I'd agree in that I believe people are doing the best they can based on what they believe to be true at that moment. More often than not, in retrospect, we discover what we thought was true, wasn't true in its entirety and we can learn from it. It's not like people figure out the best they can do in the moment and then dial it back 20% or so.
Whatever the people that were involved with running the residential school system believed was the right thing to do were wrong. Horribly wrong in many, and probably most, instances. We know that NOW. What is important, IMO, is that we are doing the right thing now based on what we believe to be true now. Inevitably, in the future, we will realize that the right things we do today could have been done better. Learn from it and do better at that time.
I'm not sure there is much benefit in having a debate about whether we believe or dis-believe they were doing the right thing back then.
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