Lend Me Your Ear: The Voice of Early African Canadian Communities in Ontario Through Petitions

The inclusion of Black history in Ontario classrooms remains relatively marginalized and stagnant after thirty years of advocacy on the part of educators, groups and individuals in Black communities, and scholars to make the curriculum more inclusive of the Black experience in Canada and across the Diaspora. This Major Research Project investigates the current state of the teaching of African Canadian history in elementary and secondary public schools, to understand why it has remained virtually unchanged for decades despite gains in policy revision: the strong emphasis on American content, confinement to Black History Month in February. It also examines the impact of such systemic exclusion and marginalization of Black history on both Black and non-Black students.

The inclusion of Black history in Ontario classrooms remains relatively marginalized and stagnant after thirty years of advocacy on the part of educators, groups and individuals in Black communities, and scholars to make the curriculum more inclusive of the Black experience in Canada and across the Diaspora. This Major Research Project investigates the current state of the teaching of African Canadian history in elementary and secondary public schools, to understand why it has remained virtually unchanged for decades despite gains in policy revision: the strong emphasis on American content, confinement to Black History Month in February. It also examines the impact of such systemic exclusion and marginalization of Black history on both Black and non-Black students. Additionally, in an effort to model how the African Canadian counter-narrative can be incorporated within the existing curricular framework, part of this MRP is a curriculum unit, Lend me Your Ear: the Voice of Early African Canadian Communities in Ontario through Petitions. The unit is developed around six petitions penned by individuals and groups of African Canadians with the intent of bringing the voices, opinions, and experiences of African Canadians into classrooms. African Canadians crafted petitions to express their grievances on a range of issues that impacted their lives including enslavement, segregated schooling, hiring practices for civil servant jobs, and enlistment in the military. Through learning activities, the diversity and complexity of these African Canadian experiences is explored. This study offers insight into how the advancement of the teaching of African Canadian history can be accelerated through a critical, balanced teaching approach, teacher training, the inclusion of specific curriculum expectations, and ideally the decolonizing of history education where ultimately we arrive at the juncture where African Canadian history is treated as Canadian history.