Trustee Mari Rutka’s motion passed last night, but it wasn’t what the Ukrainian Canadian community was fighting for last June when it tried to include the Holodomor into the new CHG38M – Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity class this Fall.

Paraphraising the motion:

1) To establish the fourth Friday of each November as a day of remembrance and recognition of Holodomor within TDSB schools
2) To develop a secondary teaching guide and curriculum materialsfor social studies courses covering the 1930s within TDSB secondary schools and to distribute this guide and these materials to all TDSB secondary schools by September, 2009

The distributed course materials will be available for any students who want to study the Holodomor – as an independant study. How many students do extra course work on top of their course load already? While this is a step in the right direction, efforts must continue to put the Holodomor into CHG38M. Unfortunately, the course material won’t be revised again until 2011, but we’ll be there.