CRITICISM OUT OF CONTEXT

The June 29 opinion piece by Ashley Milbury (“Racist Nova Scotia school curriculum needs to be removed,” June 29) about racist material in the Grade 10 English curriculum interests me because I am a retired teacher.

The question students are required to answer is “list the pros and cons of the residential school system.” As a teacher asking this question, which would be based on reading material from the course, I would expect a correct answer. If, for example, the students had read Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, then the list of cons would be long, with details of all the harm suffered by the students and their families. The correct answer to the list of pros would be that only the Catholic Church benefited from the schools, which were essentially slave-labour camps.

In my experience dealing with the Nova Scotia Department of Education as a sales rep for curriculum companies, I found the curriculum consultants to be very careful choosing reading material for the courses. I’d be very surprised to learn that any racist reading material was used. It seems to me that assignments should not be considered racist. Taking this assignment out of the context of the course, how does Milbury know what is expected from the students?

I’d like to recommend Five Little Indians by Michelle Good to your readers. It is a Scotiabank Giller Prize winning novel that gives great insight into the effects of the residential schools on five different children and their families. Patricia Phelan, Bedford