Our FREEDOM SCHOOL is a three week program for children aged four to ten. The purpose of the project is to respond to a lack of humanizing, self-affirming, queer positive educational opportunities for Black children in the GTA. Freedom school will provide an alternative setting for parents to do not feel that our children are being taught self-love, and a passion for justice and liberation through their formal education. The program is designed to teach children about Black Canadian and diasporic history, to engage children in political resistance to anti-Black racism and state violence through a trans-feminist lens, and to offer children an entry point into the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
I have my doubts that such incendiary and disturbing topics can be taught to the very young in a manner that even remotely resembles something that's "child friendly."We teach children that: your Black life matters, and you must demonstrate to your peers that their Black lives matter by protecting their dignity. Our children learn the things you didn’t learn in school: The BlackLivesMatter Movement, Marie Joseph Angelique, Marshia P. Johnson and the Stonewall Riots, the Memphis garbage strikes, Nanny Maroon and the Maroons in Canada, The Bussa Revolution in Barbados, The Haitian Revolution, Soweto Uprisings. These topics are engaged through child friendly resources like claymation, video animation, augmented realities etc.
That's something Ontario's Ministry of Education might want to probe, but, due to the reverence paid to political correctness and fears of being branded "racist" and "homophobic," will likely be given the widest of berths.
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