The Peel District School Board Student Survey

An annual exercise in identity affirmation

Image from the CBC

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; commentator)

Every year, PDSB students are asked to complete a survey. The survey rationale is as follows:

The Student Census is a confidential survey that collects identity and experience-based information from students across Peel District School Board. The goal is to better understand and support the diverse needs of our student population. The data we gather will help us identify barriers, improve programs, and advance equity and inclusion in our schools.

There are no less than four big red flags in this statement:

Identity-based information

This has to do with such things as the student’s race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation. The PDSB has been obsessed with identities for at least 5 years now, claiming that a student’s “intersectional identity” presents a unique learning style which must be understood by his or her teachers in order for the student to learn.

This runs counter to the vast majority of teachers’ experience, which has taught us that there is no relationship between a student’s identity and his or her preferred learning style. A pedagogical approach which offers a variety of learning styles will meet the needs of all students (assuming they have the needed prerequisite skills and knowledge and the level of study is appropriate for the student).

Additionally, the Board has never provided any convincing evidence that intimate knowledge of student identities promotes learning. Some of my best students are of the opposite sex to me and they are from a culture which I know very little about. What holding the view that such knowledge is critical clearly does do, though, is impress upon the students the unproven notion that race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation are important aspects about them that determine how they interact with others. Kids are conditioned to believe that other people need to know these things about them in order to interact with them in a fair and just way. So challenges students are facing are not to be met by them stepping up and meeting the demands of others, but rather they may behave however they want and expect others to accept and even affirm this behaviour since it is the result of their identity. This has been a formula for disaster.

Barriers to learning

The PDSB likes to talk about barriers to learning but makes the circular argument that teacher attitudes and biases are the main culprits in this area. Their “evidence” for that is disparate outcomes (i.e. some identity groups lag behind others in academic performance). In other words, they assume the only reason a certain identity group could be underperforming is that their identity-based needs are not being met, that is to say their poor performance is, in and of itself, proof of teacher biases and bigotry. You can’t argue with someone who presents this kind of non-falsifiable belief.

Equity

This maligned term, which once meant leveling the playing field by, for example, providing glasses for kids with poor eyesight or hearing aids for kids who are hard of hearing (i.e. providing support for students who are perfectly capable of learning if these things were provided) has come to mean something completely different. It now operates on the premise that disparate learning outcomes are the result of racism, bigotry, or pedagogical failures.

This is an educational manifestation of what Thomas Sowell calls the “unconstrained vision” in his landmark 1986 book A Conflict of Visions, a vision in which it is assumed that human nature is malleable and perfectible. Sowell points out that cultural groups place a premium on different values and attitudes which impact group-based outcomes in a variety of ways. This is something the Critical Theory-focused PDSB simply cannot countenance.

Inclusion

Inclusion once meant letting anyone in who met the admissions criteria. This is a fundamental principle of Western democracy, but has been severely eroded recently. Some blame the authors of Canada’s constitution, like Bob Rae and Jean Chretien, who added clauses on affirmative action and inherent Indigenous rights to the document (while admitting they were not sure what impact this would have- I guess we found out, huh boys?). Others blame the courts. Made up of judges who were appointed for their left-leaning principles and pedigree, their luxury beliefs have resulted in interpretations that have taken the most “progressive” possible view of these odious Articles.

Either way, in an Orwellian twist, Inclusion now means excluding people who are deemed to be privileged based on their identity (heterosexual, Christian white males who identify as men being considered the most privileged).

Survey Questions and Rationale

Here are some examples of survey questions given to kids from grade 4 and up, along with some of the Board’s reasons given for asking the questions, and my comments:

Q: Do you identify as Indigenous (original people) of Turtle Island (North America)

R: This census question helps identify systemic barriers and the unique experiences of Indigenous students, focusing on broader patterns and systemic gaps

C: How can merely asking someone to self-identify as Indigenous identify systemic barriers? It can’t. The Board will look at the overall academic achievement and discipline rates of the group of kids who so self-identify, and then go on to make assumptions about links between those outcomes and teacher attitudes and pedagogical practices. They will not try to prove those connections. They will simply present them as factual. And the use of the activist-created term “Turtle Island” as preferred to the correct and accurate North America reinforces Indigenous exceptionalism and legitimizes historical revisionism.

Q: What is your cultural background/identity?

R: …to identify and monitor systemic racism and racial disparities in outcomes that people may experience based on their ethnicity…

C: Again, the group disparities in outcomes are simply assumed to be the result of systemic racism. Of course, this depends on the group you’re talking about: Boys have been underachieving for years, but the Board will not talk about anti-boy sexism. And Asians have been out performing whites for a long time, but no one is suggesting anti-white racism is a problem.

Q: Which of the following best describe your racial background? (options include Black, East Asian, First Nation/Metis/Inuit etc., Latin American, Middle Eastern/North African/Central Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and White. Students can also write in anything else they want).

R: …allows for the identification and monitoring of systemic racism. Additionally it will facilitate reporting on the measures and indicators in the Black Student Success Strategy.

C: I think you’re probably starting to see a pattern here as once again this data will be presumed to prove systemic racism where any identity-based group outcomes show that a “victim” group (Blacks and Indigenous mostly) is lagging in achievement.

I could go on, but you get the idea. You are probably thinking we need a new school board who will come in and purge the system of all this activist-inspired, divisive, and counterproductive nonsense, replacing it with a pro-human approach which recognizes every student as a distinct human being who should be helped and supported according to his or her individual needs and circumstances, but I am sorry to tell you, that simply cannot happen under current Ontario law.

You see, the Board is actually required to collect this kind of information under the Anti Racism Act of 2017 which demands that School Boards “identify and monitor racial disparities in order to eliminate systemic racism and advance racial equity”. In other words, bigotry according to race-based identities is presumed, under Ontario law, to be the main cause of the poorer academic achievement of certain racial groups in Ontario schools.

You can bet your life savings that most of the MPPs that make up the current government of Ontario don’t believe that. Doug Ford certainly doesn’t. They did not cook up this legislation, which came from the previous Liberal government. At the time, Critical Theory and “antiracism” were all the rage with best sellers like “White Fragility” and “How to be an Antiracist” being snapped up and accepted as gospel by the majority of people who spent their time thinking about the subject of social justice.

While the ideas being promoted by these and similar activists have come under intense scrutiny in the years since, and have been rejected by contemporary thinkers such as Thomas Sowell, Glenn Lowrey, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, and many others, not to mention most Americans (see the 2024 election results), purging Ontario of them will be not easy task. The reasons for that are strictly political:

In order for the ruling political regime to act to clean this up, the political will has to exist. In other words, it has to be a win, politically, for Ford to change the law, and it just isn’t. He would in fact face intense backlash from academics and activists who have a massive stake in the perpetuation of this misguided and toxic ideology. And the law of the land is on their side: Our Canadian Constitution and human rights codes explicitly allow for discrimination based on membership in a “historically marginalized” group. So, the political inertia to change the culture is truly massive. While activists would be incensed and scream bloody murder, Ford, or any other politician would not stand to gain much, if anything, politically from taking them on. Most people are far more concerned with paying the rent and getting food on the table to be worried about Blacks and Indigenous people getting preferential treatment and handouts, at least for now.

So here we are. The Social Justice movement has entrenched Critical Theory, identity politics, “antiracism”, or whatever you want to call it, into our institutions, and it seems we’re stuck with that for the foreseeable future.

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Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read Schools Remain Focused on “Equity Plans”

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