On November 9, the Ministry of Education announced a series of reforms for Ontario schools to combat rising antisemitism, including the introduction of mandatory Holocaust learning in elementary schools. On behalf of the York Region District School Board, we welcome this announcement to strengthen Holocaust education. Incidents of antisemitism are occurring in our schools and are causing hurt and harm to students, staff and families.
At YRDSB, we take these incidents very seriously and will continue our work to raise awareness and to combat these acts of discrimination and hate. Our work with Friends of Simon Wiesenthal’s Tour4Humanities bus is currently providing Holocaust education to 900 staff and to 2,400 students, and we’ve worked collaboratively with Echoes and Reflection to develop a three part web-based module on teaching the Holocaust and second three-part module on interrupting antisemitism. We have also launched a 10 workshop series entitled, Understanding Antisemitism – Past and Present.
Creating safe, equitable and inclusive spaces for our students is the highest priority for our Board. Last week, during Holocaust Education Week, several YRDSB educators spoke with representatives from Yad Vashem for a YRDSB podcast about the importance of Holocaust education in Canadian schools and the shared responsibility of combatting antisemitism. Students from Keswick High School also had the opportunity to learn about the Holocaust through a visual display provided by Yad Vashem.
At YRDSB, we are committed to Holocaust education and to educating students and staff to counter antisemitism. We support the government’s efforts and look forward to implementing these reforms that challenge biases and hate.
Allan Tam, Chair of the Board
Scott Yake, Interim Director of Education