAs) is one such initiative. However, the initial teacher training program automatically excludes Master’s students and those who do not hold a teaching certificate. Although all departments have experienced financial constraints, however, those where minority students are dominant are even more underfunded. Therefore, these students have even fewer opportunities to acquire funding within the department. As I have mentioned earlier, there is little information on financial support among minority graduate students so it is very difficult to make meaningful comparisons. What we do know is that minority graduate students continue to pursue their graduate studies under severe financial strains. This suggests something about their determination and ambition. One administrator comments that she is surprised that these students continue to attend graduate school under the financial constraints (personal communication 2000). It is important to note that OISE/UT is one of the most underfunded faculties in Ontario (Task Force on Graduate Student Financial Support 2000). Since it is home to the largest numbers of minority students on campus, the discrepancy in funding allocation is most noticeable in this faculty. According to the Task Force Report on Graduate Student Financial Support, the average level of support to Ph.D students at OISE/UT is less than one-third of the university average. The Task Force further reports that when one compares the University of Toronto’s funding policy to that of the United States, it appears that the graduate students of the former are at a severe disadvantage. The average amount in graduate assistant compensation at American universities in 1997– 1998 was $12, 167 (Canadian dollars) net of tuition fees. On the other hand, the doctoral students from the University of Toronto received on average $12,790 from 1998–1990, with tuition fees paid from this amount. This puts the University of Toronto’s students Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 203 204 Access and Equity in the University at a considerable disadvantage when compared to our American and provincial counterparts (Task Force on Graduate Student Financial Support 2000). We do not know the racial or ethnic composition of this analysis since it was not part of the equation, but it is my hope that future institutional studies employ these variables in order to make comparison more meaningful. The University of Toronto administration has reassured the student population that it is committed to increasing funding. However, for minority students, several questions arise out of this commitment. Will the university continue to recruit minority graduate students at the current rate if funding is increased? Will it provide funding conditional upon acceptance into graduate school? What role will it play in providing competitive packages to international students? For now, the implication is that minority graduate students will continue to experience high personal cost for their education because this fits well with the university’s corporate style of governance. Conclusion At the beginning of this paper, I alluded to the change possibilities that could be addressed in terms of graduate student funding. One of the obvious changes needed is to offer graduate assistantships conditional upon acceptance into graduate programs. This is not an elusive goal since most universities in North America offer this incentive. It will not only make the University of Toronto more competitive internationally, but also encourage “future academic stars” to pursue their degrees in Canada. The next step involves the application process, which should be more comprehensive. Minority students are aware that they are not always on a level playing field. In order to encourage more minorities to undertake and continue graduate work, the application process should be more transparent. Finally, mentoring programs offering support to minority students as well as professional development will be a step in the right direction. Several universities in the United States have such programs and the results have been encouraging. Graduate students in mentoring programs have been able to make a smoother transition into faculty positions, which would otherwise have been more difficult. In creating a more supportive environment for minority graduate Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 204 Minority Graduate Students and Funding 205 students, the University of Toronto will only become a better place where diversity also means inclusion of all. 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Westmoreland-Traore, J. 1999. “Educational Equity: No Turning Back.” In Equity and How to Get It, edited by K. Armitage. Toronto: Iuanna. Ch 11-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 206 Abstract As a researcher studying the learning strategies of graduate and undergraduate students from many different backgrounds in Tanzania, Canada, and the United States, I hypothesized that “minority” students might be facing challenges that could negatively affect their academic learning. During my twenty-five years of teaching experience at many levels of schooling, I experimented with a repertoire of strategies in teaching minority students in an effort to stimulate effective learning. Some of the strategies worked well, and others did not. Between the years 1993 and 2000 I developed, compiled, used, and refined a set of strategies that worked best with minority students. Most of the minority students I taught managed to learn effectively within and outside the classroom, despite cultural, socio-economic, ethnic, and language barriers. I collected data through observations, formal and informal discussions, student interviews, and questionnaires. The data I collected over a three-year period in the United States (1996–2000), were compared to data collected in 1993 in Tanzania and data collected in 1994–1995 in Canada. Despite the time lapse and geographical differences, there were close similarities in the students’ comments and suggestions as to how they could be helped to learn effectively in a university mainstream culture. Content analysis of the data indicated that the students were interacting with unique sets of factors culturally, financially, Chapter 12 207 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity, and Excellence in University Education Selina L.P. Mushi Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 207 208 Access and Equity in the University linguistically, socially, psychologically, and emotionally in ways that affected their academic functioning directly and indirectly. Most students thought some of their instructors did not quite understand the students’ backgrounds and needs. The instructors made increased assumptions about minority students and often underestimated their efforts and learning capacities compared to the mainstream students. Several strategies emerged prominently from my research as ways to facilitate effective learning among minority students from different backgrounds. Seeking information from the students on a continued basis helped indicate how best to approach classroom learning activities. Open and unbiased discussions in class, writing exercises, action research, personal histories and experiences, students’ accumulated ways of knowing, instructor’s flexibility, instructor’s attitudes toward different languages and cultures, as well as instructor’s broad-mindedness were invaluable tools for facilitating effective learning among minority students. My research suggests various approaches to achieve better understanding of students from minority cultures, and how to utilize their unique experiences as rich sources for, and not barriers to, effective learning of graduate and undergraduate degree curricula. I am proposing three emerging theories: open-door equity theory, connectivity equity theory, and feedback equity theory to use as guides for better serving the needs of minority students. Introduction In theory, teaching fosters learning. However, what goes on between the teacher and the learners in order for learning to occur cannot be predetermined absolutely. Passmore (1980) claims that it is not fallacious for those engaged in the preparation of teachers to keep reminding themselves that everybody teaches, and that some people who are not trained to teach nevertheless teach very well. But what is teaching? Why does teaching lead to learning in some instances and not in others? For teaching to facilitate learning, there has to be a certain degree of matching within the interactions of the two parties—the teacher and the learner. How is this degree of matching brought about? Is there a formula for creating within classroom interactions, the necessary click that facilitates learning among individual learners? Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 208 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 209 Teaching involves more than classrooms, materials, trained teachers, curriculum, predetermined procedures, supervision, and testing. Effective teaching takes the teacher’s personal initiative, creativity, imagination, determination, and commitment to examine and decide on the many ways to make learning occur not only among a group of the learners, but in every learner— and learning should be defined by the learner. The effective teacher makes learning not only possible but desirable, enjoyable, and worth striving for. Among all the factors that affect teaching, the teacher is the single most influential element in the classroom and can manipulate all other elements to fit the prevailing situation at a particular time and context in order to facilitate learning. It is important for university teachers to remember that university students are adult learners. While this factor may be an advantage to the professor, it can also work against the professor because adult students can read both the spoken and unspoken messages more easily than younger learners. Learners come to a university campus with a relatively clearer goal than they had in high school or elementary school as younger students. Implementation of the university curriculum, therefore, should also involve some kind of negotiation of what is to be learned, how, and for what purpose. Although university students make considerable decisions on their own about their programs, their courses, and time of completion of their studies, the actual learning activities in the classroom, however, call for explicit or implicit agreement between professor and student about what is to be taught and supposedly learned. Traditional university teaching assumes specific levels of academic ability and preparations among the students before they join their programs of interest. Students have to qualify for the programs, and evaluations are carried out through testing, grade point averages, or other types of screening. Since all entrants must qualify for the program, it is tempting for instructors to assume academic similarity among students, so they teach the group rather than the individual. University enrolment may not only be on the rise, but probably may be more diversified. The increasing ease of mobility around the world, challenging lifestyles, rising costs of living, and self- determination call for higher education among greater numbers Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 209 210 Access and Equity in the University of young and older adults who want to seek a better life in a competitive world through university education. It is becoming more and more unrealistic to assume that most students on a university campus will be of similar ages or have similar economic, social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, or even similar attitudes toward education. For the student who struggles hard (financially, culturally, etc.) to get admission into a university program, university education may have a higher priority than for the student who faces less serious challenges to accessing the program. The latter may take it for granted. I (Mushi 1999b) found that minority students learned some aspects of technology faster and more efficiently than mainstream students because of their desire to advance in their studies. Enrolling students with widely differing characteristics in a university will imply more challenge for the professor if the goal is to ensure that teaching facilitates learning among individual learners, as defined by the learners themselves. Teaching, being a moral activity, calls for fairness in creating adequately conducive environments for learning among all members of a group. Even in cases where policies do not clearly stipulate equity, the effective teacher should feel obliged to fulfil every student’s quest for learning. Every individual learner is unique. The professor is also unique. How can the professor adjust teaching and learning interactions to meet the needs of learners from all walks of life? What are the resources available for the professor to make these adjustments? Should professors be retrained to meet the requirements of the changing demographics of students? What teaching principles work best for minority students, and why? It is important that those who teach minority students pay attention to what good teaching entails. Effective teachers consider teaching a reflective activity (Schon 1983, 1987; Shulman 1987). This implies that the best source for learning how to teach is teaching. Rather than professors assuming that they provide students with knowledge, they need to examine what actually takes place during teaching-learning sessions, how students perceive those interactions, what students think they have learned from the session, and how the experiences of one teaching-learning session affects another. This level of reflectivity is the best way to learn how to teach not only the mainstream students, but each Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 210 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 211 individual student. Teaching a group of students as if they were all alike in all aspects is doing injustice to non-mainstream students, to the teaching process and profession, and also to assessment practices. Exploring the ways in which minority students learn best will help make teaching more meaningful to them. My study focuses on strategies that facilitated effective learning among students who perceived themselves as minorities on university campuses. Their self-perceptions of being minority were based on ethnic, economic, cultural, linguistic, and/or social differences. In carrying out my research, I used my class sessions as the major sources for learning about teaching minority students. Informal discussions with professors who had experience teaching minority students supported the findings of the study. The rest of the chapter is organized in five main parts: conceptual framework, methods, findings, discussion, and a concluding summary. Conceptual Framework Classroom research has indicated that students at all levels learn in different ways. Different intelligences (Gardner 1983, 1991, 1993) are becoming more and more recognized. Howard Gardner identifies eight intelligences that determine the ways in which different individuals learn: Linguistic intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalist intelligence. The eight intelligences, however, indicate the spheres of emphasis rather than clear-cut categories of learning capacities. Students with high linguistic intelligence would benefit more from a class debate than students with high intrapersonal intelligence. For the visual learner, for example, a long lecture on the subject matter would be difficult to process. Visual learners (spatial) will benefit from charts, tables, maps, scattergrams, and clusters, than linguistic learners. Students with high interpersonal capacities will benefit more from a service project than students with high capacities in bodily kinesthetics, who would benefit more from movements, puzzles, construction, trips, etc. (Nitko 2001). Other factors that affect learning include field dependence versus field independence, reflectivity versus impulsiveness, and Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 211 212 Access and Equity in the University level of tolerance of ambiguity (Piper 1993); lateralization of the brain (Berk 1999; Trawick-Smith 1997); and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Bennett, Lingerfelt, and Nelson 1990; Maslow 1954). Field-dependent people tend to see the individual unit within the whole, while field-independent people may focus on the individual unit, overlooking the big picture. Field-dependent students would be more aware of the whole than its parts and more socialized in interaction with others. These students would have difficulty making sense of the individual outside the context of the whole. Field-independent people may tend to be more interested in the particular within a unit, more able to concentrate on tasks, not easily distracted by peripherals, and very analytical. They break down components of the problem, can overlook the overall picture, and may tend to be more independent, confident, and competitive. Some people can tolerate ambiguity more than others (Piper 1993). Those who can tolerate ambiguity see the world in a continuum (not either/or); they are open to accepting different ideologies, and are more open to new learning experiences, especially language learning. They may find it difficult to take a stand or filter out incorrect information. Individuals who are intolerant of ambiguity see the world in absolute (either/or) terms. They cannot endure uncertainty, stick to their own beliefs and practices, and limit their creativity. They tend to reject behaviour that is inconsistent with their own, for example, a new culture, a new language, or new ways of doing things. They face difficulties in pursuing the overwhelmingly ambiguous process of learning a second language (Mushi 1996; Piper 1993) and/or a new culture. Reflective individuals tend to think about their learning processes and what those processes mean to them. They can relate their classroom learning to their everyday life, and they can adjust their learned experiences to new, real life situations. Impulsive individuals will tend to react immediately without much thought; they may react almost automatically to a situation by applying some principles that they perceive as universal. Lateralization of the brain—that is, left-brained and right- brained—is a matter of emphasis and not a matter of exclusive, Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 212 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 213 dichotomous categories. Right-brained individuals may tend to be field dependent, respond intuitively, show emotions, remember faces better than names, be spontaneous, less organized, reliant on images for thinking, and very creative. They prefer synthesis than analysis, and open-ended test items. Left-brained individuals, on the other hand tend to be field independent, respond intellectually, control feelings, remember names, plan and organize well, rely on language rather than images for thinking and remembering, and prefer talking and writing. They are analytical in their reading, favour logical problem solving, and prefer objective test items such as multiple choice to open-ended test items. Below is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (developed from Maslow’s pyramid of needs cited in Bennett, Lingerfelt, and Nelson 1990:46), which provides at least five levels of needs according to importance. The basic needs must be met before the other needs become apparent. TABLE 12.1 Level Needs 1 Basic psychological needs: satisfying hunger, thirst, and sex 2 Safety needs: security, stability, and order 3 Belonging, love needs: affection, affiliation, and identification 4 Esteem needs: success, self-respect 5 Self-actualization need: the realization of one’s true potential in life Another categorization differentiates among needs, wants, and wishes, denoting different degrees of desire and necessity (Bennett, Lingerfelt, and Nelson 1990:45). Minority students may have certain academic needs such as, for example, mastering the language of instruction or learning how to summarize literature, but may want to engage in other activities of less academic importance to their fields of specialization, but which would nevertheless help them in their everyday economic survival. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 213 214 Access and Equity in the University All the above-mentioned factors—that is, Gardner’s eight intelligences, field dependence or independence, the degree of tolerance of ambiguity, reflectivity or impulsivity, brain lateralization and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—imply interference with, or shaping of, the individual’s learning processes. Rigid teaching styles and strategies that focus on universal principles derived from the mainstream culture assume unrealistic uniformity among students. Mainstream professors may adhere to those principles with little or no realization that they are communicating effectively with only a portion of the class, the mainstream students. Not many professors learn how to teach prior to their job appointments at university level. Some professors learn teaching on the job. Students come to university classrooms with different personalities, different attitudes toward education and learning, different needs and wants, different abilities to learn, different learning styles, different goals, and different perceived ways of achieving them. The university curricula, however, are fixed. There are sets of predetermined theories, knowledge, and skills that students are required to learn effectively at undergraduate and graduate levels in order to graduate from their programs. While the curricula are fixed, the professors who teach the courses are individuals with their own ways of learning and teaching, and they undertake their teaching tasks with different teaching capabilities. In addition to mainstream students’ individual characteristics, the fixed curricula, and the unique professor, the minority student brings in a comparative aspect in terms of the important values that characterize the society in question. In a society where ethnicity and physical appearance explicitly or implicitly determine the status or even the worth of individuals (for example, skin complexion, hair colour, eye colour, etc.), a student who does not look like the mainstream students will also be expected to “fit in” in addition to pursuing studies in an already complex environment. While every student is different from every other student, a student who perceives herself or himself as a “minority” will feel singled out in terms of physical appearance, even for mere identification purposes. One’s biological makeup is by no means a justification for feelings of discomfort. However, an insensitive Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 214 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 215 mainstream culture may imply it is by subconsciously attaching some unnecessary negative connotations to it. For example, a professor may make a supposedly sincere statement like “I enjoyed my class this past semester; even the Black students did very well.” While the professor is trying to be sincere here, the statement has a hidden, subconscious connotation that Black students do not normally do well. Black students hearing this statement would perceive that not much is expected of them academically. They might end up putting less effort in their studies and thus perform poorly compared to their counterparts. The minority student may bring to campus another aspect of comparison. If the student is not fluent in the language of instruction, for example English, he or she may tend to be negatively identified by this aspect, such as being referred to as “the young man with a heavy Jamaican accent.” Instead, one could rightly say “the young man from Jamaica.” The latter would be less derogatory and more acceptable in a diverse setting, especially a learning environment. Research has indicated that children who were put down by their peers or their teachers tended to have low self-concept (Mushi 1999a). Minority students tend to face financial problems, some of which may affect their learning seriously. University education is expensive. Students are required to buy expensive textbooks and perhaps other materials for courses or projects in addition to paying their tuition fees and meeting other miscellaneous financial needs. Some minority students bring to campus very different cultures, which can be expressed in a number of ways: how they interact with other students or their professors and other university personnel; how they study in class and outside of class; their priorities; their verbal communication (how directly or indirectly they make statements, use non-verbal communication); how they respond to class assignments; how they cope with being different in the university community, etc. On the one hand, it is unrealistic for professors to try to understand the culture of every minority student on campus (Mushi 1999a). On the other hand, though, it is necessary to assume differences and be open to clues that might indicate whether the differences are enhancing or limiting learning. Any good teacher, regardless of the level of teaching experience, will constantly absorb feedback from learners and utilize the Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 215 216 Access and Equity in the University feedback to inform teaching. Good teachers constantly clean up their teaching. An important way to clean up one’s teaching is to try as much as possible to minimize any negative factors that obstruct a student’s effective learning. A good teacher teaches every student, not a group of students. Feedback from each and every student is important, and it helps the teacher to plan and teach better that one student in the context of the entire group. Teaching every student in the context of an entire group with a myriad of differences from many perspectives is not an easy task. However, learning about one’s teaching in relation to every student’s learning is a promising starting point. In this study, I sought to explore the strategies that helped each student learn best, given that student’s individual background and his or her self-perception of being a minority in a mainstream university community. The convergence of strategies that worked for many minority students in different universities located in different countries and continents was indeed a positive surprise to me as researcher. Sharing these strategies with other university professors is what I would like to give back to the teaching-learning profession. Purpose of the Research The purpose of my study was to explore and document useful strategies and types of interactions that facilitated effective learning among minority students pursuing graduate and undergraduate programs in the mainstream contexts of their universities. I studied how minority students perceived their university campuses, their perceptions of classroom teaching in relation to their learning, common factors that had an impact on their learning, and how they dealt with these factors. The major research question was: What teaching strategies and interactions make it possible to connect the experiences of minority students to their university curricula in ways that allow meaningful learning to occur? Drawing from my experiences in teaching graduate and undergraduate students in different universities in different countries (Canada, the United States, and Tanzania), as a researcher I experimented with and documented different teaching strategies and how they affected learning among minority students. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 216 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 217 TABLE 12.3: Study Participants Year Undergraduate Graduate Total Women to Groups Groups Men Ratio Tanzania 1993 9 5 14 1.10 Canada 1994–1995 12 9 21 5:3 United States 1996–2000 35 17 52 3.1 Total 56 31 87 TABLE 12.2: Groups Studied Year Undergraduate Graduate Total Women to Groups Groups Men Ratio Tanzania 1993 4 1 5 1.4 Canada 1994–1995 1 1 2 5:3 United States 1996–2000 6 4 10 18.1 Total 11 6 17 Method Design of the Study I approached the study from a naturalistic perspective. Students were studied in their natural contexts without much additional interference. However, a considerable amount of time was spent outside class to ask students interview questions and participate with them in informal discussions. The study was exploratory in nature. With little or no available literature on the teaching of minority students at the university level, I designed the study with open-mindedness to record any strategies that enhanced learning among minority students. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 217 218 Access and Equity in the University Student Characteristics Graduate and undergraduate students studying in several universities participated in the study. Canadian and American participants were potential teachers of young children, while the Tanzanian participants were mainly elementary schoolteachers and teacher education college tutors. While all the students spoke English as a second or as a foreign language (Berns 1990; Mushi 1996), for some English was their first language. Some had work experiences elsewhere before they joined their university programs; they were teachers, clerks, accountants, librarians, business managers, and child care workers. Others had hotel experiences, culinary expertise, handcraft/artistry, and music experiences. They ranged in age from between twenty-two and forty-five years. Eleven groups of undergraduate students and six groups of graduate students were involved in the study over a seven-year period. The number of students per group at the undergraduate level ranged between eleven and twenty-five; and between seven and twenty-nine per group at the graduate level. Five groups were studied in Tanzania in 1993, two in Canada in 1994 and 1995, and ten in the United States between 1996 and 2000. Table 12.2 and Table 12.3 provide this information. A few of the groups were composed entirely of minority students, while the majority were mixed, with students from many different backgrounds in terms of language, physical features, socio-economic status, work experience, and culture. The overall ratio of women to men who participated in the study was 6:1. However, in Tanzania alone, the ratio of women to men was 1:10. Data Collection and Analysis I collected data through formal and informal observations, formal and informal discussions, unstructured interviews, and student questionnaires. The data collected included handwritten notes, ratings of different teaching-learning strategies, self-perceived English proficiency, audio recordings of students’ concerns about their own learning and their suggestions for instructors. The data were collected over a seven-year period from a total of seventeen groups. My data analysis went hand in hand with data collection. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 218 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 219 As soon as the class period was over, if any data were collected (through observation), I recorded them in the form of notes. These notes were brief descriptions of the strategies used, or the interactions carried out, and the learning outcome—students’ comments on their own understanding of what was being taught. I organized the data in emerging themes. Some emerging themes did not last long. They faded out while new themes emerged. In September 1998, I organized the themes that had been able to stand the test of time and tested them. The themes were tested by interviewing students about their learning strategies, issues, and concerns, given their self-perceived minority status in a university macro culture. Findings The major findings of the study are subdivided into three categories: minority students’ perception of the university environment; minority students’ perceptions of themselves as university students; and strategies that proved to be most effective in facilitating learning among minority students. Minority Students’ Perception of the University Environment Minority students perceived the university environment as a very formal place for learning. The following are some verbatim expressions of how students who defined themselves as minorities perceived their university campuses: (1) “It is getting better. I was scared at first, but now I have a few friends in my situation and we talk things out.” (2) “Everyone is so busy. Nobody can help you with anything.” (3) “I like the campus. It is very welcoming, but the work is overwhelming.” (4) “The professors are very helpful, but you don’t know what they really want.” (5) “This is a good school. I enjoy coming here. I wish there were more professors like …” (6) “I take public transportation to come to school three times a week. It is very hard. When I get here, I am tired. I cannot pay attention.” Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 219 220 Access and Equity in the University (7) “I wish there were more evening classes. In the evening I can come.” (8) “I wish the school had buses to help people like me—I don’t drive.” (9) “As a Black male, older man, I feel very isolated. I don’t see many students or professors like me here.” Minority Students’ Perception of Themselves as University Students In Tanzania, minority students perceived themselves as equal members of the university population. They would repeatedly make statements like “kila mtu ana haki sawa,” meaning “we all have equal rights,” or “kila mtu hapa anakufa lwake,” meaning “everybody here must try very hard.” However, sometimes they tended to express feelings of inferiority such as “sinema ni za wenye hela,” meaning “only the rich can go to the movies,” or “sisi tuliotumwa na kijiji lazima tujitahidi sana,” meaning “those of us who were sent here by the village must work harder”—in other words, they depended on collective efforts rather than individual resources. On the whole, Tanzanian students were only concerned about not having as much money as their “richer” counterparts. Their perceived inferiority was therefore purely economic. In the United States and Canada, however, minority students were more conscious of being minorities in several ways. They believed they were minorities in terms of physical appearance, language, socio-economic status, and the neighbourhoods in which they lived. Their self-perceptions within the university campuses were evident in phrases like: “The Spanish girl in class who is fluent in English,” or “In my neighbourhood you cannot be on the street after midnight,” or “Don’t come to my house, I live in the X neighborhood,” or “I am not like the other students; I work three jobs to support my studies and my family.” The following verbatim excerpts (with a few grammatical errors corrected) highlight students’ concerns: (1) “It is hard here. It is not easy for me to understand the professor’s intentions. I just try.” (2) “I have learned so much in just one semester. You don’t take things for granted here, you have to work really hard. …” Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 220 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 221 (3) “Sometimes I feel left out in class. The language is the big problem.” (4) “I want to learn how to write in English, but professors think I know.” (5) “I read a lot every day, but I don’t understand. Class discussion helps me a lot. In other classes, no discussion.” (6) “I have to write in my language and then change it to English. It takes a long time.” (7) “Now I know what my son felt when he started going to school here. He was eight years old and every day he complained he did not understand the teacher. Now he is the one who helps me.” (8) “It is not easy for me here. I cannot talk in class because my accent is so bad.” (9) “Some professors think I am stupid because my accent is bad. But I know what I am saying. They don’t understand.” (10)“I understand the lecture. The problem is that I have to write it in my language first. I make lots of mistakes.” (11)“I discuss my work with other (X culture students). It helps me understand.” (12)“If we write more in class, I understand.” (13)“I did not like the attitude of the professor. It’s not like in our education classes. He thought I was stupid.” (14)“The professor does not even notice me.” (15)“In my X classes I think the professor does not even see me when I raise my hand to answer a question. I quit trying.” (16)“I like my education classes. In the other classes the professor does not even see I am in class.” Useful Strategies The following is a concise list of effective learning strategies from the point of view of the minority students: (1) knowing what to expect from the professor—connecting to the instructor (2) relating their experiences to the content being taught Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 221 222 Access and Equity in the University (3) learning for a purpose—immediate practical application of what is learned (4) working with a partner in class (5) audio recording themselves and listening to how they sound (6) audio recording the professor in order to play back the lecture many times (7) doing take-home assignments (8) receiving individual support from instructors outside class time (9) having a close match between textbooks and other course materials (10) having group interaction in the classroom (11) having visual materials to accompany a professor’s explanation (12) having a broad understanding of the concept of language as a tool for learning (13) having a class discussion led by the instructor (14) relating discussion to real life experiences—using real life examples (15) learning by doing in class—a hands-on approach (16) having action research and discussion in class—having students find out more about a real problem and how to solve it, then presenting it in class (17) having structure and early planning by the professor (18) having a format for assignments and scoring criteria (19) having self-evaluation and peer evaluation (20) receiving frequent, sincere feedback (21) knowing a professor understands students’ individual circumstances (22) receiving clear instructions repeatedly (23) receiving a summary of the main points in class (24) having short lectures—avoiding long, uninterrupted lectures (25) having an instructor who is flexible and who has different and interesting teaching strategies Discussion This discussion synthesizes the important findings of the study under two subheadings: common goals of students and the Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 222 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 223 institutions, and emerging theories, to guide effective teaching of minority students on mainstream university campuses. Common Goals of Minority Students and the Institutions At a general level, it was apparent from the study that the institutions expected minority students to learn effectively and complete their programs of study successfully. This presupposes mutual understanding, provisions that meet the needs of individual students and institutions, and fair assessment and evaluation of what is learned. Practically though, in many cases this situation has not been achieved. On the part of the undergraduate minority students, their own understanding of their educational goals seemed to focus on acquiring academic qualification to enable them to be employed in mainstream culture, mainly in schools. This goal was clear in their minds; however, the road to achieving the goal was not. On the part of the institutions, there were some prerequisite expectations of students in order for the students to learn effectively. Examples of these expectations included assumptions of fluency in the language of instruction (English), familiarity with mainstream cultural concepts and patterns of language use, and past school experiences that might not necessarily be familiar to the minority students. It seemed that although the institutions and the minority students had common goals, there was little knowledge on how best to help them achieve these goals. Mutual professor-student understanding with regard to expectations was not there. Minority students and their professors operated on different platforms. It seemed students understood more about the professors than the professors understood about minority students. Level of mastery of the medium of instruction was an important factor in the minority students’ learning, so the instructors needed to be aware of it. The students expressed determination to complete their programs of study and be employable in the job market, but at the same time they indirectly expressed doubts, implying that their programs of study might be too difficult for them. Some even tended to be apologetic about their accents when talking to the instructor, implying that these students were not quite comfortable with their own accents. There was clearly the need Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 223 224 Access and Equity in the University for constant encouragement from the instructor to reassure the students that they would succeed. Since this need for encouragement was not articulated clearly, it was not always fulfilled; it was dependent on how well the instructor understood the minority students, as well as how willing the minority students were to express their doubts. There was apparent need for a stronger connection between individual educational goals of minority students and the goals set for all students by the institution. Some useful strategies to create a strong connection would include: availability and accessibility of information on supportive services; partnership with graduate minority students; accessibility of instructors at the classroom and individual level; and frequent reciprocal feedback between instructor and student. Also, a lot of open discussion about the minority students’ linguistic and economic circumstances, and above all, focusing on the students’ high quality learning. Professors’ low expectations of the minority students would make things much worse. Emerging Theories The following theories emerge from my research study: Open-door Equity Theory: Admission of minority students and their physical presence in the university are only the first step. The second and more important step is to create conditions that make each and every student feel welcome, comfortable, and that he or she is in the right place for learning to his or her highest capability. Each student needs to have practical accessibility to all student services that facilitate learning in the university. In principle, the minority students felt they were welcomed in their institutions. However, it was clear that in practice they had to adjust themselves to fit in an environment that was not very well designed for them. Students’ feelings of being left out or wishing the schedule were different support this conclusion. It would be unrealistic for students to assume that schedules would fit perfectly with their personal needs. The need to make choices is necessary in an academic environment where the academic community strives to meet the needs of thousands of students and workers. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 224 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 225 However, the economic factor seemed to emerge in all three contexts studied. Students from less advantaged economic backgrounds faced additional challenges to those faced by peers. Issues of finding transportation to school, having enough money to buy required textbooks and other materials were common among the minority students studied as they compared themselves with their mainstream counterparts. Linguistic barriers to understanding the organizational culture and feelings of not belonging in the same way as mainstream students did were barriers to open-door equity—that is, the minority students did not feel as welcomed in all aspects as their mainstream counterparts did. My effort to openly discuss in class at a general level some of the cultural, linguistic, psychological, financial, and even emotional barriers that might face some individuals helped highlight the minority students’ personal circumstances and the sacrifices they might need to make in order to interact more effectively with the mainstream culture of universities. Students participated actively with enthusiasm, and provided examples of their own experiences regarding what was being discussed. Open-door equity would be realistic if minority students felt as comfortable as the mainstream students after they have been accepted to the university. I suggest that institutions can increase their “open-door equity” by helping minority students realize the practical situations they have to function in to get acquainted with their academic journeys. This open-door equity, as an emerging theory, can best be exercised at the individual level rather than as institutional policy. This would help each minority student to feel welcomed in the learning environment in ways that he or she understands and can function in, which would increase the student’s potential to succeed academically. Connectivity Equity Theory: The process of teaching and learning is a process of communication. Connecting to students is a prerequisite for effective communication between the professor and the students. Students who do not feel this connectivity will have a harder time making sense of what the professor is teaching. Communication is intended to connect thoughts, to influence action on the part of the receiver of the message. In fact, unless Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 225 226 Access and Equity in the University meanings are exchanged in the communication, effective communication has not taken place. I perceive that there are three levels of verbal communication: (1) communication as exchanging words (2) communication as exchanging messages (3) communication as exchanging meanings Until meanings are exchanged, it will not be possible for one party to influence action in the other party. In a classroom, professors may not always exchange meanings with their students, especially when they are from very different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The proposed connectivity theory emphasizes the need to exchange meanings in the process of communication in teaching. Professors need to understand the contexts in which minority students are processing the information shared during classroom interactions. My experiences in working with both minority and mainstream students helped me understand majority/minority issues from both perspectives. Some of the study participants happened to be “minorities” in a situation where I was perceived as a member of the “majority” group. Others were minorities in situations in which I was also a minority. This experience was useful in understanding minority students’ difficulty in connecting to what was being said or done, especially in informal situations where not everything was written down clearly. I connected to the minority students by providing in different ways what they thought was worth trying out: (1) providing time in class to discuss what students thought they understood from lectures and class interactions (2) matching class assignments to students’ experiences— giving students (minority or not) an opportunity to relate theory to their own reality in the contexts in which they lived (3) incorporating flexibility in the ways in which students could experience learning (4) emphasizing practical, real life examples Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 226 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 227 (5) separating form (language) from content (concepts) in order to pinpoint the possible primary barriers to effective learning in class. For example, if the student had difficulty with timely cognitive processing, I tried to find out if more time would help. If the student had difficulty understanding the language or technical terms used in class, I (or any professor) could draw a picture, act it out, or allow for a translation or explanation from another student from the same or similar culture. I also had an opportunity to deal with the problem of connectivity from the other end. As a minority professor, I tried to make sure that I connected effectively in order to understand the mainstream students. Class discussion, real life examples, and seeking information directly from other faculty and students were invaluable tools to understanding the mainstream culture so that I could communicate effectively with the mainstream students. Therefore, the connectivity equity theory being proposed worked both ways. As a result of my research, I am proposing this connectivity equity theory to encourage other professors to listen more to minority students and to make sure the professors connect to these students’ ways of understanding, in order to facilitate effective communication in classroom interactions. This would help professors understand minority students just as they understand mainstream students. It would avoid making wrong assumptions about the entire group of learners. Overall assumptions about the group will be detrimental to effective learning for minority students whom the professor may not understand very well. Feedback Equity Theory: Different students demonstrate achieved learning in different ways. Each student deserves the right to use the most effective means to demonstrate his or her achieved learning within the context of the course. I am also proposing a feedback equity theory to encourage other professors to view assessment of learning in a broad perspective. Giving students an opportunity to demonstrate how they understand what they understand will help professors to cross- check the connectivity—that is, to check if it has happened and, if Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 227 228 Access and Equity in the University so, to what extent. In my research I used several strategies that I thought would be worth trying by other professors: (1) I employed a very systematic method of evaluating each student’s learning. Assignments were given on the first day of class; they are included in the syllabus so that students could refer to them any time; and they were discussed in class from time to time. (2) I also provided scoring criteria for the assignments so students would know exactly what they were supposed to do to complete the assignments. (3) I provided flexibility. I designed class assignments so students could incorporate their own backgrounds and use real life situations in completing the assignments. (4) I required written feedback more than verbal feedback— short essays rather than explanations—so that I could assess the process of thinking as well as the student’s metacognitive capabilities. Each student collaborated with two or three others to formally present to the entire class what they, as a group, thought they were contributing to the class learning. In this way, each student had to think about her or his own work, about the group work through collaboration, and talk about it in a summary form in class, while keeping time and being graded by peers. (5) I maintained very high standards that all students were expected to meet—without excuse—although some had to work more or harder to do well in the assignments, depending on their personal circumstances. As long as the students were aware of why they had to put in extra effort, they were willing to do it—e.g., rewriting assignments, learning the mechanics of formal writing in English, learning a new software, or having consultations with the professor. (6) Self-evaluation was another strategy that seemed to work well with all students, especially the minority students. Examining one’s own work from a critical perspective— knowing there would be an opportunity to make it better—was very educational to the students themselves and highly informative for me. This reduced their anxiety Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 228 Teaching and Learning Strategies That Promote Access, Equity and Excellence 229 about being assessed, and seemed to promote self- confidence. The feedback equity theory is, in the first place, a realization that students learn in different ways, they have different motivations for approaching learning the way they do, and they deserve the right to do so. Secondly, the theory recognizes the myriad of ways in which effective learning can be demonstrated without losing the core concept/skills being taught. Thirdly, the theory underscores the fact that classroom learning is of little use if it cannot be applied outside class, in real life situations, and in that particular learner’s contextual circumstances. Finally, the theory optimizes fair grading in the course. Concluding Remarks Those of us who teach continue teaching even when we may have doubts whether learning is taking place. Our experiences are not isolated cases. Since the best lessons about teaching are our own, in our own classrooms, utilizing these lessons effectively is a good way to assess whether effective learning is talking place among all our learners. The joy of helping a student make a leap from a state of not knowing to a state of knowing better is the most powerful force behind our willingness and readiness to learn from our own teaching practices. Learning from our students is key to teaching. There are many important teaching prerequisites we need to learn from our students. These prerequisites form a continuum from simple things such as whether our students see us and hear us, to more complex factors such as whether they attach the same meaning we do to our words; whether they feel active or passive in our classes; whether they can use the skills we teach, given their personal circumstances. “Teaching a group of students” is, more likely than not, teaching without connecting with any of the individual students. An underlying blanket assumption about the group will guide the teaching. When this assumption is wrong to a certain extent, connectivity with individuals is reduced or even eliminated. Teaching without connecting the knowledge or skill to the student’s own ways of knowing is bypassing the student and, more often than not, it is the minority student who is passed over. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 229 230 Access and Equity in the University References Bennett, T., B.V. Lingerfelt, and D.E. Nelson. 1990. Developing Individualized Family Support Plans: A Training Model. Cambridge: Brookline Books. Berke, L.E. 1999. Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood. Toronto: Allyn and Bacon. Berns, M. 1990. “‘Second’ and ‘Foreign’ in Second Language Acquisition/Foreign Language Learning: A Sociolinguistic Perspective.” In Second Language Acquisition: Foreign Language Learning, edited by B. VanPatten and J.E. Lee. Clevedon: Multicultural Matters. Gardner, H. 1983. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books. ______. 1991. The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach. New York: Basic Books. ______. 1993. “Educating for Understanding.” American School Board Journal 180:20– 24. Maslow, A. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Mushi, S.L.P. 1996. “Some General Ideas Informing Second Language Learning Globally: Obstacles to Their Utilization in Tanzania.” Language Culture and Curriculum 9(2):133–147. ______. 1999a. “A Comparative Analysis of Some Aspects of Educating Young Children in Tanzania and in North America.” Early Child Care and Development 156:15–33. ______. 1999b. “Information Technology, the Curriculum Process and the Changed Role of the Teacher.” Journal of Critical Inquiry into Curriculum and Instruction 1(3):24–25. ______. 2001. “Evaluating Validity and Reliability of Classroom Assessments Using Secondary Data.” Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, April 10–14, 2001. Nitko, A.J. 2001. Educational Assessment of Students, 3 rd ed. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Passmore, J. 1980. Philosophy of Teaching. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Piper, T. 1993. And Then There Were Two: Children and Second Language Learning. Markham, ON: Pippin Publishing Limited. Schon, D.A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. ______. 1987. Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Shulman, L.S. 1987. “Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform.” Harvard Educational Review 57:1–22. Trawick-Smith, J. 1997. Early Childhood Development: A Multicultural Perspective. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Ch 12-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 230 I APPLIED AND WAS ACCEPTED INTO THE TRANSITIONAL YEAR PROGRAMME (TYP) at the University of Toronto in 1994–1995. I chose TYP because it offered me the shortest (or possibly the only) route into any university in Canada or anywhere in the world. Moreover, it was impossible for me to take the longer route of years of academic upgrading to prepare me for university, for I needed to work full time to afford living in Toronto. To understand how TYP assisted me in pursuing my personal goals, it is important for me to outline what my goals were before I entered the program in 1994. Personally, I was adamant about not accepting for the rest of my life the low-paying jobs that I found myself doing for my first five years in Canada. I have always had a keen interest in public affairs and the functioning and structure of society. In addition, I felt that postsecondary education would enhance my confidence and self-esteem. I felt that I lacked the necessary confidence and assertiveness to proceed beyond my high school graduation certificate and the part-time college courses that I had taken. TYP helped me to successfully escape from the inevitable limited path on which I was travelling, and gave me the first taste of critical thinking and allowed me to place my observations about my life and my position in society into perspective and context. I wanted to improve myself and my position in life. I wanted to improve my writing and speaking skills, and I learned that TYP was a good environment in which to do so. It was during my year in TYP A l u m n i V o i c e s 231 TYP Prepared Me for Graduate School Claude Davis (TYP 1994–1995) Ch 12-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 231 232 Access and Equity in the University that I first realized I had the potential to develop myself, to hypothesize, and to speak and write with authority. I learned to trust my ideas as I came to realize that there was no wrong or right to my ideas, but what was important was how I developed and presented my argument. The weekly assignments and class discussions in TYP were critical to the development of my writing and speaking skills. I followed a TYP instructor’s advice that “You should write out all your thoughts, reflect on them, and rewrite and refine your paper, remove the unnecessary words until you reach the point where you are very comfortable with your work.” With such advice and encouragement, and with my determination and hard work, I was able to successfully make it through TYP. My success and the breadth of my learning convinced me that TYP as an access program is one of the greatest revolutionary ideas in university education. This provision of a route to university for under- represented students such as myself debunks the myth that there is only one path to university, the one that traditional students take with their completed high school credentials with high grades. TYP as an access program assists those of us (who would otherwise be inevitably locked into dead-end jobs or welfare dependency) to enter through an open door to university—a door that would have been closed were it not for TYP. Another value of TYP is that it provides access to students who have experienced discrimination due to race, economic status, and gender. It appeals to African Canadians and First Nations students and working-class White students, including women with children. It disproves the myth of pathological dependency or deficiency in certain groups in society, and shows what can be accomplished when people are allowed opportunities. The students who come to TYP prove that they are able to handle university-level work in an elite institution such as the University of Toronto, even though they have not completed high school or, in some cases, did not attend high school. After my year in TYP, I was able to complete my degree studies at the University of Toronto and graduate with a B.A. Hons. degree in political science, Caribbean studies, and history. I then applied to graduate school at York University where I have recently completed an M.A. degree in political science with a major research paper. The basis of my endurance in completing my M.A. is due to the strong foundation TYP provided me. I was also able to retain my link to TYP Ch 12-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 232 TYP Prepared Me for Graduate School 233 as I continued my graduate studies. When I was in TYP, I was able to interact with all of the faculty, which enriched my academic development. Most important has been the open-door policy in TYP, which allowed me to make arrangements either formally or on an impromptu basis to meet with faculty members to discuss my research interests and receive assistance when I was dealing with difficult material. This access was important in my success, especially in the last two years of my B.A. degree when I was working on difficult papers. I could bring a paper in progress to a faculty member and discuss the topic to sharpen my thoughts and my argument. In addition, the level of interaction I have had with the faculty in TYP has not been on a hierarchical basis but rather on the basis of concern for my progress. This form of interaction made it possible for me to feel comfortable in discussing a hypothesis that I otherwise would not have discussed out of fear that my idea was not academic enough or perhaps it was outright stupid. The positive space established in TYP is one of the most important reasons for my completion of two university degrees. As students and alumni, we also benefit from the permanence of our access to the TYP building and its facilities, such as the computer room. When we are working on short deadlines for essays, we are accommodated in the computer room where many of us would be crowded trying to complete our essay assignments. But one of my most important learning from my years of connection to TYP is the value of TYP students and alumni giving something back to the programme and also to our community. Since I completed my first degree in 1999, I have been trying to give something back to TYP by volunteering to assist students and alumni in the programme. I can remember that when I was a student in TYP, the programme did not have the resources to fully accomodate the financial and other needs of the students, but we all worked to compensate for this by building a strong community spirit in TYP. This spirit has helped to strengthen TYP and its development. It is a spirit that expects us to support new students, to help to mentor and tutor others. If we are succeeding academically, it is our duty to help other students to succeed academically. It is both a tacit and implicit part of TYP’s mission that alumni wherever possible assist students in the TYP family through advice and peer counselling and tutoring. Ch 12-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 233 My point is that TYP is not just a programme which deals with the academic advancement of students who would not otherwise qualify to attain a university degree. TYP attempts in many ways to respond to the total person and to all the psychological, financial and other hurdles which students face when they enter the University of Toronto. This positive support is an important reason why many students who have passed through the doors of TYP, complete their undergraduate studies, and in some cases advance to graduate studies, in the knowledge that students like us have the ability to take on the world. Editor’s Note: Claude Davis is the recipient of one of the first two Horace Campbell Community Service Awards in TYP in 2001–2002. Ch 12-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 234 WHEN I WAS A KID I WANTED TO BE EITHER A DOCTOR WORKING FOR AN AGENCY such as Doctors Without Borders, or a civil-rights lawyer, and, short of these dreams, I thought I could become a singer/performer. The first two professions involved helping other people, which was something I always enjoyed doing. Singing and performing also involved helping people, but in a different way from being a doctor or lawyer. As a singer and performer, I could make people smile, tap their feet, and snap their fingers in time to the music I would help to make. However, these childhood aspirations soon disappeared, due in part to my decreasing self-esteem, which consumed most of my teenage angst-filled years. So severe was my self-esteem problem that when I reached Grade 11 with marks in the eighty to ninety range for drama and history and failing grades for all the rest, I decided to quit school forever. I assumed that I was dumb because I had to struggle with maths, sciences, and everything else that didn’t inspire me to focus and achieve. By the time I was in my twenties, my dumb complex had fully developed and, with the added help of ancient emotional demons, threatened to send me over the edge of “normalcy” onto the jagged rocks of permanent self-destruction below. In addition, I began to realize that without a high school diploma, my career options were severely restricted. I tried my hand at acting, singing in a band, becoming a community activist, and working as a waiter. After a few A l u m n i V o i c e s 235 Building My Self-Esteem Through Success in TYP Simone Amelia Louis (TYP 1996–1997) Ch 12-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 235 236 Access and Equity in the University years, I realized I didn’t want to do any of these jobs for the rest of my life. It was time for something new, and I was willing to take a leap of faith. My leap of faith consisted of two separate acts, but both involved going back to school. Long before I had ever heard of the Transitional Year Programme, I enrolled in the part-time students’ course called Pre-University offered by Woodsworth College at the University of Toronto. The expectation in this program was that if I maintained a high seventy-plus grade in my one Pre-University course, Canadian history, then the following year I would be enrolled at the University of Toronto as a part-time student. At the time, this seemed like a reasonable and realistic goal for me to achieve. However, after a few weeks of trudging through snowy streets in the dark to attend my history lectures at Woodsworth College, I began to skip classes. As my first “small” essay due date approached, my anxiety increased and my dumb complex flexed its muscles. I had made little attempt to approach the professor. I had not really connected with any of the night students, so I felt totally alone. I did not have the courage at the time to ask anyone for help, so instead I chose to simply walk away from the course and bury my head in shame. I can’t actually remember who first told me about the Transitional Year Programme. I just remember getting excited and fantasizing about being in school at the University of Toronto. After organizing all the required pieces of information in a thick envelope, I dropped it off at TYP and waited to hear from the program. When I received a response announcing the date of my interview at TYP, I began to sweat and fret. The interview was over in a blink of an eye and I was almost certain that I had not been accepted. I had to call after a certain date to find out if I had gotten into the program or not. Marilli, whose voice is very distinct, answered the phone that fateful day and it was she who informed me that indeed I had been accepted into TYP and that I was to come in at a later date for orientation. I nearly fell off my chair with excitement. It was not until that moment that I realized how much I had secretly wanted to become a part of the Transitional Year Programme! Unlike the Pre-University Program at Woodsworth College, where I felt I was literally thrown off a boat without a lifejacket and expected to teach myself to swim or else drown, TYP spends an entire year Ch 12-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 236 Building My Self-Esteem Through Success in TYP 237 teaching students the basics of writing, arithmetic, comprehension, and giving us daily tips for surviving in university. In addition, while in TYP I did some regular university work and received credit for it. TYP also assigns each student his or her own personal faculty adviser, many of whom would become future friends and mentors. It was TYP that first introduced me to the computer, and I went from not knowing how to turn on this machine to writing, correcting, and printing dozens of half-decent essays on computers. At the beginning of my TYP year, I worried instead about being too dumb to survive the gruelling five-day week of studies, but by the end of that year, I worried about which college at the University of Toronto I would select for the following first year. As I look back on my TYP year, I can say that it was filled with inspiration, desperation, and devastation. What got me through the year was a powerful combination of constant encouragement from the entire TYP faculty and staff, supportive friendships with fellow TYP-ers, positive challenges that individual TYP professors gave me, and a welcoming TYP building at 49 St. George Street to call my second home. In my four years at the University of Toronto, while doing a major in political science and two minors in history and African studies, I have truly missed the human essence of TYP, which has been glaringly absent throughout the rest of the St. George campus. Ch 12-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 237 Ch 12-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 238 I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN MOGADISHU, SOMALIA. MOGADISHU HAS MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND dreams. I had many loving relatives in Mogadishu. I had many caring neighbours in Mogadishu. I had my childhood playground in Mogadishu. I left Mogadishu and lost my past. I lost many relatives, neighbours, and friends. I lost the togetherness of my family. I lost the pureness of my native language. I lost the taste of culture and religion. I lost them all. Growing up in Mogadishu was fun. I had all my friends with me. We used to play soccer and complain how short the weekends were. We used to go to school six days per week. Friday was the only day off. My friends were important to me. My friends and I used to play for the same soccer team. We attended the same school. We listened to the same Somali songs and poems. We had almost everything in common. We had spent many times talking about the future and what everyone wanted to be. My friend Rajis wanted to be a pilot like his father. Omar wanted to be a dentist like his father. Guled wanted to be an engineer, because he was good at math. I wanted to be a great lawyer like my dad. We all had high hopes and big dreams. Upon graduating from high school in Mogadishu in 1989 at the age of eighteen, my dream of enrolling in university in Mogadishu was crushed by the civil unrest and persistent violent protests against the military government. My parents managed to send my older sister and me to New York City four months before the 1991 civil war started in Mogadishu. Most of my cousins had been living in New York City A l u m n i V o i c e s 239 The Lost Playground! Mohamed Abdulle “Dudishe” (TYP 1997–1998) Ch 12-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 239 240 Access and Equity in the University for more than five years, but were not in school. Most of my cousins were around my age and working instead of going to school. My aunt and uncle asked me about my ambitions to succeed in this Western life. I told them I was interested in going to school to become a lawyer. My uncle advised me that going to university in North America required strong knowledge of the English language. At the time, I had never been in an English language class. My ability to speak English was nil. After nine days in New York City, however, my sister and I decided to move to Canada. We enrolled in Kipling Collegiate Institute for English as a second language classes, but after one school year, I had to leave school to work in order to support our family in Egypt. For the first time in my life, I found a job as a warehouse employee unloading trucks. Within two months, I found another job and worked part-time at nights unloading trucks. For six years, I worked five days and five nights, Monday to Friday each week. I had no time for school. Meanwhile, my older sister continued to struggle at learning English; she graduated from high school for the second time and then moved on to Humber College where she graduated with a diploma in accounting. It was now her time to work and my time to go back to school to revive my faded dream. My sister then started to work to support our family. This gave me an opportunity to return to school. I first tried to enrol in Niagara College as a mature student, but was turned down. I was very discouraged by the Niagara College rejection. I strongly believe that the test they gave me did not reflect my ability to succeed in Niagara College in their law and security program. I knew that I had what it takes to become a successful student, but Niagara College did not give me a chance to study. I was looking for a chance to become a postsecondary student. I attempted to enter many postsecondary institutions, but most of them had tests to determine who would be a successful student and who would be unsuccessful. This, I thought, was a ridiculous method. There are people who pass these tests and do not become successful students. I therefore decided to concentrate my focus on those institutions that gave mature students a chance to become successful students. I went to the University of Toronto’s admissions and awards office and asked for information about their mature students’ programs. At this office, I was given a booklet containing information about a Ch 12-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 240 The Lost Playground! 241 program designed for mature students. This program, the Pre- university Program, was very intensive, part-time, and lasted only a few months; it was also financially challenging. The admissions office suggested that I should try the Transitional Year Programme. I left the admissions office feeling discouraged and again feeling rejected. I was walking home from the admissions office when I noticed the TYP building. I did not want to go into the TYP building, because I did not want to get two rejections in the same day. As I was about to pass the building, I saw a man of my colour coming out of the building. I think that he had noticed my curiosity and waved at me. I said hi and continued to pass the building slowly. He asked me how I was and I paused to talk to him. He was very friendly and I felt that I could take his rejection easily. I asked him about TYP, and he asked me if I had time for he would explain the whole program to me at his office. The man whom I followed to his office at TYP was Dr. Keith Allen, who was associate director of the program. Through his advice and my genuine ambitions for higher education, I registered in TYP at the University of Toronto for the 1997–1998 school year. I chose TYP because it offered an access program that gave me a chance to study and become a successful student. In addition to TYP faculty, who go beyond the call of duty to help students succeed at their dreams, TYP alumni also offer a buddy system that nurtures the mature students’ effort to succeed at their studies at the University of Toronto. Through my hard work and the assistance I received from TYP faculty and alumni, I am about to graduate from the University of Toronto in 2002 with a B.A. honours degree in history and political science. My dream of becoming a lawyer has been born again and is now within my reach. The success of TYP as a university access program proves that there is a need for such access programs at all postsecondary institutions in Canada and other countries. Every child should have a chance to realize his or her dreams. I am grateful that TYP gave me the chance to become a successful university student. Ch 12-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 241 Ch 12-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 242 IMPLICATIONS OF NAMING AND PERCEPTION FOR ACCESS AND EQUITY Part Four Part Four Part Four Part Four Part Four Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 243 Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 244 Affirmative action is under severe attack in the United States. In the last decade there has been a sustained and, for the most part, successful effort on the part of conservative opponents to roll back the gains attributable to affirmative action policies and to root out such policies at all levels of government in the United States. Supporters of affirmative action, too, have at least conceded that such policies may have to be amended even if they are not to be terminated. What I propose to do in this paper is to examine one core issue that separates opponents and proponents of affirmative action. Supporters argue that many who would otherwise have been denied access to jobs, school spaces, and other opportunities do gain access in large part because of affirmative action policies. Affirmative action opponents disagree vehemently with this view. For them, what the supporters deem to be the strength of affirmative action policies is, in their view, the biggest weakness. They argue that the fact that those who are brought in, thanks to affirmative action, who would not otherwise have had access, is proof that such candidates, once stripped of these preferments, never had what it would have taken for them to have access to the jobs, placement in schools, and so on that these policies helped them to obtain. Eliminate those policies and such candidates would lack access to the relevant opportunities. Indeed, a good part of the current backlash against affirmative action, especially in employment and school admissions in the United States, can be traced to opponents’ allegations that, thanks Chapter 13 245 Breaking the Testing Mould: Or What Opponents of Affirmation Can Learn from TYP-ing Olufemi Taiwo Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 245 246 Access and Equity in the University to the policy, unqualified people are being recruited into positions they do not merit and for which they are unsuited. Simultaneously, opponents contend that qualified people, because they are not eligible for affirmative action, are being left out. In the United States, many believe that students who are admitted as part of the affirmative action programs in many institutions of higher learning are, by definition, not bearers of “standard” credentials required for college admission. Hence, such programs are under a severe and generalized assault. In the area of admission into colleges and universities and other training institutions, the argument is that Black applicants, who form a significant percentage of beneficiaries of affirmative action policies, and who are either unqualified or less qualified, are being awarded spaces while White applicants, who are either qualified or more so, are being denied spaces. Although the assault is carried out at several levels, much of it is triggered by allegations that students admitted under affirmative action policies have not met the minimum standards required of their cohort, standards that are attested by test scores. The strand of argument that will come under focus in this essay is that dealing with test scores. Before we develop the argument further, let us state the phenomenon that we propose to use as a foil for our case against the primacy of test scores and the case built on it against affirmative action policies. For that we turn our attention momentarily to Canada, to the Transitional Year Programme (TYP) at the University of Toronto. According to the brochure of the Transitional Year Programme, under the heading “Admissions and Requirements,” this program offers the following: Are you lacking the formal qualifications for admission into university? The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto may well be the place for you. The Programme is aimed specifically at those who have not had the opportunity to finish high school because of financial or social problems, family difficulties or other circumstances mainly beyond their control. TYP would be the only way for them to have access to a university education. Applications from members of the Native Canadian, African-Canadian and other minority communities, and from sole-support parents are actively encouraged. 1 Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 246 Breaking the Testing Mould 247 From the above, it is obvious that the aim of TYP is much more radical than even the most generous affirmative action admission policies will embrace in the United States. If TYP has any success at generating graduates from what would be considered an inadmissible group in regular admission policies, then there may be some reason to question an argument that says that affirmative action admission policies are faulty because they give places to so-called “unqualified persons.” And question we must because those who are condemned as “unqualified” by affirmative action critics are much closer in profile to their cohort than the prospective candidates for placement in TYP. If the latter is the case, then the argument based on lack of qualification may be less plausible than it at first appears to be. Let us now present and examine the qualification argument against affirmative action policies. The argument for test scores, usually advanced by those opposed to affirmative action, goes somewhat as follows: White candidates regularly have higher test scores, regardless of whatever aptitude test is being administered, than Blacks and Hispanics. Higher test scores, in the absence of affirmative action policies, would have ensured admission offers or job placements for the White candidates concerned prima facie. Because of the requirements of affirmative action, which compel schools and other institutions to admit Blacks or other minority groups even when their test scores are comparatively lower, low-scoring Blacks are admitted while high-scoring Whites are kept out. The consequence, opponents argue, is that those who merit admission do not obtain it, and those who do not merit it are put in places where their possibility of success is slim to nil. The preceding argument—we call it the qualification argument—rests on assumptions that are problematic, if not false. In the first place, their proponents assume that earning good test scores is indicative of the possession of a superior intelligence. Further, that the identification of superior intelligence with high test scores presages a greater potential for success in, in this case, college. In the second place, the argument assumes conversely that poor test scores are indicative of inferior intelligence and that both signal a far less potential for success in college. Finally, there is an assumption that good test scores are adequate, good, Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 247 248 Access and Equity in the University better, or the best predictors of performance in college or on the job. I wish now to challenge the preceding assumptions. One can argue that there is no necessary connection between how well or badly one does on various aptitude tests and the quality of one’s intelligence. How well one does on tests often has more to do with one’s cultural inheritance, class location, and access to coaching that is test-specific. That is, as many have argued, 2 the tests that are usually deployed as the measure of intelligence are often skewed in favour of White students of middle- to upper- class parentage, with ample access to superior schools and resources for test-specific coaching. Add to that the widespread acceptance that the tests are often reflective of cultural bias that privileges White middle- to upper-class values and preferences. We have a situation, then, in which however intelligent the Black candidates may be, given that they do not share the biographies that we have just described, their chances of performing well on the requisite tests are essentially diminished, if not crippled. And even Blacks, who sometimes share profiles similar to those of Whites who do well on the tests in terms of their social class situation, do not do as well as their White counterparts. 3 Regardless of how well Blacks and Whites do on tests, it is perhaps more important to consider whether or not those, Black or White, who do not do well in tests otherwise succeed when given the opportunity and appropriate levels of support in the relevant domains. If it turns out that such people manage to excel in spite of their low test scores, that could be grounds for questioning the value of test scores. If they do not, that still would not mean that their poor scores are the best or even a good explanation. This suggests that we may need to explore other variables in our assessment of people’s performance. Let us suppose that test scores are indicative of something instructive about prospective candidates. It is not always clear, if at all, what the tests test. For example, higher test scores do not signal a higher potential for success in college. A good test taker may find out in college that some of the requirements are actually tougher than what is anticipated in the tests. Sometimes, a student with high test scores discovers that her college courses are not interesting enough to challenge her or sustain her attention, so she drops out. At other times, a combination of uninteresting Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 248 Breaking the Testing Mould 249 courses, uninspiring teachers, and even something as mundane as homesickness can lead to the failure of high-scoring students to cope in real college situations. Given what we have just said, a student who tested poorly but who, as a result of affirmative action, finds a place in college, may prosper in the diverse situations described above for any number of reasons. He or she may feel a need to prove that he or she belongs in college. A combination of interesting courses and inspiring teachers, coupled with a rich campus life, might inspire a student with mediocre test scores to soar in a college situation. Finally, one can argue that test scores are not necessarily an adequate, much less the best, predictor of success in college or on a job. The excessive focus on testing in the United States, which borders on test-idolatry, tends to ignore the basic fact that success in college or on a job is not determined solely or even principally by an individual’s personal intellectual endowments. However meagre or ample one’s intellectual endowments, everyone requires a social context in which these endowments are exercised. Such context is not often amenable to the individual’s will and the ever unpredictable wills of other individuals. That is, what context one finds oneself in might ensure that one’s light never shines as brightly as it otherwise might. At other times, one must contend with the phenomenon of a lack of fit between one’s talents and the task that one has chosen to perform, something that is not always or easily obvious. The lesson from all the preceding scenarios is that test scores may not be adequate predictors of success in an individual’s chosen task. There are special factors involved when we limit our evaluation of the place of test scores to college admissions. The main tests that are widely used for purposes of admitting students to colleges in the United States (ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and GMAT) are for the most part not based on the curriculum of studies at the different levels for the testing of competence in which they are administered. This means that candidates who excel in specific subjects in the curriculum do not have the opportunity of showing how good they really are in the subjects that they are more than likely to encounter in college, graduate, or professional schools. Of course, supporters of testing can rejoin that the tests are designed to test general knowledge and overall Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 249 250 Access and Equity in the University competence rather than specialized knowledge or sectoral competences. But this will be a desperate move to save a dubious argument. Given the structure of most of the tests, they do not test overall competence, especially the dominant forms that college evaluations take, such as essay writing, research and presentation of results, comprehension of difficult materials, critical reasoning, and so on. Thus, students who do nothing but prepare for the tests may not necessarily be adept at critical reasoning, be able to write elegantly, possess the capacity to start with a simple idea, research it, and present it in a finished essay, be able to anticipate and reply to objections to their positions, or write well. Certainly, the aforementioned qualities are not the only ones that college graduates are supposed to have. We can add those of leadership capabilities, collegiality, and ability to relate to and work with others. Tests do not provide for the demonstration of the possession of the latter skills. If what we have said so far is plausible, one is right to question the emphasis placed on test scores as the main or most important measure with which to distinguish between those who merit admission to college and those who do not. There is evidence that, once we get past the fulminations of affirmative action opponents, in reality no school uses test scores alone or principally to make their admission decisions. In reality, different schools allot differential weight to test scores in deciding whether or not to admit particular candidates. I do not know of any school that makes admission decisions based solely on a candidate’s test scores. In the words of Neil L. Rudenstine, the immediate past president of Harvard University: Our commitment to excellence means that we will continue to admit students as individuals, based on their merits: on what they have achieved academically, and what they promise to achieve; on their character, and their energy and curiosity and determination; on their willingness to engage in discussion and debate, to entertain the idea that tolerance, understanding, and mutual respect are goals worthy of persons who have been truly educated. In assessing individual merit, we will—as we have in the past— take a number of criteria into account. Grades, test scores, and class rank will be viewed in the context of each applicant’s full set of Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 250 Breaking the Testing Mould 251 capabilities, qualities, and potential for future growth and effectiveness. 4 An important question to consider is: Why do schools make test scores just a small part of the admission decision? The fact that they do is an oblique acknowledgement that test scores cannot bear the weight that their proponents wish to place on them. This is in part due to the possible defects we identified above. Hence, in every case, schools wish to be apprised of other qualities and capacities that prospective candidates possess besides or in addition to their test scores. In order to verify such qualities, schools routinely ask candidates to submit personal profiles. They are invited to write essays, solicit letters of reference from teachers who can attest to their broader competence beyond that required for test-taking, and testimonials from others who know their strengths and weaknesses, their temperament, and general suitability for college experience. They are encouraged to submit evidence of other talents they have, and finally are invited to visit their prospective schools. With these other credentials, the place of test scores becomes further attenuated. But that is not all. Where test scores are used, no school simply selects its complement of incoming students from the top test finishers among its applicants. Rather, the usual practice is to establish a range of scores within which prospective candidates are expected to place. The range has a lower ceiling and an upper one convergent with the maximum points obtainable on the relevant test. Anyone who falls within the range specified by the school concerned is adjudged to be prima facie capable of undergoing the standard course of education for which admission is being sought. In this case, it really does not matter whether an individual candidate is at the low, say 1100, or high, say 1600, end of the range in the case of SAT. The implication is that anyone who falls within the range, that is, anyone whose score is between 1100 and 1600, given additional criteria of the sort already adumbrated, can reasonably be expected to undergo successfully the course of studies for which she or he has applied. As we pointed out earlier, the fact that one is at the high end of the range is no guarantee of success in college and simultaneously, the fact that one comes in at the low end is not a predictor of failure at one’s chosen course. If this is true, Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 251 252 Access and Equity in the University then all those who argue that affirmative action candidates do not deserve their admissions because they have lower scores than some non-affirmative action candidates are wrong. Only if the affirmative action candidates fall outside of the range specified can they be considered “unqualified.” By the same token, only if high-scoring, non-affirmative action candidates can show that they possess other competences, qualities, and capacities that tilt the balance in favour of the other candidates would they have been unjustly treated in the admission process. One question that arises from the foregoing discussion is: Might “race” be one such quality that tilts the balance in favour of the affirmative action candidates? We answer in the affirmative, especially in a situation where race has been used routinely to disable otherwise qualified persons who are possessors of certain racial inheritances. Of course, “race,” understood as a biological phenomenon, will rank lowest. But race is principally sociogenic. Bearers of racial categories come with stories and narratives that have pedagogical possibilities. Exclusion leads to impoverishment of the education of those who function within the monochromatic college communities that result therefrom. Inclusion, on the other hand, is likely to lead to enrichment and closer approximations to truth about the historical experiences of all who live and go to school in such a society. The realization that “race” has had such an impact on history and the experiences and life chances of members of certain groups in American society explains why the United States Supreme Court has yet to outlaw any reference to “race” in the allocation of some public goods. Again, I cite Rudenstine: Our commitment to excellence also means that we will seek out—in all corners of the nation, and indeed the world—a diversity of talented and promising students. Such diversity is the substance from which much human learning, understanding, and wisdom derive. It offers one of the most powerful ways of creating the intellectual energy and robustness that lead to greater knowledge, and to the tolerance and mutual respect so essential to the maintenance of our civic society. 5 If what we have said so far is true or at least plausible, why then is there such idolatrous worship of test scores in the debate Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 252 Breaking the Testing Mould 253 over entitlement and merit in the allotment of places in higher education? One possible answer is that testing and test scores offer a quick and, one is tempted to say, non-messy way of establishing merit in a system in which merit is the principle for the allocation of some social goods. Those with higher scores are easily considered to have more merit than those with lower scores. As we have seen, this is at best a dubious identification. It is even more so once we consider the experience of programs like the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto and the niche this program represents in higher education. If our initial affirmations cast doubt on the appropriateness of test scores as vehicles for establishing merit or predicting success, an examination of the Transitional Year Programme will show that its presuppositions help us solidify the claim that the emphasis on test scores may be undergirded by reasons other than those of fairness and efficiency. Indeed, what is intriguing is that many of the students whose credentials are challenged by opponents of affirmative action in the United States actually have more traditional profiles. The same cannot be said of those who are admitted into transitional year programs. What type of students does the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto cater to? Generally speaking, those who access university through this route are what we would ordinarily call “non-traditional” students. According to the Transitional Year Programme’s own advertisement directed at prospective students, the program is designed to attract students who would otherwise not have been given the opportunity of a university education. Recall that the program is aimed at those “who have not had the opportunity to finish high school.” What this means is that judged by “traditional” criteria of admissibility, TYP at the University of Toronto actually sets out to bring into the ambit of the university students who are primarily adjudged “unqualified” by its admissions criteria. This is what I mean when I say that students who are brought in under affirmative action programs are closer in profile to their fellow students than those who are invited to associate themselves with TYP. Not only do affirmative action candidates finish high school, they indeed have all those other qualities that we spoke about above, including placing within the range of those whose test scores make them Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 253 254 Access and Equity in the University eligible for admission into colleges and universities. Under TYP, by contrast, the prospective candidates do not even have to have finished high school. And if they do, they probably have done so with mediocre grades. There have also been students who do not have any high school education who have earned their degree from the University of Toronto through the TYP access route. Where test scores are concerned, these students remain, prima facie, without merit. When it comes to qualifications for college, TYP students have to meet minimum standards that have no place in the universe of test-driven merit. Although they are expected to have some academic skills, their possession does not weigh heavily in admission considerations. A candidate can be considered for admission and then “referred to academic upgrading programs.” What the candidates who have applied to TYP are required to do is “to satisfy the Admissions Committee that they left school early for reasons connected with social or economic difficulties, illness or some other personal problem wholly or mainly beyond their control. They must also be able to satisfy the Committee that TYP is the only feasible way that they can have access to a university education.” It is only after this initial step has been satisfied that the candidate is asked to submit “an application form and supporting documents such as transcripts, letters of reference, a brief autobiography including a personal statement about career goals and the importance of TYP in achieving those goals, and any other documents which the applicant believes may strengthen his/her case for admission to the Programme.” So, it is more important for the prospective student to persuade the admissions committee that he or she has the requisite motivation and drive to have a chance at university education. They are brought in to the university for a year—a transitional year—during which they take some TYP courses specially designed for them, and also some regular university courses. Most participants in TYP are the first members of their families to attend university or college, and many of them do not possess the usual qualities associated with traditional college-bound students. In light of this fact, it would not be enough to bring these students into the university and expect them to thrive without providing them with adequate resources and support. To take care of this contingency, TYP has Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 254 Breaking the Testing Mould 255 an extensive array of features—counselling, low student-teacher ratio, tutoring, an adviser system, special bursaries, etc.—to ensure that its students acquire the necessary skills and confidence to enable them to do well when they fully enter the university mainstream after their transitional year. I am arguing that in putting together a program directed toward ensuring that those who would have tested out of university have the opportunity to try for a university education, we are acknowledging, even if implicitly, that test scores and similar mechanisms are not the only or necessarily the best method of determining suitability for and the possibility of success in college. We can make the case being developed here even stronger when we consider the question of how those who participate in the Transitional Year Programme fare once they matriculate into the mainstream. Do they succeed? How well do they perform in comparative terms? One would have to peruse the data of TYP to elicit the appropriate trends. Although some might out of derision claim that the only reason that TYP has survived all these years, thirty in all, can be attributed to inertia or the University of Toronto authorities’ fear of a backlash from the communities from which TYP draws most of its registrants, such as the African Canadian and Aboriginal communities. However, given the requirements of accreditation, the continual assessment of the program at various times, and the sheer amount of resources the program needs to thrive, such an explanation would seem counterintuitive. Thirty years is a long time in the life of any organization. When the organization happens, as does TYP, to be without obvious power or clout to have its way in the context of competing units for scarce resources, we must discount any suggestion that its survival has been by sheer default. We may then conclude that the survival of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto, in particular, must be related to the continuing success of its students and the fact that its products have continued to add some lustre to the shine of the university’s alumnae and alumni. The program makes a claim in this direction in the following: The Programme has to its credit a growing list of graduates who are employed in various capacities in institutions in Toronto and elsewhere; for example, Toronto District School Board, Peel District Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 255 256 Access and Equity in the University School Board, Y.M.C.A., Ontario Ministry of Corrections, community organizations, business, and the arts. Several graduates have pursued or are pursuing graduate or professional studies in such areas as African Studies, History, English, Philosophy, Spanish, Education, Music, Fine Arts, Theatre Arts, Anthropology, Social Work, Law, Environmental Studies, and Urban Studies. An early participant was a winner of the prestigious Moss Scholarship at the University of Toronto. A number of recent students have gone on to earn scholarships and awards in connection with their undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto. The record of TYP at the University of Toronto, which we have used as foil for the development of the argument in this piece, the unusual character of the constituency that it is designed to serve, and the fact that it sets itself the task of bringing into the fold those who would otherwise have been left out by a test-dominated method of selection, combine to break the testing mould. And in breaking the testing mould, TYP students serve to remind us that there is much wisdom in downplaying the role of testing and test scores that form part of the mantra of those who wish to use them as a whip to crack against the proponents of equal opportunity in higher education. The incorporation of TYPs and the concomitant diminution of the importance of testing and test scores conjointly underline the collective commitment to broadening access to higher education. 6 Meanwhile, the performance of participants in TYP is indicative of the kind of talents that test-driven standards are likely to ignore or deny access in higher education. Their success breaks the testing mould and should serve as a reminder of what we lose when we accept wholesale the testing model. The fact that TYP students have been transiting successfully into and through a top university such as the University of Toronto, and also through other highly rated universities, suggests that the testing model held up as ideal by opponents of affirmative action is not all that it is cranked up to be. It may indeed be the case that the testing mould has outlived its usefulness. 7 Notes 1. TYP brochure, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/typ/history.htm. I am also grateful to Keren Brathwaite, who made other TYP materials, especially Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 256 Breaking the Testing Mould 257 regarding its history, available to me. She also deserves my thanks for the initial invitation to contribute to both the commemoration of the TYP’s anniversary and this volume. 2. In a Special Report titled “Should SATs Matter?” TIME’s John Cloud reported that one of the arguments against SAT is “that SAT scores measure only the ability to take the SAT—a skill that, depending on your ability to pay, you could pick up in a coaching class (a growth industry that in 1999 alone raked in $400 million). Aside from that class inequality, the test’s failure to measure anything meaningful also meant that kids were spending a lot of time fretting over pedagogical phantoms at the expense of real learning” (TIME March 12, 2001:64). 3. Again I refer to TIME’s Special Report. According to its author, “Poor kids going to dismal schools doesn’t explain why rich black kids score worse on average than white kids. Stanford psychologist Claude Steele has a theory that might explain it. His research shows that even high-achieving African- American pupils may be distracted by a fear that they will confirm the stereotype that blacks don’t do well on intelligence tests. Steele has tested his theory by giving an exam to two mixed-race groups of students. One group was told that the exam was a simple problem-solving exercise; the other was told that their scores would show how smart they were. The white kids scored about the same no matter what they were told. The black kids who thought they were taking an intelligence test performed considerably worse than those told the test was no big deal” (TIME March 12, 2001:66). 4. Neil L. Rudenstine, “The Proper Consideration of Race in Higher Education,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 33 (Autumn 2001):116. 5. Ibid., 116. 6. The importance of such access and the benefits that accrue to the larger society have recently been superbly defended by William G. Bowen and Derek Bok in their much acclaimed The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). I have not spent any time on this issue in the present paper because the case being made here does not require it. 7. Our conclusion is not without support in current developments within the United States. More and more people are beginning to question the relevance and appropriateness of, for instance, SAT and other aptitude tests in the college admission process. As John Cloud points out in a TIME article, “Should SATs Matter?”: “Over the past few years, however, the test’s defenders have started to lose ground. About 280 of the nation’s 2,083 four-year colleges and universities make the SAT optional for some or all applicants; a handful of prestigious colleges … have joined their ranks since the early ’90s and say they aren’t admitting idiots as a result. … Countless other schools have de- emphasized the SAT in more subtle ways—continuing to ask for scores but Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 257 258 Access and Equity in the University weighing other factors more heavily. … [I]t’s getting hard to find an admissions officer anywhere who says an SAT score alone tells you anything important” (TIME March 12, 2001:64). References Bowen, W.G., and D. Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cloud, H. 2001. “Should SATs Matter?” TIME (March 12):64. Rudenstine, N.L. 2001. “The Proper Consideration of Race in Higher Education.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 33:116. Ch 13-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 258 I write from my heart as an African woman, born and raised until age twenty in Antigua, the Caribbean. Since leaving Antigua in 1965, I have lived in three societies, all of which exist under White cultural hegemony: Toronto, Canada; Baltimore, United States of America; and London, England. I write from the experience of living in these societies as an African woman, carrying the whole race on my shoulders. This state of being is as much a substantive part of my social reality as the body I own. It is from within my social reality and, in particular, from within my body, that I write this essay. A part of the baggage I have accumulated in the lived experience in three White-dominated societies is the weight of the word “slave.” Living in these societies, it seems to come with the race ... filling up the space for the definition of my ancestors ... taking me over ... making me slave! No matter what I do, “slave”! No matter who I say I am, “slave”! No matter what other words I use to define myself, “slave”! No matter what other actions I carry out in this other time, in this day and age. Now, today, I state that I am an African woman who is releasing the word “slave”! For it is merely the expression of a relationship that my ancestors forcibly entered into and experienced at the hands of, to quote my mother, “the White people.” And I note here, but will return to it later, that my mother never referred to the White people as “the slave owners,” nor did she refer to the African peoples as “the slaves.” Chapter 14 259 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” Althea Prince Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 259 260 Access and Equity in the University I think that the issue of the slaves deeply affects the psyche of African peoples in the Diaspora. Recently, when I delivered a version of this essay to a largely African audience, the response was palpable. Many young adults and older men and women (who, to use the Antiguan way of saying it, have some good age) spoke of the feelings of shame they experience when “the slaves” are spoken of in the academy. For the heinous crimes committed against African peoples are not analyzed and brought to light. Hence, there is no salvation for the psyche of a people brought to their knees and placed in the condition of slavery. They told of having to assert themselves, so as not to feel powerless and weak, when their ancestors are referred to as “the slaves.” This is a given with which they grapple in classroom discussions about the making of the “New World.” They feel that other racial and ethnic groups hear themselves defined as who they are: Whites, Chinese, Indians, Caribs, Arawaks. African peoples, on the other hand, are merely referred to as “the slaves.” 1 At that same panel discussion, parents expressed the need to respond to their children’s angst. They felt that it was important for them to be able to discuss the condition of slavery without feeling such a great sense of shame. Their children need to know who they are so that they can reclaim themselves in the curriculum. The use of the term “the slaves” as the name for their ancestors effectively silences them. The very word “slave” conjures up for me a spectre that is a robust and close-close memory. I am, after all, fresh out of slavery. My father was born in 1899 and his grandmother had lived life in the condition of slavery, so writing and speaking about this is for me a kind of journey—a journey of reclamation, of retrieval. I embrace it and undertake it (or “overtake” it, to state it in a Rastafari reshaping of the action, first claimed in the reshaping of the word). I see the writing of this essay as a part of my personal commitment to struggle, marronage, 2 resistance, and revolt. So in my journeying, I say that it bothers me that my African ancestors, whose own journey to the “New World” took place in captivity, are referred to only as “the slaves.” The reference appears everywhere—in the culture, in the academy, in the cultural hegemony in which I do life. Whenever I hear it, read it, almost say it myself, I stop short and address it. I do so, even if at the Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 260 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” 261 time, the appropriate place for raising the issue of the slaves is only in my own mind. “Africans!” I assert, as if my assertion, the figurative stamping of my foot (or even stamping my foot literally), will change things. I think it can and does, because I remember what it took for African peoples to declare that they did not want to be called “coloured” or “Negro” any more. That action was a stamping of the foot, and it took place at all levels of society. When you want to override a bad file on a computer disk, you can simply reformat the disk. Well, that is what my journeying in this article is about—reformatting the language disk altogether. I do so believing that the very stamping of my foot asserts “African” over the word “slave.” It is an act to reclaim my ancestors’ African selves, overriding the concept of exchanging their race definition for the word “slave.” The word “slave” is, after all, merely a common noun, used to describe a state of being in the material constructs of the world. Certainly, it is not descriptive of who my ancestors deemed themselves to be as a people. I see immense implications in this. If I blindly accept and use the term “slave” or “the slaves,” I am missing links that could help me to connect with my ancestral memory. Some of that memory (and I always like Toni Morrison’s term “rememory” to describe this reclamation)—some of that rememory—contains the very capacity to stamp my foot. So when I stamp my foot, I reclaim and connect (and reconnect) with my ancestors’ African selves. For their selfhood has been allowed to slide into the belly of the word “slave.” And it hangs me up in there psychologically with them. With the use of that small, yet large-large word “slave,” gone is my ancestry from the universe! And with it has gone my capacity to sustain a connection, carry out an invocation of its awesome power, the power that enabled Africans to resist enslavement and, by resisting, survive. No one stops, every time he or she uses the word “slave,” to add qualifiers to the definition. Nor does anyone stop to explain that “slave” is the condition and not the race. Clearly, that would be clumsy and unwieldy, but just as I reject and override “coloured” and “Negro” by stamping my foot, I reject and override “slave.” I also reject and override the term “ex-slaves,” Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 261 262 Access and Equity in the University demanding of myself the creativity to construct a passage through this journey of language. Other words that would come under examination are “slave culture,” “slave society,” and “slave children”—in other words, all areas where “slave” is used instead of “African.” There is no place for argument, in my view, when it comes to my claiming my racial definition. That cannot be a matter that is up for debate. I see it is an act of marronage to refuse to accept this piece of plantocracy, which still imposes itself on me. At first, that refusal takes place in my head. I am encouraged that recently a colleague, Afua Cooper, organized a panel discussion at the University of Toronto entitled “Talking About Slavery.” At the panel, a discussion took place about the use of the word “slave.” I see that in itself as an act of marronage for it presents a challenge to academics, students, and professors alike to explore issues concerning the location of the word “slave” within the politics of language. I think that continuing to use the planter’s economic and social relationship with my people to define them and, by extension, me and everyone like me, has become the norm. I see this daily in my lived experience, not just in schools and universities. Once, years ago, a White co-worker said to me, “I worked like a slave today. Oops, sorry, Althea!” Shock rippled through me. When I gathered myself together—the self that I like to call my Bolans Village-Antigua-reclaimed-from-my-mother-self—I asked: “Why are you apologizing to me?” He looked puzzled. I was also puzzled. My response was from my gut. I had not worked it out in my head then, but I knew that he used “slave” as a misnomer for my ancestors and for my race as a whole, always and forevermore. And I did not like it one bit. There was no “S” on my forehead. In graduate school in Baltimore, a Nigerian colleague, seeking to be insulting, told me one day that African Caribbean people ought to be ashamed that they were the descendants of slaves. I retorted that I thought it was much more shameful—and that he ought to feel ashamed—that his people had sold my people into slavery. I hasten to add that this was in 1973. At that time I had read only a little about the realities of the movement of African peoples to the “New World.” In retrospect, I think that, like my Nigerian colleague, I demonstrated that a little knowledge is a Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 262 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” 263 bad thing. But I mention it here to underscore the observation that the word “slave” has become internalized as a shameful thing. In my view, the shame is more appropriately located in the laps of some White people as the descendants of people who initiated and participated in such a heinous crime against humanity. It is also clear that some African peoples were also engaged in the capture and sale of humans. There is shared blame and shared shame. Shame by itself, however, is not a legitimate form of social action; redress is a much more appropriate act at this time in our history. Today, I write of African peoples who were enslaved in the “New World” in many different ways, but I never just write the word “slave” or “the slaves” when I can write something like “enslaved Africans,” or simply “Africans,” or “African peoples.” It is worth the extra effort to me. For in carrying out the tangible overriding of a non-racial category, I feel as if I am doing some sort of cleansing, some shedding of damaging psychological baggage. When I reclaim my race by name, I embrace much more than the name: I reclaim the real Africa in me, connected to those who went before me, those who enabled my being here. I think that it is appropriate to acknowledge these people by calling them by their rightful name: “Africans.” In my view, that is their race definition. I believe that their having enabled my being here came out of their retention of who they were as Africans. That is a thing worthy of celebration, and I would be delighted to honour them and thank them every year on dates that make sense in terms of our history. The practice of denying a people their ancestry amounts to psychological bullying. In other words, it asserts that “might makes right,” even in terms of deciding how people are to be defined and categorized. A powerful White elite who refer to the economic class of their forebears as “the slave owners” over and over again is sending a clear message. At the level at which language penetrates the consciousness of Whites, these are powerful affirmations. Just so too, it penetrates the consciousness of Africans. There is much work to be done. I always felt sure that no-one would refer to Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, as a Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 263 264 Access and Equity in the University slave. And King Court of Antigua, who, with his comrade, Tom Boy, developed a masterful plan to eliminate slavery on that island by killing all of the White people while they were attending the governor’s ball—no one would refer to them as “the slaves,” would they? And what of Jamaican Maroon warrior, Queen Mother Nanny? Do we think of her as “slave” too? Therefore it is a disappointment that in C.L.R. James’s definitive work on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, he refers to the revolutionaries who carried out that most successful African peoples revolt against slavery in the New World as “the African slaves.” 3 A recent edition of Ebony magazine announced an art exhibition in the United States that included some paintings of Toussaint L’Ouverture. And, sure enough, there it was again: “Toussaint L’Ouverture ... the Haitian slave who liberated his island-nation is featured in the 41-panel Toussaint L’Ouverture series.” Here, though, he is “Haitian” as well as “slave.” But then, thankfully, there is my late mother and all like her. She was a storyteller and she referred in her stories to the period of captivity that her ancestors endured in Antigua as “slavery days.” She spoke of her “generation,” which is the Antiguan term for one’s extended family and ancestors; she never used the word “slave.” For the collectivity, she said “the people.” She did not even have the problem with which I am grappling: her people are her “generation” and the African population is “the people.” She referred to the planter class as “the White” people, never the “slave owners.” I was humbled before this truth when I saw it late-late in my life. I remember that during my neophyte Black Power days, I went to Antigua on a holiday and dared to try to put my mother straight about who she was. “You are African,” I told her, my passion bristling in my well-picked out Afro’d hair and my African clothes. My mother, unlike me, had spent her formative years in the psychologically affirming environment of Bolans Village, Antigua, and had never lived anywhere but in a predominantly African society in several Caribbean islands. “That is your business,” she said. Then she added proudly, “I am a West Indian,” barely raising her voice and not even gracing me with a look. 4 Then she drew herself up to her most regal stance Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 264 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” 265 and said: “In fact, I am a born Antiguan from Bolans Village.” That was all she said, yet I realized that I had received the simplest and best treatment of history, identity, and demography that I had ever heard. I understood then that the reason the issue of my African self was a burning concern for me was because I lived in Canada, in a White cultural hegemony. It had never been an issue for my mother, given the particular within which she did life. Indeed, it was my business, in a way that it had not needed to be hers for she had not emigrated to Canada as I had. She had not had to define herself within the cultural hegemony of the other, as I was in the process of doing. She did not have to endure the word “slave” like a brand on her forehead in a sea of whiteness. There was no “S” on her forehead! Speaking from within a world that did not include this issue, her African self was a given. She could afford then to locate herself within her particular ethnicity and geography. She had no need to highlight a pan-African sensibility. It was submerged in the simple term “the people.” “Slave” she was not, nor were her “generation” for that matter. To her, they were “born” West Indians, Antiguans, from Bolans Village, some of “the people,” different from and in opposition to the White people. And “slavery-days” was a historical moment in their lives. They forged an identity based on who they knew themselves to be. Even today, I see nothing slave-like in that identity. In Toronto, I watch a beautifully crafted historical vignette on television. It chronicles Harriet Tubman’s power and courage, rescuing African people from enslavement in the American South. “Good food for the souls of Black folk,” I think. Then it comes: the voice-over says that “the slaves” travelled on the Underground Railroad to safety in Canada. I shout “Africans!” at the television screen, as if anyone can hear me. I think of the irony of the symbolism, the futility of hurling words at the television set, and of the insidious nature of the word “slave.” I think of how simply and quickly the nature of the African is submerged into this amorphous, inglorious word, “slave,” and how this word has come to have the implicit code “African” submerged in it. I ask myself: What happened to the African selves of these African peoples who had travelled on the Underground Railroad? It was African peoples, manifesting collective action, who carried Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 265 266 Access and Equity in the University out such a dangerous journey. Their behaviour was entirely unlike that of slaves. I keep uppermost in my mind that “slave” refers to a thing, chattel, livestock. African peoples’ resistance to slavery shows that they never collectively accepted White people’s definition of them as chattel. They never exchanged their ancestry, nor their sense of who they were, for the persona of “slave.” Revolts against plantation slavery show us that. Story tells us that too. For in African peoples’ early Story, we see the revolutionary and subversive reconstructing of the self in the hegemony of the plantation system. It is clear in Story that African peoples did not take possession of the definition of “slave,” except in ironic usage. They did not include it in the epistemological underpinnings of their lives. Their attention to “slave” was only in the definition of the relationship in the plantation system between the two production units: the owners of the production machinery (the plantation owners, or the White people) and the people whose labour ran the machinery (the Africans or “the people,” as my mother referred to them). The very reconstruction of power that is present in African peoples’ Story tells us that they existentially reclaimed their organic mind, overriding the position in which the condition of slavery had located them. They showed, too, in the way they did life, that they had an identity which was forged by them, in their mould. This was not a “slave” identity, but an African identity. This identity is what provided the fuel for journeying on the railroads out of slavery, be they underground, above ground, by sea, or in the mind. Language is everything. When I write stories about African children in Antigua, which are set during slavery days, I do not call the children “slaves” or, worse yet, “slave children.” This is not because I seek to deny the historical moment of slavery, but because my concern is with the children’s dreams, hopes, fears, and joys as human beings. I am concerned to present the lived experiences of African human beings, albeit located within the objective realities of the condition of slavery. The condition of slavery is the thing that they transcend in my stories, in order to connect with their humanity and their African and Antiguan selves. Toussaint, wonderful revolutionary that he was, understood this method. The Haitian Revolution was carried out by African Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 266 Stop Calling Us “Slaves” 267 people who transcended the psychology of “slave” to act on the desire to be free, to be human, to reject the condition of slavery. This was the same thing that poor White people had done two years earlier in France, the country that owned Saint-Domingue. So concerning the issue of the slaves, I tell African youth who have their close ancestral memory in the “New World,” (that is, the Caribbean and/or North America) that we are of African descent. They are the descendants of African people who lived a period of their history in enslavement. Their persona is comprised of a complex set of parts (and they become more complex as world culture becomes a reality) created within a predominantly African view of the world. That is not up for debate. That is a given. It is who I say I am. It is those composite parts, struck within that predominantly African view of the world, that I see in my makeup. I see nothing slave-like in my view of the world, nor in my identity, except perhaps in a ferocious commitment to equality for African people. And this commitment is a political response to the condition of slavery and the institution of slavery and its aftermath. It is not a racial or ethnic definition of my ancestral memory. I want to reach for a deeper understanding of all that is encompassed in what my mother meant when she said, “That is your business!” I see the issue of “the slaves” as a part of my business. I am aware that redress—in the context of all forms of the physical and psychological genocide of any people and, in particular, African peoples—takes time and energy. I must add that we do not need to create myths to dispel the first myths. All that is necessary is that we decide to take the heart and the time to tell the recorded truth. And then we must speak it in all spaces where learning takes place. This is an act of humanity, not political expediency. It is everyone’s work, not just that of African peoples. I look at the Greeks as an example of a people who experienced slavery and who have not had their identity sublimated in the word “slave.” 5 They are not forevermore, generation after generation, doomed to be referred to as the descendants of “the slaves.” They are, however, credited with a number of intellectual achievements—and even some borrowed from Africa. In my view, this is a telling example of the politics of language and cultural hegemony. Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 267 268 Access and Equity in the University I am encouraged by African peoples’ capacity to reinvent themselves, using their own terms of reference. After all, we do know who we are. I believe that it is liberating to carry out these kinds of archaeological digs into the psyche—a journeying, a renewal, a reasoning. Even if all that is accomplished is the generation of epistemological libations for the souls of Black peoples, it is enough. Notes 1. I should point out that many First Nations people in Canada make another kind of case altogether concerning hearing and reading about themselves as “the Indians,” but more on Columbus’s mistakes later. 2. The word marronage is used in Caribbean scholarship to signify the spirit of petit marronage, a term that grew out of the word “maroon.” When the Spanish began their settlements in the sixteenth century on Hispaniola, they used the word “maroon” to describe cattle that had gone wild and escaped from the plantations. The term was extended to refer to indigenous peoples, and to Africans who escaped from plantations and formed separate societies. Maroon societies existed for centuries in Jamaica, and for shorter periods in Brazil, Ecuador, and Saint-Domingue. Other forms of resistance to enslavement were termed petit marronage. These included temporary absence from a plantation, resisting labour, defying a planter, destruction of property, and other acts representative of the personal conflict between African and planter on individual plantations. (See Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.) 3. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (New York: Vintage, 1963):7. 4. The term “West Indian” deserves scrutiny in this discussion of language and the weight and power of words. Columbus, seeking to find his way to India and realizing that he was in the West and not the East, named the islands “the Indies.” Later the Caribbean islands were referred to as “the West Indies” and its inhabitants were (and are often still) called West Indians. Today, the term “Caribbean people” is used more frequently in the scholarship on the region. Reclaiming the geographic location of the region by name is, in my view, an act of marronage. 5. Slavery was a normal part of life in ancient Greece, and the enslaved were sometimes other Greeks, yet modern Greeks are not referred to as “the descendants of slaves.” (See M. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. New York: Viking, 1980.) Ch 14-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 268 In this panel, we are exploring the relationship between education and empowerment. And for the purposes of this presentation, I take education to mean the acquisition of thinking tools, which will give us greater control over our lives, which will empower us. In this context, I see education as providing us with a sociological imagination—an imagination that helps us to look at our own personal experiences in a different, more objective way. It is an imagination that requires us to ask how our lives are shaped by the larger social and historical context within which we live. The sociological imagination converts personal troubles into public issues when “both the correct statements of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the political and economic institutions of the society and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals” (Mills 1959:15). In this paper, I am going to argue that the underachievement of Black students in our schools is not a personal trouble (though it is experienced as such), but a public issue. I will argue that the sociological imagination is especially useful in helping us to understand why Black students are not only overrepresented in “remedial” programs (a code word for students who are difficult to assimilate), but also underachieve in our schools. These phenomena have been well documented in Canada, and the explanations offered have been many (Henry et al. 1995:173–193). Let me begin by describing and critiquing a popular explanation used by majority teachers to explain the failure of Black students in the school system. Chapter 15 269 The Sociological Imagination, Critique of the Model Minority Argument, and Empowerment Horace Henriques Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 269 270 Access and Equity in the University While the teachers do not use the term when discussing why “Black kids fail,” they often rely on what has been referred to as the “model minority group” explanation of differential rates of school success among various student populations. In a nutshell, majority and some minority group teachers argue that success in school is related to respect for family and for the value of education. Asians are said to have such a culture of respect and that their families succeed economically and educationally because of their work ethic and values, which are viewed as compatible with White, mainstream society. This kind of an explanation is allowing majority group teachers to conceal from themselves their own racial ambivalence concerning the inferior status of Black children in the classroom. This point I will develop later. The notion that culture has been the fulcrum of Asian success has been in circulation since the 1950s when LIFE magazine photo essays depicted Asian students seriously applying themselves to acquiring an education. In the 1980s and 1990s, various mainstream magazines ran articles extolling Asian culture while decrying the so-called cultural wastelands of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The sheer repetition of these ideas by talk show hosts and their repeated appearances in newspaper articles eventually gave them a mantle of undisputed truth. Thus, the hegemonic character of the model minority group explanation allowed it to be used thoughtlessly by majority teachers to explain the underachievement of Black students in the schools of Ontario. In so doing, the teachers failed to look beyond individuals to ask the broader sociological question of what it is about the history of Canadian society and about the way that it is ethnically and racially stratified that results in the underachievement of Black students. The majority teachers’ view of Black students, especially African Caribbean students, might have been different had LIFE and other magazines published essays on Caribbean history. Among other things, they would have discovered hard-working African Caribbean people in the cane fields, the banana plantations, the timber industry, the bauxite mines of Guyana and Jamaica, and would have found out about the immense sacrifice they made in the construction of the Panama Canal. But that is not all they would have discovered: they would have learned that the African Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 270 The Sociological Imagination 271 Caribbean people pioneered and established the educational system of the Caribbean, and that well into the 1960s they were the only teachers in many parts of that region (Anderson and Grant 1984). Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that the TYP program was established and fought for by people of African Caribbean and African Canadian background. Henry (1994:126) observes that: Caribbean parents place an inordinately high value on education, which is important in its own right and is also considered the only value of mobility for people from the lower class. Even poor single mothers will do their utmost to ensure that their children receive as much schooling as possible. I strongly recommend that majority group teachers take a crash course in Caribbean history and, in doing so, they will certainly discover a Caribbean culture of hard work and respect for education. And if that were not enough to make them reconsider the erroneous ideas about why Black students fail in schools in Canada, majority group teachers should take note of the following:  Asians are eager to rid themselves of the model minority image. For example, they let it be known that there is a large number of Asian students who require help and are not succeeding in school. In addition, some Asians consider the model minority image a slight to other minorities who are not thought to be model citizens! All of this points to a sad irony: while more and more Asians are rejecting the group label of the “model minority,” majority teachers continue to use it in their explanations of Black educational underachievement. The reason for this, I will argue, is that the model minority group explanation is, in essence, an example of New Racism. I will return to this issue later on in the paper.  There is no such thing as a uniform Asian culture. For example, a number of commentators have noted that the model minority idea lumps together some twenty-five nationalities in history and culture. Little evidence is advanced to demonstrate that Asians share common values with respect to family and work. Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 271 272 Access and Equity in the University  The model minority idea ignores the uncomfortable fact that the Asian communities both in the United States and Canada are internally stratified. For example, the situation for many Chinese immigrants within their own communities is one of being “super-exploited” in sweatshops and restaurants, reminiscent of their nineteenth-century counterparts. In addition, it has yet to be empirically shown that the children of super- exploited parents are part of the Asian success story.  While it is true that Asian cultures, like those in China and Japan, have traditionally placed a very high value on education, it must also be noted that education has been used historically in these countries to create an intellectual caste. Those who excelled educationally enjoyed access to further education, while the great many of those who failed were relegated to menial labour.  What is often overlooked is that pre-migration class factors help us to understand the destinies of Asian immigrants after their arrival in North America. Asian immigrants “are a very biased sample, the cream of their own societies.” Their origins are from within the intellectual and professional elites and, therefore, their children come from homes that are “successful” prior to their migrating to North America (see Steinberg 1996:124–126). These observations not only reveal the conceptual and empirical inadequacies of the model minority group notion, but also bring to the foreground a puzzling situation. Why is there reluctance on the part of majority teachers, whose education includes the ability to evaluate information, to question the adequacy of the model minority notion to explain Black educational underachievement? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the predominant view is that our society is one in which equality of opportunity exists. Canada is viewed as a society that provides equal opportunity to everyone to compete and to secure for himself or herself the desired roles and status without reference to race, class, and gender. Those who fail to take advantage of this opportunity do so as a result of some deficiency on their part (Allahar and Cote 1998:1–22). For African Caribbean students, the reason for this failure has to do Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 272 The Sociological Imagination 273 with their so-called culturally impoverished background. Majority teachers ask rhetorically: If Blacks are held down by discrimination and racism, then why do Asians come to this country and do so well for themselves? The model minority group explanation allows majority group teachers to express racist views without appearing to be racist. But the reality is that although they are not red-necked racists, majority teachers hold racist views comparable to those of the White mainstream Canadian population (Henry and Ginzberg 1984). Henry (1994:138), in one of her descriptions of the educational experiences of Caribbean youth in Ontario, writes: It was the first day and there was myself and another Black girl in the class. The teacher was talking about science. He said, “Oh, I see we have two coloured students in the class. It’s been my experience that coloured students don’t do too well in the sciences.” In this context, several studies have shown that while toleration of overt forms of racism has lessened, subtle expressions of bigotry and stereotyping are practised in sites other than the schools (Elliott and Fleras 1992:49–75). For example, content analysis of The Toronto Sun has revealed that it “repeatedly distorted issues in which (visible minority) communities were involved, including race relations, immigration, discrimination in employment and education” (Ginzberg cited in Henry et al. 1995:240). Indeed, the Toronto media have not really rigorously tackled racist dogma and occasionally allow non-critical coverage of reports about the connection between “race,” intelligence, and criminal behaviour. As an example, The Globe and Mail carried an article describing crime in Jamaica: It’s a sweltering Friday night—an ideal time for a plainclothes cop on the intelligence unit to look around. On one corner, Detective Corporal Mark Allen chats briefly with a man recovering from a bullet wound in the neck. It was a drive by shooting, apparently motiveless. On another, a woman complains that a gang of robber rapists is terrorizing the neighbourhood. He stops in a doorway to speak with a mother whose two teen-aged sons were recently slain. … Jamaica’s crime rate is among the world’s highest. … “I’ve never Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 273 274 Access and Equity in the University seen violence to this extent—to kill for no apparent reason,” said a Western diplomat. (cited in Henry et al. 1995:237) Majority teachers operate in an environment in which the dominant ideology of equality of opportunity overlaps with racist media representation of Blacks, providing a legitimating cloak for their discriminatory treatment of Black students. In addition, the model minority notion dovetails nicely with the equality of opportunity ideology, helping majority teachers to distance themselves from “scientific” racist explanations of differential school success rates between Black and other visible minority students. In this context, there is no public talk about racial superiority as a way of explaining differences. The strategy now is to criticize racial and ethnic minorities not in terms of White biological superiority, but in terms of their cultural differences from the dominant Euro-Canadian group. Thus, Asians do well in school and business because their work ethics and values are compatible with “Anglo-Saxon” values. This way of understanding the world is indicative of what has been called the New Racism and involves “the beliefs that, although races of people cannot be ranked biologically, they are naturally different from each other, and that social problems are created when different groups try to live together” (Satzewich 2001:219). The new racism embedded in the notion of the model minority should not be taken lightly. Majority teachers might be convinced that they are simply stating the facts, but their so-called culturalist explanation of Black educational underachievement has a number of deleterious consequences. Among other things, it socially excludes and marginalizes Black people, even if it does so “without reference to unalterable biology” (Satzewich 2001:218–219). Majority group teachers as new racists can and do undermine minority aspirations in ways that are subtle and indirect. Through the use of the hidden curriculum, majority teachers in North America and Great Britain interact with Black students in ways that convey low expectations, often seeing them as troublemakers and taking swift action against them. Indeed, majority teachers communicate positive expectations of Asians, viewing them as relatively quiet, well behaved, and highly motivated. For example, research both in Britain and Canada found that African Caribbean Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 274 The Sociological Imagination 275 children, unlike Whites and Asians, are often punished not for any particular offence but because they have the “wrong attitude” (Browne 1998:318–321; Henry 1994:120–147). If the hidden curriculum were not enough, the formal curriculum of the school completes the job of undermining the self-esteem of visible minority students. For example, textbooks still frequently carry degrading stereotypes of people of African ancestry, which can then produce low motivation in school and poor educational achievement (Henry 1994:139–142). In addition, language differences between Black students and majority teachers may cause difficulties for students when they are doing homework and communicating with teachers. As noted by Browne (1998:321), “Teachers may mistake language difficulties for lack of ability (leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy), and because Caribbean English is non-standard English, it may be unconsciously penalized in the classroom, because most teachers are white and middle- class.” The above observations reveal that the new racism embedded in the model minority notion blinds majority teachers to the fact that they may be contributing to Black educational underachievement. However, this does not mean that Black students passively accept their inferior status within the school system. Indeed, Black students respond to the new racism by developing an anti-school subculture. Let me develop this point further. The use of the model minority group explanation for Black educational underachievement divides the school population in terms of those with high status and those who are deprived of status. In response to this student hierarchy, Black students rebel against what they rightly perceive to be an unjust system. In so doing, Black students develop an alternative set of values, attitudes, and behaviour in opposition to both the formal and hidden curricula of the school. This anti-school subculture provides a means for status deprived students to achieve some success and status in their peer group. In this context, Cohen (1998) notes that educational anthropologists have argued that: … involuntary or captive minorities, incorporated by conquest or enslavement and exposed to subordination and discrimination for Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 275 276 Access and Equity in the University decades, see little hope of getting ahead through education and resist the mainstream culture. They maintain a necessary and protective sense of themselves by being purposefully different and unresponsive to the pressures of the mainstream society—and often by mocking or discouraging friends who attempt to emulate the larger culture. (see Ogbu 1991:3–33) Majority teachers can better understand the phenomenon of visible minority underachievers in the school system by acquiring a sociological imagination. Such an imagination would allow them to debunk facile and convenient theories that rely on explanations such as the model minority group explanation. In so doing, they would be in a position to explore how biographies and history intersect within a specific society to ensure that some people will advance and perpetuate their privileges, while others are stagnant and inherit social, economic, and political disadvantages. If we are going to use culture as an explanation for the differential success rates among various visible minorities, we have to speak not about culture in general, but about class-specific culture and its relationship to school and business success. That is, class background functions as a mechanism for inclusion and exclusion. Recall that in the criticisms of the model minority notion, it was revealed that one’s premigration class position was an important determinant of academic and business success in the North American host society. Indeed, the demystification of the model minority group success story brings us to one simple truth: “that what is inherited is not genes, and not culture, but class advantages and disadvantages” (Steinberg 1996:126). To paraphrase Cohen (1998), majority teachers should also be conscious of another truth: that for many or most Black students, the nature of their social transactions with White teachers are influenced by feelings of distrust, risk, and tension that other students do not usually have to face. It is quite understandable that such an experience must reduce the willingness and ability of Black students to focus and give their best in the classroom. The TYP, from its inception to the present, clearly reveals how wrong-headed and unjust is the model minority group explanation of differential success rates among various student populations, Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 276 The Sociological Imagination 277 especially among African Canadian students. It has shown that by altering the developmental environment from one of negative stereotyping to that of support and encouragement, hitherto “disadvantaged” students can begin to view themselves as having agency. In addition, they regain the trust necessary to change their lives and to see the personal and collective benefits of a postsecondary education. In fact, TYP students not only go on to achieve academic success, but also to acquire the thinking tools, which give them greater control over their lives and ability to examine their own personal experiences in a different, objective way. Unlike those who rely on the model minority group explanation, TYP students examine how the larger social and historical forces within which they live have shaped their lives, and the more they understand those forces, the more empowered they become. References Allahar, Anton, and James Cote. 1998. Richer & Poorer: The Structure of Inequality in Canada. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Ltd. Anderson, W.W. and R.W. Grant. 1987. New Newcomers. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Browne, Ken. 1998. An Introduction to Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brym, Robert. 1999. Society in Question: Sociological Readings for the 21 st Century. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada. Cohen, Mark. 1998. Culture of Intolerance: Chauvinism, Class, and Racism in the United States. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Elliott, Jean, and Augie Fleras. 1992. Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race and Ethnic Dynamics in Canada. Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc. Henry, Frances. 1994. The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Henry, F., and E. Ginzberg. 1984. Who Gets the Work? A Test of Racial Discrimination in Employment. Toronto: Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Social Planning Council of Toronto. Henry, Frances, et al. 1995. The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada. Mills, C.W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Penguin. Ogbu, John. 1991. “Immigrant and Involuntary Minorities in Comparative Perspective.” In Minority Status and Schooling: A Comparative Study of Immigrants and Involuntary Minorities, edited by Margaret Gibson and John Ogbu. New York: Garland. Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 277 278 Access and Equity in the University Satezewich, Vic. 2001. “Race and Ethnic Relations.” In Robert J. Brym (ed.), New Society. Toronto: Harcourt Canada. Steinberg, Stephen. 1996. “Ethnic Heroes and Racial Villains.” In Robert J. Brym (ed.), New Society. Toronto: Harcourt Canada. Ch 15-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 278 The image of the university I had was supported by the information package I received. … The package promoted the university as … a place where diversity thrives and where differences in ideas and bodies are accommodated. (Bramble 2000:271) In 1987 I was applying for a postbaccalaureate degree in education and I can remember going through the arduous task of creating a list of potential universities in Canada that I wanted to attend. I took the time also to call upon each of those with a faculty of education in order to request an information package about the university and its application process. I had never physically visited most of these universities and relied exclusively on the university brochures and handbooks to give me my first introduction to these institutions. The images and pictures included in the various information packages gave me my first insights into the university and its culture. What does the campus look like? Would I fit in? Are there any students who look like me? How accommodating is the university to differences and diversity? Is it an institution that promotes equity? Would it be sensitive to issues that relate to me and my background? Like Maxine Bramble (2000), my initial perception of universities as a prospective student was also largely based on the information packages I received and the popularly held belief that universities promote intellectual engagement with a range of ideas, including those that related to or included me. In Bramble’s Chapter 16 279 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities: What Do University Web Sites Say? Andrew M.A. Allen Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 279 280 Access and Equity in the University account of her experience as a prospective student, she also had visions of the university as a “place where [one] would come into contact with different people, develop new ideas and learn new things . . . [and] a place that promotes equity and accommodates difference and diversity” (Bramble 2000:271). At the time, I used the information packages to gauge each university’s relative commitment to promoting equity, accommodating differences, and reflecting diversity. I wanted to attend a university that offered an inclusive environment and therefore my evaluation of the culture of a university as it was presented in its information package became an important evaluation and selection criteria in deciding whether or not to apply to that institution. Furthermore, the university I wanted to attend needed to be actively engaged, not just in the discourse of equity, diversity, and social justice, but to have these issues clearly reflected in the actual policies and practices of its academic programs and admissions process. If a university wanted to attract me to its institution, that university’s commitment to these issues must be explicitly stated or portrayed in its communication to prospective students. As a Black man, I was looking for ways in which these universities promoted their interest in attracting and recruiting candidates of traditionally under-represented groups in postsecondary institutions, and particularly racial and ethnic minority applicants like myself. I examined their information packages very carefully because I believed the images or text produced for prospective students were important in attracting and encouraging racial and ethnic minority students to apply to their university. From my examination, I interpreted that diversity as portrayed in university brochures and handbooks signified a safe and diverse space for minority students like myself. Conversely, I interpreted that the lack of related images and text information may signify a university’s ambivalence regarding these issues or even a conservative or unwelcoming environment. At that time, I did not find many of the information packages sent out by universities to be very inclusive. This type of information was important to me because it might help me discern the university’s responsiveness to my needs as a student and how someone like myself might “fit” into the university’s culture. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 280 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 281 As universities today continue to become more inclusive, I can assume now that most of them are becoming even more sensitive to the types of things that might attract prospective students from a variety of backgrounds. I expect these institutions to promote and advertise themselves as being progressive, open, and committed to diversity in their communication to the public and to take into consideration how candidates like myself interpret this information. In addition, I also want to know how they communicate the kinds of structures in place to support racial and ethnic minority students once they gain access into these institutions. Universities should be just as concerned about the retention and support of racial and ethnic minority students as they are in diversifying their student population, and they should be interested in helping to counter some of the social and academic barriers faced by prospective students of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds. In recent years, many universities have sought to find innovative ways to attract those students who have been traditionally excluded from their institutions in order to diversify their student population to be more representative of the Canadian population or the local communities they serve (Allen 1996; Anisef, Bertrand, Hortian, and James 1985; James and Manette 2000; MacKay 1989; Shapson 1994; Solomon 1996). I have become quite curious about what universities have to offer now and how they are choosing to promote themselves as open and inclusive. I wondered what my search for a prospective university might look like today and what universities have to say about access and inclusion. I decided also to take advantage of the Internet and try to locate the information I needed through the use of information technology. In this paper, I examine the overt representation of diversity in promotional materials and how the language of and images in the information presented might signal an inclusive university environment. I am interested in the information a university might consider important to communicate to prospective students and how universities signal to prospective students that their institution is a welcoming and inviting learning environment for a diversity of students, particularly those from under-represented groups. I examine also how accessible the information that signifies a Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 281 282 Access and Equity in the University welcoming environment might be for racial and ethnic minority candidates. More specifically, I want to know whether these institutions have begun to pay careful attention to the methods used and the style, content, and nature of how information is presented for prospective students to make it clear that their institutions welcome people of historically disadvantaged groups. If universities are truly interested in opening their doors and welcoming a wider variety of students, particularly those from under-represented groups, then how is this information communicated to prospective applicants? How do these universities make it known that they are interested in recruiting a diverse student population? What do Canadian universities consider when posting information that might affect the choices of prospective minority students? What language and images do the universities use in their promotional materials? In what ways can a similar search for university information be carried out using today’s technology? University Web Sites as Material Culture To answer these questions, I found that exploring informational material posted on-line by Canadian universities on the World Wide Web to be a useful and efficient way to readily and conveniently locate information about various institutions. In this paper, I have used both the imagery and textual information presented on these Web sites to examine how university promotional information on-line might attract a diversity of prospective students. I wanted to learn more about the stated and unstated ways in which universities make themselves more welcoming for prospective students from under-represented groups through the presentation of information on-line. To this end, I decided to view and analyze some of the intended and unintended messages presented on university Web sites. I wanted to examine how they represent diversity and what that says to me about the culture of a university and the diversity of the students on campus. Some of the institutional documents, messages, and imagery available on-line provide a public record of the context within which the text and images were developed and produced and may offer insights into the culture of the institution. The contexts Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 282 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 283 of production of these Web sites suggest certain political and material conditions embedded within social and ideological systems. Some meanings and evocations are more tacit and implicit and are constituted through the general discourse of the university ethos. Because we read and experience material cultural meanings in different ways, I attempted to explore these Web sites in terms of what they signal or signify to me about the ethos of the university as expressed on its Web pages and its intentions (implied or stated) toward social goals (Hodder 1994). The study of material culture is an interdisciplinary approach concerned with the relationship between artifacts and social relations, between object and ideology, irrespective of time and place, and aims to systematically explore the linkage between the construction and representation of social identities and the production and use of material culture. It is the study of objects or artifacts made or modified by humans, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly as it refers to the understanding of the culture of a society or institution. It also examines how these objects might reflect the belief patterns of individuals who made, commissioned, or used them, and, by extension, the belief patterns of the larger society or institution to which they belong (Schlereth 1985). The interpretation of informational documents on institutional Web sites as a cultural space providing mute evidence of the material culture of the institution or university it represents is a relatively unexplored field of study. Assuming that the images and information as posted on-line by each university is socially and technically constructed, the material culture of a university Web site can be used to gauge the university’s relative commitment to access, diversity, and equity as reflective of an institution’s culture. Hodder (1994) suggests that material culture can be interpreted and analyzed in relation to a situated context of production and use. That is, Web sites as material culture serve certain communicative and representational purposes through written text, symbols, and images. My approach to locating information on-line was done in a manner similar to a prospective student from a particular under- represented group searching for information on admissions. To frame my analysis and discussion, I have used the following particular frame of reference for my on-line search of university Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 283 284 Access and Equity in the University Web sites; I imagined myself as a Black high school student seeking admission to a Canadian university. In this way, I looked at how race and diversity were represented in the information presented on-line and what that communicated to me about the university culture or environment. I paid particular attention to the portrayal of people of colour on university Web sites and how symbols or images are used as I looked for anything that might signify or communicate to me that this is a place for me. I also looked for keywords or images that reflected how the university wants to represent itself. I was interested in keywords such as “equity” and “diversity” and to see if racial and ethnocultural groups were mentioned in the text presented on the Web site. Such keywords or reference to certain groups are important because they identified a university as perhaps being progressive and open to critical political and social issues. Prospective students may interpret this information as signalling that the university promotes and accommodates difference and diversity in its programs and on campus. For this reason, I expect universities to be mindful of the impact of their Web sites and to present themselves as supportive of equity if they really want to attract us to their institutions. Although I made every effort to search each university Web site in a controlled or systematic way, the differences in Web site layouts and availability of the universities’ Web site search engines made consistency in searching each site difficult. However, the exercise could be considered a way of viewing “cyber” brochures of each university and a form of document analysis. As we have embarked upon the information age and the Internet has become the most convenient way of quickly locating general information about programs, this search may suggest or approximate actual strategies for prospective students (Burgstahler and Murakami 1999). For this investigation, I used a general search from the home page of the Yahoo Canada Web site (www.yahoo.ca or http:// ca.yahoo.com), and under the “Education” heading, I selected the “University” hyperlink text, which offers a list of Web sites for Canadian postsecondary institutions. At this point, this Web page allowed me to search for information on Canadian universities by region (provinces) or alphabetically by institution. I focused Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 284 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 285 my search on the major universities or only those postsecondary institutions in Canada designated as “universities.” On entering a home page of a university’s Web site, I browsed through each site to search for information on admissions and particularly information about diversity with regard to people of colour. Each university Web site contained graphic images and/or photographed images, with texts and hyperlink texts and buttons that provided more information on particular topics in its Web pages (similar to flipping through information booklets and brochures). Most sites had their own search engine (like “HotBot”), which allowed you to search a Web site for information or institutional documents by entering search words or phrases in a dialogue box. The information posted was generally in document form outlining general to specific information on university programs, admissions procedures, history of the university, location and community information, university events, student services, faculties’ memos and correspondence, policies and guidelines, etc. A number of universities had their application forms available on-line. Where available, I examined these forms to see if the application forms offered any options for prospective students of traditionally under-represented groups. The following areas were checked and the following search method used to find any information on each institutional Web site: (1) Selecting and browsing the following areas or sections on a university Web site: “Admissions,” “Undergraduate Information,” “Information for Prospective Students,” “Application Procedure” or “Application/Admission Requirements,” and “Special Application/Requirements.” (2) Conducting a search (if available) on each university Web site using a site search engine for the following terms or keywords: “Access,” “Access Program(me),” “Transition(al) Year,” “Access AND Admissions,” “Native,” “First Nations,” “Aboriginal,” “Blacks,” and “African Descent.” (3) Combining two or more of the above terms to narrow my search. For most search engines, using the capitalized Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 285 286 Access and Equity in the University operator “AND” specifies a more enhanced search for information on the Web site containing both of the terms specified. For example, by entering “Native AND admissions” in the search engine’s dialogue box, a search is conducted for documents, Web pages, or other information on a university Web site that contain both terms. In addition to information collected from university Web sites, I looked also at available university brochures, calendars, and information handbooks in the local public and university libraries. Another factor informing my analysis of university Web sites is the ever changing nature of the information available on-line. University Web sites are constantly being updated and refurbished, so the information available on-line was never permanent. Therefore, the analysis presented in this paper represents a cumulative exploration of both this current study and my first exploratory study in the summer of 1999. I have attempted to analyze university Web sites to develop a framework for examining what universities might be signalling to prospective minority students about the nature of their institutional culture. What the Web Sites Were Saying My exploration and analysis of the home pages of approximately fifty institutions across Canada and what each university communicated to me revealed some interesting patterns as to how diversity is represented. While I was unable to find much information using the keywords “equity” and “diversity” on some of the Web sites I visited, the ones where I did find information ranged from being very accessible, on the one hand, to being difficult to find, on the other. The information produced using a search of my keywords was either readily available on the first or home page of the Web sites, or was very difficult to find and required a great deal of search time, effort, and expertise in using the Internet search engines. In some extreme cases, such information about diversity was absent. For this study, I focused particularly on the information presented on a university Web site’s home page because the home page represents the front door or the first/main page that appears when one visits a Web site. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 286 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 287 This information is crucial because it might lead the reader or viewer to read further. A university’s Web site, like all other Web sites, can be a powerful promotion and advertising tool for the university. As all universities have their own Web sites and compete for applicants for admission, the information presented is designed to attract and recruit. However, if the diversity of people represented in Canadian society or in the university’s local community is not reflected on its home page, then what does that mean? Does representation and information about diversity on- line suggest that a university promotes and accommodates diversity or is interested in attracting students from under- represented groups? The Culture of the University The idea of gauging a university’s commitment to accommodating diversity through equity recruitment and support of students of under-represented groups is borrowed from the work of Richardson and Skinner (1991). Richardson and Skinner developed a framework for describing the commitment or progress an institution makes in changing its culture to accommodate diversity along a general continuum. At one extreme, they describe those universities with an active recruitment project as having an open access culture and, at the other extreme, those universities with a more conservative or restrictive standards and admissions as having a selective culture. Along that continuum, they describe a number of universities in various stages of development of working toward diversifying their student population. They view the relative progress an institution makes toward diversifying its student population as being linear and generally following the stages along this continuum. I have expanded on this idea to identify only three distinct types of university cultures based primarily on an analysis of information on the institutional Web sites. I have referred to the open access culture as inclusive and the selective access culture as exclusive. The third type of university I have described is the ambiguous university. These operational definitions will be used to define, analyze, and categorize the university cultures for this study. These definitions will help form a framework for examining the visual and textual clues that might identify a university’s Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 287 288 Access and Equity in the University commitment to issues of equity and diversity. The three forms of university cultures based on their commitment to student diversity are as follows: INDICATORS OF INSTITUTIONAL RELATIVE COMMITMENT TO STUDENT DIVERSITY BASED ON AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGES AND LANGUAGE USED ON INSTITUTIONAL WEB SITES The Inclusive University  Culturally specific images, symbols, and photographs of members of under-represented groups or racially diverse groups of people  Photographs depicting student diversity on campus  And/or text in the form of instruction, messages, or statements encouraging inclusion and diversity; addressing issues of equity in recruitment or admissions and the existence of social and academic barriers for certain marginalized groups in society  Difference or issues regarding difference is addressed on the home page The Exclusive University  Exclusive depiction of traditional European images or photographs on home page  Student diversity not portrayed  Text provides information for prospective students on the university, including admission requirements and procedure in the absence of any social or political commitment to issues of equity or diversity in the student population  Difference or issues regarding difference are ignored on the home page The Ambiguous University  Ambiguous or “generic” university pictures or photographs depicting campus buildings, structures or objects, or images/ photographs  Student diversity not portrayed  Socially and politically generic text  Difference or issues regarding difference are ignored on the home page Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 288 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 289 Inclusive or Representational Web Sites I have chosen to describe the particular culture of a university as being inclusive based on the following themes and general appearance of the Web sites that I visited. Inclusive university Web sites were ones that I perceived attempted, through images and/or text, to make themselves more welcoming for members of under-represented groups. These Web sites provided images that included people of racial and ethnocultural minority backgrounds or used certain key words (which I have described) that signified their awareness of or interest in issues of equity and diversity. In some cases, I have attempted to interpret the form and content of information presented on their Web pages to indicate their relative commitment to equitable admission or inclusion. The inclusive Web sites offered images that were more representational or inclusive of the diversity of the Canadian population. The visual information featured either a person or diverse images of people and symbols or cultural artifacts that are culturally specific and recognizable as those of a particular under-represented group or text that conveys a university’s awareness of equity and diversity issues. The images of people were mostly photographs of a group of students with one or more people who were easily recognizable and identifiable as people from a particular racial or ethnic minority background. These images of a racial or ethnic minority person or people seemed to stand out from the group. One of the most effective ways for me in how an inclusive university Web site promoted diversity was through the use of these identifiable images of people from particular ethnic or racial minority groups. I found the use of photographs on the first or home page to be most appealing because it signalled to me at first glance that diversity may already exist on campus. I assumed this signified that the university was indeed interested in promoting itself as open and welcoming of various cultural groups by placing familiar cultural symbols and images of the particular group(s) on its Web site. Two such examples of an inclusive culture Web site that stood out for me were the University of New Brunswick and Lakehead University’s home pages. When I visited their Web sites, both these university home pages profiled a racially mixed group of Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 289 290 Access and Equity in the University students, which seems to suggest a sampling of the diversity of their student body. Lakehead’s home page suggested that these were their own university students because the people presented were shown involved in a variety of academic and extracurricular activities. Included in the picture of students from various racial and ethnic backgrounds was a person who was clearly identifiable as Native. Two other institutions—the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia—used Native symbols, patterns, and designs to decorate their home pages. I was quite impressed with both their home pages because, on the surface, they suggested a non-traditional or open environment in these institutions. I wondered, however, if the diversity depicted on some of the inclusive university Web sites might be one way for the universities to create such diversity on campus and hopefully attract more racial and ethnic minority students to their institutions. I wondered also if such diversity really already existed on campus or just how representative the the Web site photographs might be of a university population. Although I have suggested that the text and images presented on university Web sites may give some insight into a particular university’s commitment to access and inclusion, it is perhaps important for prospective students to interpret the material presented on a Web site as promotional material for the university. Promoting inclusion and diversity are very powerful marketing tools and can help to attract students from particular groups targeted by the university. I must point out that although some universities are very successful at representing diversity on their Web sites, I have not necessarily assumed that the structures, policies, and practices of the university are in place to support such an environment. Another feature of the inclusive university Web sites were keywords or statements that identified or somehow mentioned something about barriers to academic achievement for certain groups of students because of their background and experiences in schools. An inclusive university can also use text that addresses issues of equity, diversity, or inclusion. For example, on the home page for the University of Western Ontario, a part of the text reads as follows: “Fostering Diversity in the Classroom.” Selecting this text opened up a Web page giving information about a session Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 290 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 291 on campus called “Social Class: Understanding Privilege in the University.” This was an indication to me that social issues dealing with power, privilege, and their relational aspects to access to university were being recognized and addressed in some way within the university’s programs. I recognized this as the university’s indication that it also wanted to recruit students from lower socio-economic groups, and that issues of access are a part of the institution’s course curriculum. The following section describes the features of what I have called the exclusive university culture. The Exclusive or Non-Representational Web Sites Exclusive university Web sites were ones I have identified that used images that portrayed only one or more students who appear to be of European descent on their home pages. If actual photographs or representations of students were used, they did not portray any diversity. In some cases, people from racial or ethnic minority groups were either in the background or shown as a smaller image on the home page or located on another Web page (and not the home page). For instance, the home page of the University of Prince Edward Island showed a photograph of students on campus, none of whom was of any identifiable racial or ethnic minority background. Generally, these Web sites displayed monocultural, Eurocentric images and the text did not seem to mention any of the keywords I identified for this study. The text and language of the documentation on their Web sites focused on general information about the university and its programs, with no specific reference to diversity or issues regarding access to university for under-represented groups. That is, the text on these Web sites tended to provide general descriptive information for prospective students, or information about the history of the university and its academic programs, location, etc. Trinity Western University was another example of what I considered to be an exclusive culture Web site. Its home page had an image of a lone White male portrayed with his head framed by library books on a shelf. He was the only person portrayed on the home page. I did not find these Web sites as appealing as the more inclusive Web sites because they left me wondering what the universities Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 291 292 Access and Equity in the University consider important to communicate to me. The absence of diversity, particularly on these universities’ home pages, signals to me that they have not recognized the need to promote diversity as a way of marketing themselves as institutions where I might fit in. I assumed, therefore, that the universities may not be as aware of or as sensitive to issues of equity, diversity, and social justice as some of the more inclusive universities. Even when I could find evidence of diversity on campus in the subsequent links and other Web pages, I felt that I needed to see this promotion of diversity on a university’s home page. The absence of related texts and keywords that would also signify a more welcoming environment was also puzzling to me. From my interpretation of the information I had collected, I was still uncertain about various universities’ culture after viewing their Web sites. I wondered if they could or should be saying more about student diversity and how they might accommodate the needs and interests of a variety of students. This uncertainty might make me hesitate inapplying to these universities based on the information (or lack thereof) presented on their Web sites. Ambiguous Web Sites The ambiguous university Web sites presented universal or generic “university” images or pictures on their Web pages, with few or no details that identify them as culturally specific to any racial or ethnic minority group. In most cases, there were no images of people and the pictures were usually of traditional campus scenery or of university structures and buildings, or a university crest, shield, or logo. On the surface, these images provided little or no specific information that might indicate the cultural makeup of the student populations today or the universities’ willingness to engage in issues of inclusion. This type of visual presentation led me to regard these universities as perhaps less sensitive to the need to address access and diversity within their institutions if they failed to mention it somehow on their Web sites. For example, Queen’s University’s home page has a basic portrayal of the university’s crest and pictures of buildings on campus and the skyline of the local municipality along with general information. I wondered how university personnel decide what to include or omit when creating Web sites. This kind of generic university Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 292 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 293 image of the “traditional” university did not provide me with any evidence that identified the institutions as places where I might or might not fit in. I see them as ambiguous because they have chosen not to include images of people, which might give me more of a clue to the cultural demographics of the student population. Ambiguous university Web sites also lacked any textual reference to equity or diversity on their home pages. Ambivalence in Exclusive or Ambiguous Universities Although I have described universities as either exclusive or ambiguous based on appraisals of their Web sites and particularly their home pages, some of these universities are known to have very well-established equity recruitment programs. For some universities with such programs, the type of program and the accessibility of that information for prospective students raise questions for me as to the universities’ underlying cultures. The ambivalent nature of these exclusive or ambiguous university cultures is the most interesting for me because of how difference is reflected. Although there may be one or more access programs in individual faculties or departments for which access is a central issue, these universities may not openly advertise this information for prospective students on their home pages. Sometimes an on- line search revealed extensive documentation on these access programs, or information was available mainly through notices on campus, in the academic literature, or through other sources. A university’s commitment to access is not always readily apparent on its home page, but it is buried and requires some effort to find. Examples of this ambivalence can be found on the University of Toronto and York University Web sites. The University of Toronto’s Web site portrayed photographs, both in the foreground and background, of institutional buildings. The rest of the home page consisted of hyperlink text such as those offering more information on admission requirements. Neither the images nor the text indicated any form of diversity or commitment to access, even though the institution has a well-established Transitional Year Programme. This program offers a one-year university preparation for candidates who may not have had successful experiences in the school system. This program is aimed at Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 293 294 Access and Equity in the University “remediation” and preparation for those at different levels of educational preparedness and helps candidates to qualify for entry into university degree programs. The TYP program attempts to prepare academically, as well as psychosocially, non-traditional students of identified target groups for successful participation in university life. Similarly, within particular faculties at York University, there are specific programs that actively seek to recruit students from under-represented groups. These programs have very open admission requirements for particular groups recognized as those most likely to experience barriers to their participation in postsecondary institutions. These programs are generally geared for applicants who have graduated from high school, but do not have the necessary qualifications to get into university to enter specific professional degree programs. For example, York University’s Faculty of Education Access Initiative is designed for applicants who already have a degree or who are in the process of completing a degree and applying for the postbaccalaureate degree program in education. The application process includes a written profile of the applicants’ educational experiences and a personal interview, which, in addition to grade point average, are important considerations for assessing students. I know of both TYP and Access Initiative because of my work and studies within these institutions and from research of academic literature. It is less likely for an applicant who is unfamiliar with these universities to be aware of their access programs because the ambiguous information about equity and diversity on the university Web sites gave little evidence of the types of programs the universities have to offer. I found these universities to be the most interesting and I wonder why the information about equity and diversity was not placed up front on their Web sites. Discussion Generally, I have described universities that have omitted the images and discourse about equity and diversity on their home pages as being either exclusive or ambiguous, and those that do as being inclusive. I have argued that the absence of diversity in images or text signified to me that an institution ignores differences and does not regard them as sufficiently relevant or important to Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 294 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 295 be mentioned on its Web site (see Bramble 2000). This raises questions for me about the university’s attitude toward promotion of or engagement with issues of equity and diversity and the type of environment or university culture I might expect if I choose to attend such a university. In some cases, I have interpreted the absence of diversity in images or text to mean that these universities need to reconsider how difference and diversity are perceived by those seeking information on their Web sites. A university’s silence on issues of difference or diversity raises questions about its need to communicate its commitment to accommodating diversity and becoming more inclusive. A university’s failure to openly recognize or acknowledge the diversity of Canadian society or the salience of privilege and exclusion in admissions leaves me a bit unsettled in this day and age. I believe that universities cannot afford to ignore the need for representative participation in postsecondary institutions, and they need to take the lead in advancing these issues. In other cases, the universities simply were not saying enough about the opportunities and programs offered for racial and ethnic minority students even in those institutions with well-established equity recruitment projects and academic programs. I wondered why this information was not always readily available or promoted on their home pages. I wondered if perhaps the view that a university’s pursuit of excellence in terms of achievement and outcome is being sacrificed, for lofty goals of inclusion, diversity, and access may affect how universities promote themselves. At times diversity is still seen as a threat to quality and as having adverse impacts on a university’s reputation, and that quality and diversity are seen as mutually exclusive goals (Richardson and Skinner 1991). Generally, critics claim that equity in recruitment involves relinquishing standards and offering differential admissions requirements or waiving requirements altogether for unqualified or underqualified applicants based on racial or ethnic considerations. These issues are fuelled further by the debate over whether or not these equity programs are another form of discrimination or “reverse racism” that disadvantages and penalizes Whites to make room for more minorities (James 1995). In response to this critique, Solomon (1996) argues that diversity and quality do not necessarily conflict with each other. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 295 296 Access and Equity in the University He contends that both goals can be accomplished by adapting an institution’s environment to accommodate greater diversity without relinquishing its commitment to maintaining and protecting high standards of academic quality and integrity. In answering the question of whether access and inclusion are a form of reverse racism or discrimination, James (1995) challenges some of the “commonsense” notions of equality and fairness. He contends that the system is not based on a fair process with equal opportunity in the first place, and that there is a need for equity recruitment and inclusion to promote fair outcomes by distributive justice. Equality and fairness are not synonymous. It is not “fair” to treat unequals in an equal fashion. Access and inclusion are about the unequal treatment of unequals. Differently situated students need different forms of assessment of their potential as applicants to meet the requirements of most of the traditional programs. We already exist on an unequal footing on an uneven playing field, i.e., we live in a socially stratified society, and certain groups cannot compete equally, particularly when some of the program requirements are based on culture capital, which excludes several disadvantaged groups in society (James 1995). In cases where a university does promote itself as welcoming and open to diversity and inclusion on its Web site, I felt I still needed to know more before I would decide whether or not to submit an application to that university. I used the university’s promotion of diversity as a way of narrowing down my choices in my selection process. However, I needed to investigate further to find out more or to see if what the university promoted on its Web site was consistent with what was actually happening in its institution. I needed to know more about the support for students and the types of academic programs that might reflect my interests and background. I have come to expect universities to be progressive in how these issues of difference and diversity move from scholarship to the policies and practices of the institutions. Both the exclusive and ambiguous culture universities left me with unanswered questions and suggested that perhaps I needed to find out more about these institutions before determining if these places would welcome someone like me. I expected them to openly honour difference and diversity, and that this would be easily reflected in the prominent way diversity is represented on their Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 296 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 297 Web sites. I was more concerned about how both the exclusive and ambiguous culture universities ignore or omit critical social and cultural issues. These issues or perspectives were critical to me as a prospective student from an under-represented group and were what I looked for when choosing a university that would facilitate equitable recruitment. These universities presented themselves in a way that led me to wonder if they are willing to acknowledge difference and how difference influences who gains admission to university and who traditionally gets excluded. On the other hand, I was quite impressed with Lakehead University’s decision to place the kind of images and text on its home page that might appeal to a student like myself. As a student of a racial minority background, I would be particularly attracted to this university because of its efforts to signal its commitment to the recruitment and support of Native applicants in its programs. My interpretation of Lakehead University’s culture through this type of representation made me believe that diversity was regarded as a positive contribution to the academic programs and to the university in general. The general objective of most Native access programs at Lakehead seemed not only to recruit under- represented groups into university faculties, but also to address the needs of the community they serve. For instance, in Aboriginal communities like those close to Lakehead, the Native access programs in pre-service teacher education programs tend to include courses on Native languages and cultural studies as preparation for teaching in Native schools. Quite unique to Lakehead’s home page was text referring to the “Aboriginal Programs and Services” provided by the university. Clicking on or selecting this text opened up a subsequent Web page that provided more information on a range of academic programs, support services, conferences, and projects specifically geared toward issues pertaining to Native peoples and the recruitment and support of prospective Native students. On this subsequent Web page were Native symbols, patterns, and designs, including an image of a Native “dream catcher” and the message “Catch your dream: Lakehead University.” Identified in this section on the Web site were a number of “Native Access Programs” available through various faculties and departments at Lakehead University. These access programs Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 297 298 Access and Equity in the University provide academic support and special preparation for Native students in the form of tutoring services, academic counselling, and a social support network to provide candidates with an atmosphere “conducive” or “supportive to encourage the Native candidate to pursue a university education in an academically, socially and culturally supportive environment.” Over the past few decades, a number of researchers such as Allen (1996), James (1997), Solomon (1996), and Shapson (1994) have explored issues regarding access programs and have described them as initiatives that help to reduce, remove, and overcome institutional barriers and promote proportional enrolment and comparable achievement and graduation of people who are traditionally under-represented in universities or other postsecondary institutions (James 1997; Solomon 1996). Such access programs may involve active recruitment of minorities and people of under-represented groups, and the necessary structural, institutional, and curricular change in the university and its student support services. However, a prospective student must first become aware that such programs exist, and the information on such programs must be readily available on a university’s Web site. Critical to the success of an access program is first attracting racial and ethnic minority students to a particular university and— a point that needs to be stressed—adaptation and accommodation initiatives both within the institution and curriculum that support achievement by the students. Once students have gained admission to an institution, I believe there must be a corresponding supportive and inviting environment that addresses institutional barriers encountered after admission and seeks to retain and promote completion of degree programs and graduation. The type of search I have conducted in this study is limited to how university Web sites can accurately promote and represent the types of initiatives and work that a university is doing regarding access and inclusion. As we have seen in the case of some of the ambiguous Web sites, there was much that was missing about a university, sometimes from just an examination of the images and text presented on its Web site. I may not have had a full picture of the reality of institutional life based on what might have been portrayed on-line. These Web sites may also be limited in what can be said within the space, layout, and design Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 298 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 299 of the Web sites. However, such an analysis does give some insights into how Canadian universities are beginning to publicly take up issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in both their admissions process and academic programs. Conclusion In response to today’s heterogeneous university population and the need to diversify the student body, a number of universities in Canada have adopted more inclusionary and multicultural approaches. Proposals for revitalizing professional faculties have emerged from a variety of theoretical orientations, including both sociological and critical. Typically, a number of intervention strategies have been considered, including approaches that attempt to deal with issues of bias and Eurocentrism, and those that promote equity and social justice, enhance equality of opportunity, and address the under-representation of racial and other visible minorities in university programs. University Web sites in Canada may provide an easy and convenient way of evaluating an institution’s commitment to equity and diversity. The examination of university Web sites and the textual information and images represented on these Web sites may reveal insights into the ethos and culture of universities. There is considerable variance in the design of Web sites and what that might indicate about the stages of development in a university’s ability to accommodate diversity and to eventually make the university environment more welcoming and supportive to members of under-represented groups. The analysis in this study was exploratory in nature. I have attempted to highlight a number of issues and to briefly address some of the complications and contradictions regarding these issues. In attempting to examine some existing university Web sites in Canada and forming a general critique of their presentation of access, diversity, and inclusion in these institutions, I conclude that these principles, though controversial, are fundamental to educational reform. There is definitely a need for more research into the issues raised in this paper. There is also a need for open forums of discussion and dialogue about access and equity among university administrators, students, and community members. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 299 300 Access and Equity in the University References Allen, K. 1996. “The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto: A Life-line for Blacks Seeking a University Education.” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James. Toronto: James Lorimer. Anisef, P., M. Bertrand, U. Hortian, and C. James. 1985. Accessibility to Post-secondary Education in Canada: A Review of Literature. Ottawa: Department of the Secretary of State. Bannerji, H., L. Carty, K. Dehli, S. Heald, and K. McKenna. 1991. Unsettling Relations: The University as a Site of Feminist Struggle. Toronto: Women’s Press. Bramble, M. 2000. “Black Education in Canada: Past, Present and Future.” In Weaving Connections: Educating for Peace, Social and Environmental Justice, edited by T. Goldstein and D. Selby. Toronto: Sumach Press. Burgstahler, S. and Murakami, C. 1998. New Kids on the Net: Internet Activities for Secondary Mathematics. MA: Allyn and Bacon. Campbell, P. 1993. No Going Back: Older Women as University Students. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Canadian Education Association. 1992. Teacher Recruitment and Retention: How Canadian School Boards Attract Teachers. Toronto: Canadian Education Association. Dilworth, M.E. 1990. Reading Between the Lines: Teachers and Their Racial/Ethnic Cultures. Washington, D.C.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Teacher Education and American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. ______. 1992. Diversity in Teacher Education: New Expectations. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Feagin, J., H. Vera, and N. Imani. 1996. The Agony of Education: Black Students at White Colleges and Universities. New York: Routledge. Fleras, A. 1996. “Behind the Ivy Walls: Racism/Anti-Racism in Academe.” In Racism in Canadian Schools, edited by M.I. Alladin. Toronto: Harcourt Brace & Co. Flynn Foyn, S. 1998. “A Troika of Programs: African Nova Scotian Education at Dalhousie University.” In Re/visioning: Canadian Perspectives on the Education of Africans in the Late 20 th Century, edited by V. D’Oyley and C.E. James. Toronto: Captus Press. Garibaldi, A.M. 1989. Teacher Recruitment and Retention: With a Special Focus on Minority Teachers. Washington, D.C.: NEA Professional Library. Hall, J. 1990. Proceedings of the Conference on Strategies for Improving Access and Retention of Ethno-Specific and Visible Minority Students in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Institutions. Toronto: Ryerson University. Hammonds, E. 1993. “Clarence Thomas, Affirmative Action and the Academy.” In Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence, edited by B.W. Thompson and S. Tysagi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Henry, F., C. Tator, W. Mattis, and T. Rees. 1995. The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society. Toronto: Harcourt Brace. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 300 Diversity and Representation in Canadian Universities 301 Hodder, Ian. 1994. “The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln. London: Sage. James, C.E. 1994. “‘Access Students’: Experiences of Racial Minorities in a Canadian University.” Paper presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education’s Annual Conference, 1994—the Student Experience, University of York, York, England. ______. 1995. “‘Reverse Racism’: Students’ Responses to Equity Programs.” Journal of Professional Studies 3(1):48–54. ______. 1997. “Contradictory Tensions in the Experiences of African Canadians in a Faculty of Education with an Access Program.” Canadian Journal of Education 22(2):158–174. James, C.E., and J. Manette. 2000. Rethinking Access: The Challenge of Living with Difficult Knowledge. MacKay, W. 1989. Breaking Barriers: Report of the Task Force on Access for Black and Native People at Dalhousie University. Halifax: Dalhousie University. Orfield, G., and E. Miller. 1998. Chilling Admissions: The Affirmative Action Crisis and the Search for Alternatives. Cambridge: Harvard Educational Publishing Group. Orlikow, L., and J. Young. 1993. “The Struggle for Change: Teacher Education in Canada.” In Inequity and Teacher Education: An International Perspective, edited by G. Verma. London: Falmer Press. Proudfoot, M. 1996. “Access? Sure, But into What?” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James, 234–250. Toronto: James Lorimer. Richardson, R.C., and E.F. Skinner. 1991. Achieving Quality and Diversity: Universities in a Multicultural Society. Toronto: Collier Macmillan Canada. Saini, B. 1994. Who Teaches the Teachers? Toronto: York University. Schenke, A. 1993. “Being ‘Access’/Doing Change: Confronting Difference in Teacher Education: A Reading of Teacher Candidates’ Experiences of the Faculty of Education Access Initiative and Consecutive Program, 1992/93: A Report.” North York, ON: Faculty of Education, York University. Schlereth, T. 1985. Material Culture: A Research Guide. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Shapson, S. 1994. “Emerging Images for Teacher Preparation.” In Innovations in Black Education in Canada, edited by V. D’Oyley. Toronto: Umbrella Press. Solomon, R.P. 1996. “Creating an Opportunity Structure for Blacks and Other Teachers of Colour.” In Educating African Canadians, edited by K.S. Brathwaite and C.E. James. Toronto: James Lorimer. Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 301 Ch 16-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 302 I REGISTERED FOR TYP IN THE SUMMER OF 1998. I HAD REACHED A POINT IN MY life where I felt like I desperately needed a new challenge. After fifteen years of playing the drums for a living, I was beginning to suffer a kind of mental deterioration. I needed to get involved in something that would force me to use my mind before it was too late. I started looking into various college courses, but none seemed to interest me. I did not simply want to train for a job; I wanted to learn about the world. Whenever I heard graduates talk about the things they had studied in university, I could not help feeling as though I had really missed out on something. I thought I was probably capable of going to university if I had the chance. The problem was that I had never finished high school. In fact, I had earned only about three or four credits by the time I quit school in Grade 10. When I was younger, I never could have imagined that some day I would actually want to attend university. None of my close friends or family members were university graduates. I actually thought that university was for the rich kids. I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer, so I quit high school to join a country and western band. As a result, I believed that I had virtually no chance of ever being accepted into any university, especially one as prestigious as the University of Toronto. That was my belief until I saw an ad about the Transitional Year Programme in a newspaper! It was exactly what I was looking for to fill the mental void I was experiencing, so I applied and was lucky enough to be accepted. A l u m n i V o i c e s 303 From TYP Student to Winner of National Scholarship Tyler Burgess (TYP 1998–1999) Ch 16-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 303 304 Access and Equity in the University I will never forget how strange I felt during my first weeks in TYP, walking around the campus trying to comprehend the fact that I was actually a university student. The whole university environment seemed so foreign and intimidating to me. I felt like an outsider, as if I didn’t belong there. To worsen matters, most of my friends and family members could not relate to what I was trying to do. To them, it was all like a big joke. People I knew thought that I had lost my mind, or that I was just looking for a way out of working for a living. The whole experience of attempting university was for me therefore very alienating. At TYP, I met a lot of other students who were dealing with the same kind of issues about alienation. It helped so much just to know that I was not the only one who was having such a difficult time adjusting to life as a student. Without the camaraderie I developed with my fellow students in TYP and the constant support of the faculty, I doubt I could have made it through those first few weeks. I often felt that there was just no way I could ever do what was being asked of me in TYP. As the year wore on and the workload intensified, there were times when I seriously thought about giving up. However, TYP provides an atmosphere that makes it very difficult for a student to just walk away. The students and faculty form a tight- knit community. The support is there to help you deal with just about any problem that might arise. I remember feeling that if I quit, I would let the whole group down. I found that aspect of TYP to be helpful, as opposed to the mainstream university where students get the sense that if they quit, no one would even notice, let alone care. Thankfully, I not only stayed with it, but also managed to exceed my expectations. On top of successfully completing my year in TYP, in 1999 I was also awarded a Bank of Montreal National Scholarship for my B.A. degree studies at the University of Toronto. This scholarship includes tuition and living expenses paid for me for four years. I was honoured to be the first TYP recipient of this prestigious scholarship. This, for me, was nothing short of a miracle. I had started the year with so much self-doubt, but now there was no question in my mind that returning to school had been the right decision for me. None of this would have been possible without TYP. I am now in my third year at university, working toward a B.A., with history as my major. This is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done. Here I am, four years after entering TYP, and I still struggle Ch 16-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 304 From TYP Student to Winner of National Scholarship 305 with almost every assignment as though it were my first. However, it is so reassuring to know that I can still return to TYP and get help with virtually anything. For me, TYP is not just a one-year program. It has given me access to an invaluable resource that continues to help me at every step of the way as I work toward completing my degree. It is hard to imagine my life at the University of Toronto without the Transitional Year Programme. At times, the stress of having to produce good grades seems to overshadow my original goal of simply wanting to learn. Nevertheless, I feel that I have already learned a great deal, and this is only the beginning. My eyes have been opened to so many issues and new ideas. At the very least, I have learned that nothing is as simple as it once seemed, and this learning has made me a better person. My own life has certainly become more challenging since I returned to school— almost too challenging at times—but it is definitely worth it. TYP has given me the chance to live a richer and more rewarding life. I can best express my final thoughts with: Thanks for the opportunity to experience TYP. Ch 16-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 305 Ch 16-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 306 I GREW UP IN A VERY POOR FAMILY WITH FOUR CHILDREN AND ONE PARENT. DUE to the expenses posed by such a large family, my mother was forced to work two jobs in order to help us survive. I attended a school where my other three siblings went, but by the time I had arrived at this school, our last name was plagued with a reputation for problems. In Grade 1, I started to find school very difficult; numbers and letters did not make sense to me, and this made it hard for me to learn at the rate of the other students. Further problems arose from my difficulties in school, due to my teachers’ aggravation with me for not paying attention. My desk was placed in the corner of the classroom where it would stay until I entered middle school. Not only was I alienated from learning, but I was also alienated from schoolyard games and tormented by the other students for being dumb. Placing me in a special education classroom still did not provide me with the adequate training I needed; instead I was encouraged to paint and draw because I showed an interest in and had a talent for this form of expression. I first dropped out of high school when I was fourteen years old, and by the age of fifteen, I had successfully entered and dropped out of three more. Due to the truancy laws in Ontario, I was forced to go to school and ended up in a small program designed for troubled students. Within days in this program, my teacher realized that one of the main reasons I was not successful in school was because I could not read or write a proper sentence. This discovery was the first real A l u m n i V o i c e s 307 TYP Took My Dreams and Made Them Real! Jennifer Cowan (TYP 1999–2000) Ch 16-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 307 308 Access and Equity in the University opportunity that someone gave me, an opportunity to learn how to read. It took a year and a half for me to learn, but through extensive training, I was reading at an advanced level. Looking back at my situation growing up, I often think that if someone had given me a chance, what a difference it would have made in my young life. A simple opportunity and bit of time would have made a difference for me, but instead that precious time I needed was spent on stigmatizing me as an outcast. I think that if a teacher had addressed my problem with literacy when I was younger, things would have been different for me. I might have attended the University of Toronto at an earlier date. I began the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto on September 15, 1999. This was an incredible opportunity for me because it was a chance to attend one of the best universities in Canada, and to do so without a high school diploma. My TYP year was very difficult, but full of accomplishments. With the guidance and support of the Transitional Year Programme faculty and staff, I was able to learn the skills needed to complete my year with an average of 79 per cent in my courses. This is something I had only dreamt of accomplishing, but due to the existence of TYP and the opportunity it offered me, my dream of success became a reality. After I completed the Transitional Year Programme, it was time to enter my first year as a full-time University of Toronto student. With the knowledge and skills I acquired through the program, I was able to pull myself through one of the toughest years of my academic career. The transition for me was difficult due to the heavy workload and level of the courses, but I was aware of the places to go to for extra help, including TYP, where the faculty welcomed me whenever I needed them. As my first year at the university ended, I chose to major in history and am looking forward to completing my degree. I will graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in history at the end of the school year 2003. This accomplishment has brought me great confidence and also provided me with many opportunities open for exploration. After I complete my degree at the University of Toronto, I will attend Ryerson Polytechnical University for further education in fashion design and business. Without the help of the Transitional Year Programme, these opportunities that are now mine might not have become a reality. TYP took my dreams and made them real! Ch 16-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 308 UNIVERSITY ACCESS THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS WITH SCHOOLS Part Five Part Five Part Five Part Five Part Five Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 309 Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 310 In this presentation, I shall give an account of how the Steps to University Program came to be, and why. I will also describe the program and review some indications of its success. Finally, I hope to indicate the kinds of difficulties we have faced in keeping the program in operation since the early 1990s. By doing this, I hope to make available to others some of the lessons learned by those who have participated in what has become an important joint venture in access education. The Origins of the Steps to University Program Long before the Steps to University Program began, it was the opinion of many faculty at the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto that some sort of intervention in the school system would assist in the extension of access to postsecondary education to hitherto excluded groups. It was the shared view that certain aspects of the school system and the way it was encountered by people from certain social groups—as a result of their common experiences—caused the system to work as a barrier to higher education for many of the children of those groups. Because of this belief, a number of faculty were engaged in campaigns to change the schools and to advocate for the children and youth of inadequately served communities. While the advocacy produced immediate benefits and the political efforts were directed at important long-term changes, neither addressed the situation of the marginalized adolescent Chapter 17 311 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools: The Case of Steps to University in Toronto Thomas Mathien Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 311 312 Access and Equity in the University student who was near the conclusion of his or her school career, and already as much a product of the exclusionary processes as a subject of them. Some means to intervene on behalf of these students was desirable. It could allow the students to find a route to access and a motive to undertake higher education. Students who became engaged in their secondary education as a result of this intervention could get access to university in a more or less standard manner. They could avoid the costs and restrictions unavoidably borne by students in our principal program. For all its value, the access route provided by TYP does have its costs. It takes a year of full-time university study prior to degree study. This is a loss of time and, until very recently, added a year of student indebtedness for most of our students. The emotional strains faced by once marginalized students returning to school years later could be avoided by those students who decide not to drop out as a result of intervention during their secondary school years. By completing the province’s university admission courses, Ontario Academic Courses (OACs), these students would have a school background closer to that which university professors assume their students possess than do most students who complete access programs designed for adults returning to school. This could make their adjustment easier and reduce their chances of marginalization in university. It would also open a wider variety of academic subjects to them than can be provided by TYP. They could, for example, elect to take science, mathematics, or language OACs. This would allow them wider study opportunities once they were in university, since a number of programs of study have defined high school prerequisites. In the early 1990s a means to intervene appeared. During the previous decade, a partnership developed between San Francisco State University and a number of high schools located in communities in the Bay Area that were under-represented in higher education. The university offered instruction in university subjects in the schools involved for students who were otherwise unlikely to graduate or enter higher studies. (In some of the schools, that amounted to the majority of students.) By the end of the decade, the spectacular success of that program had been reported in the press. These reports were Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 312 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools 313 noticed by the then director of research for the Toronto Board of Education, Suzanne Ziegler. She managed to interest a number of school officials and some university employees. There were already two obvious target communities. A number of surveys done during the 1980s indicated that African Canadian and Portuguese students were less likely to graduate or go on to higher education than others in the Toronto system. A pilot school with willing staff was identified. It was West Toronto Collegiate, located in a neighbourhood with a large population of both the target groups. Initial financing was obtained through a Toronto Board fund for dealing with student alienation. The organizers decided to offer first-year sociology as the university course because it could offer an attractive form of self- knowledge to marginalized students while demanding a high level of literacy and analytic skills, and because a brilliant teacher of the subject happened to be available at the time. A parallel course aimed at developing the skills needed was set in the high school’s timetable and an equally talented teacher/guidance counsellor was enlisted to teach it and coach the sociology students. To combat the marginal status that many of these students had previously acquired in the school, Steps instructors and guidance officials made it clear that this was a special opportunity, and each student in the program got access to the same facilities and services as were available to part-time undergraduate students at the University of Toronto. The TYP became involved in the program because of the interest of the director of the day, Professor Jack Wayne, and some faculty members. The interest solved an organizational problem. As a teaching division of the university, which included Arts and Science courses in its program, TYP could enroll students in those courses even though they had not been accepted as regular students in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Since high school students in mid-career could not be admitted directly to that faculty, TYP provided the bureaucratic point of access to university studies for them. After a successful first year, which produced a number of new recruits for OAC courses and for university entry, the program expanded to a second school and students were given the opportunity to complete a second course, in critical reasoning, Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 313 314 Access and Equity in the University offered by the Department of Philosophy. After three years, this was abandoned despite the good reviews that instructors in the course received. The enrolments in critical reasoning were low, in part because many of the students who had completed the sociology course and might have taken it could not accommodate it in their timetables because it conflicted with the OACs they had decided to take as a result of their earlier Steps experience. Abandoning the second one-semester course in the two schools in which it was offered made possible the addition of a third section of sociology in a new school, which was a much more efficient use of funds. At the same time, funds were made available to the university to cover the extension of the program to two additional schools for a period of five years. Thus in September 1996, the Steps to University Programme was available in five schools, all located in various parts of the downtown core of the old city of Toronto. Program Evaluation After the first two years of the program’s operation, a preliminary review, conducted by Suzanne Ziegler and Robert Brown of the Research Services Office of the Toronto Board of Education, indicated that it had considerable success at retaining students in high school, and a more modest success at altering their stated expectations about their futures. The small numbers involved in that study, however, could not provide a fair picture of the program’s efficacy. More extensive follow-up studies were undertaken, with the assistance of the guidance offices of the schools involved, in the autumn of 1996 (of all those registered in the program during its first four years) and in the autumn of 1999 (of those enrolled in the five-school program in 1997–1998). The first review indicated a cumulative academic success rate in sociology 101Y of 86 per cent over the period covered, and a rate of success of 81 per cent in the critical reasoning course. A review of the postsecondary participation rate of students who had completed Steps on or before June 1995 showed that 29 per cent had gone on to university and 25 per cent to community college, while an additional 18 per cent were still completing OACs prior to university application. Thus 72 per cent were acting on intentions to pursue higher education, a rate higher than the provincial high school average, in a population of marginalized students. Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 314 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools 315 The 1999 follow-up examined the success rate in sociology 101Y for the first three years of the five-school program, and the information on school placement available for those who had completed the second year of that version of the program. Average success rates in sociology came to 79.7 per cent, 68 per cent, and 75 per cent in 1996–1997, 1997–1998, and 1998–1999 respectively. The depressed rate in 1997–1998 was attributable to a number of official and unofficial withdrawals. The follow-up of those who successfully completed in that year (eighty-five students) indicated that 41.2 per cent had entered universities, 17.6 per cent were in community college, and 24.7 per cent were continuing high school studies. Thus the postsecondary participation rate had already reached nearly 60 per cent of the Steps graduates, and the overall retention rate was 83.5 per cent. On two occasions, Robert Brown compiled figures on ethnic origin for Steps students on the basis of questionnaires, which asked respondents to indicate their own birthplace and those of their parents. The first of these was a survey of all students enrolled in the first four years of the program. It showed that the principal countries or regions of origin for students or their parents were the English-speaking Caribbean, Portugal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and various African countries. Forty per cent of the students had themselves been born outside Canada. The second survey was administered in the fall of 1998 to the incoming Steps students of that year. Nearly half the respondents (47.5 per cent) were born outside Canada. Membership in target communities was estimated on the basis of parents’ birthplace. Only 18.5 per cent of respondents indicated that their mothers were Canadian-born, while 16 per cent reported a birthplace in the English-speaking Caribbean, 12.5 per cent indicated Portugal, 9.9 per cent noted various South Asian countries (Sri Lanka was most frequently mentioned). Vietnam and Latin American countries were each mentioned as maternal birthplace by 7.6 per cent of respondents and 5.5 per cent indicated that their mothers came from the Philippines. Other parental birthplaces mentioned included Haiti, Kampuchea, and various African countries, including Somalia. Portuguese, Tamil, Tagalog, and Vietnamese were the most common first languages other than English mentioned by respondents. At Monarch Park, which is located Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 315 316 Access and Equity in the University near an elementary school aimed at Aboriginal students, there have been a number of First Nations participants in the program: four in 1999–2000 and two in 2000–2001. These numbers indicate that the program has had success in reaching communities in which many marginalized students can be found. However, they do not reveal the concrete circumstances of many of the students who are Steps participants. The presentations made by program instructors, which are included here, are informative in this matter. They are based on extensive first-hand knowledge of the students and their situations. Maintaining the Steps Program for its Mission It is worth making some concluding observations about the organization and preservation of our program. Two will bear on ensuring that the program carries out its mission. The remainder have to do with securing institutional support for it. First, since the program is intended for students who have been shunted to the educational margins, a great deal of care must be taken that it serves those for whom it is intended. That means that some delicacy of judgement must be exercised. The students selected must really be people who for a number of reasons are not otherwise likely to attempt higher education or remain in school until graduation. On the other hand, the selection should be careful to find candidates likely to benefit from the program. It must find genuinely marginalized students who are likely to succeed without playing on invidious distinctions analogous to the old division between the deserving and undeserving poor. Success at this requires a teaching staff sensitive to the complexities of marginalization and a well-informed and co-operative guidance office. There have been times when we may not have made entirely wise selections for the program. At those times, students may have been selected simply because of their poverty or family situation who were in any case well on track for higher education. Nevertheless, the experience of recruiting has taught us a great deal about marginalization and how to make better selections. Another chapter in this book has something to say about this. The second remark about the operation of the Steps program has to do with co-operation and commitment. These programs are a team effort, and demand a great deal from all involved. The Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 316 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools 317 university instructors must be a special breed: brilliant instructors with an open enthusiasm for their subject and for the benefits of higher education, and a strong sympathy for young people, which even their most reluctant students cannot fail to perceive. The TYP has been tireless in its pursuit of such individuals, though to do so, we may have contributed to their own academic marginalization. In addition, the school must contribute the time of instructors of similar quality and commitment. If recruitment is to be handled well, instructors and guidance teachers must give considerable time to identifying suitable candidates. Someone from the school will have to promote the program among the groups of students likely to include candidates for the program. In allocating resources to the program, the school administration must regard the program as an important school endeavour, not a marginal afterthought. Only one school has withdrawn from the program since its expansion to five schools. The information we have suggests that neither the school nor the sociology instructor there was in a position to give the Steps program the attention it required to prosper. Talented teaching, good school programs, and sensitivity to our target students are not sufficient. Will and circumstance must reinforce them. The observations on institutional support for Steps are as follows: (1) Steps could not have begun at all if it had not started small and in the margins of the bureaucracies on which it depended. To have attempted it as a major new program of the university would have required years of organization and mobilization. It would have taken the strong support of the dean of a major faculty (Arts and Science or Education) to pilot it through all the approval processes needed for a new academic program. No one involved was in a position to win such support at the time. The course was floated as a new section of an existing Arts and Science course aimed at part-time students of an existing program. This reduced red tape to a manageable level. (2) Continuing funding is an ongoing problem. The program has had a history of at best short-term commitments to Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 317 318 Access and Equity in the University its support. The first few years of the program required annual lobbying to find funds from the old Toronto Board of Education. Once program success was established with them, and the university found a donor willing to support a more or less matching commitment, we were able to get the program promoted to a line item in the Board budget. Shortly after, amalgamation of the Toronto urban school boards occurred, and new efforts had to be made to find officials willing to seek continuing support. Once that was accomplished, and we got a line in the Board’s central budget, the administrators decided to decentralize budget processes. For a few frightening weeks after the 2000– 2001 session began, the school board officials with whom the program dealt could not locate the budget line for it. This fact and the continuation of the provincial policy of cutting back school funding have presented us with a new problem: keeping the Board committed to our work. We now have to convince one branch of the bureaucracy that it will do well to devote a fairly large portion of its limited budget to our activities. This is complicated by the fact that our private support through the university is now in its final year. The program is in the process of seeking new donors. Potential donors will be much more likely to give if they know that the Board has a long-term commitment to the program. The Board is more likely to continue support if it can count on the university and its supporters to be on side for a fair number of years. Program administrators now face a classic problem of converting conditional goodwill into genuine co- ordination. (3) The program must work hard to remain visible. In a city of 2 million, with a school board in charge of instructing around 300,000 students, a low-budget activity serving fewer than 200 secondary school students can easily get lost. The program attracted the attention of journalists covering the education beat for the major local media during its earlier years. That helped. Extending the program to a number of new schools made it more visible in the former, much smaller, pre-amalgamation Toronto Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 318 Extending Access into the Secondary Schools 319 Board of Education. Now, however, we find ourselves a small program, geographically limited unless it can expand, in a much larger, much harder-pressed organization. Many of those who knew the work of the program best have retired—a reflection of their age. The Board’s need to reorganize, and the demoralization of those now affected by recent changes in secondary education (and education in general) in the province of Ontario had an impact on Steps. This even happened to the people we have relied on to act as liaison between the program and the Board. The official who had budgetary responsibility for the program was not aware, at the beginning of the 2000–2001 school year, that it was still in operation. Steps to University had a 91 per cent success rate in the sociology course in 1999–2000. In 2000–2001 it enrolled the largest number of participants ever, more than 150 students of whom 83.3 per cent (125) succeeded in the sociology course. In the autumn of 2002, the program took advantage of an unexpected change in the province’s per capita student funding arrangements to expand to its sixth school. This school, Emory Collegiate, is outside the old core City of Toronto, but in an area in which there have been many marginalized students. Those who have contributed to the program are still convinced of its value, and work still to maintain and extend it. If the program folds, it will do so in the midst of success. Our aim must be to keep success alive. Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 319 Ch 17-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 320 The first time I wanted to drop out of school, I was five and a half years old. I had just come to Canada from an economically destitute small town in southern Italy. I remember, and people tell me, that I was one of the “chattiest” children in town. I loved to talk and talk and talk. When I started school in Canada, I realized that I could not do what I loved doing most—talking—at least not in English! In frustration, I came home from school one day and told my mother that I would be staying home with her from then on. As she was always so busy, I could help her out at home. I could help cook and clean and sew, just as long as I did not have to return to that place that frustrated me so very much. I guess I don’t have to tell you that, to my great disappointment, my mother did not agree to my little plan. She bundled me up the next morning, in that special way that mothers have. She gave me a pep talk and a gentle kick in the pants that got me through that school year and twenty-five more years of school after that. Needless to say, it took a number of other kicks in the pants along the way! In that first, very traumatic year, I had good ideas. I had the will to learn. I had the desire to interact with others my age, but I did not have the words (in English, that is). Now as a teacher in the Steps to University Program, most of the students I encounter have the same “problem.” They have the thoughts; some are full of great ideas. They have the will to learn; some just don’t care to Chapter 18 321 Teaching in the Steps to University Program: A Personal Reflection Patricia Albanese Ch 18-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 321 322 Access and Equity in the University admit it. Like me back then, they do not have the words, at least not the words that we traditionally give students grades for. The young people in the Steps program have an excess of talents, but a shortage of resources. Some lack support at home. Some lack confidence. Some lack what has been called “cultural capital” or middle-class navigational savvy. Let me give you an example. My second- and third-year university students would know not to say what one of my very poor Steps students said when I complimented her on her “new” purple trench coat. “You see—and people say you can’t find nice stuff at the Goodwill Store,” she replied to my compliment. She was open and honest, something we teach our young people to “outgrow.” The young people in the Steps program come from all walks of life. I can’t even begin to describe the diverse people who walk into each class. Some live in group homes. Some are single parents. In my first year of teaching in the program I had three young women who were pregnant out of about fifteen young women in the class. One of the three was pregnant with her third child and she was only eighteen years old. I can only imagine how hard it would be raising one child … but three? Most of the Steps students work. Many work to help parents and other family members pay mortgages or rent. Many have experienced things that I cannot even begin to imagine. For example, during a lecture on crime and deviance and the Young Offenders Act, one student revealed that one of her close friends was shot and killed as he spent the afternoon at a local swimming pool. Each one of the students in the Steps program was “hand- picked” for the program. Each one ended up in the program because someone, usually a teacher or guidance counsellor, recognized talent, courage, and potential beneath that baseball cap, behind a tough façade, or behind a terrified shy smile. This year I have a room packed with life, fire, passion, fear, and raw talent. I can feel it in the air when we debate about just how much influence rapper Eminem has as an agent of socialization. These young people are hungry to learn. They want to learn new terms. They want to challenge each other and they love being challenged. They keep me on my toes and I try to keep them on theirs. Ch 18-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 322 Teaching in the Steps to University Program 323 But how do you keep a room full of what some would call “troublemakers” in the room? How do you keep them coming back? I am not exactly sure what is making them come back, but I guess it’s a combination of factors. When I was asked to think and write about what I do as an instructor, I was not even sure where to begin. Essentially, I was asked to assess my own work—to put into words something I never really verbalized or even cared to think about. Basically, I was forced to ask (and answer): “What makes an effective educator effective?” This is what I came up with. You have to make the material relevant. It has to be real. And what is real to a sociologist may not be the same as what is real to a teenager who has not had too many breaks in life. Ironically, many sociologists have managed to take real people and real experiences out of the study of social life. A good instructor must bring that back in. “I would never dress my boy in pink!” yells one boy from the corner of the room. “Why not?” I yell back in the same feisty tone he used. And off we went into a discussion of gender socialization in childhood. Not only does the material have to be accessible, but so does the delivery and the deliverer. Many of the Steps students have come to trust me. They tested their boundaries. I reacted. We found some common ground to work on. I also had to learn to read their moods and understand their needs. Many really appreciate it when I notice that they are tired or bored. I often try to ask them: “Had a late night?” or “Not feeling well?” They need to know that I know and that I’m going to “lay off” them because I know. I have had to experiment with different teaching techniques, and on a number of occasions, I’ve flopped! One of the lessons I learned is that some of the students need to see structure in the program. The lack of structure in some lectures made some of them uncomfortable or nervous, so I try to mix my approach. I try to have a formal lecture outline on the blackboard. It includes a list of topics we are going to cover during that particular lecture. This lets us spin off into debate and discussion, but gives us a place to return to. I find that it is very useful to tell the students where you will take them in a lecture before you take them there. Ch 18-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 323 324 Access and Equity in the University This gives them security on the mental ride. It also gives them time to formulate their thoughts so that they are not behind me, but rather “with me” on the ride. I found that as long as you stay honest and open about what you are doing and how you will do it, they are not afraid to share their thoughts with the group. I find that it also helps to be honest about my feelings and state of mind too. I will tell them when I am tired and ask them to “go easy” on me. They love that! They feel responsible and in control and it also reminds them that I’m human too. I can’t know or have experienced everything that some of these young people have gone through. I am not Black. I am not a teenage mother of three. I have never lived in a group home. I have never been a tough-looking young male. I can’t even pretend to be any of these, and if I tried, I’d fail miserably. But I allow them to inform me. I try to create a safe space in my classroom that allows them to talk about being young and male and Black, etc. I don’t even try to pretend to know what it’s like to be them, but they will tell me—eventually. Many times I remind them that I am not from their world. I tell them that I have not been to the movies in six years. I tell them I don’t watch television and never had cable in my life— first, because my parents could not afford it, and then because I chose to do other things with my time. Clearly, I don’t have to be “cool” with them, especially once we have created a space that tolerates diversity of experiences and ideas. They can be “cool,” I can be “uncool,” and we can happily co-exist. I deeply respect my Steps students and I think they know that. In return, they give respect right back. Over the three years that I’ve been teaching in this program, I have seen countless successes. We must remember that success is measured in many ways. For some, showing up for class is a major accomplishment. Most of these young people are truly amazing; they just have to be reminded of this from time to time. They need to be told that they can do it. Most of them won’t let you down. Ch 18-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 324 Abstract This paper is the reflection of our involvement in the Steps to University Program of the Transitional Year Programme, of the University of Toronto. The paper examines the stated goals of the Steps program within the overall mandate of TYP to help provide access to higher education for disadvantaged groups, especially marginalized students. It discusses our experiences at the Parkdale Collegiate Institute, and proffers suggestions on how the program could be strengthened and sustained (at the school level) over time in order to better realize its objectives. We begin by discussing the mandate of the Steps program. We suggest that a better understanding of such central concepts as marginalization is critical if the program is to reach and benefit all of its target groups. In particular, we suggest that these concepts describe processes rather than conditions of students. In this sense, an attack on these processes is important for successfully helping students achieve academic success. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of the Steps program that we inherited at Parkdale Collegiate, how we responded to that inheritance, and the challenges that lie ahead. These areas are discussed with a special focus on criteria for selecting students, pedagogical strategies, and support for students from the global community of public education (i.e., school administration, faculty members, guidance counsellors, and other support staff). Chapter 19 325 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk” Students: The Steps to University Program in the Eyes of Two Participants Watson E.J. Morris and Andrew C. Okolie Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 325 326 Access and Equity in the University What Is Steps and for Whom Is It Offered? Thirty years ago the Transitional Year Program was established at the University of Toronto as a way of enhancing access to university education for many who may otherwise not have such access. Years later, in 1992, to further broaden the mandate, the university, in partnership with the Toronto Board of Education (now the Toronto District School Board, or TDSB) established the Steps to University Programme. The Steps program, it was hoped, would further enhance access to university education for under-represented groups. In this program, a university course is taught to inner city high school students in Toronto. Students are from large low-income populations who, for economic, social, and cultural reasons, are under-represented at university. The students are considered “at risk” of not completing their high school education, so to them, therefore, university education seems rather unlikely. It is believed that Steps provides them with access to a university course, and their success in it will likely encourage them to at least complete their high school education and even seek higher education. The program is modelled on a similar collaboration between San Francisco State University and schools in the San Francisco Bay area. 1 Students who participate in the Steps program are selected by their schools as being “at risk” of not completing high school, but they show some indications of interest in, or capacity for, postsecondary study. The obstacles these students face may be economic, such as having to combine study with long hours of work to earn an income. They may arise from difficult personal or family situations or lack of confidence, such as perceptions about the openness of universities to people of particular ethnic or economic backgrounds. Obstacles may also arise from their perceptions about the suitability or usefulness of postsecondary education for students whose backgrounds suggest only a limited range of possible futures. Such perceptions may derive from prevailing views in the students’ families, communities, or peer groups about the availability, accessibility, or suitability of postsecondary education. Thus, marginalized and at risk are processes rather than conditions. They refer to those social, cultural, or economic forces that combine to make it difficult for certain students to complete their secondary education. Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 326 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 327 Steps is intended to remove perceived obstacles by giving the students a full year’s exposure to an introductory level degree- credit university course offered in their schools by instructors who have experience reaching non-traditional university students. The students in the Steps course take a parallel high school English course aimed at developing their note-taking, writing, and reading skills. The high school teacher responsible for the English course, which follows the university (sociology) course, provides tutorials in sociology to demonstrate how the English course materials can be applied to the university course. Steps students are also required to take Grade 12 advanced English if they had not already taken it. The credit obtained in the Steps course is transferable to any postsecondary institution that the student later wishes to attend. Parkdale Collegiate Institute is one of the schools that joined the Steps program when it expanded in 1996. Our experiences in teaching the Steps program in this school inform this presentation. We try to show that academic success for “at-risk” and marginalized students requires teachers to deal with a myriad of classroom and non-classroom issues. Pedagogical strategies and styles are important in teaching students in this program. The teacher needs to know his or her subject matter and how best to deliver it, but the teacher also has to possess “social work” 2 skills in order to address a number of socio-economic and political obstacles that may impede students’ academic success. We suggest that the task of the Steps teacher and anyone teaching “at-risk” and marginalized students goes beyond excellent classroom instruction and regular and timely feedback. These we take for granted. Working with Steps students includes identifying forces that put students at risk and marginalizes them. Seen this way, the students’ situations are not accidents, but rather the students are victims of circumstances. Their academic performance will likely improve with either a change in their circumstances and/or with the students’ changed attitudes toward those problems and how to deal with them. While pedagogical and cognitive issues are important, non-pedagogical and non-cognitive issues seem to be equally important when dealing with students of particular socio-economic and political standing (racial minorities, students from poor, single-parent homes, poor inner city neighbourhoods), who often lack cultural capital. In short, Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 327 328 Access and Equity in the University these are students who often do not know how to get ahead, or lack the resources to do so. Students’ Worlds and the Perceived Boundaries and Borders That Exist Between Them In their 1993 essay, “Students’ Multiple Worlds: Navigating the Borders of Family, Peer, and School Cultures,” Patricia Phelan, Ann Locke Davidson, and Hanh Cao Yu discuss, among other things, the perceived borders and boundaries identified by students from various cultural and economic backgrounds. They adopt Erik Erikson’s notion of boundaries as “real or perceived lines between worlds, settings, or contexts that are neutral and where socio-cultural components are perceived to be equal by the people in each setting.” 3 The term “world” is in the context of cultural knowledge and behaviour found within the boundary of a student’s particular family (Phelan and Davidson 1993). Hence, movement between worlds separated by boundaries is relatively easy, creating little or no social/psychological costs. However, such movement is within the socio-economic/language-based group within which the student has been socialized. What continues to exist and contain the student within his or her world is what Phelan, Davidson, and Yu refer to as a “border.” While boundaries are perceived as “neutral,” borders are real or perceived lines that separate worlds not perceived as equal (Phelan and Davidson 1993). Phelan and Davidson assert that “when borders are present, movement and adaptation are frequently difficult because the knowledge and skills in one world are more highly valued and esteemed than those in another are” (Phelan and Davidson 1993:53). Such valuation of one world in contrast to another is often entrenched through social institutions and the members of the more preferred world (who often purport a more egalitarian paradigm). Such is the case in public schools where teachers work in a social setting that is open to all children, regardless of socio-economic, ethnic, or economic background. While school and classroom doors may continue to be open to students of multiracial, multilanguage, or multilearning style backgrounds, little is done to either identify or address the borders that students perceive between groups. Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 328 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 329 By focusing on transitions between worlds, Phelan and Davidson identify a number of different types of borders that students encounter (Phelan and Davidson 1993:57–59). Psychosocial borders are constructed when children experience anxiety, depression, apprehension, or fear at a level that disrupts or hinders their ability to focus on classroom tasks, or blocks their ability to establish relationships with teachers or peers in school environments. Such borders often arise from socio-cultural, socio- economic, or linguistic borders. They may also arise from events in the student’s life (e.g., an abusive home life, a death or severe illness in the immediate or extended family, a peer relationship gone awry). It is not uncommon to have students who are experiencing severe depression and taking prescribed medication. Socio-cultural borders exist when components in one world are viewed as less important than those in another. Parkdale Collegiate has its share of students who believe that their cultural background is inferior to that of the dominant culture and/or an emerging, relatively more affluent Parkdale community (a result of ongoing “gentrification”). A third type of border is socio- economic, which arises from economic circumstances that create severe limitations. For instance, some Parkdale Steps students find it difficult to procure funds for lunch or bus fare. 4 Linguistic borders result when communication between the student’s worlds (e.g., family and school or peers and school, family and peers) is obstructed. Such obstruction exists not just due to different languages spoken, but are also due to one group regarding another’s language or accent as unacceptable or inferior. Gender borders are created when the school as an institution or the people in it present possible roles for female students or underscore suitable aspirations for women that differ from those presented to male students. Such borders undermine both the self-confidence and self-understanding of students as well as block students’ perceptions of what is possible for themselves and others. It also discourages or impedes the acquisition of skills necessary to pursue specific careers. The final border outlined is structural. Such a border exists between the student’s world at home or among peers and the world of school. Structural borders may arise due to the school’s lack of attempt to adequately meet students’ needs (e.g., inadequate tutoring due to cutbacks in inner Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 329 330 Access and Equity in the University city school funds for tutors and counsellors). A lack of information about bridges between students and available resources will also create a structural border. That is, students need to have information about how to access available resources. Finally, while services may exist in a school, they may not match the needs of the students. Such borders arising from mismatching or lack of information on bridges are exemplified in two cases. The first is the reintroduction of tracking or streaming (“applied” versus “academic” courses), which could eliminate the chance for many “at-risk” students to take the Steps course because they have been inaccurately identified or assessed. The second is the new Ministry of Education-introduced legislation (“Safe Schools’ Act”), which has led to an increase in the number of severe punitive disciplinary suspensions. Phelan and Davidson assert that an ideal classroom is one “where students are able to work together … to solve problems jointly and to have an equal investment in schools and learning” (Phelan and Davidson 1993:85). Such a classroom enables the teacher to address the needs of students from more disenfranchised socio-economic conditions of various language/ dialect backgrounds, and of communication exceptionalities. 5 The ideal classroom is possible only if we: … identify institutional structures that eliminate borders without requiring young people to give up or hide important features of their lives. This requires more than understanding other cultures. It means that students must acquire skills and strategies to work comfortably and successfully in divergent social settings and with people different than themselves. (Phelan and Davidson 1993:85) Such an environment not only empowers students who are facing more recognizable borders, but also allows students who are of the dominant culture to recognize the heterogeneous character of society. In short, Phelan and Davidson are saying that class, race, gender culture, socialization, and a history of oppression and exploitation matter. As Paulo Freire and D. Macedo have pointed out, the educational process cannot be neutral. It “either functions as an instrument that is used to enculturate the young into the logic of the present system, or it is the means of Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 330 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 331 dealing critically and creatively with reality to discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. ”6 We have drawn from the research of Phelan, Davidson, and Yu because it seems relevant to the reality of schools like the ones involved in the Steps program in general and Parkdale Collegiate Institute in particular. With the support of some teachers, the head of guidance, and the school administration, we have attempted to address some of the obstacles that our students face in order to ensure that they succeed in the program and, hopefully, beyond it. Removing these obstacles is also consistent with the (largely non-cognitive) variables identified by numerous studies as critical for student success and which, as William Sedlacek has shown, are particularly important for the success of marginalized students. 7 We begin with what we inherited at Parkdale. Our Inheritance In the fall of 1999 when we became responsible for Steps at Parkdale, we had a class that did not appear to represent the types of marginalized students we observed or interacted with in the halls, nor the ethnic composition of Parkdale. While enrolment in this program tends to reflect the overall enrolment in grades 11 and 12, the class that we inherited reflected the shortcomings in the recruitment process prior to our involvement. To some extent, the Steps program was perceived as a program for only the “elite” (university-bound) type of student. While the teacher before us had a very clear vision of the type of student needed in the program, his retirement and professional/ministry pressures earlier in the spring meant that the one person involved in recruitment was not able to invest as much time and energy as was required. Hence, in addition to being non-representative, the class size shrank from approximately twenty-four to eleven, so we decided to make changes, a part of which was involving more colleagues. Arousing Students’ Interest A major problem we identified was how to advertise the Steps program to students for whom it was intended without ghettoizing them and the program itself. We decided to ensure a class that was more representative of the Parkdale students than the class Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 331 332 Access and Equity in the University we inherited, so we decided to share the recruitment responsibilities with a larger number of colleagues. We used a PowerPoint presentation in an assembly for grades 11 and12 students. The assembly and the visual presentation enabled us to communicate the diversity of cultures and ethnic groups of students involved in Steps. Moreover, the group-learning/interactive pedagogical techniques were expressed through pictures of the layout of desks and group interaction. All potential Steps students could attend and reflect upon the presentation. The presentation made it clear that the program was for all students, especially those who were unsure of their options or goals after high school. While such language encouraged even students who were already bound for university, we were able to attract the interest and attention of students who are often overlooked in this process. In the past, recruitment had occasionally fallen into the hands of teachers and guidance counsellors who did not always stay true to the spirit of the Steps program, either due to lack of commitment or misconception of who it was meant for. In addition to this presentation, we held an information luncheon at which we provided pizza and pop to interested students. As a result, more interested students were able to sign up. While such individual choice is crucial, we made clear to other guidance counsellors the type of students for whom the program was designed and advised them to speak with students as they came for timetable scheduling for the upcoming year. Also a memo was sent to all other Parkdale teachers describing the students we were looking for and asking them to suggest names of students. This process gives some indication of the hurdles that have to be overcome within a school environment when offering an access program. As Phelan and Davidson point out, while discussing structural borders, there is the possibility that members of an institution do not extend the necessary welcome or understanding to link the student to a program. Such borders may also be developed from stereotypes based on the students’ peer group. Such borders were evident in the disparity between suggestions from colleagues and the names that appeared on a sign-up sheet. In addition to sign- up sheets and input from colleagues, we also spoke with students individually or in groups about the program and recommended Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 332 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 333 that they reflect on the possibility it offered them. Once we were certain that we had a solid group from which to choose, we began the interview process. The Rationale of the Interview Process and Its Format The purpose of the interview process was to get a better understanding of the students applying for Steps and to enable us to focus on selecting those for whom the program was established. Hence we sought, through the interview process, to better understand the worlds of our applicants in order to see what possible borders existed for them. During the interviews, we asked the following five questions: 1. What motivated you to include Steps in your timetable for the coming school year? 2. Where do you envision yourself three years from now? Focus your answer on:  Work obligations: In what kind of field of work would you want to be employed?  School: What courses would you like to take in a postsecondary program?  Hobbies: What would interest you in your free time?  Family interaction/duties: What responsibilities at home would you be required to fulfil? 3. How do you think the Steps program at P.C.I. could help you in achieving your above stated goals? 4. If you were to be accepted, how would you demonstrate your interest and commitment to the Steps program? 5. How could you contribute to the learning environment of the program? What do you think your strengths are? What skills do you still need to develop? The first three questions were designed to make clear possible gender, linguistic, socio-economic, and cultural borders the student may have experienced. Questions four and five were designed to see what identified learning exceptionalities the student may experience. From the answers to these questions, one could also gain some insight into how severely perceived borders affected learning. And the last question gave us as educators an idea of Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 333 334 Access and Equity in the University what needs would have to be addressed in the classroom. The information gathered not only helped us select students, but also assisted us in making pedagogical decisions for those selected, as well as in thinking about ways to meet the needs of those students whom we advised to reapply next year. Our Work Inside and Outside the Steps Classroom Socio-economic borders are very evident in our experience with students in Steps. Many of our students work late at night to make ends meet. We have students of various cultural backgrounds living on their own or with a sibling. Hence, we have to structure exercises that can be done during class so as to enable the students to learn more efficiently. Examples are the use of planners during movies or initial lectures that help shape the students’ ability to organize and interpret data. Given the importance of the structure of the classroom to students’ ability to synthesize materials, we opted to employ the technique of having students sit in co-operative learning groups of no more than four. The sitting arrangement makes for greater interaction among students, more consultation and discussions among them, and is less intimidating to students. It facilitates learning from both a classroom management standpoint as well as a sharing of experiences. An example of this is the students’ work on articles about so-called squeegee kids. The students work on an article and try to make sense of it in terms of what it says about subcultures, dominant culture, countercultures, cultural values, cultural stereotypes, and macro- and micro-sociological perspectives. Members of each group discuss within their group and plan a presentation of what they have learned and interpreted. Each group then presents its findings. The groups then break up into new groups of four to synthesize articles. At that point, each student adopts a sociological paradigm to interpret the issue. As well, students have to find other articles similar to the ones they presented. This environment provides co-operative learning and fosters a learning environment in which students of various language and socio-economic backgrounds interact. However, this requires the teacher to plan beforehand the seating arrangement of students in terms of who sits with whom, taking into account the students’ behaviour and worlds. Such planning was made easier by the information we collected during the selection interviews. Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 334 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 335 Classroom support has also been very central to our work with the students. We use “main questions” and “why study this?” for every class session. This means that at every class session a main question on the day’s topic was written on the blackboard to draw students’ attention to a core issue in the lecture. The main question also guides the students to answer the question as to why they need to study a particular topic or issue. These have helped the students to focus on the critical issues in each topic. They helped them to understand better and faster, but also to prepare for tests and examinations. We do more than lecture; we give detailed explanations. The students get tutorials on alternate days (i.e., two days in the week). In addition to in-class assignments, we give the students regular homework assignments and encourage them complete them. We use videos to help augment our teaching, teach important sociological (and life) lessons, and encourage critical reasoning. The videos are of movies or documentaries covering issues of racism (examples include the movie Boyz N the Hood, and the documentary of Jane Elliot’s blue- eyed/brown-eyed experiment in A Class Divided and Blue Eyed). We also use articles from various Toronto newspapers that cover such a wide-range of issues as squeegee kids, gang violence, and gentrification in the Parkdale area. This way such abstract concepts as subculture, socialization, cultural capital, micro- and macro- sociological research are brought to life. In short, we try to relate the materials to the world that the students are familiar with, including their personal experiences. Because we believe in empowering the students and enhancing their self-confidence and sense of self-worth, we encourage them to participate in class activities. In particular, we try to draw out the taciturn students and encourage them to ask and answer questions and contribute to discussions. We then try to build on their useful contributions or answers. These approaches help to give them a sense of achievement, thereby enhancing their confidence. They also acquire a better understanding of the world they live in, including the nature of their marginalization. In the words of Effie Clark, “An oppressed people cannot understand the nature of their oppression before they are inspired with hope and a vision of freedom that they desire. To understand the nature of their oppression, a people must first know who they are.” 8 Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 335 336 Access and Equity in the University Writing about Black children in White America, Peter Murrell, Jr., argues that “emancipatory education … ought to promote the development of a sense of self-efficacy and self-agency so they critically interrogate the cultural, racial, political, and economic barriers to their full participation as citizens in a multicultural democracy.” 9 As well, we offer materials on learning techniques. These include materials on and techniques for note-taking and test- writing preparation in order to introduce new and efficient methodologies to synthesize information. We are very mindful of the authority relationships between us and the students, so we are careful not to display any authoritarian tendencies or create a sense of fear and insecurity in the students. These approaches are consistent with some of the work that has been done in this area over the years. 10 Also central to our work has been support outside the classroom. We are cognizant of students’ social situations, family background/situations, support or lack of support, poverty (e.g., the inability of some to buy food or locks for their school lockers), legal troubles, work schedules/commitments, and peer pressure and how these may affect their school work. Persistent lateness and absences lead us to try and find out more about the students’ social environment and what else may be going on in their lives. Within the Steps classroom we have adopted a sign-in sheet that requires a student to write an explanation of why he or she is late or absent. When it is inexcusable, it is reported. However, when it is a very personal and valid matter, it is overlooked (unannounced to the students, though, so as not to undermine the school’s policy). For example, we had three students who were often late for class because they worked late into the night. Another student was sometimes late due to difficulties in affording the bus fare. Although the principal at Parkdale Collegiate has had to deal with a budget cut to inner city school funds from $45,000 to $7,000, he graciously offered to buy a MetroPass for this student to assist with his transportation. Acceptance into the program does not stop a student from being “at risk” of dropping out. We constantly and in various creative ways remind students of what life could be like if they go on and acquire education and what it can be without higher Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 336 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 337 education, especially for those without huge inheritances. We regularly remind them that university education is possible for them if they want it. We keep advising them that university students are not necessarily geniuses, but rather are people who are determined and willing to work for success. They are regularly reminded that education is perhaps the only decent avenue of escape for most of them into the good life. The students have generally responded well to us, and we have not experienced classroom management problems. This suggests to us that our strategy has worked so far. Getting their attention may also have been helped by the fact that Steps is a university course and by the university’s prestige. But for the continued success of this program, colleagues in the school are necessary because we alone cannot do it all, so we have enlisted the help of the guidance counsellors, who are supportive. School administrations—the principal, vice-principal, etc.—are crucial to Steps and they need to be supportive of the program and the students. Resources for the classroom, such as overhead projectors and video cassette recorders that work, should be available at all times. We also feel strongly that overall and sustained support for the program has to go beyond those who are in the Steps program at any given time. Important questions are: What happens to a student who wants to be in the program, sees how it may benefit him or her, but after three years in high school has only twelve to fifteen credits as opposed to twenty-four? What happens if that student hasn’t yet passed Grade 11 general English? Should students who are taking only advanced-level courses get into the program? What does it mean to say that a student “is capable of doing good work,” but has not demonstrated that capability? Would a student who is told to reapply for the Steps program necessarily remain in school and make the necessary improvements in order to qualify? These are some of the questions for which we do not have definite answers. But we do feel that those who wanted to, but could not, get into the program either because they did not meet the criteria or because their status in the school is such that they can still join the program in a subsequent year would need another kind of support. We also do not think that informal conversations in the hall are enough, however useful Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 337 338 Access and Equity in the University they may be. The same sense of community that we are trying to establish in the classroom must be established in schools. The school administration at Parkdale is very proactive in tracking students and fostering an atmosphere in which students can discuss issues and be communicated with about their attendance and focus. However, tension or borders due to blocked or unbuilt bridges by teachers can put off “at-risk” students and prevent them from getting into Steps. The mandate of Steps is to attract students before their final year so as to influence them to change paths and head toward postsecondary education. However, students in the general-level programs may be there due to various borders that Steps can and has overcome. Hence, we must not concentrate resources on just advanced-level students. Moreover, we must not just ignore the “applied” (formerly “general-level”) students as educators, administrators, parents, and peers often do. While the debate on the justifiability or otherwise of streaming is beyond the scope of this paper, we believe that the vision offered by Steps can help guide what happens to the whole school. For instance, teachers should hesitate to employ punitive measures for attendance problems or students’ inability to focus. Rather they should try to identify the borders that exist which prevent the students from meeting high expectations. While providing services to selected students is the priority of the Steps program, it may be necessary to think about how to address the needs of students who are not in the program due to specific reasons and who have been asked to reapply. How can their interest be maintained not only to ensure that Steps will have a near-ready core group of future students, but also to ensure that they remain in school until the next school year? While beyond the scope of Steps, sharing ideas that have worked for Steps with guidance counsellors, other teachers, and school administrators might help. Conclusion We have learned first-hand from the Steps program that one really cannot be a good teacher to marginalized students without also being a “social worker.” We have learned from close range that what happens in the classroom constitutes only a part of the reasons Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 338 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 339 for success or failure of many students. Indeed, our sociological skills and knowledge have been very useful as we try to help these students. An understanding of the students’ social environment is critical for the learning process. In particular, it is necessary to understand the borders that inhibit the students, whether they are social, economic, cultural, or linguistic, and try to help the students to bridge them. In a way, the teacher is also the student and the student is also a teacher. The students learn the tools necessary for the analysis of society, including their social experiences, and as we play the role of teacher, we learn the skills necessary for success as a good teacher for the type of students that society often leaves behind. We have learned that a good teacher does not regard his or her students as clients but as colleagues and friends; does not relate to students as his or her commercial customers, but as people with important social ties and who may be facing real obstacles in life. While education is supposed to help provide equal opportunity, educators must also be conscious of education’s role in creating and perpetuating inequality due to assessments that rank students 11 through streaming, stereotypes, and stigmatization. Education should, therefore, also be a liberating exercise as Paulo Freire painstakingly shows in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 12 As Carter Woodson argues, an educational system such as this is worthless unless it accomplishes the task of transforming the social order for the good of the community. 13 Our experiences have also confirmed what we have known for a long time—that it is extremely difficult to calculate the real value of a teacher’s work. In this era of budget cuts, our experience with the Steps program clearly shows that however governments strive toward rationality, teaching can never be a nine-to-five job. Teachers may be highly demoralized and disenchanted with their employers, but it is also extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to turn away from their students and treat their relationship with the latter as episodic transactions of the department store variety. Of course, disenchantment and low morale would have serious adverse effects on student-teacher relationships and learning generally. But the point is that the best accountants and budget cutters would be unable to accurately measure the value of a teacher’s work. As we replace citizens with “taxpayers,” Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 339 340 Access and Equity in the University students with “clients,” parents and communities with “stakeholders” in the ongoing “businessfication” drive, teachers need to take a broader view of teaching and learning, and to increasingly become part of the conscience of the community. They should help to demystify learning and redefine concepts and practices that have streamed and ghettoized many students, especially those from the subaltern classes, racial minorities, and women. They should also help convince the wielders of state and corporate power that teachers are not mere “service providers” or “temp” workers. The conditions under which students learn and the factors that make for their success are not located solely in the classroom. So educational expenditures focused exclusively on so-called classroom activities will leave out many of our students, perpetuate social inequality, and help create other serious social problems. Notes 1. See TYP three-year report on the Steps to University Expanded Program. 2. By this we mean an ability to take into account the student’s personal experiences, family situation, and other socio-economic and cultural factors that may be affecting the student’s academic performance in order to address the needs and interests of the student. The Ontario Student Record (OSR) is an important source of some of this information. 3. Renegotiating Cultural Diversity in American Schools, edited by Patricia Phelan and Ann Locke Davidson (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1993). 4. This situation has been exacerbated by the Toronto District School Board’s cut in “inner school funds” (used to fund tutoring programs as well as provide lunch programs and transit fare support for students with such needs). 5. Communication exceptionality consists of a multitude of possibilities. Such exceptionalities may involve blindness or deafness; we have one student at Parkdale Collegiate with these exceptionalities. It may also involve a learning exceptionality, which may be either auditory or visual based. Dyslexia is of a small percentage compared to the many other various possible combinations of learning disabilities. Last year we had two students with identified exceptionalities and a student whom we suspected of having an unidentified exceptionality. This year we have three students with identified learning exceptionalities. 6. Paulo Freire and Donaldo P. Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, quoted in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 340 Enhancing Access to University Education for “At-Risk Students” 341 Children,” in Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1997):19. 7. William E. Sedlacek, “Teaching Minority Students,” in Teaching Minority Students: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, edited by J.H. Cones III, J. Noonan, and D. Janha (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1983):39–50. 8. Effie Clark, Outstanding Black Sermons, quoted in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children,” in Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1997):19. 9. Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children,” in Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1997):29. 10. For example, Helaine Dawson, On the Outskirts of Hope: Educating Youth from Poverty Areas (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). 11. Yogesh Atal, “Education for the Poor and Against Poverty,” in Perspectives on Educating the Poor, edited by Yogesh Atal (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1997). 12. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum Publishing Co., [1970] 1984). 13. Carter Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro, in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children,” in Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1997):22. References Atal, Y. 1997. “Education for the Poor and Against Poverty.” In Perspectives on Educating the Poor, edited by Yogesh Atal. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. Clark, E. 1997. Outstanding Black Sermons, quoted in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children.” In Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Freire, P. [1970] 1984. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum Publishing Co. Freire, P., and D.P. Macedo. 1997. Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, quoted in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children.” In Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 341 342 Access and Equity in the University Murrell, P. 1997. “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children.” In Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Phelan, P., and Ann Locke Davidson, eds. 1993. Renegotiating Cultural Diversity in American Schools. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Sedlacek, W.E. 1983. “Teaching Minority Students.” In Teaching Minority Students: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, edited by J.H. Cones III, J. Noonan, and D. Janha. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Woodson, C. 1997. The Miseducation of the Negro, quoted in Peter C. Murrell, Jr., “Digging Again the Family Wells: A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African-American Children.” In Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical Dialogue with Paulo Freire, edited by Paulo Freire. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Ch 19-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 342 MY NAME IS ROSAMUND DORRINGTON, AND I AM A FORTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD mother of two children and grandmother of a two-and-a-half-year- old little boy. My life journey started on the tropical island of Barbados in the eastern Caribbean. At the age of twelve, after the death of my father, I began to dream of leaving the island and moving to Canada or the United States. I had recently started high school at one of the private secondary schools on the island, and this was a financially difficult time for my family as a result of my father’s death. A close family friend, who had recently moved to Canada, reported in all her letters how wonderful Canada was and how it was a land of endless opportunities. At that time, I prayed that she would adopt me and sponsor me to Canada. Instead, she sponsored my older sister, who was later able to sponsor my mother, myself, and my younger brother and sister. It was a cold winter’s night when we arrived in Toronto on February 14, 1976. I immediately enrolled at East York Collegiate Institute to continue my education. Unfortunately, because of financial obligations to my family, I had to leave high school and get a full- time job. My dream of pursuing an academic career had to be put on hold and was to remain on hold throughout the latter part of the 1970s onward. In the late 1980s I finally had the opportunity to return to school and investigated the possibility of enrolling in the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto. Unfortunately, my marriage fell apart at that time and I had to put A l u m n i V o i c e s 343 Thirtieth Anniversary Class Rosamund Dorrington (TYP 2000–2001) Ch 19-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 343 344 Access and Equity in the University those plans on hold. However, I never gave up my dream of one day returning to school to pursue postsecondary education. Today, I am on the road to fulfilling my dream of a university education. In May 2000, I applied to the Transitional Year Programme and was accepted for the 2000–2001 season. What brought me to this stage was losing my job as a manager in a housing co-operative, which left me feeling that although I had the necessary skills to obtain jobs at the managerial level in co-operative and other non-profit housing, what was lacking from my curriculum vitae was a university degree. Most of my colleagues were university graduates. The TYP program has assisted me in pursuing my personal goals by providing a safe and healthy environment for me and other students. While in the program, I was motivated to work hard. I received tremendous support in TYP when my mother’s care at the nursing home where she lived was compromised and after her subsequent death. This was more than I expected and I am very thankful for the encouragement and support I received not only from the faculty but also from my fellow students and TYP alumni. My life has been enriched by this community of TYP, which I will always forever carry in my heart. I was a proud member of the graduating class of 2000–2001. My hard work paid off, I was admitted to the University of Toronto, University College in September 2001, and I received awards at TYP’s graduation night in recognition of my work and commitment to my studies. Today, I am pursuing an undergraduate degree, which hopefully will prepare me to pursue a career in either social work or anthropology, with a specific focus on researching African heritage religions in the Caribbean. In my opinion, the Transitional Year Programme is the most valuable vehicle available to people in the African Canadian, Aboriginal, and other disadvantaged groups/communities for accessing a world- class education at a renowned institution like the University of Toronto. TYP provides the means for many students to move from a position of disadvantage, defeat, and destruction to one of empowerment and recognition, and becoming socially and economically productive members of Canadian society. This is a good thing. Ch 19-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 344 MY NAME IS CLINT OTTO AND I WAS A STUDENT IN THE TRANSITIONAL YEAR Programme at the University of Toronto in 2000–2001. Three years or so before coming to TYP, I could never have dreamt of such a reality as this: Clint Otto, a student at the University of Toronto! I was raised in Dallas, Texas, and attended elementary school there. Some of my teachers saw me as a problem child, but I did not fit their hypothesis for I did not show any symptoms of a problem. My mother and father, who were both hard working, lived together with me. I was always fed and had a balanced diet. I was not hyperactive and my attention span was average. I did not have the usual symptoms of a problem, yet the teachers saw me in a stereotypical way. Because of the social and racial problems in the United States, I believe that my teachers placed me in a category based on my race. I was a Black child. I felt that the teachers were trying to dictate my destiny, but my spirit protested: Never, I said to myself. I knew that I was intelligent. I knew that I could learn just as well as anyone, and, fortunately for me, not all of my teachers saw me as the stereotype. Mrs. White, my Grade 4 teacher, saw me as a student. Mrs. White, a kind woman, gave me the inspiration and motivation to succeed in my school work. My grades improved dramatically. Cs and Ds became As and Bs. I felt new vigour in my soul, which poured into my studies, but unfortunately for me throughout my academic journey, the Mrs. Whites were scarce and few. I again doubted my potential because the negative stereotype followed me until I could A l u m n i V o i c e s 345 My Life Clint Otto (TYP 2000–2001) Ch 19-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 345 346 Access and Equity in the University finally rid myself of it on entering TYP as a student in September 2000. TYP, like Mrs. White, gave me the confidence to believe in myself and my potential. In my year in TYP, each time I entered my literature class, I saw Mrs. White. I saw Mrs. White each time I went to the TYP math class, English composition, and other courses. I have learned a lot from the faculty in TYP who have dedicated themselves to giving individuals like myself a chance at university education and helping us to succeed in it. I have seen in TYP individuals who have invested years in making university education possible for students who do not usually get admitted to the university. The Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto began in the African Canadian community in Toronto, but it has a history of serving students from different communities and backgrounds who need a special program to enter university. TYP has been in operation for more than thirty years, but I believe that the dream of an access program like this has been around for more than 100 years. The dream has been kept alive by the spirit of those in our society who deserve a chance to reach their potential. This includes many students like myself whom society tends to view in a negative and stereotypic manner. TYP gives us the opportunity we deserve. That is why this program is here to stay. TYP should be expanded to allow more students the opportunity to enter university. It should also be offered in other universities in Canada and the United States. Finally, I see TYP as a rose tree blossoming to offer a rose of hope. To whom, you may ask? My answer is: to bright and positive students like us who need a chance at success. Thank you. Ch 19-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 346 ACCESS AND EQUITY IN SCIENCE AND MATH EDUCATION Part Six Part Six Part Six Part Six Part Six Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 347 Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 348 Introduction This chapter will outline theoretical considerations for a science course aimed at equity and social justice. These considerations are in the context of a university access program. Typically, access program students come from communities that are traditionally under-represented in the scientific field and underachieve in science education. Most are Aboriginal, Black, women, working class, recent immigrants, and single parents. Arguably, most will have been streamed during high school into lower tracks. Research into educational outcomes of lower tracks shows that the explicit and implicit curricula of the lower tracks engender student alienation from school disciplines, especially disciplines seen to embody the values of the establishment, as is science (Anyon 1981; Rosenbaum 1976; Yerrick 2000). Consequently, graduates from underachieving communities end up in entry-level jobs, in occupations that require minimum independent decision making, creativity, and critical thinking. The long-term effect of lower tracking is that “scientific” skills are inequitably distributed in society. The inequitable distribution of scientific skills has resulted in the socio-economic marginalization of entire communities. The assumption in this discussion, therefore, is that social justice and equity should be the organizing principles for a science course in university access programs. There are three parts to this chapter: a discussion on science literacy, global and historical considerations of science, and pedagogical considerations of science. Chapter 20 349 Science Literacy: Schooled Science in the Service of Equity and Social Justice Wanja Gitari Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 349 350 Access and Equity in the University I will start by adopting a view of science that is taught at school as “schooled” knowledge (Apple 1976) to distinguish it from everyday sciences, such as indigenous science (Roberts 1998) or street science (George and Glasgow 1988). The term “schooled” is most appropriate because the science taught in school has been subjected to academic rigour, while other sciences, such as everyday sciences, are refined through everyday experiences. Many authors use the term “Western science” to refer to science that is taught at school. The term “Western science,” however, is erroneous given that the products of “schooled science” are a contribution from many cultures, not just Western culture (Bernal 1987; Sardar 1988, 1989; Turnbull 1993, 1997). The central argument in this chapter is that teaching and learning for science literacy should and can be a means of achieving equity and social justice. This claim sets the context for the chapter. Science Literacy The term “science literacy” became a part of educational literature in the 1970s. It was based on a fundamental principle of progressive education that underlined an education for personal-social development. On the basis of this principle, science literacy was described as “an education in science for all youth that was personally relevant and that focused on socially important issues” (Bybee and Deboer 1994:376), but operational definitions of science literacy vary widely (Lucas 1983). Lucas discusses three types: practical science literacy, civic science literacy, and cultural science literacy. Practical science literacy is the science and technological knowledge that would enable an individual to solve everyday problems and to prevent, where possible, the occurrence of such problems. An example would be knowledge of disease-causing micro-organisms, which enables an individual to adopt hygienic habits. Civic science literacy is knowledge that enables an individual to make informed choices regarding the impact of science and technology on society. An example is the kind of knowledge required for the public to debate and vote on whether to allow a multinational company to construct a dumping site in their neighbourhood. Cultural science literacy constitutes an intellectual pursuit of science and technological knowledge. The culturally science literate pursues science for its value as a major human Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 350 Science Literacy 351 achievement. Such people are inclined to read science periodicals and watch science programs on television (Jenkins 1990; Lucas1983). What are the many definitions of science literature’s implications for science education? Are we to design courses aimed at one, two, or all of the different definitions? And how would such a tailor-made supply of knowledge help students grapple with real life, especially given the high speed at which current knowledge becomes redundant and gives way to newer and better explanations? As Lucas (1983:1) rightly argues, it is most important that school courses provide a framework for future learning, especially “when faced with presently unpredictable future needs.” It is crucial for educators to help students cultivate a desire to acquire scientific and technological knowledges. Individuals then will determine the kind of science literacy to pursue. In any case, as an educational objective, science literacy is only a useful guideline for appropriate pedagogy and philosophy of science teaching and learning (American Association for the Advancement of Science 1989). The notion of science literacy may, therefore, be broadened to encompass other goals such as equity and social justice. The Problem with Science Literacy Although as an educational objective science literacy is highly desirable (Hodson and Reid 1988), science literacy has been implicated in poor and sometimes highly contentious outcomes of science education (Roberts 1983). Forms of science literacy that stress content and structure of science have been instrumental in the exclusion and, thereby, marginalization of everyday knowledges and skills. Stress of content and structure occurs mainly in courses in which cultural science literacy is highly valued. In such courses, course content is very abstract. Most students are eventually put off by the lack of connectivity with their prior knowledge, especially the lack of linkage with everyday knowledges and skills. Several studies have shown that everyday knowledges and skills may constitute a useful bridge in the understanding of schooled science and in the application of schooled science to everyday problem solving (Lucas 1983). In addition, because science literacy can be interpreted to mean Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 351 352 Access and Equity in the University different things—interrelations between science and society; ethics of science; nature of science; conceptual knowledge; science and technology; and science in the humanities (Bybee and Deboer 1994)—it has sometimes been used as the basis for what has often turned out to be questionable instructional practices. For instance, lower-track students have been swamped with factual and acontextual schooled science (SS) knowledge in the name of practical science literacy, yet the socio-historical contexts of most of the students in the lower tracks demand a more imaginative delivery of subject matter (Yerrick 2000). Yerrick (2000), for instance, has shown that one outcome of science literacy associated with lower tracking is a learned helplessness regarding science knowledge. Incidentally, the majority of lower-track students come from traditionally disadvantaged groups. Additionally, he has shown that mindful instructional strategies can help students acquire a more acceptable view of science. For instance, in examining science as a social practice, Yerrick helped his students become agents in their own learning. As his entrance and exit interviews show, at the beginning of the course students’ reasoning was characterized by an unwillingness to make and commit to SS claims regarding the resolution of an everyday problem. Students were inclined to give “correct answers” to the target problem and apologized for not having the correct answer, even though students were told that there was no correct answer to the problem. After inquiry-oriented instruction, however, students were willing to give suggestions on how to solve the problem and even proposed to test one problem-solving approach against alternative problem-solving approaches. At the end of the course, students were better critical thinkers. Science literacy is, undoubtedly, an educational objective with interesting political implications (Roberts 1983). In this regard, emphases, especially those related to content, are of great concern. Therefore, should the emphasis in a science course be on knowledge of the norms and methods of science? An appreciation of the interrelationships between science, technology, and society? General grounding in the language and some of the key constructs of science? A combination of these or much more? These questions require careful consideration based on the social, cultural, political, Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 352 Science Literacy 353 and economic contexts of the learners, of their communities of origin, and of the subject matter (Jenkins 1990; Levins and Lewontin 1993; Lewontin 1987). Global and Historical Considerations As mentioned earlier, most access program students hail from communities that are traditionally under-represented in the science enterprise. In addition, students have been made to believe, through school curricula, media, and otherwise, that their communities have contributed nothing to schooled science or, for that matter, to technological knowledge. Even more disheartening, students have been made to believe that knowledge of the natural world that originates in students’ communities is of less value than SS. A science course aiming to remedy this situation would help students understand the ideological commitments that motivated omissions of the contribution of non-Western cultures in the writing of the history of schooled science. The following brief and very much simplified history of science will highlight issues of global and historical importance that should inform the design, organization, and planning of such a science course. Ogilvie (1986) argues that the development of SS began in ancient Greece and Rome with the careful recording of astronomical events. Accurate predictions in astronomy fuelled speculation about the causes of these events. She notes that speculation about the causes of these events were made possible by writing skills and mathematical skills developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Discussions of the causes of these events then developed into a discipline, natural philosophy, which later developed into “science.” “Science” was gradually incorporated into school curricula and became “schooled” (Young 1976). Natural philosophy was based on strict rationalism following the teachings of Aristotle. It remained an occupation of the Greeks until Arabs invaded ancient Greece and took possession of the existing philosophical materials. The Arabs then translated, dissected, augmented, and modified the works of natural philosophy. Ogilvie (1986:7) adds that their commentary tradition “became very important in the subsequent development of European science.” Note that it is only recently that “science” history books have documented the contribution of the Islamic world to Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 353 354 Access and Equity in the University “science.” In fact, writers of the history of “science” have often portrayed “Islamic science as only a conveyor belt that preserved the Greek heritage and then passed it on to its rightful descendant, the post-Renaissance European civilization” (Sardar 1989:10). The period between the Arab invasion and the recovery of classical texts is often referred to as the “Dark Ages.” It was a time when Europe was preoccupied with salvation as espoused in the new Christian faith (Easlea 1980). Consequently, not much attention was paid to “science,” although important technological innovations such as medicine, the magnetic compass, the wheelbarrow, the improved plough, and others were made. It was not until the late eleventh century that Europeans recovered natural philosophical texts (many of the works of Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy) from the Arabs, and translated them from Arabic into Latin (Bruno 1987). It is interesting to note that the study and extension of philosophical texts, through the method of speculative analysis, went on for a while. Experimentation as a method of knowledge building was not introduced until the fifteenth century. These are interesting observations, given that most school curriculum give the impression that the works of Archimedes and the rest were based on experimental work. This point will be discussed further below. A move from philosophical speculation to experimentation was initiated by Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and William Gilbert. They envisioned a “science” based on experimentation and not on scholasticism or the authority of philosophical texts. This new vision was accompanied by a change in the way people responded to nature. Formerly, the earth was seen as the centre of the universe in the project of a divine and all-powerful God. The new view, introduced by Copernicus, was radically different (World Book Encyclopedia 1993). Copernicus proposed that the sun was the centre of the universe, with the earth and other planets moving around it. This was a “physical reality” model, unlike the earlier view, which was metaphysical. Copernicus’s model was considered a “physical reality” because it could be understood mathematically. This, and Giordano Bruno’s ideas of infinite space and the existence of other worlds, opened a new avenue for questioning the authority of Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 354 Science Literacy 355 the Christian Church. These new discoveries demystified the role played by supernatural forces in shaping and directing physical phenomena. In the new social and intellectual climate, scientists were willing to be more adventurous in the investigation of natural phenomena. In this new climate, Galileo popularized observational astronomy and fuelled further discontent with the authoritarian Aristotelian-Ptolemaic metaphysical world view. Galileo emphasized rational means (a philosophic outlook holding that “reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge, and that the validity of sense perception must be proved from more certain principles”) as a way of knowing the world (World Book Encyclopedia 1993:387). His new method was given further weight by the discoveries of Isaac Newton, who concluded “in a bold and intuitive stroke that the physical laws of the heavens and those of the earth were one and the same, with both planets and apples being subject to the same natural forces” (Bruno 1987:39). Following this burst of scientific activity, there were more speculative thinking, logical analysis, and experimentation of all sorts leading to organized scientific societies, which precipitated the phenomenal growth of scientific activities from the seventeenth century onwards (Bruno 1987; Kockelman 1968; Oglivie 1986). An important point to note is that the members of these societies were, at the time of their formation, grappling with the question of what philosophy “science” should be based on: the hermetic philosophy or mechanical philosophy (Easlea 1980). It appears that mechanical philosophy prevailed in the battle, which Easlea says: … was a case of scholastic Aristotelianism crumbling and protagonists of very different and rival cosmologies engaging in a bitter and protracted struggle for supremacy, both with each other and against the entrenched proponents of Aristotelian-Thomistic cosmology. “Modern science” emerged, at least in part, out of a three-cornered contest between proponents of the established view and adherents of newly prospering magical cosmologies, both to be opposed in the seventeenth century by advocates of revived mechanical world views. (Easlea 1980:89) Hermetic philosophy dealt “essentially with the idea of the complete community of all beings and objects” (Harris and Levey Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 355 356 Access and Equity in the University 1975:1232). It represented the alchemical vision, in which metaphysical forces were included in the explanation of all life’s experiences, “with merging of spirit and matter” (Keller 1985:58; see also Keller 1983, 1989). Keller observes that the hermetic world view was also respectful of women, whereas in mechanical philosophy, the mind (which was equated with man) was to have dominion over everything; to conquer and subdue nature (which was equated with woman). Also, “men associated themselves with mind and rational activity, women with matter and carnal instinct” (Easlea 1980:242), that is, equating knowledge with power (mastery and domination) (Keller 1989; World Book Encyclopedia 1993). The linkage of power and knowledge is undoubtedly the greatest achievement of SS. Indeed, the simile of nature and woman significantly influenced the in-equation of women and SS leading to “success in science being defined in opposition to everything female” and the assumption that “different values such as those expressed in hermetic philosophy could not have been conducive to success” (Keller 1985:64). This is a significant point for issues of ethnicity and gender in schooled science (Oyewumi 1997). Breakthroughs in astronomy, together with new mechanical innovations, enabled explorers to go out and discover other lands. Spearheaded through trips by Christopher Columbus to the Americas and Vasco da Gama to India, this exploration was the beginning of a never-ending project of conquering, subjugating, and eliminating Native peoples and their traditions and, finally, colonizing new lands (Adas 1989; Césaire 1972; Rodney 1982). As a result of colonization, Europe became rich in material as well as intellectual wealth (Emeagwali 1997; Rodney 1982). Indeed, Bacon’s vision of a future world where “science” would enable a “flight of technology” of cars, submarines, airplanes, and much more had come to pass (Bruno 1987). Because of these achievements, Europeans who travelled to other lands felt materially and intellectually superior. As Adas (1989:3) observes: … in the industrial era, scientific and technological measures of human worth and potential dominated European thinking on issues ranging from racism to colonial education. They also provided key components of the civilizing mission ideology that both justified Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 356 Science Literacy 357 Europe’s global hegemony and vitally influenced the ways in which Europe’s power was exercised. In this climate of European achievement, philosophers Kant, Hume, and Nietzsche commented on why other people had not achieved as much as Europeans had: I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all the other species of men … to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilised nature of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences. (David Hume, 1748, quoted in Easlea 1980:249) Most of these philosophers came to the conclusion that, unlike the Europeans, Africans, for instance, lacked the mental capacity to theorize, exercise logic, and utilize reason. This notion of a hierarchy of beings was drawing a lot of support from Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the anthropological works of Levy-Bruhl (Mudimbe 1988). It appears that in celebrating their achievements, Europeans lost sight of the achievements of others, for example, those of Africans in ancient Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, Mali, the Maghreb, the Western Sudan, the Interlacustrine Zone, and Zimbabwe (see Diop 1974, 1987; DuBois 1977; Kamalu 1990; Mudimbe 1994; Mudimbe and Appiah 1993; Murfin 1994, 1996; Rodney 1982; Sertima 1994). As already noted, the marvels of the new “science” were not only used as a measure of human intellect based on cultural background, but also based on sex. This sex bias was aggravated by the fact that women’s position in society did not permit them to participate in out-of-the-home activities such as in intellectual pursuits. However, as Alic (1986) and Ogilvie (1986) point out, in cultures where women were accorded respect, for example, in ancient Egypt, they made a significant contribution to the “science” of antiquity. Hypatia, for instance, “best known woman of antiquity, mathematician, and philosopher, was born in Egypt 370– 415 AD, and educated in Neopolitan school of Alexandria” (Ogilvie 1986:5). Hypatia is not well known as a significant scientist because of the nature of information selection in the history of Western Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 357 358 Access and Equity in the University thought. For similar reasons, the contributions of many other women in “science” have not been included in mainstream history of “science” textbooks (Alic 1986; Ogilvie 1986). As Alic (1986:11) puts it: Most of recorded history of western societies has been dominated by men. History books reflect this male bias. They have ignored the history of women. As science and technology became increasingly valued by patriarchal societies, the scientific work of women was increasingly devalued. As more people, women and men alike, became interested in science, the assertion that women were incapable of scientific work became vehement. In a similar view, Murfin (1994:96) observes that “the history of science as it has been taught in schools has been from an almost exclusively white, European, male perspective.” Such devaluing has led to student alienation from SS. Alienation from SS is a loss because SS provides a widely applicable explanatory mode and innumerable career opportunities. An access science course should aim to develop a positive attitude to science by purposefully exposing students to literature that disclaims the myths of superior knowledge (Norman 1998). At the same time, the course should emphasize schooled science’s powerful explanatory mode and career possibilities. Pedagogical Considerations As is clear from existing literature, a compelling explanation as to why the majority of students become disinterested in science is traceable to the nature of classroom discourse within the lower tracks (Rosenbaum 1976). Most access students will have been streamed into the lower tracks and have experienced the instructional contexts of lower tracks. Yerrick (2000) notes that science pedagogy in the lower tracks, or general science, is characterized by a teacher-centred model. Teacher-centred learning does not foster independent learning and thereby alienates students from scientific knowledge. Lack of faith in the intellectual capacity of students and the perceived need for discipline and high classroom management and several other misguided notions divert time and energy away from teaching Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 358 Science Literacy 359 and learning. More time is then spent on behaviour modification than on teaching and learning. Subsequently, students who are tracked into a general science course develop a thought pattern that perpetuates the view of science as factual, as “a finished business” with no room for educated guesses (Hodson 1998). Several other myths of science cloud students’ minds, rendering SS foreign and out of reach. I will discuss a few of these myths. The discussion highlights some arguments of and about SS, following certain debates in the philosophy and sociology of “science.” Claims that SS is pure, universal, and objective have been shown to directly or indirectly hinder the learning of science for all students, and more so for students who have a wider border to cross. Aikenhead (1996) envisions science as “another” culture and the learning and teaching of science as enculturing students into a different culture. Enculturation entails the crossing of epistemological borders. I do not intend to discuss in detail how the SS myths developed or the mechanisms by which they are or were promoted. It will suffice to mention that most of them are a result of the continued promotion of the so-called “scientific method,” which for purposes of instruction is often presented in a simplified form, especially in school textbooks. Overall, this procedure is seen as a means of helping students acquire an idea of how scientists do “science” (Hodson 1986). Another source of these errors could be the presentation of SS as fact or as “correct explanation” (Roberts 1982). “Correct explanation” is a term used by Roberts to refer to one set of seven curricular emphases occurring in school science. “The Scientific Method” Jenkins (1996) observes that “investigative activity” has been part of school science since it was first introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. Although many “science” educators have often questioned the validity of depicting the nature of SS as synonymous with this “investigative activity,” there has been … no serious challenge to the importance of developing “scientific thinking” as a curriculum objective and, during the so-called curriculum development era of the 1960s, this objective was strongly re-asserted. Supported by references to investigative, open-ended Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 359 360 Access and Equity in the University or discovery learning, science curriculum projects in many parts of the world emphasized scientific procedures and attitudes. (Jenkins 1996:4) It is important to scrutinize some assumptions that underlie school science’s understanding of how scientists do “science.” The following discussion, while not an exhaustive treatment of these assumptions, will serve as a useful framework for depicting how scientific method or experimentation is understood. There are six essential elements in this description. (1) Nature is simple. (2) Scientists are distanced, isolated, and rigorous. (3) Scientific knowledge is value-free. (4) Scientific method is the only means of building scientific knowledge. (5) Scientific method is a step-wise procedure. (6) Observation is the basis of all science. Nature is simple. A basic assumption of the scientific method that has persisted in school curricula is that nature is simple and susceptible to accurate and true descriptions (Hodson 1982; Smolicz and Nunan 1975; Teich and Young 1973). This assumption, acquired in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and supported mainly by a mechanistic outlook, regards all “physical phenomena as connected mechanically by laws of cause and effect” (World Book Encyclopedia 1993:387). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the study of natural phenomena concerned itself with simple regularities that were subject to the laws of cause and effect, for instance, the periodically repeated movements of the sun and the moon. Prigogine and Stengers (1984:xiii) argue that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century “science” pictured a Newtonian world: A world in which every event was determined by initial conditions, that were, at least in principle, determinable with precision. It was a world in which chance played no part, in which all the pieces came together like cogs in a cosmic machine ... a clockwork, planets timelessly orbiting, all systems operating deterministically in Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 360 Science Literacy 361 equilibrium, all subject to universal laws that an outside observer could discover. Two thousand years earlier, Plato is said to have posited that heavenly bodies move “only in perfect, eternal, unchanging motion ...: [in] perfect motion” ( New Encyclopedia Britannica 1992:34). With further progress in the study of natural phenomena, scientists realized that these simple regularities were not readily manifested in all phenomena and, therefore, the notion that “nature is simple” was no longer useful, especially in the study of living things (New Encyclopedia Britannica 1992). The contemporary view of nature is that of a complex network of interconnections and interrelations that defy any simple readings (Keller 1985; Maslow 1966). It is noteworthy that the underlying assumption in most everyday knowledge, especially indigenous knowledges, is that nature is very complex and should be approached as an interrelated and interconnected whole (Christie 1991; Jegede 1998; Lickers 1992; Worsley 1997). Nevertheless, the notion of “nature as simple” is still useful for the purposes of astronomy and certain areas of physics. Arguably this axiom is still applicable in the study of simple physical phenomena, especially in cases where the relationship between cause and effect is straightforward. Still, it is wrong to use this principle as a generalization for the study of all phenomena. The SS view of nature as simple may also have originated from the use of simple mechanical models to explain natural processes. René Descartes, who is recorded as the first person to have proposed the use of such models, did warn that “such models were not the way nature probably worked” (New Encyclopedia Britannica 1992:38). It is likely, however, that some SS teachers may, by use of models to explain natural phenomena, impress upon students that the phenomenon is as “simple” as the model. Students, therefore, receive the unintended message that nature as a whole is “simple.” The scientist is distanced, isolated, and rigorous. School science commonly says that the scientist has to be “distant, isolated and rigorous” to achieve objectivity in the scientific method (Hodson 1998). While on occasions this may be true, and while on many Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 361 362 Access and Equity in the University occasions “true regularities must be established by detached examination of data” (New Encyclopedia Britannica 1992:32), the portrayal of this as the typical scientist and the universal approach is problematic. Abraham Maslow (1966:114), while commenting on “value-free science,” makes a similar point: It was certainly necessary for astronomers and physicists to assert their freedom to see what was before their eyes rather than having truth determined a priori by the church or the state. This is the kernel of sense in the concept of “value-free science.” But it is this generalization, uncritically accepted today by many, that has crippled so many human and social scientists. The implications of such a portrayal are that students who by nature are not “distanced, isolated and rigorous” will lose interest in “science.” They will build an opinion that “science” is not their “kind of stuff.” This point is made to great effect by Costa (1995). Conant (1951:8) reflects on how far and for how long scientists have relied on this popular image of a scientist: Now there is no question that one of the necessary conditions for scientific investigation is an exact and impartial analysis of the facts. But this attitude was not invented by those who first concerned themselves with scientific inquiries nor was its overriding importance at once recognized ... if I read the history of science in the seventeenth century and eighteenth century rightly, it was only gradually that there evolved the idea that a scientific investigator must impose on himself a rigorous self-discipline the moment he enters his laboratory. He adds, “would it be too much to say that in the natural sciences today the given sociological environment has made it very easy for even an emotionally unstable person to be exact and impartial in the laboratory: because of the traditions he inherits, his instruments, high degree of specialization and so on” (Conant 1951:9). Conant (1951) continues to argue that standards of scientific investigation were set by the characters of a few giants and spiritual ancestors like Galileo, who by nature were self-controlled, and Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 362 Science Literacy 363 by the incorporation of the Socratic tradition. Other standards, for instance, to do with professionalism, were later added by scientific societies to earlier standards. Of spiritual ancestors, Conant (1951:10) says: “these men passed on to subsequent generations many facts and valuable methods of attaining practical ends but not the spirit of scientific investigation.” In fact, some of the “scientific giants,” like Copernicus, “did not experiment and observed very little” (Lindsay 1963:11). What Copernicus did was to consider material by early scholars, thereby using his mind on familiar material or devising new ways of regarding “old” phenomena (Toulmin 1960). A similar observation is made by Nadeau and Desautels (1984:3). What may seem to be a discovery of personal dedication is really an “accumulation of various endeavours, breakthroughs and/or stalemates, and as such, is the consequence of a collective effort.” An illustration of this point would be, for instance, when a school text informs students that Charles Darwin discovered the evolution of species without providing information on how his ideas benefited from those of earlier naturalists who had been “toying with the notion for some time” (New Encyclopedia Britannica 1992:41). This emphasis on “a discovery of personal dedication” is, to a large extent, a fallacy that may deter students who may have useful scientific ideas but are afraid to develop such ideas on the grounds that they are not “a discovery of personal dedication.” Further, the notion of a “distanced, isolated” scientist, as portrayed by school texts, is weakened in the face of evidence that scientists are very passionate people (Maslow 1966; Wilson 1972). For instance, the edited volume by Wolpert and Richards (1997) shows the “human reality of scientific life” as “intellectual, emotional and imaginative vigour” (Wolpert and Richards 1997:1). Scientists use similar “psychological” apparatus like the rest of us: “It is the human qualities of science which come over most strongly: its energy and imaginative richness; the sensations of frustration, love, despair and enchantment which hold its practitioners in its thrall” (Wolpert and Richards 1997:6). Therefore, like the rest of us, scientists differ in their temperaments and thereby in the approaches they use in their pursuits. As Wolpert and Richards (1997:1) observe, “among the Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 363 364 Access and Equity in the University experimentalists and the theorists, the biologists and the physicists, there are as many differences in style and motivation as there are in haircuts and accents.” Knowledge is value-free. The requirement to be “distant, isolated and rigorous” is based on the assumption that knowledge can be “value-free” (Maslow 1966). However, it has been argued that although scientists use “standardized procedures” to gather knowledge of natural phenomena, they do it within specific psychosocial and historical settings (Kuhn 1970). Therefore, the use of a standard procedure like experimentation does not preclude the interference of extrinsic factors. Besides, extrinsic factors (cultural, political, ideological, professional commitment to a paradigm, and so forth) determine, to a large extent, the intentions and outcomes of any scientific activity. Moreover, most of scientific activity is motivated by “puzzle solving” and not “problem solving.” Puzzle solving involves deciphering why the initial expectations of the scientist are not being met by “the scientific method,” whereas problem solving, as espoused by Popper (1968), refers to a situation where the scientist is working from a purely hypothetical stance (Cawthron and Rowell 1978; Kuhn 1970). The essence of the “value-freeness” of SS and its subsequent legitimacy is well captured in the following description: “Its worth is not dependent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the relation of man to the surrounding world. Necessary and eternal are its truths, all science concerns all mankind for all time.” (Binder 1970:349) That it is “not dependent on opinion” implies that SS can provide a true description of reality. Furthermore, the statements “fixed as is the relation of man to the surrounding world” and “concerns all mankind for all time” implies that SS should be understood by anyone anywhere, that is, anyone can arrive at a similar empirical observation anywhere in the world. Mathews (1994:181) observes that the claim that SS should be understood by “anybody, independently of their previous convictions” portrays “science” as an “intellectual activity that Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 364 Science Literacy 365 knows no national, class, racial or other differences: science transcends human difference” (see also Stanley and Brickhouse 1994). However, this view does allow for the fact that “while aspects of culture do influence science, ... cultural considerations do not determine the truth claims of science” (Mathews 1994:182). In fact, if by any chance cultural considerations form part of an account of the natural world, such an account would be marred, and continuous experimental interrogation and checks with reality (falsification) would subsequently prove it to be “unscientific” (Stanley and Brickhouse 1994). There is also the peer review process through which claims of SS are scrutinized for any distorting influences. The aim of the process is to “ensure[s] that scientific accounts of the natural world are culture proof” (Stanley and Brickhouse 1994:389). Whether scientific accounts that have gone through peer review end up being “culture proof” is no doubt a critical issue. Nevertheless, for lack of time and space this issue will not be discussed. Scientific method is the only means of building scientific knowledge. In most cases, “scientific method” is depicted as the only means of building scientific knowledge. Hodson (1998:30) says that this is a mistaken portrayal of experimentation. He argues that there are instances when, in doing “science,” scientists do not make use of experimentally based observation, especially given logical, theoretical/epistemological constraints, or when space, time, and ethical considerations do not allow. At such times, correlational studies and “thought experiments” are used in place of experimentally based observation as a means of building scientific knowledge. Worsley (1997:161) also observes that “‘the laboratory’ is a short hand for only one kind of scientific research, for meteorologists, palaeontologists and astronomers do not perform controlled experiments, which many assume to be typical of scientific work.” Here is an example of such practical suggestions appearing in a class reader and popular biology text in the 1970s and 1980s: Prepare two petri dishes of sterile, nutrient agar as described. ... In one of them sprinkle some particles of soil and in the other, as a control, some particles of clean sand that have been sterilized by Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 365 366 Access and Equity in the University heating. If bacteria or fungi are present in the soil, they will appear as colonies in the surface of the agar within two days. The absence of such colonies from the control will prove that the bacteria were in the soil and did not come from the air, the dish, the medium or the instrument used to introduce the soil. (Mackean 1976) The scientific method is a step-wise procedure. In a bid to simplify the account of the way scientists do “science,” school science normally depicts “the scientific method” as a procedure consisting of: (1) Making observations from nature. (2) Stating a hypothesis. (3) Planning the experiment (including control experiment). (4) Obtaining the results, interpreting them, and writing them up. (5) Drawing a conclusion. This step-wise procedure has become synonymous with scientific inquiry. Not only does the practical procedure leave most students with the impression that no theory is necessary in SS investigations, it also suggests that SS investigations are neat and easy to follow. This is an astounding fallacy, says Schwab (1964), because such accounts omit the experiences (cognitive, political, social, or otherwise), the frustrations, the “messy” work, and the trial and error that scientists go through before they develop the theoretical and substantive bases of their work. Clearly, not all scientific investigations go through these orderly steps. In fact, Schwab (1964:36) sees the isolation of hypothesizing as a discrete, named step in the biological sciences as “pretentious and over-emphatic.” This is because the procedure of setting up an hypothesis within the biological sciences is not as rigorous and does not involve the same kind of abstract theoretical speculations as in the physical sciences. (Also, see the example from a biology text, above.) Similarly, Hodson (1986) argues that instructions for practical work are a common textbook distortion that gives children a false sense of the significance of results deriving from so-called “experiments.” Hodson is arguing from the fact that practical demonstrations in science textbooks are given Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 366 Science Literacy 367 as steps to follow in order to “find out” what is already suggested by the author. Observation is the basis of all science. The role of observation as a first step in the building of SS was very central in my school science. Indeed, a double lesson each week was devoted to enabling students to observe things, make inferences, and draw conclusions. As students, we were made to believe that in making observations we were, in effect, re-enacting an initial step in the building of “scientific knowledge.” An observation made by Hodson (1999) ties in very much with how I viewed SS. He observes that “the validity of all knowledge claims [in SS] is deemed to be judged solely in terms of consistency with observable and experimental evidence” (Hodson 1999:3). SS has in effect been defined as “an interconnected series of concepts and conceptual schemes that have developed as a result of experimentation and observations” (Conant 1947:25). I have already discussed experimentation or the “scientific method,” as it is popularly known. Philosophers have argued about the role of observation in the building of “scientific knowledge” for some considerable time. For instance, Chalmers (1982) pointed out that the basis of scientific knowledge is not “observation” per se but “problems,” while others suggest “puzzle solving” as the basis of scientific knowledge. “Observation is guided by and presupposes theory,” says Chalmers (1982:38). By way of illustration, Chalmers (1982:46) imagines that a scientist sets out to find how bats fly. Presumably the scientist has already made an observation that bats are able to fly. He or she is intrigued and plans to carry out an investigation. Subsequently, she or he poses a question such as: “How are bats able to fly so dexterously at night, in spite of the fact that they have very small, weak eyes?” It is notable that such a question is not based solely on the observation made by the scientist, but takes account of the theory that living organisms “see” with their eyes. Another claim made for observation in school curricula is that observation can be precise. However, a precise observation or an observation that gives a true reading of reality is highly disputable. As Einstein is said to have remarked: Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 367 368 Access and Equity in the University Altogether I do not at all like the now fashionable ... positivistic tendency of clinging to what is observable. I regard it as trivial that one cannot, in the ranges of atomic magnitudes make predictions, with any desired degree of precision, and I think ... that theory cannot be fabricated, out of the results of observation, but it can only be invented. (quoted in Popper 1968:459) Einstein was referring to the fact that in subatomic physics, one cannot guarantee that an observer or observation instruments will not interact with the object being measured. In fact, physicists have devised methods of calculating quantities that take into consideration this interference. One such method involves the Heinsenberg Uncertainty Principle (Maslow 1966). This principle allows for the measurement of quantities of a particle in motion, “given the problem of permanent localization of particles” (de Broglie 1990:21). Over the years, such physical realities in subatomic physics have shed more doubts on the attainment of objective reality. As Gierer (1986:36) points out: … modern atomic physics, ... has shown that predictions in the atomic domain depend on the precision of measurements, the precision being limited in principle because the measuring instruments used must themselves consist of atoms. The interrelation between the measuring process and the object of measurement results in an inevitable status of uncertainty. Another significant point about precision instruments is that, because they were built by human beings with a purpose in mind, the “innocence” of the resulting observations becomes questionable. Concluding Remarks Historically, schooled science was and is to an extent used as the unquestionable basis for the exclusion and marginalization of people based on race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, ability, class, and so forth. Indeed, the justifications of widely held prejudices were and still are hidden behind the claim to objectivity and/or the scientific method. Indeed, ideas developed by current oppositional discourses (Barton and Osborne 1998) show clearly Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 368 Science Literacy 369 that schooled science was evoked in claims that purported to justify prejudice and discrimination (Du Bois 1977; Latour 1988; Lewontin 1987). At the same time there is recognition by oppositional discourses that science has made a significant break from the practices and ideological commitments that made such exclusion possible. As well, there is recognition of current attempts to rewrite the history of science to reflect the involvement of cultures from around the world and to oppose the widely held notion that schooled science is a cultural heritage of the Europeans. Therefore, an access course in science should engender more acceptable practices of science, with substantial emphasis on the acquisition of healthy skepticism, reasoned judgment, and critical thinking (Atwater 1998). It is hoped that a thoughtfully designed science course will open many doors of possibilities for the students. In turn, students will provide role models for others in their families, neighbourhoods, and communities. It is expected that such role modelling will have a ripple effect on previously underprivileged individuals and communities. References Adas, M. 1989. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. London: Cornell University Press. 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Knowledges: Culture, Counterculture and Subculture. New York: The New Press. Yerrick, R.K. 2000. “Lower Track Science Students’ Argumentation and Open Inquiry Instruction.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 37(8):807–838. Young, M.F.D. 1976. “The Schooling of Science.” In Explorations in the Politics of School Knowledge, edited by G. Whitty and D. Young. Toronto: Naffuton Books. Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 373 Ch 20-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 374 Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life; all words and forms are populated by intentions … (Bakhtin 1981:293) Orientation and Purpose I have found this quotation, and the work of Bakhtin in general, to be very thought provoking when I try to conceptualize equity in science education. In this paper, I will present some of my understandings and visions of the potential for equity in science education through this quotation. In the first section of this chapter, “Heteroglossia and Learning,” I will interpret Bakhtin’s words with regard to communication and learning. I will explain his notion of heteroglossia, that is, his notion that words gain their meaning in society against political and social contexts, and I will link heteroglossia to constructivist theories of learning. In the second section, “Heteroglossia and the Social Construction of Knowledge,” I will make two points. The first point will be that modern sociologists, historians, and philosophers have developed a view that regards scientific knowledge as a social construction. The second point will be that this view has informed a diverse array of constructivist theories of science education. I will focus on one theory: that of world views. I have chosen to focus on world views in this section because it is the conceptualization that is most in line with my present understanding of student learning. Since two authors have been particularly influential in my own Chapter 21 375 “Heteroglossia with Science”: A Tool for Conceptualizing Curriculum for Science Students Theresa Calovini Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 375 376 Access and Equity in the University understanding of learning, in the third section, “World Views, Science, and Heteroglossia,” I will focus on Aikenhead’s and Hodson’s visualization of student world views. In the final section, “A Critique of Hodson’s and Aikenhead’s World View Approach to Science Education,” I will critique the work of these authors, arguing that their conceptualization is too narrow to encourage and assist the students in developing and articulating their association with science. I will argue that explicit incorporation of the students’ “socially charged” words and “intentions” linked to potentially any text about science is another step to a more just, personal, and democratic curriculum. Heteroglossia and Learning Heteroglossia, or multiple voices/multiple accents, is one of the English translations of Bakhtin’s image expressed in the epigraph. In heteroglossia, words are envisioned as connected to certain socially and politically charged contexts. As a consequence, individuals in different parts of society, with their different past experiences, “taste” words differently. That is, when interpreting and using words in a new encounter, individuals from different political and social positions draw from different heteroglossia. Heteroglossia makes explicit that we are not isolated individuals when we read, nor are we isolated individuals when we speak. Drawing on words from numerous but distinct voices from our past, we are not “the first speaker who disturbs the eternal silence of the universe” (Bakhtin 1986:69). All the words that sit on our tongues have once existed in the mouths of others and in other contexts. That is, the words of texts make sense to us as readers or listeners through our past experience with them. The meaning one attaches to texts is fluid; it is created anew through the discourse of the individual and the person or text with whom she is interacting. Halliday (1978) independently developed similar ideas. He created a duality in which we both interpret the language of other(s) in the context of a given interaction through our past experience and use language to create the context of the present experience. Thus each new interaction is a negotiation between those involved. This is the aspect of Halliday’s work that I relate to heteroglossia. What is said or meant by one is not necessarily Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 376 “Heteroglossia with Science” 377 what is heard or understood by the other. We interpret a new situation through our past experiences, and through our past experiences we influence and learn more about the situation. A classic example is that of a shopper. The question “Do you sell small packs of tissues?” can be a bid by one to set the context of a shopping interaction. You as a reader, through your past experiences in Canada, can immediately see that this is probably not taking place in the office of a university professor. As a reader, you can guess what the respondent in this situation might say, but you don’t know for sure. Perhaps, through this example, you can see that language uses are bids to set contexts that are identifiable by those with similar experiences. In a Bakhtinian sense, “Do you sell small packs of tissues?” tastes of the contexts of a store, but the outcome of a given interaction is not known a priori. Actually, the meaning of the outcome must be interpreted through a person’s past experiences. Halliday, in his 1993 publication of “Towards a Language- Based Theory of Learning,” argued that children from birth start to construct signs—for example, eye contact—that people, e.g., parents, learn to interpret. Children then learn words as symbols that resemble what they mean. They learn about these words through their experiences with those around them. From this they start to organize words in relation to themselves: “I want ...,” “I don’t want ...,” and begin to form a language. This language is built up through the experiences of the child and others interacting in her or his physical and social world. Children learn language through the social context in which they are immersed and eventually, as Halliday argues, use language to learn about their social and physical contexts. Works like those of Bakhtin and Halliday place learning in the interface of the individual (the student) and those with whom the student is interacting, either personally or through her or his written text. These works defy the direct transfer view of learning (Beach 1999) by making learning an active process of interpretation. These works highlight individual learning as a social activity: individual learning through interactions with other people’s texts. This is the basis of a learning theory called constructivism (Good et al. 1993). Constructivism is especially interesting in the case of science education because it applies to Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 377 378 Access and Equity in the University the enterprise of science as well as to the enterprise of education (Good et al. 1993; Matthews 1998). Heteroglossia and the Social Construction of Knowledge In terms of the enterprise of science, sociologists, historians, and philosophers have examined the social construction of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is portrayed as being guided by the accepted ideas of the time and resistant to new ideas (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Kuhn 1970). The questions of science are stimulated not only through the dominant paradigm of the time, but also by the scientist’s own gender and race (Allchin 1995; Gould 1981; Longino and Hammonds 1990). Scientific knowledge claims in journals are also influenced by media standards of the day (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1993). The modern example of cold fusion illustrated that not all discoveries are presented first in scientific journals for peer review but can be funneled directly into the public media. These are among the multitudes of texts and voices that potentially influence the way scientists act and communicate in their day-to-day practice. In other words, these texts and others may be found in the pool of diverse voices, the heteroglossia, through which a scientist interprets new texts. World Views, Science, and Heteroglossia That scientific knowledge is socially constructed has important implications for constructivism in science teaching. According to Matthews (1998), editor of Constructivism in Science Education: A Philosophical Examination, constructivism can be found prominently in scientific, literary, historical, and even theological education. Constructivism is, however, a term used by authors who markedly disagree on other critical issues relevant to science education (Good et al. 1993). Thus, to avoid “obscur[ing] differences crucial to educational practice” (Good et al. 1993:71), I will focus on the constructivist conceptualization of learning most consistent with my own understanding—the notion of world views. A world view interpretation of constructivist theory acknowledges that students associate many different socially and politically charged contexts, many different voices, with science class (Aikenhead 1996; Cobern 1998; Driver et al. 1996; Hodson 1998). In other words, the Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 378 “Heteroglossia with Science” 379 student’s world view is formed by their past experiences with texts in different social and political contexts. To interpret and learn in a new situation, the student draws on these different heteroglossia. I will focus on the work of Aikenhead and Hodson since they are two voices influential in my understanding of science learning. These authors acknowledge that the “taste” of the words in the context of science class may not mix well with other flavours the student associates with science. Another way to look at this is that the heteroglossia with science, formed with the student’s friends and family, may not mix well or align well with the voices of science—the heteroglossia of science—that inform the science class. They refer to a study by Costa (1995), which found that for some students, the social and political flavour of science in the classroom was complementary to the flavour experienced with family and friends. For these students, their heteroglossia with science was parallel to the heteroglossia of science, so adding more voices of science to their world view was not problematic. For other students, the social and political flavour of science in the classroom was inconsistent with the flavour experienced with their family and friends. Aikenhead described this dissonance of taste as a border between school science and the student’s world view that is hazardous to cross. I look at it as a non-alignment of the voices informing the student’s and the teacher’s heteroglossia with science. Another category in Costa’s study is that of students for whom the flavour of science in the classroom and of school in general is discordant with those experienced with family and friends. For this group, the border is almost impossible to cross. If the crossing into the world view of science or science education is so difficult for some, why should they try? There are many reasons why everyone should understand the nature of scientific knowledge and inquiry (see Driver et al. 1996; Durant 1990). These include: (a) the economic argument—the national economy depends on developing and maintaining industrial and communications technology; (b) the utilitarian argument— everyone in industrialized countries is surrounded by technology and, to be more comfortable with it, needs to understand how it works; (c) the democratic argument—that everyone should understand some science content and how scientific knowledge is generated so as to participate in democratic decision making; Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 379 380 Access and Equity in the University and (d) the cultural argument—that science is a major cultural creation and, as such, science embodies norms and values that are important to consider. There might be strong arguments explaining why every citizen should know something about the nature of scientific knowledge and inquiry, but I, along with Aikenhead and Hodson, wonder if asking students to cross the border is not imperialistic. If their world view, informed by voices of their friends and family from socially and politically charged heteroglossia, is so counter to the politically and socially charged texts of the heteroglossia of science, would not attempting to incorporate scientific texts into their world view be an attempt at assimilation? Aikenhead (1996), in addressing this question, suggests that science class should be intimately linked with topics of society and technology, and that students should be encouraged to “borrow or adapt attractive content or aspects” (Aikenhead 1996:26) of science into their own world view. He asserts, however, that students do not always need to modify or give up their own world views. He makes the analogy of an anthropologist. “Anthropologists do not need to accept the cultural ways of their subjects in order to understand and engage some of these ways” (Aikenhead 1996:34). He suggests that students select only certain voices from the heteroglossia of science informing a science education, or include both voices from their home experiences and from school science in their own world view. He uses the analogy of a tourist. Students whose taste with science is discordant with that of science class will be on a more structured “tour” of science. They can explicitly compare their flavours with science and those offered by science class and are free to choose flavours that suit them. Those with complementary flavours will be tourists trying to incorporate as many of the voices with science as they can. As an example of making the flavours of science explicit, he describes research he did on the topic of mixtures. He describes how he had the students divide the page (a metaphorical border) and had the two columns as “my idea” and “the subculture of science.” In the “my idea” column, students put their own personal knowledge, their own taste, of an event or explanation, and in the “the subculture of science” column, they used scientific terms and scientific knowledge (tastes) to describe Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 380 “Heteroglossia with Science” 381 the event. He suggests the notebook as a tool for the teacher to help guide the students’ thinking and use of language, likening it to a tour guide. Hodson (1998) also envisions students bringing their own world view informed by multiple voices into science class. He holds that the voices informing these views can be contradictory. He states that “it is of paramount importance to make clear that gaining access to science does not require the students to give up or suppress important features of their lives outside the science classroom” (Hodson 1998:137). He lists voices that would need to be present in the school to make this possible: voices that value difference and social justice, teachers who can speak from the same heteroglossia as the students. He also promotes a politicized, issues-based Science, Technology, and Society (STS) curriculum designed to explicitly link science, technology, and society. This curriculum would have four levels of sophistication: Level 1: Appreciating the societal impact of scientific and technology change and recognizing that science and technology are, to some extent, culturally determined. Level 2: Recognizing that decisions about scientific and technological development are taken in pursuit of particular interests, and that benefits accruing to some may be at the expense of others. Recognizing that scientific and technological development is inextricably linked with the distribution of wealth and power. Level 3: Developing one’s own views and establishing one’s own underlying value propositions. Level 4: Preparing for and taking action. A Critique of Hodson’s and Aikenhead’s World View Approach to Science Education My critique lies in the extent to which their shared commitment to the world view notion of science education and the politicized issues-based STS curriculum draws the focus to students’ association with the enterprise of science and assists the students in developing and articulating their position in that association. First of all, I think it is possible that the social and political texts informing science education can be so antagonistically linked to Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 381 382 Access and Equity in the University the texts informing the student’s view of science as to render conciliation impossible. To illustrate, I will debate Aikenhead’s (1996) anthropologist analogy where he asserts that one does not have to accept the cultural ways of another in order to understand them and engage in them. I will draw on the example of “corporal punishment.” Through past experience, an anthropologist can have antagonistic links to this term that are so socially and politically charged that it would be impossible for her or him to negotiate a situation in a new culture by hitting a child as punishment. This is what I see as the problem with both Aikenhead’s and Hodson’s approach to using students’ world views in science class. While I completely agree with their view that the world view that an individual student brings to science class is informed by different socially and politically charged heteroglossia, my question is: Why is “developing one’s own views and establishing one’s own underlying value propositions” (Hodson 1998:21) the third-level goal when it might be the biggest, richest well for the constructivist to tap into for the students who find science untenable? Perhaps it would be a much more productive, empowering use of class time for these students to draw on voices that claim that “decisions about scientific and technological development are taken in pursuit of particular interests, and that benefits accruing to some may be at the expense of others” (Hodson 1994). According to Bakhtin, Hodson’s words in this quotation once lived in the mouths of others. Why cannot the students spend science class time focusing on these voices that informed Hodson when he made this quote—voices from a heteroglossia with science? Would not adding these voices and expressing their world view benefit the experience and diversity of the science class? Hodson, when he described his third level in his 1994 paper, stated it beautifully: “It culminates in a commitment to the belief that alternative voices can and should be heard in order that decisions in science and technology reflect wisdom and justice, rather than powerful social interests” (Hodson 1994:86). Perhaps the students whom Aikenhead wants to treat as tourists sitting in a motor coach would be the ones to help the class better identify the norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions of science. Perhaps the students could find broader issues more socially and politically stimulating than salad dressing. Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 382 “Heteroglossia with Science” 383 I think so. Aikenhead gives a powerful example of a student reflecting on the nature of heat: If I don’t know what it is, then I can just leave as it is, and I’ll never wonder. Like I’ll just say it’s that way ’cause it is that way. Same as a person is a way that person is ’cause of the ways that they’re made because; like you may have the eyes of your dad and the chin of your mom and it’s just how they are. So you just have to live with it. (Aikenhead 1996:24) What are the texts, experiences, and meanings in the heteroglossia that Melanie brings to this reflection on the nature of heat? What would the class learn about the nature of science if she was given the opportunity, indeed encouraged, to access multiple voices within the heteroglossia with science? Summary In this essay I have argued, using Bakhtin’s introductory quote, that we, in our socially and politically situated lives, interpret and create new situations using language. The language we use to interpret and to act comes from social and political contexts experienced in our past. I have presented this theory of language as universally applicable. As I have presented it, it applies to all language speakers, including scientists, students, writers, historians, and philosophers. In the case of students, the way they approach a new context depends on both the strength and the alignment of voices they interpret in that context with the heteroglossia that informs their own view. I have argued that educators encourage students whose own views are strongly informed by a heteroglossia with science congruent with school science to add new voices from that heteroglossia to their world views. I have concluded that students whose views are strongly informed by a heteroglossia with science that is not well aligned to school science should also be encouraged to elucidate and strengthen this world view from a heteroglossia with science that suits them. This is not to say that how one positions oneself with science will not change; I see an individual’s view as being ever in flux. I have made these arguments in the hope that encouraging all students in a science class to develop their heteroglossia with Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 383 384 Access and Equity in the University science by drawing on voices that are personally interesting and pertinent will enable them to more powerfully articulate their views about science to a wider audience. It is my hope that strengthening and enriching the diversity of voices in a science classroom will also strengthen and enrich the diversity of voices within the enterprise of science. References Aikenhead, G. 1996. “Science Education: Border Crossing in to the Subculture of Science.” Journal of Studies in Science Education 27:1–54. Allchin, D. 1995. “Points East and West: Acupuncture and Teaching the Cultural Contexts of Science.” In Third International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2, edited by F. Finely, D. Allchin, D. Rhees, and F. Fifield. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. ______. 1986. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, edited by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Beach, K. 1999. “Consequential Transitions: A Sociocultural Expedition Beyond Transfer in Education.” Review of Research in Education 24:101–139. Berkenkotter, C., and T.N. Huckin. 1993. “You Are What You Cite: Novelty and Intertextuality in a Biologist’s Experimental Article.” In Professional Communication: The Social Perspective, edited by N.R. Blyler and C. Thralls. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Cobern, W.W. 1998. “Science as a Social Constructivist View of Science Education.” In Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education: An International Dialogue, edited by W.W. Coburn, 7–24. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Costa, V.B. 1995. “When Science Is ‘Another World’: Relationships Between Worlds of Family, Friends, School, and Science.” Science Education 29(3):313–333. Driver, R., J. Leach, R. Millar, and P. Scott. 1996. Young People’s Images of Science. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Durant, J.R. 1990. “Copernicus and Conan Doyle: Or, Why Should We Care About the Public Understanding of Science?” Sci. Public. Affairs 5(1)1:7–22. Gilbert, G.N., and M. Mulkay. 1984. Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Good, R.G., J.H. Wandersee, and J. St. Julien. 1993. “Cautionary Notes on the Appeal of the New ‘ism’ (Constructivism) in Science Education.” In The Practice of Constructivism in Science Education, edited by K. Tobin, 71–90. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gould, J.G. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York/London: W. W. Norton and Company. Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 384 “Heteroglossia with Science” 385 Halliday, M.A.K. 1978. Language as a Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. ______. 1993. “Towards a Language-Based Theory of Learning.” Linguistics and Education 5:93–116. Hodson, D. 1994. “Seeking Directions for Change: The Personalization and Politicization of Science Education.” Curriculum Studies 2:71–98. ______. 1998. Teaching and Learning Science: Towards a Personalized Approach. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Kuhn T. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2 nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Longino, H. and E.M. Hammonds. 1990. “Conflicts and Tensions in the Feminist Study of Gender and Science.” In Conflicts in Feminism, edited by M. Hirsch and E. Fox Keller. New York: Routledge. Matthews, M. 1998. “In Defense of Modest Goals When Teaching About the Nature of Science.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 35(2):161–174. Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 385 Ch 21-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 386 Abstract African Canadian students move from grade school to high school with battered self-confidence and a weak foundation for high school mathematics, which lead to the students finishing high school with inadequate foundation to study mathematics at the university level. This problem will have to be solved if the under- representation of African Canadians in mathematics and the sciences is to be addressed. Introduction In this paper I will explore some of the probable causes that lead African Canadian students to finish high school with an inadequate foundation to study mathematics at the university level. I will then discuss strategies used by some parents and a program that is being used in one educational institution to get more students of African descent into mathematics and science studies at the university level. I will conclude by suggesting areas of research that may help increase understanding of the reasons for the difficulties that African Canadian students are experiencing in mathematics education. Hopefully, this will lead to a long-term solution to the problem. The paper is based on my experiences with African Canadian students in my role as a volunteer mathematics tutor in Toronto for over three years, and on in-depth discussions that I have with some mathematics and science educators of African descent, and 387 Chapter 22 Mathematics and African Canadians Francis Ahia Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 387 388 Access and Equity in the University with parents and community activists. I will first discuss my experiences with African Canadian students in three different grade groups: up to Grade 5, Grade 6 to Grade 9, and Grade 10 to Grade 12. I will follow this with my discussions with some parents, community activists, and mathematics and science professors of African descent about their experiences with students of African descent in the context of mathematics and science education. My Experiences I have met students in all three grade groups referred to with outstanding mathematical abilities. What I write reflects my experiences with most of the students in these groups, and not all the students in these groups. The African Canadian students in the early grades—that is, up to Grade 5—are very fascinated with mathematics. They have high motivation and a keen desire to learn the subject. They ask questions, give suggestions on how a problem is to be solved, and, most admirably, they are ever ready to defend and explain the method they use. Students in the early grades are more interested in knowing why their solution to a problem is not correct than in having someone solve it for them. This is because they always want to find their own solutions. At this age, the children generally have a high degree of confidence in their ability to do mathematics. If asked what they would like to become professionally, their responses include scientists, engineers, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and nurses. My experience with African Canadian students in the middle grades—that is Grade 6 to Grade 9—reveals that these students exhibit doubt about their mathematical ability and knowledge. They often seek assurance about any step they wish to take to solve a problem. Their response to any question about their solution to a problem is immediate cancellation of the solution, followed by “I am wrong.” When asked why they think they are wrong, their response is often “I do not know.” They respond in this manner regardless of whether their solution is right or wrong. It is difficult to engage in a discussion of a problem, or the solution to a problem, with students in this group because their most common answer to a question is “I do not know.” When I probe Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 388 Mathematics and African Canadians 389 further, the students indicate that they do not ask questions or answer questions in their class in school. Their major interest is to know how a problem is solved, but they have little interest in why a procedure is used. A gap in their knowledge of arithmetic is noticeable, especially in their working with negative numbers and their application of order of operations. A few students work to strengthen their foundation in arithmetic and then begin to appreciate the interconnection of the different areas of mathematics they have been studying. If I ask them what they would like to be professionally, their response is mostly “I do not know.” A few of them will choose social work, and fewer still choose law or a career in the mathematical sciences. My experience with African Canadian male students in the final grades of secondary school—that is, Grade 10 to Grade 12— is that this group of students generally have little or no desire or motivation to study mathematics. Most of them who came to our tutorial sessions wanted their homework done for them. (Here I am referring to a mathematics and science tutorial program that I run on Saturday mornings at TYP, University of Toronto, at the St. George campus.) When they realize we only offer help to students to do their own homework, they stop coming to our meetings. Their foundation in arithmetic is poor and I had to suggest to more than a few that they needed to learn arithmetic again. I recall the case of a Grade 11 student in an advanced mathematics class who had difficulty adding or subtracting two digit numbers. When asked what he would like to be professionally, his response was “I do not know” and then he thought about becoming a sports professional, perhaps in basketball and football. My experience with African Canadian female students in this grade group is too limited for a meaningful comment to be made on this group at this time. Report on Discussions with Parents, Community Activists, and Math and Science Professors of African Descent Parents with children in Grade 8 and upwards could not understand why their children were performing poorly in mathematics at the higher grades of school, whereas their performance had been very good in the lower grades. They Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 389 390 Access and Equity in the University expected their children’s knowledge and skills in mathematics to increase with the grade level, but not to decrease. Most of the African Canadian students are streamed into non-academic mathematics, with the result that they finish high school without an adequate foundation to study university mathematics. Parents with children below Grade 8 complained about the small amount of homework given to their children and, in some cases, their children were not allowed to take their mathematics textbooks home. This means parents cannot help their children with math at home and, more importantly, deprives the students of developing the habit of independently studying mathematics, which is crucial for success in the subject. Community activists in education also report that African Canadian students are disproportionately streamed into non- academic mathematics in high school. As a result, a large number of students of African descent are streamed out of the high-paying professions in the sciences and mathematical sciences. It should be noted that the notion that people of African descent lack the intellectual capacity to study mathematics and the sciences is very old. This was a major reason given for the continuous enslavement of people of African descent in the eighteenth century (Adas 1989:116). The mathematics and science professors observed that students of African descent have no problem grasping the essential aspects of concepts, theories, and methods. What they said surprised them was that these students lacked the foundation, especially in mathematics, to fully exploit their intuitive grasp of concepts and abstractions. These students, after filling in the gaps in their mathematical knowledge either by themselves or with help from their professors, successfully completed their university studies in mathematics or the sciences. Causes My experiences, and that of parents and community education activists, all show that African Canadian students finish high school with an inadequate foundation in mathematics for the study of university mathematics or the mathematical sciences. The streaming of a disproportionate number of African Canadian students into non-academic mathematics is the most important Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 390 Mathematics and African Canadians 391 cause of the students’ lack of readiness. I will therefore discuss the possible reasons that result in the streaming of a disproportionate number of African Canadian students into non- academic mathematics. I will first look at what we can learn from the literature on education in a multicultural and multiracial society, and will then discuss the heuristic reasons given by parents, community activists, and mathematics and science professors of African descent in light of the literature. Research shows that teacher expectations of students may be self-fulfilling and that teacher expectations of low academic achievement for disadvantaged students may be one major reason for the poor academic performance of disadvantaged students (Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968:19). In addition, some teachers who were prompted by research findings to reflect on their behaviour and actions in their classrooms were “surprised” to realize that they may be biased in their dealings with their students (Paley 1986; Woods 1986). That is, some teachers carry their biases about different groups into the classroom, and this is happening in a society where recycled myths packaged as scientific proof of the intellectual inferiority of Blacks is a best seller. I am referring to The Bell Curve by Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray. The teacher’s bias and acceptance of the intellectual inferiority of the African Canadian child translates into the teacher’s expectation of low academic achievement for the African Canadian child, especially in subjects like mathematics. This may be one of the reasons why African Canadian students lose confidence in their ability to study mathematics as they get older, because with age they understand their teachers’ behaviours and actions better, and, unfortunately, there are very few teachers of African descent to instruct them in school or to act as role models. This is detrimental to the students’ development, and especially to their development of mathematics ability, because mathematics is ultimately an exercise in asserting the product of one’s thinking and reasoning. Mathematics requires all the self-confidence one can muster. The methods used in teaching mathematics is also important to my discussion in this paper. Different cultures have different modes of educating their young. Shirley Brice-Heath observes in her book Ways with Words that Black babies grow up in an Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 391 392 Access and Equity in the University environment that allows them to “learn to talk”, while White babies grow up in an environment in which they are “taught how to talk” (Brice-Heath 1983:73, 113). The pedagogical implication of this observation cannot be overestimated. Children who “learn to talk” and children who are “taught to talk” may require different methods of teaching and different learning environments to promote their educational success. What works for one group may be detrimental to the other group. Unfortunately, the pedagogy is usually designed for the child who was “taught how to talk” and the children who “learn to talk” are expected to adapt. The failure of this approach is manifested in the disproportionately high number of African Canadian students who are failed by the education system. In another study, Yoshiko Nozaki found that the cause of the failure of some Japanese students in a U.S. school was due to the pedagogy of their U.S. teachers (Nozaki 2000:355). These two papers suggest that how mathematics is taught (i.e., pedagogy) may be a factor in the difficulties that African Canadian students experience with the study of mathematics. As far back as 1834, a British educator in India found that incorporating Indian scientific knowledge into the science curriculum in his school motivated his students to study science, including their own and Western science (Adas 1989:283). In the book Reconstructing ‘DROP-OUT’ (Dei et al. 1997:138), the Eurocentric nature of the curriculum is given as one of the contributing factors of Black students’ disengagement from school. The present mathematics curriculum in Ontario is essentially the history of mathematics, which acknowledges or emphasizes only the European contribution to mathematics. In effect, other cultures and peoples are written out of the mathematics curriculum. The fact that the low representation of African Canadian teachers and also of African Canadians in positions of authority in schools negatively affects African Canadian students is documented in Dei et al. (1997:81). The combination of a curriculum with which the African Canadian student cannot identify and the absence of role models in the classroom or in the school creates an environment that solicits failure from the students, for they are not being motivated to succeed. Parents argue heuristically that as their children get older, the more alienated they become from other racial and socio- Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 392 Mathematics and African Canadians 393 economic groups. There are two main reasons for this alienation. The first is the cultural, racial, and socio-economic divide between most teachers and most African Canadian students. Most teachers are European by culture and race, and are middle class by socio- economic classification, whereas African Canadian students are African by race, with a culture with strong roots in Africa and most are from working-class homes. The second reason is the incessant negative image of people of African descent as portrayed in the media and in public pronouncements by politicians and influential members of society, which alienates not only the students but almost the entire African Canadian community from the rest of Canadian society. Parents think this makes it difficult for their children to identify with their teachers, especially their White teachers, and this has attendant negative consequences, some of which are the unease and fear their children feel in either asking questions or answering them in class. So to the parents, one of the major causes of their children’s failure with mathematics is the near absence of African Canadian teachers, particularly in mathematics and, to some extent, the Eurocentric curriculum. It is clear that the literature supports the causes given by the parents. Community education activists continue to argue for a curriculum that is inclusive of the achievements and contributions of all cultures and races, including Africans, and also for the recruitment of teachers of African descent to help African Canadian students identify with their schools and education in general. They argue also that diversifying the teaching staff, coupled with an inclusive curriculum, will help raise the self-esteem of African Canadian students. The possibility that African Canadian students may now see themselves as future teachers and other professionals may motivate them to work harder to succeed in education and move away from the stereotypical low-paying jobs. Mathematics and science professors of African descent teaching in universities in the U.S., with whom I discussed mathematics education and student performance, commented that most of the students of African descent they teach have high aptitude for mathematics and science, but come from high schools with inadequate foundation in these subjects for university study. The only reason they can give for the poor foundation is that the students of African descent were not taught well, and were Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 393 394 Access and Equity in the University probably taught differently from the other racial groups. This assertion may have some merit and may be applicable to African Canadian students in Canadian schools. Among the cases that I have seen, I will share that of an African Canadian student whose work, although poorly done, was given a pass mark, without the teacher indicating which aspect of the work deserved the mark. When I asked the student whether he thought he deserved the mark, his answer was that the teacher assured him it was “okay.” There was also the case of the African Canadian student who was praised by his teacher for getting 65 per cent in a test for which the class average was 75 per cent and the median 72 per cent. This brings us back to the crucial impact of teacher expectations and bias on the educational success of students. Strategies There are strategies to help more students of African descent prepare better to study mathematics or the mathematical sciences at university. I will now discuss personal responses as well as the African Canadian community and institutional responses to the underachievement of African Canadian students in mathematics. In the case of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto, the personal/community response evolved into an institutional response. Professor Horace Campbell, Keren Brathwaite, and others formulated and tested the TYP idea in the African Canadian community in Toronto to make university education in all subjects, including mathematics and the mathematical sciences, more accessible to African Canadians and members of other groups rarely seen on university campuses. Resource constraints forced these pioneers in access to university education to prepare their students for university studies in mainly the social sciences, which continued even after TYP became a formal University of Toronto access program. However, Dr. Keith Allen, Professor Jack Wayne (a former director of TYP), Keren Brathwaite, Dr. Thomas Mathien, and others continued to ask the university to expand the program to include access to studies in mathematics and the sciences. The TYP, under the present director, Professor Rona Abramovitch, has started the process of such expansion by hiring me in 1999 to teach and organize the mathematics component. A science Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 394 Mathematics and African Canadians 395 professor was hired in 2000 to teach and organize the science component. The TYP also makes space available for me, with the help of volunteers, to use for the Saturday morning mathematics and science tutorial program for African Canadian and First Nations students, but it is open to all students. One intervention that has assisted some African Canadian students over many years is the free Saturday tutorial program in mathematics and English at Vaughan Collegiate, Toronto, run by the Canadian Alliance of Black Educators, which was started more than twenty years ago and tutors over 500 students of all races and cultures every Saturday. There are other free tutorial programs run by some individuals in the African Canadian community, and others run by some community groups like the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Ghanaian Association, etc. Some parents enrol their children in these programs, while others enrol their children in private after-school mathematics classes, or hire mathematics tutors to give one-on-one help to their children. One parent successfully dealt with his child’s situation by making the teacher essentially accountable to him. He bought a hard-cover notebook for his son to use only for homework, and asked the teacher to certify the quality of the work his son submitted and sign it. Through this means, he could keep track of the amount of homework given and the quality of the work done by his child. The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto also offers a tutoring and mentoring program to assist African Canadian, First Nations, working class, and other students under- represented in the university to improve their math and science education, and their chances of accessing university programs in these areas. This program recruits students mainly from inner city schools and economically deprived neighbourhoods. Dr. Miriam Rossi is credited with the introduction and development of this program. Central Connecticut State University, in the United States, has also formed a partnership with some schools in areas with predominantly students of African descent. A selected number of students from these schools are bused from their schools on Saturdays to the university campus for lessons and experiments in mathematics and the sciences. Students who stay with the program through the school year get the opportunity to spend Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 395 396 Access and Equity in the University four weeks at the university in the summer to study and perform experiments. Some students who have gone through the program are now registered in the science and mathematics program at Central Connecticut State University. I consider all of these strategies as short term since they do not deal with the fundamental causes of the problem. The school experiences of African Canadian students and other students from communities assigned by the dominant White culture to the margins of society indicate that the present educational structures do not serve a multicultural and multiracial society. The educational system must reflect the society it educates and serves. Teachers and education administrators are the most visible face of the education structure and must therefore be diversified to reflect the multiracial and multicultural society in which it operates. What we teach our children and how they are taught must also reflect the society and also the world in an increasingly global village. This means the knowledge and contribution to knowledge by all cultures and peoples must be acknowledged and taught. To achieve these goals, faculties of education that train teachers should assume leadership roles in bringing about this change. Admission requirements to faculties of education should be broadened to give equal opportunity to all segments of society. If necessary, measures must be taken to correct historical imbalances. Special attention must also be paid to the teaching of anti-racist education methodology in faculties of education. Community involvement in the decisions that affect education should become the norm. Conclusion The problem of African Canadian students’ underachievement in mathematics in the school system should be of concern to all educators, and in particular to science and mathematics educators. This is because talents from the African Canadian community, which could otherwise enrich mathematics and the sciences for the benefit of all, are being lost due to the environment in schools, which nurtures only some cultural and racial groups and fails to nurture African Canadian students. Universities in Canada need to play a proactive role in ensuring that, in the short term, as many African Canadian students as possible are helped to build a sound foundation through well-organized after-school programs Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 396 Mathematics and African Canadians 397 in mathematics and the sciences. In the long term, it should be a priority of researchers to identify the grade level at which African Canadian students start falling behind in mathematics, since they start well in the lower grades, but end up poorly in the higher grades. Researchers should also determine the right pedagogy and curriculum, which could motivate students from all cultures and races to study mathematics. That is, if a method of instruction or a curriculum works in an all-White school, it should not be assumed that it will work in a culturally and racially mixed school. Finally, from my observation, research needs to be done on the impact of peer expectations on students’ success in the education system. References Adas, Michael M. 1989. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Brice-Heath, S. 1983. Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dei, G., et al. 1997. Reconstructing “DROP-OUT”: A Critical Ethnography of the Dynamics of Black Students’ Disengagement from School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nozaki, Y. 2000. “Essentializing Dilemma and Multiculturalist Pedagogy: An Ethnographic Study of Japanese Children in a U.S. School.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 31(3):355–380. Paley, V.G. 1986. “On Listening to What the Children Say.” Harvard Educational Review 2(56)56:122. Rosenthal, R., and L.F. Jacobson. “Teacher Expectation for the Disadvantaged.” Scientific American 4(218):19–23. Woods, P. Peter. 1986. Inside Schools. London: Routledge Education Books. Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 397 Ch 22-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 398 THE PHYSICAL FEATURES I SEE IN THE MIRROR ARE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT OTHER people see of me. The identity of Ojibwe native was not relevant to me. How people perceived my physical features of Aboriginal identity did not match my perception of what I saw in myself. I wanted to be neutral. I wanted to be Raquel, pensive and tranquil. I was aware of the stereotypes dominating the cultural history of Ojibwe natives and other Native identities. I was unfamiliar with the truth of the cultural history of Aboriginal peoples, so I preferred not to acknowledge the description of Ojibwe. I did not understand the true background of the Ojibwe culture. The present occurrence of changes in my adult life focused on my previous belief about Aboriginal identity, but I am slowly unveiling opportunities for understanding that identity. A change came to my life in December 1996, when my child was born. Parental child care became my priority and I decided not to return to work. My decision postponed my future interests until my child was in full-time elementary school. Certain circumstances led me to rethink my original decision. I was presented with a brochure of a preschool program for Aboriginal children between the ages of two and a half to six. I considered the importance of early socialization for my child. I was not socially active and avoided frequent interaction with unfamiliar as well as familiar people. I preferred to remain anti- social. I decided not to raise additional children for several reasons. My child does not have aged relatives or siblings, so I became determined to do what I could to ensure early socialization for my A l u m n i V o i c e s 399 I Want to Be the Main Role Model for My Child Raquel Madahbee (TYP 2000–2001) Ch 22-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 399 400 Access and Equity in the University child. I never thought at the time that I could benefit from socialization as well. The concept of the Aboriginal Head Start Program attracted my attention. The concept of Aboriginal Head Start seemed to me to be self-explanatory. I recognized, however, that there was a need I could not explain within the program, and I felt compelled to volunteer. It was possibly my own need to reconnect to my Native culture that pushed me to volunteer in this program. I became actively involved and am still involved in contributing to Aboriginal Head Start. Many questions and considerations arose regarding my child and our future during our first year at Aboriginal Head Start. A review of my high school transcript made me dissatisfied with some of the credits I had accumulated for my diploma. I regarded my accomplishment of achieving a diploma with a visual arts major gratifying, but I felt dissatisfied with my marginal success in my compulsory credits. I felt I could benefit from more education. In February 2000, a friend from the Aboriginal Head Start Program recommended the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto as a program that would help me improve my education and my future. I submitted my application to TYP, and was fortunate to be accepted for the 2000–2001 school year. In TYP I chose as my elective SOC 101, Introduction to Sociology. I originally chose this university course because I thought it would satisfy the employment qualifications for Aboriginal Head Start. Later I became interested in sociology to help me better understand my personal “self” and also to apply sociological knowledge to understand the human “self.” As a TYP student, I used and continue to use the support and encouragement the program provides to strengthen my social skills and my motivation to succeed. TYP has a positive atmosphere, and the faculty and staff members contribute to maintaining this atmosphere. When I socialize with the faculty, staff, and students at TYP, I feel confident that I am capable of achieving personal success, regardless of my prior beliefs to the contrary. In my year in TYP, I made every effort to utilize the various facilities and exciting events at the University of Toronto. The university studies course in TYP introduced our class to great resources and their locations at the university. I also found First Nations House a wonderful place to socialize and to find out about resources and events. I tried for the Ch 22-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 400 I Want to Be the Main Role Model for My Child 401 position of public relations officer and although I was not elected, I still hope to contribute to the TYP newsletter. With the guidance of First Nations House, Aboriginal Head Start, and TYP, I will continue to strive for my personal best. My main motivation, however, for completing TYP successfully has been my child. I want to be the main role model for my child. Therefore, to achieve my goals, I will continue to do my best as a TYP alumna pursuing my B.A. degree at the University of Toronto. Ch 22-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 401 Ch 22-01.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 402 I ENTERED TYP IN THE 2000–2001 SCHOOL YEAR AFTER HAVING BEEN AWAY from school for thirty-six years. The last time I attended school was in 1964. In October 2000, after my first few weeks in TYP, I volunteered to be part of a student discussion panel at TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary celebrations at New College, University of Toronto. We were going to speak about our common experiences in TYP, and how together we travelled from problems to solutions on the accessibility brain train. On the panel were the brightest and the best, and the most prepared volunteer speakers. I felt a little out of place without a written paper to speak from, but I hoped that my ideas and words would flow spontaneously. I think I did okay on the panel. I described my life as that of a truck driver, and shared how I finally became disillusioned with that life and the never-ending stress and extended weeks on the road. I remember saying that for me every day on the university campus was like living in a dream, and that being in such a great class of students in TYP was the happiest thing that happened to me since Grade 4. I can’t remember all the details of my little talk, but what I will always remember are the presentations of my classmates. They all spoke of their appreciation for TYP and how it was helping them fulfil their dreams. Emotions were high as we each took our turn to share our thoughts around the big square folding tables in Wetmore Hall, New College. A l u m n i V o i c e s 403 What TYP Means to Me John David Herron (TYP 2000–2001) Ch 22-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 403 404 Access and Equity in the University As we spoke, the late afternoon sun shone through the windows, and time seemed to dilly-dally. Some of my fellow students told of their dreams and ideas. Others spoke of this fabled place of learning, the University of Toronto, and of the intellectual drama that was happening here. Some students praised the beauty of the university dressed in stone. And the room glowed like gold as the minutes slowed to our sharing of our common wonder at being students here. Some students cried as they remembered the personal struggles they had endured, but they were cheered by their hopes of achievements to come. All this beauty, this TYP Thirtieth Anniversary, our humble hopes, our love of learning, and our search for truth overwhelmed us. We were joined together in this race to realize our dreams. And the atmosphere at this anniversary seemed in a way like church, and this place seemed almost like heaven, a beautiful surprise, with eyes and faces we can’t forget in this place of grace. Some speak of “shining moments”; this was ours. And we were confident that the TYP faculty would continue to prepare us for our education journey ahead beyond this moment. TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary celebrations brought together past and present students, faculty, and staff in a two-day festival of the program’s achievements. I was happy to be a part of the celebration. My name is John David Herron, and I was an excited fifty-two-year- old applicant to TYP in the year 2000. I come from a large family of four girls and two boys. When my father died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1959, a year later my distraught mother gave the Children’s Aid juvenile court system custody of me. My sister, one year younger than I, was also shipped over to this system one year later. We spent our teenage years in Ontario training schools and were released only before our eighteenth birthday. On my release, they cut me loose with only the skills of the three R’s and my rage, resentment, and finally resignation. And that is why I was a fifty-two-year-old applicant to TYP. As a young boy of eleven, life basically turned into an unhappy and fearful place after the death of my father, who worked at the Telegram newspaper. My mother was pregnant with my youngest sister when he died. One day a few weeks after my father died, I was returning home from floor hockey at the Kiwanis Club in Cabbagetown with my friend Wesley when two cops in a squad car stopped us on the street and accused us of breaking windows Ch 22-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 404 What TYP Means to Me 405 somewhere. We swore our innocence, but the cop who smelled of alcohol threw us into the back seat of his car, drove us to our homes, and inferred that we were delinquents. A few months later, my family moved into an Ontario housing project at Bathurst and Lawrence, and our life went downhill from there. Most of my peers in the project were trapped in an unhappy and explosive atmosphere, earned poor grades at school, and some had abusive or depressed and angry parents. In junior high school, after my hospitalization with a serious case of meningitis, I started to develop a sense of frustration with school, but didn’t know then that my hearing and eyesight may have been affected by my illness. I was experiencing bursts of high energy, anger, self-pity, or sometimes a brilliant moment of grandeur. And I declined into a state of fear and loneliness. My mother was having a rough time on mother’s allowance, and was in a nervous state from taking care of my four sisters, little brother, and me. One day the police came and took me away from my mother because I had skipped school and was unmanageable, so I spent the next years of my life until I was eighteen in the provincial training school system. I was in three different training schools, plus the Children’s Aid Receiving Centre, plus the juvenile court jail at 311 Jarvis Street. It was at the juvenile court jail that I watched the Yankees win the World Series on TV, when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were the big stars. I can remember it being hot in 311 with no air conditioning, and all those kids twice my age playing cards all day long when they were not planning to beat up on someone. After supper, the guards would lock us in our cells to experience long and lonely nights. But to cut a long story short, I did more time in those places than some serious criminals because I didn’t always toe the line. In the training school, our life was on a military-like schedule, and we were marched everywhere, even to church. Some guards with personal problems of their own would direct their anger at us. Some of the guards were mean and would make us fight each other for their entertainment. If they felt we had a friendship with another kid, they would make us fight each other so that we would learn to hate each other. In 1963, they let me out of this facility to attend Riverdale High School, but I lasted only six months there before I quit. In Grade 10, my math level was at Grade 7. Ch 22-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 405 406 Access and Equity in the University Since I was a ward of the province and had quit school, they put me back in training school until I was eighteen. Today, things are different in the training schools, and there is better treatment of the kids and better surroundings than when I was incarcerated there. However, I still believe that it is a bad idea to lock up emotionally and socially challenged children with hard-core delinquents who have committed violent crimes. I feel I am one of the lost and forgotten casualties of a medieval and non-caring system of justice. This is my story, the story of my youth, which explains why I needed TYP and why I was happy to join other students in sharing our stories on a panel at TYP’s Thirtieth Anniversary celebrations at New College, University of Toronto, on Saturday, October 28, 2000. After a childhood and youth spent in detention in training school, I worked for years as a truck driver. I drove a truck for a living until I could no longer stand the frustration of being lied to, mistreated, and cheated by scurrilous dispatchers. After years of no sleep, no money, no life, and no hope, I decided to try out for university education, and I applied to TYP. I worked for a long time to complete the application form, and was lucky to have a couple of references. When I received the letter of acceptance to TYP in June or July, I sat and read the letter over and over. It felt better than my first three- speed bicycle! And that bicycle was the most incredible feeling of freedom and joy for me as a young boy. I must thank my poor mother for coming up with $15 from her mother’s allowance cheque to enable me to have that bicycle. During my year in TYP, I was surprised and inspired by the great students, faculty, and staff that I got to work with. For the first time in my life, I became associated with a group of well-behaved, well- balanced, and sincere people who seemed committed to modern ideals. Although I flunked math again in TYP, I passed my university course (a second-year course called Introduction to Equity Studies) with 91 per cent. Not bad; at least I tried. Ch 22-02.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 406 IN MARCH 2000 I WAS SITTING AT A RECEPTION DESK ON ONE OF MY MANY LOW- paying temp assignments, feeling dejected and unfulfilled. I smiled politely at the corporate men and women who passed my desk on their way to the kitchen to fill their cups with coffee and said “Good morning” as if I really meant it. It was morning, true enough, but it wasn’t all that good. Since moving to Toronto in 1985, my working life had been a long line of temp assignments, contract work, waitress jobs, and self- generated business ventures that I would abandon shortly after the planning phase. My external life was a direct reflection of the inner turmoil I had felt most of my life—that I wasn’t smart enough. With this belief system firmly in place, I would turn down jobs that offered more responsibility (and more money) because of my absolute conviction that I wasn’t bright enough to handle them. Thus, there I was at thirty-five years of age, feeling frustrated and restless and living my life ruled by fear. This trepidation also stopped me from going to university in my twenties. Low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy manifested into a belief that I wasn’t intelligent enough to go to university. I had always lamented my lack of formal education, but my fear of failure stopped me from applying. However, on that March morning in my temporary life, I saw a light. While thumbing through a copy of Now magazine, in between transferring calls, I saw an advertisement for the Transitional Year A l u m n i V o i c e s 407 TYP: There Is a Light Debbie Innes (TYP 2000–2001) Ch 22-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 407 408 Access and Equity in the University Programme (TYP) offered at the University of Toronto. I called the number and requested information to be sent to me, curious to see what it was all about. A few days later, the information arrived and the program seemed ideal: an intensive, well-established university access program that started in the Black community would help to improve composition, mathematics, and critical reasoning, and was taught by professors at the university. As a Black woman with a need for a supportive and encouraging academic bridging program, it was a perfect fit. As I debated with myself about whether or not to apply (and my inner voice kept screaming that I couldn’t do it), I began to see signs that would help to change my mind. The first sign, surprisingly enough, was my horoscope in the Toronto Star newspaper. It read: If you can take a course or do some in depth study to appreciate the knowledge that has gone before you on any subject, you will be quietly thrilled. You need new vistas. Fresh ideas. (Toronto Star 2000) The second indication came a few days later. It was an article in the Toronto Star about a past TYP student. She was a Black woman in her forties who was now in her second year at the U of T. I couldn’t ignore what I believed were clear signs that led me to what was ultimately my final decision. With lots of encouragement from my family and friends, and a small but growing belief that perhaps I could do it, I applied and was accepted. I chose TYP because I knew I needed a hands-on and supportive environment that would raise my skills to the university level. I knew I wanted a comprehensive year of study rather than a correspondence course that would be over in a few weeks. Further, I needed to be on the university campus so that I could interact with other U of T students, be taught by university professors, and feel a part of the greater vision. TYP offered it all. I am now a graduate of TYP and in my first year of study. However, TYP’s support and commitment to me and other past students are still ongoing. For example, the TYP’s director and administrative team communicate with the other colleges on campus, so they understand the unique lives of TYP students. This helps to ease our transition from TYP into the first year. Further, TYP’s faculty and staff are always willing to assist past students academically or Ch 22-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 408 TYP: There Is a Light 409 with our personal concerns and stresses. Moreover, academic advisers are assigned to us throughout our academic careers. As well, TYP offers ongoing career information sessions for past and present students so we can be well informed when setting our long-term career goals upon graduation. These examples are testament to TYP’s commitment to its students even after they leave the proverbial nest. Clearly, TYP is more than a university access program. For some, it is a safe haven where skills can be honed and ideas can be shared without the fear of being ridiculed, judged, or chastised. For me, TYP has given me the courage to try, the opportunity to learn, and the support to carry me through my academic career. We react to life’s tragedies and triumphs in different ways. TYP was the light that led me out of the mire of indecision and inadequacy that stopped me from achieving my goals. I now realize that my voice is significant. Poet Walt Whitman wrote “that the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” With the life lessons I have learned, coupled with the opportunity that the Transitional Year Programme has given me, I am certain my verse will be indelible. Editor’s Note: Debbie Innes won a National Scholarship to the University of Toronto on successful completion of her year in TYP. Ch 22-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 409 Ch 22-03.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 410 Keren Brathwaite (editor) Keren Brathwaite came to Canada from Antigua as a graduate student in 1967. She is a founding faculty member of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto where she teaches literature and writing, and is Associate Director. An advocate of anti-racist and inclusive education, she served on the Committee on the Education of Black Students in Toronto Schools 1988, and on the Secondary Education Advisory Committee from 1996. She has helped to define a central role for parents in Ontario education, and is co-founder of the Organization of Parents of Black Children. A graduate of the University of the West Indies and of OISE/UT, she has received several awards in education, including Award for Leadership from the Toronto Board of Education 1996, the Distinguished Educator Award from OISE/UT 1998, the Jus Human Rights Prize from the University of Toronto 1999. Her research interests include parent involvement in education, community education and development, and access to university. She is co-editor of Educating African Canadians (Lorimer 1996). Jack Wayne (preface) Jack Wayne received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and was a member of the Department of Sociology until his retirement in 1998. From 1987 to 1997 Dr. Wayne was Director of the Transitional Year Programme. He is now President of Canadian Scholars’ Press/ Women’s Press/Cariad Services to Publishers International. 411 Notes on Contributors Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 411 412 Access and Equity in the University Rona Abramovitch Rona Abramovitch holds the following degrees: B.A. (Honours sociology) from McGill University in 1970; M.A. (anthropology) from the University of Minnesota in 1972; Ph.D. (developmental psychology) also from the University of Minnesota in 1976. She started teaching developmental psychology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga in 1974. Her areas of research included peer interaction, sibling relations, and children’s capacity to consent to research participation. She served as the acting Status of Women officer for the University of Toronto, and as the full-time officer and as half-time officer from January 1993 to June 1999. She has been the provost’s adviser on proactive faculty recruitment (quarter time) from July 1999 to June 2002. Most importantly, she has been the director of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto since July 1997. Francis Ahia Francis Ahia holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Toronto, and is an associate professor in the Transitional Year Programme with cross-appointment to OISE, University of Toronto, in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning. The culture of education is his research interest. Since joining the TYP’s faculty in 1999, he has been offering, at the TYP building, a Saturday morning program of support in math education for public school students. Patricia Albanese Patricia Albanese has been a Steps to University instructor at Monarch Park Collegiate, Toronto, since September 1998. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is also currently teaching sociology at Ryerson Polytechnic University and University of Toronto at Mississauga. Andrew M.A. Allen Andrew M.A. Allen teaches in the Faculty of Education at York University. He is also the co-ordinator of the Access Initiative in the faculty. He is completing his doctorate at the Ontario Institute for Education of the University of Toronto. His research interests include anti-racism education and educational equity, multicultural children’s literature, and critical inclusionary teacher education. Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 412 Notes on Contributors 413 Keith A. Allen Keith Allen has spent his adult life professionally involved in education as a student, teacher, and principal. He specializes in education and employment equity. His academic achievements include a Teacher’s Diploma, B.A., M.Ed., and Ed.D. degrees. Keith has taught in elementary and secondary schools in Jamaica and in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. He has been a principal of both elementary and secondary schools in Jamaica. He migrated to Canada in the 1970s and joined the faculty of the Transitional Year Programme, University of Toronto, in 1979 where he has served as associate director, acting director, and registrar. He retired from the U of T in June 1999. Eileen Antone Eileen Antone, Ph.D., OISE/University of Toronto, is an assistant professor in the Transitional Year Programme, University of Toronto, where the primary focus of her work is with Aboriginal students achieving university studies. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Adult Education, Community Development, and Counseling Psychology at OISE/University of Toronto. Dr. Antone has many years of experience with Aboriginal communities and organizations, both as a committee member and a concerned individual advocating for Aboriginal perspectives. Dr. Antone is a member of the Oneida of the Thames First Nation. Horace Campbell Horace Campbell is an educator and teacher who is a professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University, New York. He has published widely, and his most important book, Rasta and Resistance, is in its fifth edition. His forthcoming book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation, will be published by Davis Phillip, Cape Town, South Africa. Horace Campbell is co-founder of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto where a Community Service Award for TYP alumni has been endowed in his name. Theresa Calovini Theresa Calovini is a Ph.D. graduate student in the OISE/UT’s Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning with a specialization in science education. Her interest and involvement in Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 413 414 Access and Equity in the University equity and access programs in science stem from her experiences as a science teacher in Zimbabwe and Guinea-Bissau and from her own physics Master’s program. Her dissertation research is on social aspects of scientific learning through undergraduate students’ involvement within a community of scientific practice. Frederick Ivor Case Frederic Case is a professor of French studies at the University of Toronto where he has taught since 1968. He is a former principal of New College and former chair of the Department of French at the University of Toronto. For many years, he has been associated formally and informally with the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto and was chair of its Policy Committee in the mid-1970s. He has taught in several countries in Africa and Europe, and has carried out evaluations of educational systems and specifically of teacher education in Guyana and in Tajikistan. Frank Cunningham Frank Cunningham is principal of Innis College and a professor of philosophy and political science at the University of Toronto. His area of teaching and research is social and political philosophy, with a focus on democratic theory. He was a member of the Policy Committee of the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto in the mid-1970s. Wanja Gitari Wanja Gitari, Ph.D., is cross-appointed between the Transitional Year Programme at the University of Toronto and the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at OISE/UT. Dr. Gitari received her doctorate from OISE/UT in 2000. She has a Master’s degree in science curriculum from the same institute, and a Bachelor’s degree in the biological sciences from Kenyatta University, Kenya. She is the recipient of a CIDA scholarship and an IDRC Young Canadian Researchers Award. At TYP, she tutors students in environmental science, and teaches a general science course, reasoning in the sciences. At OISE/UT, she offers a graduate course called “Ways of Knowing in Science and Technology: Cross-cultural Issues in Science and Technology Education,” which springs from her research work and interests in indigenous science. Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 414 Notes on Contributors 415 Horace Henriques Horace Henriques holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Toronto, and is a member of TYP’s faculty, and formerly the Steps to University Program where he played an important role in establishing the program and attracting media interest to it. In TYP, he is also responsible for the sociology program and has taught composition as well. Horace is frequently invited to academic conferences and community forums where he presents papers on various aspects of Caribbean culture, history, and ideas. His current work reflects his interest on how identity is created, strengthened, and weakened. Carl E. James Carl James is an associate professor and teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs in the Faculty of Education, and the graduate programs in social work and sociology at York University. His research and publications explore equity and social justice, youth and sports, anti-racism, multiculturalism, and immigration. He has been a visiting lecturer in the Teacher Training Department at Uppsala University, Sweden. James holds a Ph.D. in sociology and, in addition to his many refereed journal articles, he is the author and co-author of several books, including Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture (1995, 1999); co-author of Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of 73 (2000); editor of Experiencing Difference (2000), and co-editor of Educating African Canadians (1996). Thomas Mathien Thomas Mathien obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Toronto and has been a faculty member at the Transitional Year Programme since 1978. In TYP he teaches two courses: critical reasoning, and human nature. He has also taught English composition in some years. He is a long-serving member of TYP’s Admissions Committee, which he chaired for a number of years. He co-ordinates the Steps to University Program with which he has been involved since its organization in 1991. Elder Lillian McGregor Elder Lillian McGregor is elder-in-residence at First Nations House at the University of Toronto. She is originally from Birch Island, Whitefish River First Nation in northern Ontario. Her spiritual name is Shkebuk, and she is of the Crane clan. She retired from the nursing Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 415 416 Access and Equity in the University profession in 1989, and has served on several boards, including the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, Native Child and Family Services, and Anduyhan Inc. She was honoured by the Native community in Toronto with the Eagle Feather in 1995, and has also received the Outstanding Educator Award from the University of Toronto. She was the elder for the Aboriginal Presentation at the Toronto Olympic 2008 Bid in Moscow in July 2001. She received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Toronto in June 2002. Watson Morris Watson Morris is currently an assistant curriculum leader at Parkdale Collegiate Institute. He has taught in TYP’s Steps to University Program for three years and is active in ensuring that the program meets the needs of the Parkdale community. A graduate of a joint Master’s program between Wilfrid Laurier University’s Religion and Culture program and Phillipps-Universität Marburg, Watson focuses on programming that reaches beyond the classroom and focuses on the global learning potential through crosscurricular programming. Recently, Watson co-ordinated, with a group of colleagues and students of Parkdale Collegiate Institute, an open house on Thursday, March 21, 2001, called “Celebrating Ourselves: Citizenship, Multiculturalism, and Anti-Racism.” Selina L.P. Mushi Selina Mushi is an assistant professor of teacher education at Northeastern Illinois University. She obtained her Ph.D. Education at the University of Toronto, and her B.Ed and M.A. (Ed.) degrees at the University of Dar es Salaam. She has taught at all levels of schooling, from primary school to graduate programs. Her teaching and research experiences span three countries—Tanzania, Canada, and the United States. Married with two grown sons and a daughter, Dr. Mushi draws on her experiences of being a wife, mother, teacher, and researcher for her teaching. She believes that effective teaching and learning begin with understanding the learners’ perspectives, given their circumstances, experiences, potentials, and setbacks. As she often tells her teacher education students, “rather than making assumptions about learners, an effective teacher meets the learners where they are.” Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 416 Notes on Contributors 417 Andrew Okolie Andrew Okolie teaches anti-racism education in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He is an associate member of the School of Graduate Studies and an instructor in the Steps to University Program of the University of Toronto. A community activist and adult educator, he also has extensive teaching experience in the access programs of community colleges in the Toronto area. His research interests include sociology of race and ethnicity, international development, anti-racism studies, social theory, and indigenous knowledge system. Althea Prince Althea Prince is a sociologist and writer. She is the author of a short- story fiction collection and two books for young people. Her latest book is a novel titled Loving This Man (Insomniac Press 2002). She has a Ph.D. in sociology and has taught at York University and at the University of Toronto (the Transitional Year Programme, the Steps to University Program, and the Caribbean Studies Program). Carolyn Stallberg-White Carolyn Stallberg-White is a former TYP student who is presently completing a Ph.D. at OISE/University of Toronto in the Department of Psychology. She was a researcher in the New Approaches to Life- long Learning Project, which has been investigating informal learning in TYP at the University of Toronto. Olufemi Taiwo Olufemi Taiwo is an associate professor of philosophy and African and African American studies at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington. In 2000–2001, he was a Ford Foundation visiting postdoctoral research and teaching fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virgina. He was a visiting distinguished minority scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, and also served as visiting professor at the Institut fuer Afrakstudien, Universität Bayreuth, Germany. His book, Legal Naturalism: A Marxist Theory of Law, was published in 1996 by Cornell University Press, and Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 417 he is completing a collection of essays called Colonialism and Modernity. His research interests include philosophy of law, political philosophy, African philosophy, women and politics, and philosophy of history. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Roslyn Thomas-Long Roslyn Thomas-Long is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, OISE/University of Toronto. Her areas of interest include social justice, youth employment and young mothers’ issues, integrative equity, feminist theory/ institutional ethnography, and mentoring for minority graduate students. Her M.A. thesis focuses on equity in higher education related to minority graduate students. She was a Teaching Assistant in Literature courses in TYP from 2001–2002. Ch 23-00.p65 1/31/2003, 3:10 PM 418 Adas, M. 1989. 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