Jordan
By the end of January, just over half of Canadian kids aged five to 11, had received their first dose of the COVID vaccine during the two months since its approval. That number is creeping up slowly, but it’s still nowhere near the 72% of kids aged 12 to 17. Who got theirs in the first two months. It’s fair to ask what the difference is between those groups. To a certain extent parents are warier of vaccinating younger children, no matter how safe it may be, as well. This is an age group that generally handles COVID. Well, so the individual decisions made by parents might outweigh those made for the greater good. But if you want to try and wrap your head around the outlook that leads to parents making that choice, it’s more important to ask where the difference is, rather than what one reporter did just that recently, in Canada’s largest city. The results paint an interesting picture. If you want to know which kids are likely to be unvaccinated, there’s a decent way to tell. They’re the ones attending alternative schools even before COVID with vaccines that had been proven safe over decades, the opt-out rate among alternative school kids was many, many times higher than kids in traditional classrooms. So why is that? Where does that vaccine hesitancy come from? And what can we learn about the factors parents weigh when they make those decisions by studying the philosophies of the schools chosen by parents who don’t vaccinate their kids?
I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story in Inori Roy is a freelance investigative journalist based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star, the Narwhal, and for this project,in the local. Hey, Inori.
Inori Roy
Hi Jordan, thanks for having me.
Jordan
You’re very welcome. For the purposes of this conversation, why don’t we just start by having you define or describe what we mean when we talk about alternative schools? What are they?
Inori Roy
Yeah,so alternative schools, and for the purposes of this story, our schools within the Toronto District Public School, so board, sorry, so they are publicly funded, but they provide alternatives to mainstream education. So they’re usually much smaller in terms of class sizes, and in terms of size of the school overall. And they usually have particular themes related to them. So because they’re providing alternatives to the mainstream, they’ll instead have themes like being based on outdoor education or community involvement, the arts, social justice, or particular styles of teaching like the Waldorf inspired schools. One thing I wanted to note that was quite interesting that came up in the research for this piece is that amongst the elementary schools, the alternative elementary schools in Toronto, there is a sense of them being more elite amongst researchers, and a sense that parents sort of strive to, to put their kids in those schools, and then in the secondary system, send them off to private schools, but alternative secondary schools are not considered particularly elite. Instead, they’re usually for kids who aren’t really thriving in the mainstream, secondary school system. So there’s quite a difference between who is seen as attending elementary alternative schools and secondary alternative schools.
Jordan
That’s really interesting. How many of these schools exist in the TDSB?
Inori Roy
They’re around 40.
Jordan
Okay, so a substantial number. And these, uh, they’re attended by a smaller number of children. And I know this, I mean, because you’ll probably hear me mention that my own mother ran an alternative school for 25 years, it was a grade seven, eight, so middle school, but very much that, you know, parents really trying to get in application process, etc, etc, what you’d consider, I guess, an elite atmosphere, even though the kids were from all walks of life.
Inori Roy
Exactly. That’s right. They are open to the public, and anyone can apply. But there has been a question amongst, you know, people who are trying to advocate for more equitable alternative school systems, that depending on on where you are in the city, sometimes you end up with, you know, communities in the schools that aren’t particularly diverse, that are from the same sort of economic like upper-middle class or upper-class backgrounds. And so while they are available to everyone, there is a sense of exclusivity to them.
Jordan
And what fascinates me about your work on this story is we’re going to talk about vaccination rates in these schools in pre-COVID time. So this is not actually talking about the COVID vaccine. So give us an idea of what those rates are, how many people opt-out and then in a second, we’ll can talk about what opting out actually means.
Inori Roy
Yeah, sure. So the exemption rates for alternative schools for alternative elementary schools, it’s about 13% exemption rate for high schools, it’s 4%. So you’ll see that’s, that’s quite a bit lower. So overall, it’s around an 8% exemption rate from mandatory vaccines. So for the data that’s provided by the city, that is calculated mainly for the DPT vaccine and for MMR, so, measles, mumps, rubella, and so overall, you’ll see like a nearly five times higher than non-alternative vaccination rates, because non-alternative vaccination rates are around 1.8%. So it’s a pretty stark difference, especially at the elementary level.
Jordan
What exactly is the exemption that we’re talking about here? And what does it entail? How do you get it?
Inori Roy
Yeah, so this is a non-medical exemption. So medical exemptions, the process is sort of standard and across the board, and it involves, you know, having your doctor sort of give you a note for it. Non-medical exemptions are conscientious philosophical, or religious exemptions, they go by a few different names. And the process is that anyone can apply for a non medical exemption, it involves filling out a form and then the parents have to go to an education session, or they have to watch a 30 minute standard video that is provided publicly and is available to anyone who would like to access it. And then once you’ve sort of done that education session, watch that video, you just sort of fill out the necessary paperwork, and then you’re given your exemption.
Jordan
This is probably a question that’s gonna sound controversial. I don’t mean to try to stir anything up either way. But if these vaccines are, quote, unquote, mandatory, and these exemptions are not for medical reasons, why does the board allow it?
Inori Roy
I think there are a lot of complex legal factors behind it that for someone who’s not a legal expert probably wouldn’t be able to get into the details of but I know that there is a sense that the non medical exemptions are sort of fundamental to like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That’s one of the the ideas that has been put forward by researchers who’ve involved themselves in understanding the history of non-medical exemptions. There’s also you know, as I mentioned in the article, there is a sort of complex history of parents advocating for it. And so there’s a sense that, at this point, it feels a little unavoidable. And I think that there is a legal precedent, certainly, and it’d be quite difficult challenge that.
Jordan
Fair enough. That’s why I asked when you speak to teachers and workers at these alternative schools, or even just people in the board who look at both alternative schools and non-alternative schools, what do they say the reasons are for that stark difference in terms of exemptions?
Inori Roy
Well, there’s a, it’s interesting, because there’s a spectrum of hesitancy, right. So there’s, there’s sort of a small, extreme minority who, straight up just won’t believe in biomedical science, right? They’ll say that, you know, Western medicine doesn’t have our best interests at heart. It’s not how we go with our kids, like, it’s not the route we choose to take. And so instead, we’re going to focus on different forms of medicine. So homeopathic medicine, or other forms of medicine that aren’t super common. But that spectrum, you know, sort of can move from that extreme to a more general distrust, for example, in pharmaceutical companies. And, you know, it’s interesting, because in a lot of ways, these are the two halves of parents who are really engaged with the question of like community and social justice, I find that on the one hand, when you think about social justice, you have to think about, you know, common good and, and making decisions that help the common good include getting vaccine. But on the other hand, parents are very engaged with social issues, also understand that, you know, there is a reason to potentially distressed major pharmaceutical companies who have had a history of, of doing things that that can harm, potentially marginalized people. And so, there is a sense that, you know, amongst a middle group of of those parents, there’s that distress in pharmaceutical companies. And then on the other end, there’s parents who sort of have a pretty common perspective, which is that they’ve just not seen enough of an effect of the vaccine, like they haven’t seen it, you know, rollout over enough time to be able to tell what the long term impacts are.
And so they will wait until they’ve seen that impact to be able to make their decision. So across all of these, these different factors, one of the common things that you see is there is a belief that their knowledge networks and their ability to do their own research and gain their own understanding of the situation is equal to that of science. And so, you know, with all due respect, of course, the ability of a person who is not a scientist who is not involved in, you know, peer reviewed scientific research and you know, the sort of massively funded, globally initiated research that’s happening to these vaccines, obviously, that’s not going to be able to, you know, mirror, an individual parent or a group of parents in a in a small city who don’t have their own sort of resources on the subject. And so you’ll find that Despite those differences, despite that imbalance, and like the scientific experts, certainly being able to speak for the vaccine and parents doing their own research, not being able to those parents will think their researches is equal and is up to par.
Jordan
Okay, well, we’ll give that to them for now. In terms of the schools themselves, this is something else that I found interesting. Is there anything that some of them have in common that lends itself to the approach that you just mentioned? For instance, I think right when we started, you mentioned the Waldorf learning philosophy, what is that? And? And how might it play into what we’re talking about here?
Inori Roy
Yeah, so the the Waldorf learning philosophy is, the thing that’s that’s quite tricky about it is that there is no body that like speaks for Waldorf across the world. There are Waldorf schools, all over the planet, and they all sort of have their different approaches that are informed by a few overarching factors that remain common. And so those factors are that Waldorf learning believes that the mainstream and traditional approaches to teaching aren’t working for kids, specifically, you know, that they’re too prescriptive, and that the the sort of benchmarks and standards that they set up for children don’t really match the children’s sort of natural and intuitive abilities. And so Waldorf learning combines some amount of academic learning with also a lot of sort of hands on activities and emotional learning things of that nature. So they have a sort of motto of like heart, head and hands. And so there’s a lot of doing involved in in Waldorf learning. And there’s a sort of emphasis on the Arts, on being in nature, and on setting up different academic benchmarks, perhaps ones that are a little less strenuous than what they perceive the mainstream system to be.
Jordan
I think so far when we’ve talked about alternative schools, especially in in the Waldorf style, we’re talking about those schools that we mentioned at the beginning that are predominantly Elementary and are kind of seen as elite, but what about other schools that serve different communities? What are they like? And, and I guess, what’s the same and what’s different about their philosophies towards vaccines? And I guess I’m speaking about the parents, but the schools as well.
Inori Roy
So one of the schools that we spotlighted in this story that I think really illustrates that is the Afrocentric school. Um, so that is an environment where the learning is is geared towards understanding black history, black realities. And you know, there’s a sort of an approach that really focuses in on that Afro-centric, thinking. And so the the difference between a school like that, and a school like Da Vinci, which is a Waldorf inspired school, is that at the Afrocentric school, you know, there is a recognition of the history and the harm that the medical community has caused to black people over time. And so, of course, that goes back to, you know, periods of enslavement, and even, you know, sort of over the last century, and so there’s a different hesitation towards vaccines, the hesitation amongst DaVinci parents is very much one of Well, I don’t necessarily trust the system, because the medical, you know, the medical beliefs that I have don’t align with Western medicine necessarily, or I have a distrust of pharmaceutical companies versus for Afrocentric. School parents. Some of them of course, not all, it’s not a monolith. But some of them have a sense of, Well, you know, there’s been a history of trauma in the black community with regards to how they’ve been treated by the medical community.
And there’s a sense that, you know, we’ll make our own decisions, as we sort of speak with health care providers who we know, we can trust who we know, have our bench best interests at heart, because we don’t feel that the system overall has our best interests at heart, because they haven’t in the past. And so there is a sort of, there’s a marginalization and historical trauma in a school like the Afrocentric school that doesn’t exist at Da Vinci. And so that is a really important distinction. And that makes, you know, that is the distinction that sets apart the conversations that are being had at a school like the Afrocentric school. But again, it’s not sort of across the board, just because parents at that school sort of have an interest in their children learning like in an afro-centric manner, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all having the same conversations about the vaccine.
Jordan
As I mentioned right at the beginning, the data we’re looking at for this predates COVID. So we’re not talking about the COVID vaccine here. As you mentioned, we’re talking about MMR and other ones. My question though, is about how this plays into the pandemic and in either kind of alternative school or just in alternative schools as a whole has that distrustful attitude towards science in the medical community wherever it comes from? Translated into suspicion of other scientists approaches to the pandemic. So you know, mask wearing cohorting. Even believing that COVID is real, which I also know can be a problem.
Inori Roy
Yeah, so as we covered in the story, a particular instance that happened at Da Vinci, so Da Vinci shares the school building with with Lord Lansdowne, which is another public school. And so there are, you know, there’s the mainstream school and the alternative school inside the same building, that is the case with most alternative schools. And so one of the incidents that we speak about in the story is that, you know, there was an altercation between the Lord Lansdowne parents and a Da Vinci parent who were both picking up their kids from the daycare on site, because the Lord Lansdowne parent asked the Da Vinci parent to put on their mask, and the Da Vinci parents sort of became very agitated, and, you know, said that mask wearing isn’t necessary, because COVID isn’t real, it’s, you know, it’s just the regular flu-like the everyone’s making a big deal for no reason, there’s no, there’s no reason for mask-wearing at all. And so, that was one of the altercations that really sort of illustrated to the teachers and parents on site that, that there was a problem here. And so that is, you know, it’s, it’s a reality amongst a minority, I’m not going to say it, that all sort of alternative school parents are anti-mask, that’s not the case at all, it is a sort of extreme minority who fallen in the realm of, you know, not believing that, that science can really be trusted in terms of its assessment of the pandemic.
And so what you’ll see more often is amongst these parents a sense that the things that my child is going through to make space for the pandemic and to take precautions against it aren’t worth the psychological trauma. And so, you know, the person the parents and teachers that we spoke to, anonymously for this story, some of them noted that one of the key things was that parents kept believing that like, if their children saw people wearing masks all the time, that there would be a sense of trauma, you know, that the children can’t really understand or emotionally process the world, you know, being masked up. And so that was a reason to avoid masks, and to, you know, to not impose that on children, which is, you know, something that particular in particular, like some teachers disagreed with they, they felt that, you know, they had seen the students adapt really well inside the classroom when their parents weren’t around, and they were wearing masks. And so, you know, there’s a question as to whether those parents are being fair in their assessment of what their kids are, are experiencing, or whether there’s an overall sense of needing to protect children from something that is, in fact, helping them. And so that’s one of the ways in which like, that sense of skepticism that like scientists may be are being too precocious are going to too far. That is, is sort of impacting the way that the children, the parents want their children to interact with the world around them,
Jordan
I will just say, because it sounds like I’m being skeptical towards these folks for this entire interview, that I have a lot of empathy for every parent that worries about this stuff, and the long-term damage it’s doing to kids. So I totally understand where that questioning nature comes from. What I want to know is what kinds of conversations are happening between teachers and parents, between parents and parents around the uptake on COVID vaccines, which I am assuming, because it is the trend in the general public will be much less even than the uptake, for, say, the MMR vaccine.
Inori Roy
Yeah. So first of all, like, definitely, it’s important to have empathy for parents in these situations, because without that, there’s also no way to get through to them, like there has to be sort of one of the first things that is important in terms of communicating with these parents is is is the sense of, you know, their fears are understandable, everyone’s really worried about the impact that this is going to have on children. And so I have I’m not a parent myself, but I have a lot of empathy for what these parents are going through and the things they might be aware of, and worrying about on a constant basis. And in terms of the conversations that are happening in the schools, between parents and teachers, between parents and parents, one of the things that is that has proven really interesting is that amongst the the parents who are more extreme, and the parents who are more are very skeptical of the medical system and the scientific system, they will direct some of their requests around, you know, not being as harsh with the masks or in terms of you know, not feeling that this is the right time to get vaccinated, they will direct that towards the teachers because they feel that, you know, it’s part of the teacher’s responsibility to, you know, hear where parents are coming from and it’s part of the administration’s responsibility. And so that dialogue doesn’t really work two ways like I have found with the teachers I spoke to that there isn’t that much of a return dialogue between teachers and And parents were teachers are trying to convince parents that the vaccine is a viable solution that’s not really happening, those conversations largely take place between parents and between parents and like public health authorities.
And so, you know, one of the ways in which that functions is that amongst parents, there is a potential risk of misinformation, because a set of parents will, will do their own research and come to specific conclusions. One of the ways that one of the researchers put it is that the parents often end up becoming fixated on the limitations of a study. So they they will, you know, engage with medical research they will engage with, with scientific research that has been published in peer-reviewed, but when it comes to, you know, the part of a scientific study where they have, you know, the, these are the limitations of this study, and, and sort of use it to define their entire understanding of the piece of research, even if, you know, they’re sort of disproportionately focusing on the limitations. And so what ends up being the case is that sometimes misinformation based on those limitations can travel from parent to parent, and, you know, spread through those means. But equally, you know, parents are able to, you know, listen to public health authorities, or even you know, if there is a medical professional or a scientist in their midst, like, for example, one of the parents we spoke to, for this story is a clinician and researcher. And so he’s had sessions with the students, and is open to parents asking him questions about the vaccine that he’s able to answer with authority and with certainty. So as much as parents are prone to, you know, sharing information amongst themselves that can also be used for good because there are some medical professionals whose kids go to alternative schools. And so that’s proven to be a really good opportunity for parents to sort of learn and have their worries about the vaccine assuaged by people who are, you know, authoritative and have the ability to speak with certainty on matter,
Jordan
I probably should have asked this earlier, but has the TDSB, either to you or to anybody else, address this discrepancy, and alternative schools and vaccination.
Inori Roy
Um, so when I spoke to the TDSB, for this story, and they said that, because they, you know, can’t speak for certainty as to vaccine uptake among alternative school students, they aren’t going to roll out any specific or targeted information sessions or, you know, ways to share information until they know what that uptake is like, with regards to existing mandatory vaccines, there hasn’t been any targeted outreach that I know of, and in terms of the COVID vaccine, I believe that that is, you know, still something that they’re deciding whether they’d like to do and that’s done in association with Toronto Public Health. And so I haven’t heard of any targeted outreach as of yet.
Jordan
This is my last question. And you might have just answered it. But just to be clear, when you say they’re talking with Toronto, public health, about whether or not to do it, are you talking about adding the COVID vaccine to the list of mandatory school vaccines?
Inori Roy
And yeah, so that is something that Toronto Public Health has wanted to do, they have requested to the province that this take place, the province is not keen to do so at this time. And so I don’t believe that that is something that Toronto Public Health is is putting like, is putting a lot of investment into because they know it’s going to be a significant uphill battle to get that agreed upon at a provincial level. And so there has been an attempt to do that there was also an attempt to get rid of non-medical exemptions even before the pandemic started. So this was in 2019, they petitioned the province saying that, you know, the the non-medical exemptions are getting a little out of hand in terms of the rate at which they’re increasing, I think there was a doubling over the last decade or two. And so there was a sense that, you know, this is a problem that we’re going to have to address and then the pandemic happened, and both times the province wasn’t inclined to get rid of non-medical exemptions. And so for now, despite Toronto public health’s best efforts, the COVID vaccine likely won’t become mandatory in schools and non-medical exemptions for other vaccines won’t be eliminated. And so Toronto Public Health, I think, is focusing on ways to reach out to parents in specific schools, to be able to, you know, convince them that the vaccine is is worth it, and is, you know, a safe and healthy solution. But that will depend on the uptake that we’re seeing at these schools over the next you know, a few months or a year.
Jordan
It’ll be a really interesting thing to watch and Inori thank you so much for this.
Inori Roy
Thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it.
Jordan
Inori Roy writing for the local. That was the big story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca Find us on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPN and talk to us anytime via email,click here!] You can also find This podcast in your favorite podcast player, Apple or Google or Stitcher or Spotify or Pocket Cast or overcast or good pods or whatever you want, but when you do find it, make sure to leave a rating leave a review. And as always, tell your friends. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow
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