The Peel District School Board Claims to Hire Based on Merit
The Peel District School Board Claims to Hire Based on Merit
But re-defines “merit” to align with affirmative action principles
By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; commentator)
The Peel Board is hiring; hopefully not too many white people.
First some background and context. The Peel District School Board (PDSB) has long lamented the lower average academic achievement of black students, especially boys (it has also become politically necessary for them to point to low achievement for Indigenous kids although they make up less than 1% of the student body).
So it was that in 2017 a concerted effort was made to improve outcomes for black boys. Of course, there were then, and still are, examples of very successful black boys in the system, and many kids, girls and boys alike, who are not black, were struggling then and still are now. It should be obvious to anyone that struggling at school is not entirely (at all?) a race-based thing. But rather than explore common denominators for school success the board did what our institutions are all doing these days which was to jump on the race-essentialist bandwagon.
Thus the “We Rise Together” initiative was born. In its first iteration, it consisted of 5 “pillars” as you can see in the graphic below. Teachers were skeptical that it would work, but willing to give it a try. They had some trepidation about the second pillar, though, which seemed to blame education workers for a good portion of the achievement gap between black boys (as a group) and the average achievement of other students. Were we really racist, and didn’t even know it? That is a scary thought and not something a person would feel comfortable confronting. But, in the interest of the students, we thought, confront it we must.
So began the descent into the ideological capture of the PDSB. Professional learning sessions inspired by the work of “anti racist scholars” like Robin DeAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi came fast and furious (see the graphic near the end of this essay for an example). Before long it became clear that, in the board’s view, education workers were really the main problem and anti-black racism were the main, if not the only reason black boys were underperforming (as a group) at school.
This was the foregone conclusion of the Review of the Peel District School Board which came out in February 2020. It was the classic case of taking an unverified assumption and then finding evidence to support it. The review concluded that the Board was systemically racist toward black youth and the relatively poor performance of black boys could be attributed mostly to that.
Fast forward to today when the PDSB is doing a lot of hiring of new staff. Teachers are leaving the board, even the entire profession in droves, the reason for which will be the subject of a later essay.
The PDSB, convinced that the solution to the low black achievement problem is replacing racist (white) teachers with (ideally racialized) true believers in “anti racism” (which is just a beefed up version of affirmative action), has engaged in an earnest campaign to do just that. Enter We Rise Together 2.0.
Any hint that anything other than the education system and it’s workers could possibly have anything to do with low black achievement has be expunged from this new version, and that is being felt on the ground. A friend of mine who is a vice principal told me that she had been placed on a new teacher hiring committee and was interviewing candidates for teaching positions. This was a kind of “pool hire” whereby successful candidates would be placed on a list of supply teachers and would be able to apply for contract jobs from there (this process can take many years).
She basically told me the board had come up with a rubric and that if you are white there is no way you are going to get hired unless you taught on an Indigenous reservation or something of that nature (Isn’t it odd that after all these years of “colonial oppression” Indigenous bands are still actively recruiting white teachers? But I digress).
A short time ago, the PDSB posted two documents: A proposed hiring practices document and a hiring practices operating procedures document. They then posted a survey to be completed by employees and community members. All of these things have been taken down, probably as a result of the tsunami of negative feedback they were receiving.
You can read the documents yourself (below), but the gist of it is this: They want to hire people who are true believers in “anti-racism” (the unproven strategy of intensive affirmative action), and preferably not white people. If you are reading this article on this substack you are probably familiar with the ideology, but a more thorough explanation can be found in this excellent opinion piece by black American academic John McWhorter.
Basically, candidates must demonstrate the desire to teach kids that, if they’re black or a member of any other “marginalized identity group”, their success in life will depend on them being extended preferential treatment in the form of handouts, shortcuts, and generally lower expectations for their levels of knowledge and skill and behavior, by the white people who hold power over and oppress them. White kids are scolded for their “white privilege” and admonished not to object when they are passed over for a less deserving black person, or if opportunities are created for which whites are ineligible. This is all clearly unfair, so a good early start on indoctrination is essential.
Of course, the PDSB knows that this view is not shared by most Canadians. Indeed if you Google “anti-racism” you will get definitions such as this, which seems hard to argue with. The very idea of hiring based on race or ideology rather than merit rubs most of us the wrong way. So to make it more palatable, the board has tried to present their hiring practices as merit-based. It’s just that, according to the Board, your race and ideology are attributes that make you meritorious!
In the hiring practices document, definitions section, it defines merit as “being worthy and deserving of consideration”. It goes on to say
…the way in which this traditional concept of merit is interpreted and applied in the hiring process must be through an equity-based anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens. Merit will consist of more than formal qualifications … but will also give weight to the skills, work, traditions, experiences, and perspectives derived from the lives of the applicants.
What this means, in practice, is that the Board gives itself free reign to discriminate against able-bodied heterosexual white people (especially males) because they lack the “lived experiences” needed to be considered meritorious.
But, if you ask young kids why they like some teachers more than others they will tell you the ones they like are “nice”, “kind”, “helpful”, or “smart”. They don’t care what race the teacher is unless some race-essentialist adult has told them they should (which is happening earlier and earlier). The system is actually teaching kids to be racist.
Ask the same question of high-performing teens and they will tell you they want a teacher who is well organized and “knows his shit”. That means someone who is very well versed in the subject matter and can clearly and effectively convey that knowledge and any related skills. They really couldn’t care less about race.
The board’s hiring policy is a transparent attempt to make the racial distribution of teachers and other education workers align with the racial distribution of students. This necessarily means hiring less qualified teachers, there is no way around it. They will need a lot of non-white teachers- right now, and there just aren’t that many of them out there. You’re limiting your hiring pool drastically based on the unproven assumption that the race of a teacher is more important than what he or she knows or his or her pedagogical skills.
The fact is the racial alignment that the board is trying to create would happen all on its own anyway, but it will take time. A teacher’s career is usually about 30 years but the demographics of Peel Region have been changing rapidly. White people now constitute the minority here, so it is only natural that down the line, they will also make up the minority of teachers. But the board just can’t wait for that, because they are convinced these racist white teachers are holding black boys back.
I will be very interested to see what the PDSB has to say if and when they achieve their objective of a racial alignment of the teaching staff and students and black achievement continues to lag as it almost certainly will. Decades of affirmative action in the United States hasn’t put a dent in it. One thing I can guarantee they won’t say is that they were wrong.
Check out this “anti-racist” graphic. This is the kind of thing teachers are bombarded with non-stop. Questioning it will get you in a lot of trouble:
Most teachers are definitely in the “fear zone”, and with good reason! Asking a “hard question” like “why won’t anti-racists like Ibram X. Kendi have an ongoing dialogue with people who don’t share their views, like Coleman Hughes or Glenn Loury?” will definitely land you in hot water. That is the irony when it comes to “anti-racist” gurus. They themselves are guilty of the very behaviors and attitudes of which they accuse others.
The PDSB can play their semantic games all they like, but their intent is plain to see for anyone who takes a serious look. And they are not alone. Virtually all our Canadian institutions have been captured and are applying the same principles.
We are living through a seismic shift away from traditional liberalism based on individual rights and freedoms, equality, fairness, and compassionate opposition to racism based on our common humanity, into a Brave New World of identity-based power dynamics. This will not end well.
___
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Don't Like Black History Month?
BREAKING NEWS: James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers
Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!
There are now two ways to support Woke Watch Canada through donations:
1) By subscribing to the paid version of the Woke Watch Canada Newsletter for - $7 Cdn/month or $50 Cdn/year
2) By making a contribution to the Investigating Wokeism In Canada Initiative, which raises the funds necessary to maintain and expand Woke Watch Canada’s research and investigation into Dysfunctional Canadian School Boards, Education, Indigenous Issues, Free Speech, and other areas of Illiberal Subversion and the Canadian Culture Wars.
Pure race poison.
Those Toronto school boards are ndp-captured and should be placed under trusteeship.
How are parents tolerating this? Show some courage for your children!
Excellent analysis by Igor.