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Originally Posted by opendoor
Why couldn't they be educated in their communities like most other Canadian students?
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Because they didn't have schools in the middle of nowhere back when the residential school system was set up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
Why was an involuntary boarding school model the only alternative to illiteracy? The answer isn't because such things weren't possible; obviously the children of white settlers received educations in very remote places.
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Often they didn't. Or they were taught by some random spinster in a barn. That's tough to pull off when nobody in a community has even a high school education.
The apparatus of the modern welfare state was not set up in Canada until the 60s. This country was a very different place before that. There was no secular public school in Quebec, for example, until 1964 - the Catholic church ran all schools. Everyone older than about 60 today in Quebec or Ireland was taught by priests and nuns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
It's because residential and industrial schools were crafted to isolate the students from their families and their culture. This wasn't a side effect, it was by design.
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Yes, it was by design. And that's the tragedy. The people who set up the system believed that children had to assimilate to have any future in Canada. They were wrong. But they were not malicious.