Toronto school board director’s plagiarism was breach of trust: Editorial
RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR
The Toronto District School Board's trustees Thursday asked Chris Spence to resign his job as director of education.
Being caught out for plagiarism in this way would be bad enough for a student or rank-and-file teacher. The TDSB has policies that set out serious sanctions for plagiarism, including possible suspension from school. For the board’s leader and self-described role model, it’s fatal. Credibility, it has been said, is hard to earn and all too easily squandered. Spence squandered his credibility with the board and the public and broke a fundamental bond of trust.
Spence went a long way in his apology on Wednesday for failing to give credit for several passages in an opinion article for last Sunday’s Star. What he conspicuously omitted, however, was that he had done it before – in at least two previous articles. For the leader of a public institution dedicated to serving education and young people, there’s no recovering from that type of deception.
For Spence himself, it’s a tragedy. The TDSB looked long and hard for a new education director back in 2009 and finally came up with a man who seemed to bring the ideal blend of experience and education, and as a bonus came from right here. He cut his teeth as a teacher in the Jane-Finch area and headed Hamilton’s board before returning to Toronto full of ideas and ambition.
He championed reforms like mentoring programs for boys left behind in the school system, and an Africentric program to give black students a better chance at succeeding in school. But he rubbed many people the wrong way, as Rick Salutin writes on the opposite page, with such showy gestures as a controversial revival-style pep rally for teachers. In the end, though, he turned out to be his own worst enemy.
