From the Fraser Institute

By Michael Zwaagstra

It appears that Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees have too much time on their hands. That’s the only logical explanation for their bizarre plan to rename three TDSB schools, which bear the names of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, British politician Henry Dundas and Egerton Ryerson, founder of public education in Ontario.

According to a new TDSB report, the schools must be renamed because of the “potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-indigenous racism, and their connection to systems of oppression.”

Now, it’s true that each of these men did things that fall short of 21st century standards (as did most 19th century politicians). However, they also made many positive contributions. Canada probably wouldn’t exist if John A. Macdonald hadn’t been involved in the constitutional conferences that led to Confederation. More than anyone else, he skillfully bridged the divide between British Protestants and French Catholics. But for a variety of assigned sins typical to a politician of his era, he must be cancelled.

Henry Dundas supported William Wilberforce’s efforts to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, but believed a more moderate approach had a higher chance of success. As a result, he added the word “gradual” to Wilberforce’s abolition motion—an unforgivable offense according to today’s critics—even though the motion passed with a vote of 230-85 in the British House of Commons.

Egerton Ryerson played a key role in the founding of Ontario’s public education system and strongly pushed for free schools. He recognized the importance of providing an education to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, something that was unlikely to happen if parents couldn’t afford to send their children to school. And while Ryerson was not directly involved in creating Canada’s residential school system, his advocacy for a school system for Indigenous students has drawn the wrath of critics today.

Knowing these facts from centuries ago, it strains credulity that these three names would so traumatize students and staff that they must be scrubbed from school buildings. Despite their flaws, Macdonald, Dundas and Ryerson have achievements worth remembering. Instead of trying to erase Canadian history, the TDSB should educate students about it.

Unfortunately, that’s hard to do when Ontario teachers are given vague and confusing curriculum guides with limited Canadian history content. Instead of a content-rich approach that builds knowledge sequentially from year-to-year, Ontario’s curriculum guides focus on broad themes such as “cooperation and conflict” and jump from one historical era to another. No wonder there is such widespread ignorance about Canadian history.

On a more practical level, renaming schools costs money. Officials with the nearby Thames Valley District School Board, which is undergoing its own renaming process, estimate it costs at least $30,000 to $40,000 to rename a school. This is money that could be spent better on buying textbooks and providing other academic resources to students. And this price tag excludes the huge opportunity cost of the renaming process. It takes considerable staff time to create naming committees, conduct historical research, survey public opinion and write reports. Time spent on the school renaming process is time not being spent on more important educational initiatives.

Interestingly, the TDSB report that recommends renaming these three schools has six authors (all TDSB employees) with job titles ranging from “Associate Director, Learning Transformation and Equity” to “Associate Director, Modernization and Strategic Resource Alignment.” The word salad in these job titles tells us everything we need to know about the make-work nature of these positions. One wonders how many “Learning Transformation and Equity” directors the TDSB would need if it dropped its obsession with woke ideology and focused instead on academic basics. Given the significant decline in Ontario’s reading and math scores over the last 20 years, TDSB trustees—and trustees in other Ontario school boards—would do well to reexamine their priorities.

Egerton Ryerson probably never dreamed that the public school system he helped create would veer so far from its original course. Before rushing to scrub the names of Ryerson and his colleagues from school buildings, TDSB trustees should take a close look at what’s happening inside those buildings.

In the end, the quality of education students receive inside a school is much more important than the name on the building. Too bad TDSB trustees don’t realize that.

MxM News

Quick Hit:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced $881 million in cuts to Education Department contracts, targeting diversity training and research programs.

Key Details:

• About 170 contracts for the Institute of Education Sciences were terminated.
• The cuts include 29 diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training grants worth $101 million.
• The move comes as President Trump is expected to issue an executive order to wind down the Education Department.

Diving Deeper:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) confirmed Monday night that it had cut $881 million in Education Department contracts, marking a major step in the Trump administration’s plan to restructure the agency. The cuts target nearly 170 contracts, including several linked to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the department’s research division.

Among the terminations are 29 grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion training, which collectively totaled $101 million. One of the grants aimed to train teachers on how to help students “interrogate the complex histories involved in oppression” and recognize “areas of privilege and power,” according to DOGE’s statement.

The American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit specializing in social science studies, confirmed that it received multiple termination notices for IES contracts on Monday. “The money that has been invested in research, data, and evaluations that are nearing completion is now getting the taxpayers no return on their investment,” said Dana Tofig, a spokesperson for AIR. He argued that the terminated research was essential to evaluating which federal education programs are effective.

The cuts coincide with President Trump’s expected executive order to wind down the Education Department, a long-standing conservative policy goal. Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, is set to testify before Congress on Thursday.

The Education Department and DOGE have yet to comment on the specifics of the terminations. However, the move signals a clear shift in priorities, with the administration pushing to reduce federal involvement in education spending, particularly in programs aligned with progressive social initiatives.