Making a Global City by Robert Vipond

Author:Robert Vipond
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4426-2443-6
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2017-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

What were these significant implications? The commissioners were quick to connect the dots between this demographic trend and the country’s cultural identity: “If the increase of the ‘other Europeans’ and the ‘non-European’ categories in the population is not accidental but a marked sociological trend, one wonders if now is the time to think not of Canadian biculturalism but of Canadian multiculturalism.”58 Never ones to play it close to the vest, the commissioners added this clear endorsement: “Ontario needs to be on its guard lest it miss this chance of developing a society that is truly multicultural.”59

Hall-Dennis viewed the programmatic implications of this incipient multiculturalism through the lens of what it called “special learning experiences.”60 All children, the report maintained, “have the same basic needs. But the children of newly arrived immigrants may have exceptional needs, especially in language.”61 Hall-Dennis observed that those jurisdictions (like Toronto) that had mounted programs for New Canadians typically emphasized “linguistics and the acquisition of school language.”62 Echoing the TBE researchers, Hall-Dennis pointed out that it was impossible to disentangle language from culture. And again like the TBE researchers, Hall-Dennis understood that, once cultural diversity was in play, schools had to take a stand on the meaning of citizenship:

Furthermore, as far as education is concerned, the problem arises of whether the school, functioning according to the norm as a middle-class institution – predominantly British in heritage – should ignore the cultural values which the students’ homes reflect or capitalize on them by adapting and incorporating them for their program.63

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