From the Mississauga Times, May 31, 1978

While there were no predominantly Black schools in historic Mississauga in the 19th century, new Black immigrants to Malton and other communities within Mississauga in the latter half of the 20th century meant a changing demographic in Mississauga schools. These students made a big impact on how our education system was structured.

In a 1980 Mississauga Times article, Malton is described as an epicenter of cultural communities in Mississauga. Westwood Secondary School, later renamed Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School after Canada’s first Black member of Parliament, was noted as perhaps most affected when it came to the migration of new Canadians, and their children, into Malton. In Westwood Secondary School, the student body had quadrupled in the 1970s and comprised itself of many diverse faces.

So many different people together presented an opportunity for a new future. In 1979, a group of Westwood Secondary School attended a multi-cultural conference in Toronto and experienced a sense of racial freedom hitherto unknown to them. One student, Dave Carrigan, recalled, “I was walking arm-in-arm with a Black guy. […] If I did that here in the cafeteria, people would say, ‘Are you crazy?’” It was an eye-opening experience for many students to say the least. They had seen how effective open communication could be in improving racial relations and understanding, but it was blatantly obvious how far away they were from this goal.

Students reported that tensions were thick in the air, and while nobody wanted the situation to continue, nobody was willing to make the first step. Indeed, Vice-principal Mary Jean Lambert had hand-picked the students who would participate in the excursion as those students who displayed leadership skills but would not “revolutionize” the student body upon return. The students had experienced a possible utopian future but had come back to the same world they left with no support to implement such a future for their own communities. Real life is much more complicated.

Faculty began to realize that racialized students experienced certain factors outside of school hours that affected their learning within class. For example, many students had to care for younger siblings while both their parents worked long hours, while others simply did not understand the North American culture (whether that be in relation to education or otherwise).

As a result, the school introduced several new programs to help these new students attain success in their academic lives and beyond. Timetable accommodations for students walking their siblings to school were made. ESL (English as a Second Language) and Special Education programs were added to the curriculum and individual assessments in English and Mathematics were completed with students prior to placing them in a program. The overarching theme of all these curriculum additions was that standardized learning does not work, rather their learning should be individually catered to.

Page from Westwood Secondary Yearbook c. 1970’s

Sylvester Leach, social worker for Morning Star Middle School in Malton, and John Kennedy, guidance counselor at North Peel Secondary School, both pointed out that Black students were among those who needed the most attention in the school system. Kennedy asserted that Black students were just as, if not more, intelligent as their white counterparts. Yet, Black students made up 20% of students in vocational schools. According to Kennedy, these students are “culturally deprived as opposed to learning disabled”. In fact, Kennedy asserted that many of these students should be in regular schools, not vocational schools, despite lower test scores. While the article does not give a reason behind these observations, it is likely due to cultural and societal norms which historically have placed Black Canadians in blue collar manual labour employment, rather than white collar jobs. While it is true that, as Director of Education John Fraser points out, vocational schools offer that style of individualized learning so sought after, there are certainly other factors at play here. If society is constantly telling students that their lot in life is to labour and toil away and that they will not succeed in aiming their ambitions higher, some may believe it. Ultimately, Leach demands that faculty must learn to understand the culture of the Black students to better serve them in the education system.

In 1993, Malton’s Westwood Secondary was again at the cutting edge of Black education. The Globe and Mail’s article entitled “It’s a School Thing” by Gare Joyce explored the implementation of a Black history program in the school. While Westwood Secondary was not the first to institute Black history lessons in the classroom, the school was the first in Mississauga. At the time, 40% of the school body was made up of Black students, many of whom suffered from poor grades. In fact, not one Black male had been accepted into university for at least the past six years. The article asserts that many of the Black students had simply given up, thinking that school just wasn’t for them. Student Junior Julien complained that school, “was always about white people,” and as such it was hard for students to feel connected and included in their education. If the education system continued on this path, according to one teacher, “Community College is just about the most they have been able to hope for. And the kids in the vocational programs are basically sentenced to a life at the end of a broom”.

In response, Black students approached Westwood school administration to add Black history to the school offerings. The idea was taken seriously by school administration who hoped that Black students would be more interested and invested in their schoolwork if learning a subject that was meaningful to them, thereby developing useful skills that could take them a long way within the classroom. Mr. Alexander, a white teacher, won approval for the course, then planned the course and deliverables. The class was to be split into three section, one taught by Mr. Alexander, another taught by Black teacher Sheila Hoyte and the last taught by Westwood’s history head Alex Shenfield.

Students studied African, Caribbean and North American Black history, though faculty noted that resources pertaining to Canadian Black history was soulfully lacking. In particular, Mr. Alexander found that history books failed to make connections to Canada’s diverse Black population, focusing only on slavery, the Underground Railroad and other topics totally foreign to Westwood’s then student body made up of Black students from all over the globe. “Their own history has hardly been documented at all,” Mr. Alexander pointed out.

The class was open to all students from Grade 10 and above, making the students a diverse group educationally. However, Mr. Alexander noted that the students were exclusively Black due to guidance counsellors funneling only Black students into the course, leading to an assumption by many that it is a Black-only class. That was not, as Mr. Alexander was quick to point out, the point of the course. Black history is for everyone and can serve as an important “cultural exchange” for both students and teachers.

Using the skills learned in the class, some of the students, whom hitherto had been labelled “high-risk”, had begun taking more challenging academic courses with success. Some of the students had begun thinking critically about what was being shared in their other classes. One student, Clifton Willis, demanded to know why there were no Black authors on the Grade 11 English syllabus. This type of critical dissent is important for educators teaching a diverse student body, but also a sign that these Black students are engaged with their learning one way or the other.

It is thanks to Black and other diverse students and immigrants that Mississauga’s education system began to change, first slowly, then in bigger and better ways.

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