Calgary Herald

Residentia­l schools had no positive effects

- DOUG CUTHAND Doug Cuthand is a writer with the Saskatoon StarPhoeni­x.

Every so often, some story surfaces that is so ridiculous I have to dig into it and expose the antiquated and unrealisti­c thinking that still exists.

Last week, a story surfaced in Alberta about a multiple-choice question on an online test provided by the Alberta Distance Learning Centre. The question appeared on a social-studies test.

The question read as follows: “A positive effect of boarding schools was ...” Children were away from home; Children learned to read;

Children were taught manners; Children became civilized.

I don’t know what the correct answer was since none of the multiple-choice answers makes sense, so it behoves me to break each answer down.

First “the children were away from home.” How could that possibly be a positive effect? That was the fundamenta­l sin of the boarding schools. The children were ripped from their parents and sent to an institutio­n away from their homes. In some cases, the home was far away but in others, the children were only a short distance from their parents.

A friend of mine once told me that in the morning he could go to the top floor of the boarding school and see the smoke rising from his parents’ home. He would imagine his parents having their breakfast alone. It filled him with a deep sense of sadness.

The second answer was that the children learned to read, and granted they did, but they only learned to write in English. Back at home, the parents would teach their children to write in Cree syllabics. My grandfathe­r taught my dad so they could keep in touch by sending letters to each other. Syllabics existed in Dene and Anishinaab­e as well, and in some cases, many northern communitie­s had a literacy rate that approached 100 per cent.

The third answer is that the children were taught manners. This presuppose­s that if they had stayed home they wouldn’t have learned any manners. Once again, the powers that be thought only the Euro-Canadian way was the right way. Over the years I have had many friends who either attended a boarding school or stayed home and went to a day school. I have never, ever thought about their lack or abundance of manners. People are who people are.

The final answer is that the children became civilized. This is a loaded answer because “civilized” indicates that the child would move from being a “savage” to a harmless and useful individual who could be trained for a useful skill and leave their pagan past behind. Boarding schools were regarded as one-way streets where the children were to be moulded and shaped to become Christians and graduate as farm hands for the boys and domestics for the girls.

So, while none of the answers is correct, what is the correct answer? What were the positive effects of boarding schools? From the student’s point of view, not much.

Did the boarding schools spread the Christian religions?

Today many reserve churches are empty, and the people have returned to the traditiona­l beliefs and ceremonies. When a religion is forced on people it has shallow roots.

In the end, the boarding schools provided employment for priests, nuns, child supervisor­s, janitors, etc. — who were usually not Indigenous people.

The boarding schools were the start of the Indian industry which would be followed by police, jails, social workers and other social and correction­s services. Many of our people became institutio­nalized and became the fuel that runs the system today. It’s not a positive effect of the boarding-school system, but it was the genesis of an institutio­nalized colonial regime.

Sunday is Orange Shirt Day, when we remember and honour the survivors of the boarding schools. The day is named after Phyllis Jack, a girl from northern British Columbia who attended boarding school. She showed up wearing an orange shirt that the school authoritie­s deemed too bright and cheerful for a school where everyone was to be moulded into useful robots.

She never saw her shirt again, so every Sept. 30 we wear an orange shirt to show our support and remember all the children who lost their zest for life in the repressive boarding schools.

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