Native Canadian education experience in early Canadian history: The industrial school and its legacy in the residential school - Considering oppression and resistance.

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

10 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

04/27/2009

Category :

Social studies

Sub category :

Educational studies

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Summary :

Introduction
Gresko and the acquisition of Rupert's Land by the new Canadian state
The new educational institutional goals
Grant's Samson metaphor
The idea of assimilation through education
Key long-term impact of the separation of parents
The introduction of public schools
A key problem from the point of view of Native people
McKegney's complex insights and the humanitarian impulses of white people towards Natives
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

This paper will explore native education in British North America, focusing on the structural disadvantages which native children faced in a society whose goal was assimilation of native people to white, Christian values, at the expense of their own cultures and languages. This was a paternalistic system at best, and highly racist and discriminatory at worst. The experience of native children during the colonial period did not improve following Confederation: in fact it worsened, in the establishment first of industrial Schools and then the residential school, which became the dominant education institution. (Barman Hebert and McCaskill, 1986) Both institutions are notable for their philosophy of segregation of native children from other canadians as well as, especially in the residential school, their own families and communities. Struggles by native leaders in the later parts of the 20th century finally are moving to alter Canada's previous misguided educational goals and methodologies for transforming the native peoples of the country into more 'civilized' people. (McKegney, 2007; Stonechild, 2006)In a broad overview of the nature of education of children in pre-contact times David LeJong (1993) writes,
"....every human society has its own means of preparing children for adult participation in that society.