Genocide course draws protests

A high-school course on genocide that has raised loud protests from ethnic groups, one for being included and one for being excluded from the core curriculum, was unanimously approved by the Toronto District School Board last night.

About 50 protesters waved Turkish flags and picket signs outside the school board's North York offices, objecting to the inclusion of the Armenian genocide as one of the course's three core case studies. Meanwhile, a group of Ukrainian-Canadians sat in the board meeting's audience in support of an effort to have the Holodomor, the 1932-33 Ukrainian genocide, included as a core case study.

"I think some of the effect and the goodness of the curriculum has been distracted by the controversy that has surrounded it," said school trustee Gerri Gershon, who introduced the idea of a genocide course after she visited Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. "It's so important that our students understand history in all its bad forms."

Board members expressed hope that the new course would help to promote cross-cultural understanding and awareness of the dangers of stereotyping and prejudice. But Turkish protesters said they feared the curriculum would be corrosive to Toronto's multicultural fabric because it engaged in "hate politics" by including an event that isn't recognized by the United Nations as a genocide.

More than 40 Ukrainian-Canadians and 60 Turkish-Canadians picketed before the meeting, then packed the board's gallery seats.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress wanted the 1932-1933 forced famine in Soviet Ukraine used as the course's fourth case study with the Nazi Holocaust, 1994 Rwanda genocide and 1915 mass murder of Ottoman Empire Armenians.

The Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations and Council of Turkish Canadians sought the removal from the curriculum of the Ottoman killings, which the government of Turkey contends did not constitute genocide.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, like the government of Canada, does deem them genocide. The Ottoman case was not mentioned at the meeting, and no trustee proposed adding the Ukrainian famine as a core case.

The board, however, passed two amendments. The first allows teachers to spend significant time on genocides other than the three core case studies as they "see fit." The second notes the curriculum's exclusion of specific genocides does not imply the board believes those events are of "lesser significance."