In Canada they're teaching African-centric history to school kids
They have learned how long it would take a runaway slave to walk to freedom from deep in the south.
A year.
"Now think how much longer it would take if you had children with you," prods the teacher. "Or if you lost your shoes wading through the river to throw bloodhounds off your scent."
Not a paper rustles; even the girl eating lunch at the back is fixed on the front.
In this unusual new "sold-out" class at a Scarborough high school, students are learning a new kind of history: African history.
As the Toronto District School Board debates trying an "African-centred" alternative grade school next year to battle the high black dropout rate, this course – and a dozen like it sprinkled through Toronto's 150 public high schools – provide a glimpse of how such a school might work.
"This is my history, miss. The first university in the world was in Timbuktu – in Africa!" gushes Karar Jafar, 18, who moved to Canada five years ago from Libya.
Read entire article at The Star
A year.
"Now think how much longer it would take if you had children with you," prods the teacher. "Or if you lost your shoes wading through the river to throw bloodhounds off your scent."
Not a paper rustles; even the girl eating lunch at the back is fixed on the front.
In this unusual new "sold-out" class at a Scarborough high school, students are learning a new kind of history: African history.
As the Toronto District School Board debates trying an "African-centred" alternative grade school next year to battle the high black dropout rate, this course – and a dozen like it sprinkled through Toronto's 150 public high schools – provide a glimpse of how such a school might work.
"This is my history, miss. The first university in the world was in Timbuktu – in Africa!" gushes Karar Jafar, 18, who moved to Canada five years ago from Libya.