Good intentioned. A good education is and will always be one of the best thing you can give children.
No genocides. Even the upper claimed amount of deaths ~6000 out of 150k. At the start of the program in 1831, the life expectancy in the US was like 35ish, and slowly rose. (no data for Canada)
Poor results. IMO a lot of natives don't agree with my first statement regarding education... so... ?
Lefties insist that RS arose through nothing but evil intentions. That the millions we spent on RS, even in depth of the great recession, was only out of maliciousness. That the priest and educators who devoted their lives to educating these children, did so only because they were sadists.
Educating aboriginals was an impossible and unrewarding task. They spoke 150+ languages, none of which had any form of writing. They were itinerant and isolated so reaching them was expensive. Their cultures were millennia behind the west. Broken homes, alcoholism, and violence were common place. Kids had no role models and no interest in leaning.
Yet, as you say, education was the only solution. What chance would they have if without it, not even speaking English or French? We ought to praise both the educators and the students who learned.
It's really hard to appreciate and try to retcon how things used to be in different eras than our own.
Your comment made me think about the life of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book.
He was born in 1865 to British parents in India. At the age of 5, along with his 3-year-old sister, his parents sent him back to England, as apparently was custom, to live with another couple and go to boarding school.
Apparently he was abused by his foster family for seven years before his mother finally came back from India to pick him up.
And this all was done voluntarily by British aristocrat parents that thought "this was best for him". This had nothing to do with religion or racism or government overreach or genocide.
Children were just valued differently back in the day.
So were residential school good or bad boys?
Good intentioned. A good education is and will always be one of the best thing you can give children.
No genocides. Even the upper claimed amount of deaths ~6000 out of 150k. At the start of the program in 1831, the life expectancy in the US was like 35ish, and slowly rose. (no data for Canada)
Poor results. IMO a lot of natives don't agree with my first statement regarding education... so... ?
Lefties insist that RS arose through nothing but evil intentions. That the millions we spent on RS, even in depth of the great recession, was only out of maliciousness. That the priest and educators who devoted their lives to educating these children, did so only because they were sadists.
Educating aboriginals was an impossible and unrewarding task. They spoke 150+ languages, none of which had any form of writing. They were itinerant and isolated so reaching them was expensive. Their cultures were millennia behind the west. Broken homes, alcoholism, and violence were common place. Kids had no role models and no interest in leaning.
Yet, as you say, education was the only solution. What chance would they have if without it, not even speaking English or French? We ought to praise both the educators and the students who learned.
It's really hard to appreciate and try to retcon how things used to be in different eras than our own.
Your comment made me think about the life of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book.
He was born in 1865 to British parents in India. At the age of 5, along with his 3-year-old sister, his parents sent him back to England, as apparently was custom, to live with another couple and go to boarding school.
Apparently he was abused by his foster family for seven years before his mother finally came back from India to pick him up.
And this all was done voluntarily by British aristocrat parents that thought "this was best for him". This had nothing to do with religion or racism or government overreach or genocide.
Children were just valued differently back in the day.