STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT GENOCIDE, SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN GROUNDBREAKING TORONTO COURSE
The Canadian Press
Feb 4 2009
TORONTO
TORONTO — A group of Toronto high school students making a
presentation on their first day of a groundbreaking course on genocide
are suddenly and without warning bombarded with paper airplanes and
catcalls by their peers.
There’s shock and confusion on the faces of classmates watching the
chaotic scene unfold, but no one does anything.
Finally, one student at the back of the class says: "Enough is enough."
This is CHG 381 – Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity – and the
student brave enough to call for an end to the assault is "up-standing"
in the truest sense of the term.
Silverthorn Collegiate teacher Mitch Bubulj lets his class know the
students behind the abuse were instructed to prevent the group from
presenting. He then asks if they understood the point of the exercise.
"To see if anyone would tell them to stop?" one girl says.
"Exactly," Bubulj replies.
In addition to discussing the often gruesome history of genocide, the
course – being taught at nine Toronto high schools – revolves around
discussing ways the students can act to "achieve effective change."
It’s called "up-standing," a term coined by author Samantha Powell
meant to describe the opposite of a bystander.
The stereotype of the teenager who is wrapped up in their own world
is met head-on, says Bubulj.
"The true story is they’re caring, they’re concerned, and they might
not show it right away – on the surface they seem disengaged and
apathetic, but that’s not the case," said Bubulj.
"You just have to offer a course like this to see the best in these
teenagers and I’ve seen it. Students want to do the right thing and
they get angry at the injustice."
It took five years for the course to make it into the classroom since
it was first conceived at the Toronto District School Board. It’s
now being taught for just the second time.
The first crop of kids graduated from the class last month.
"This course can be brutal. It is brutal," Bubulj tells the new
students.
"People figure you won’t be able to handle it – hearing about killing,
torture and rape, but the last class proved that you can handle
it, and some of them are now on the road to becoming activists for
social change."
The course received media attention last year when some members of
the Turkish community lobbied the board to remove any teaching of the
Armenian genocide of 1915 – a core aspect of the course and one that
many Turks deny ever took place.
The material remains, and halfway into the school year a new group
of students are preparing to learn about it, the Holocaust and the
Rwandan genocide.
Seventeen-year-old Damir Cvetkovic doesn’t look like a child of war,
but the boy with the shy smile came to Canada in 1998 – three years
after the war in Bosnia ended.
Individuals have been convicted of committing acts of genocide in
the Bosnian war, including former Serbian political leader Radovan
Karadzic. In 2007, the UN’s top court ruled that while Serbia broke
international law by failing to stop the killings, the state was
itself not guilty of genocide.
Cvetkovic was too young to remember all of it, but his mother has
told him what it was like.
"It was like being in a cage the way my mom explains it. She trembles
when she talks about it."
Cvetkovic is a graduate of the first semester class and says it has
given him a greater awareness and understanding, and has even helped
him mature.
"We had to watch these videos, things like concentration camps,
and kids turned their heads," he said.
"I don’t want them to be disgusted but I thought, good – now they
understand what actually went on. They get that it’s not a joke."
As part of their final exam, students had to write a letter decrying
a current genocide to their local MP. In this case it was Borys
Wrzesnewskyj – a man who has seen first-hand the affects of genocide
in Darfur.
In 2005, Wrzesnewskyj became the first member of Parliament to enter
the region. He was there on a self-financed fact-finding mission.
The irony is that the students weren’t aware of Wrzesnewskyj’s
experience, just as he didn’t know the course was being taught in
his riding, though he said he wrote a letter to the Toronto school
board supporting the concept when it was first announced.
"It’s important that students understand that this is a part of the
human reality, that there is evil out there and we need to protect
against it," he said.
Wrzesnewskyj says he hopes to meet with the students rather than
replying to their letters.
"Talking to someone who has been there may personalize and provide
an opportunity to hear things that may not have crossed their minds."
Seventeen-year-old Zarah Rostamijam, also a course graduate, said
she’s not sure how she’ll get involved in the future, but said she’s
convinced she will speak out about injustice wherever she sees it.
"It opened my eyes. I want to be able to do something about
(genocide). And I want to find out ways that we can stop it," she
said. "There are teens out there who care about politics and what
goes on in our world."
Bubulj says while the course makes students more empathetic, the dark
side of human nature must be explored to bring about that awareness.
"It also leaves them with a disgust at times when people have been
so evil that they’ve eliminated whole groups of people," he said.
"It just reaffirms what it means to be human."