Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Because they didn't have schools in the middle of nowhere back when the residential school system was set up.
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.
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.
|
That's not really true. My parents grew up in Montreal and were students in the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. They apparently said the lord's prayer first thing in the morning and that was it - no priests or nuns.