Quick Facts
Biography
Christopher M. Spence is a Canadian educator, author, and former Canadian football player. He is the former Director of Education of the Toronto District School Board and former Director of Education of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
Biography
Born in England to Jamaican parents, Spence has lived in Canada since he was three years old and received his early education in Windsor, Ontario. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminology from Simon Fraser University in 1985. A running back, he was drafted by the BC Lions in the third round of the 1985 CFL Draft, but his CFL career was ended in 1988 by an Achilles tendon injury.
Spence received a Bachelor of Education degree from York University, a Master of Education degree from the University of Toronto in 1993 and a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1996.
He became Director of Education for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board on September 1, 2004, and served until July 2009, when he became the Director of Education for the Toronto District School Board.
On January 9, 2013, Spence apologized for plagiarizing several passages in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Toronto Star on extracurricular activities. The plagiarism was verified by the Star's public editor. Among the plagiarized material was this paragraph lifted from a 1989 opinion piece in the New York Times: “We are challenged through sport to use our minds in guiding our bodies through the dimensions of time and space on the field of play. Learning the skills of sport provides opportunity to experience success." On January 10, 2013, Spence tendered his resignation as Director effective immediately after additional incidents of plagiarism in earlier articles and blog entries were uncovered. Passages of his 1996 Ed.D. dissertation were also revealed to have been copied from other sources without attribution; the University of Toronto is investigating the allegations.
On December 20, 2016, the Ministry of Education announced that Spence's teaching license had been revoked as a result of the findings of the investigation. Spence is still subject to an investigation by the University of Toronto in regards to his thesis at OISE.
He is the author of Skin I'm in: Racism, Sports and Education (Fernwood Publishing Company, 2000, ISBN 978-1-55266-017-1) and On Time! On Task! On a Mission! (Fernwood Publishing Company, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55266-094-2).