Province Set To Collect Race Data

The Ontario education ministry has put out a research contract for bid. In this contract, the ministry is investigating means of collecting student data about race and ethnicity at both the elementary and secondary levels "for education purposes". The project description also states that any collection methods must obey privacy laws and the Ontario Human Rights Code. Provincial privacy laws define ethnic and racial details as personal information, requiring authorization and detailed explanation of reasons for collection as well as proper protection.

Officially, no information has been gathered yet. This is a project proposal that is currently out for bids from interested parties. However, if the contract has gone out for bids, it has been approved at some levels within the Ontario government since it is an education project, which is a provincial responsibility. It is the beginning of what is in all likelihood a change in the amount of privacy a student can expect in Ontario schools.

When I originally heard this story on my commute into work one morning, I was shocked. Racial data? About students? Surely, I thought to myself, This has to be some kind of sensationalized news item cooked up by the anti-Liberal media. But as I listened, and then read more about the story, my initial reaction settled into something a little different.

I am still disappointed that such a contract needs to be created, that our education system is failing such a large portion of its student body and is unable to keep up with the changing face of Canada as immigration redefines what it is to be Canadian. Our education system, while it does make some attempts to update itself to remain topical, was nonetheless created by parts of the Canadian government: a Canadian government that, for the most part, was a bunch of European (read: white) men. Today's Canada is no longer the Canada of their times, and the education system needs to reflect that.

When the Toronto District School Board proposed an Africentric school, I spoke out against it, arguing that it was segregating students from each other, and that they all had things they could learn from one another. This is not the same thing, and I would argue that this is a better solution to the problems the Africentric school proposition (which was approved) sought to solve.

The statistics cited during the Africentric school debate cannot be denied: the education system as it stands does not meet the needs of all students, and it would appear that one means of identifying students who have been failed is by race or ethnicity. If correlating the academic data of students with their ethnicity can identify shortcomings within the education system and therefore improve the experience of future children from various backgrounds, then I believe it is the right thing to do. However, we must remain mindful of the privacy laws and the protection they afford these individuals as we gather the information.