These Are The People You Elected To Educate Your Kids

I wait with baited breath to see the diversity curriculum the school board will come up with and I will bet little of it will have to do with the life skills to make a living.

Baffling survey in a class of its own
Toronto school board census confounds parents and pupils, says Anna Morgan

Nov. 26, 2006. 01:00 AM
ANNA MORGAN

Earlier this month, a census was distributed by the Toronto District School Board to students in Grades 9 through 12. Apparently, some personal information was needed to plan for Toronto's changing classroom population.

Parents were supposedly warned. The Internet message from the director of education innocuously stated that "some questions are about the student, such as age, language and country of birth." But when I started to hear about this "weird survey kids got at school," this parent started to pay closer attention.

After the usual identifiers — name, homeroom, birth date — the census delves into questions of race where, in our multicultural world, the number of pigeon holes used to box people in has grown. Students are asked "Which of the following best describes your racial identity: (Pick one only)." Choices are: Aboriginal, Asian (East, South or South East), black (Africa, Canada or Caribbean), Latin American, Indian-Caribbean, Middle Eastern (e.g. Egypt, Iran, Israel, Palestine), mixed background, white (Canada), white (Europe). There is also a box for Other(s), in case the pre-labelled categories didn't marginalize you quite enough.

The next question is, "What is your ethnic or cultural background." Out of the 34 options, religious affiliation is nowhere to be found. Too sensitive a question, I guess.

Identity politics seems to have written religious groups out of existence. I thought about this as I drove past the Sephardic Kehillah Centre in north Toronto, a synagogue founded by Spanish, French and Arabic-speaking Jews from North Africa. Which box should their many hundreds of children tick? Somehow, the classification of "Algerian" or "Libyan" conveys more misinformation than information for a group whose identity has always revolved around religion.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more out of place the survey looks. Are Muslims and Orthodox Christians from Bosnia going to be lumped together as if their heritage is the same? As far as the TDSB is concerned, is the experience of Falun Gong families really the same as all other Chinese students? Of course, we want people to get along here, but hiding their differences doesn't make for a meaningful survey. If we're afraid of the relevant questions, why bother asking at all?

It gets even better.

Page two begins with a question about disabilities. Immediately after this, almost as if a sub-category of the above, appears what for children might be the most personal question of all: "How do you identify your sexual orientation?" The options present a bewildering menu for even the most broad- minded of families: "Heterosexual (straight), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Two-spirited, Questioning, and Not Sure."

It's probably a failing in my education, but the distinctions that no doubt exist between gay and queer, bisexual and two-spirited, transgender and transsexual, were beyond me.

I hate to admit that my children may not be up to the Mensa levels expected of them by the TDSB, but they didn't have a clue either. When asked at the dinner table the difference between Questioning and Not Sure, I realized I should have paid better attention in that "Dancing-on-the-Head-of-a-Pin" course I took in graduate school.

The message to parents notes that the census is voluntary.

However, forms handed out by teachers are usually completed; kids who refuse may be seen as having something to hide. It also assures confidentiality: "There will be no student names on the survey when they are returned."

But my children's names were on the survey when it was handed to them by their teachers, as were the names of all the other students. No one was exempt; it was an equal opportunity "outing" of everything you would not want your teachers to know.

To one of my children's teacher's credit, the survey became an impromptu lesson. The class happened to be reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the TDSB fit nicely into the omnipresent character of Big Brother.

With all the talk about bringing great books alive in today's classroom, I guess this was too much for even a dutiful employee of the school board to resist.

Anna Morgan is a Toronto writer whose column appears every four weeks.