 Safe Schools Action Team, Episode 3 - Another attempt at safer schools
Dave
18Mar2009 09:23
EDT |
| According to recent press reports, our provincial government is presently in the process of amending the Ontario Education Act, in a further attempt to remedy issues such as homophobic bullying in schools.
This follows the release last December of a report by the 'Safe Schools Action Team' entitled 'Shaping A Culture Of Respect In Our Schools: Promoting Safe And Healthy Relationships'.
In its introduction, this report states that the Safe Schools Action Team conducted "province-wide consultations with (amongst others) .. representatives from a wide range of community groups: [including] diverse cultural groups ... and agencies that support LGBT youth." This came as something of a surprise to me because, as someone who liaises regularly with all of York Region's LGBT-related organizations and is actively involved with many of them, I had never heard even a rumour about any of them ever being consulted. And, given that York Region is home to nearly 10% of Ontario's residents, you might expect that "province-wide" should probably include us.
In this whole area of consultation and partnerships with community agencies and organizations, the report haphazardly works around a genuine problem without ever arriving at a sensible solution. It correctly identifies "that school boards/schools still lack strong links to community agencies/organizations with expertise in the area of gender-based violence, homophobia, sexual harassment, and inappropriate sexual behaviour", and goes on to recommend that "Schools and agencies/organizations with knowledge and professional expertise [in those areas] must work together". Further, a footnote defines “Professional expertise” to mean "access to professionals with training that qualifies them specifically to counsel and/or support students about incidents/issues of gender-based violence, homophobia, sexual harassment, and inappropriate sexual behaviour."
This would be excellent advice indeed, if a sufficient supply of eligible agencies and organizations actually existed. But the reality is that many of the most knowledgeable community organizations, and potentially the most willing to help, are non-profit and/or volunteer groups that, with very limited funding, lack the financial resources needed to acquire extensive professional training. And, for obvious reasons, schools are (and will always continue to be) very reluctant to trust groups that lack professional training, through fear that involvement with them might introduce an element of risk. For example, in York Region over recent years, a mere handful of LGBT community members have ever been invited to even speak in schools, let alone act in a consultative role, and almost all of that handful were either teachers, former teachers or school board employees. It's therefore silly to suggest that school boards merely need to exploit community organizations for their own benefit, when all but a few of those
organizations presently lack eligibility. Instead, the recommendation should be that school boards engage collaboratively with a wider range of organizations, provide a level of professional training and other resources to those organizations when required, and invest in those organizations in order to empower more of them to provide the required degree of quality assistance and participation.
In addition to this and suggested curriculum changes, another area covered by the report relates to reporting procedures. Specifically, it recommends that teachers should be forced to report to the principal, various (somewhat ambiguously defined) types of incident, which would presumably include instances of bullying. It goes on to recommend that schools should also be compelled to notify parents of these incidents, but only need notify the police of incidents involving physical violence.
The changes to legislation stemming from these recommendations are currently being debated, according to a recent yorkregion.com (Era Banner et al) article entitled "Anti-violence laws won't fully protect students, Klees says" - at http://www.yrng.com/article/89152
Although not mentioned in the report, according to this news article, it has thankfully now been realized that reporting instances of homophobic bullying to a victim's parents might not always be such a good idea. The revellation of gay sexuality (or the rumour of it) to some parents may indeed have dire consequences, potentially even worse than the bullying. But sadly, it seems likely that to avoid this potential problem, it will be left entirely up to the discretion of principals as to whether homophobic bullying incidents need to be reported to parents, or indeed anyone else - which seems to leave us just about where we are today. And today, based on past incidents, it would seem that whenever such matters are left to the discretion of a principal, failure to report is often the more likely outcome.
Personally, I think a better solution would be that all instances of bullying should have to be reported to either the victim's parents and/or the police - with a principal permitted to choose either or both of these options, but compelled to choose at least one of them.
Perhaps that enhancement will become part of the next set of amendments to the Education Act, as and when Safe Schools Action Team Episode 4 reveals once again that previous changes have failed to combat the problem.
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