The plan by this country’s largest school board to rebrand schools named for Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas and Sir John A. Macdonald shows how remarkably out of touch its staff and politicians are.
At a time when our national identity is under threat, where tax dollars are stretched to the limit, the Toronto District School Board says it will spend precious education dollars removing the names of three historic figures.
Schools are supposed to teach facts about history to young, impressionable minds. This shows a shocking lack of knowledge of Canada’s past and history professors have questioned the validity of this move.
Without Macdonald, there would be no Canada. He forged this country into one unit with his vision for a cross-country railroad. He steered the nascent country through chaotic times and supported Indigenous people with immunization programs and food relief plans. Macdonald’s laudable goal was to educate all children in every part of the country.
Ryerson has been even more shamefully misrepresented. He was a visionary with the goal of bringing universal schooling to all children. He lived with an Indigenous First Nation, learned their language and was given an Indigenous name. He was the architect of our public school system. For that, he must be erased.
Dundas was an abolitionist, as was William Pitt the Younger, the prime minister he served. When William Wilberforce kept trying and failing to push his motion for an immediate end to the slave trade through the British House of Commons, Dundas sought a compromise — that it be done gradually. And it passed.
No good deed goes unpunished.
This latest act of desecration of our history by low-level functionaries is surely proof we need to take the education of our children away from school boards. They have their own agenda, don’t listen to experts and should be scrapped. Ontario
Premier Doug Ford should make an election pledge to make it a priority.
At a time when the need for national pride has never been greater, we should celebrate those who created this great country, not denigrate our history.
George Washington was a slave owner. You don’t see Americans trash-talking him or renaming their capital.
Schools should teach history, not erase it.