"Growing Up In": The Transfer Program in Windsor, Ontario, 1983

Abstract

In 1983, stand-alone vocational schools that had been built less than two decades earlier, were struggling to remain open. In an effort to make the most of the recently built schools, new special education programs were offered there. Transferring grade 8 students from the local elementary school kept the doors of the vocational school I attended open in the early 1980s. Vocational studies claimed to provide more options to students. For me, going to vocational school was not an option. I was “advised” that I was suited for the program and transferred to the school with no way of refuting or challenging the decision. Students destined for academic high school streams could interact with the process of going to secondary school as active agents in their own education. Me, my two siblings, and many other students from my working-class neighbourhood were “advised” of a program that supposedly matched our achievements — advised by the same people who gave us the failing grades that prompted our transfer to the program.