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For those unaware of the history here, 'Residential School' is a misnomer for what these institutions were. There are plenty of details on Wikipedia [1] for tho

For those unaware of the history here, 'Residential School' is a misnomer for what these institutions were. There are plenty of details on Wikipedia [1] for those seeking more information. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

trutannus 5y ago
Residential school is a coy name for "internment and reeducation camps for children".
- hnuser847 5y ago
  Now for the real eye opener - all compulsory schooling can be described as "internment and reeducation camps for children". Children are taken from their parents, forced to learned a standardized dialect of the dominant language, indoctrinated with myths and ideals that are useful for the state, taught history that's heavily skewed to present the nation in a positive light, and trained that obedience to authority figures is highly desirable. Rulers throughout history have found it useful for their subjects to speak the same language, pray to the same gods, and extoll the same values. The goal of compulsory education has always been to assimilate people into a single culture.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    I think it's pretty disingenuous to compare the residential school system to the compulsory public school system. Yes, the standard school system is skewed towards a positive view of the state in North America (note Germany as a counter-example), but they're summer camps compared to the residential schools. You won't be beaten by a teacher for speaking Arabic if you're Afghan for example.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Cajun-French almost went extinct, and it was illegal for a long time to speak it. Immigrants from all over were forced in school to use English and punished for speaking their ancestors' languages. And physical punishment was pretty standard until recently, and a surprising number of schools still give spankings. There might be things that need to be addressed with residential schools, but Americanizing (Canadianizing?) children and forcing English while banning ancestral language and culture were the norm across the continent.
stavros 5y ago
So more like concentration camps for children?
- hluska 5y ago
  Precisely concentration camps for children. :(
  - stavros 5y ago
    Yay :(
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I wouldn't say precisely concentration camps for children - at least not late-war concentration camps that were focused precisely on eliminating the population. I'm not saying residential schools were good in anyway - I just don't want to minimize just how bad the nazis were... Residential schools were pretty close to the US internment camps of Japanese citizens though.
    - hluska 5y ago
      Okay folks, I've got to put a trigger warning here. This next paragraph is absolutely brutal - it's physical, sexual abuse and infanticide. :( This may be a time when we need a new word. Residential school doesn't quite capture the horror, the unbelievable level of physical and sexual abuse or the endless stories from residential schools across Canada of babies conceived in sexual assault being taken from their mothers and thrown into furnaces. I'd really recommend reading some of the testimony from the survivors. These places were a special form of evil.
    - glangdale 5y ago
      You are conflating "concentration camp" with "extermination/death camp". The modern "concentration camps" were invented by the British during the Boer war.
isoprophlex 5y ago
> The school system was created to remove Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. So... Basically the goal of current Chinese re-education camps, only applied to the indigenous Canadian population? How 'nice' to frame that as a 'school'.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  It wouldn't be farfetched to call these institutions concentration camps for indigenous Canadian children, given that mass graveyards were found. It's not unusual to disguise concentrations camps under euphemistic names such as "Internment Facilities". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > given that mass graveyards were found. They were just graveyards. Nothing "mass" about them. A mass grave is where a backhoe is used to open a giant pit and dump bodies in en masse. These are just individuals dying and graves made for them as needed. Given most of these were run starting in the 1890s and the first-half of the twentieth century, mortality rates were quite high. Reminder: penicillin was only generally available after 1945. Before that, it didn't matter if you were the US President's son, life could be extremely fragile: > The general story is well-known: while playing lawn tennis with his brother on the White House grounds, sixteen-year-old Calvin [Coolidge], Jr. developed a blister atop the third toe of his right foot. Before long, the boy began to feel ill and ran a fever. Signs of a blood infection appeared, but despite doctors’ best efforts, young Calvin, Jr. was dead within a week. * https://coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-of-calvin-jr-s-untimely-death/ https://coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-of-c... A little while ago there was a news article from BC about a former school having 210 graves. People seem to have been shocked that this number was 'high', but it seems that most people didn't do the math: the school ran for over 70 years, and with that many graves, all you need is 3 deaths a year over the decades to get to that number. Given historical child mortality rates, 3 isn't a crazy-high number IMHO: * https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...

trutannus 5y ago

Residential school is a coy name for "internment and reeducation camps for children".

hnuser847 5y ago
Now for the real eye opener - all compulsory schooling can be described as "internment and reeducation camps for children". Children are taken from their parents, forced to learned a standardized dialect of the dominant language, indoctrinated with myths and ideals that are useful for the state, taught history that's heavily skewed to present the nation in a positive light, and trained that obedience to authority figures is highly desirable. Rulers throughout history have found it useful for their subjects to speak the same language, pray to the same gods, and extoll the same values. The goal of compulsory education has always been to assimilate people into a single culture.
- trutannus 5y ago
  I think it's pretty disingenuous to compare the residential school system to the compulsory public school system. Yes, the standard school system is skewed towards a positive view of the state in North America (note Germany as a counter-example), but they're summer camps compared to the residential schools. You won't be beaten by a teacher for speaking Arabic if you're Afghan for example.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Cajun-French almost went extinct, and it was illegal for a long time to speak it. Immigrants from all over were forced in school to use English and punished for speaking their ancestors' languages. And physical punishment was pretty standard until recently, and a surprising number of schools still give spankings. There might be things that need to be addressed with residential schools, but Americanizing (Canadianizing?) children and forcing English while banning ancestral language and culture were the norm across the continent.

stavros 5y ago

So more like concentration camps for children?

hluska 5y ago
Precisely concentration camps for children. :(
- stavros 5y ago
  Yay :(
- munk-a 5y ago
  I wouldn't say precisely concentration camps for children - at least not late-war concentration camps that were focused precisely on eliminating the population. I'm not saying residential schools were good in anyway - I just don't want to minimize just how bad the nazis were... Residential schools were pretty close to the US internment camps of Japanese citizens though.
  - hluska 5y ago
    Okay folks, I've got to put a trigger warning here. This next paragraph is absolutely brutal - it's physical, sexual abuse and infanticide. :( This may be a time when we need a new word. Residential school doesn't quite capture the horror, the unbelievable level of physical and sexual abuse or the endless stories from residential schools across Canada of babies conceived in sexual assault being taken from their mothers and thrown into furnaces. I'd really recommend reading some of the testimony from the survivors. These places were a special form of evil.
  - glangdale 5y ago
    You are conflating "concentration camp" with "extermination/death camp". The modern "concentration camps" were invented by the British during the Boer war.

isoprophlex 5y ago

> The school system was created to remove Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. So... Basically the goal of current Chinese re-education camps, only applied to the indigenous Canadian population? How 'nice' to frame that as a 'school'.

gnulinux 5y ago
It wouldn't be farfetched to call these institutions concentration camps for indigenous Canadian children, given that mass graveyards were found. It's not unusual to disguise concentrations camps under euphemistic names such as "Internment Facilities". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > given that mass graveyards were found. They were just graveyards. Nothing "mass" about them. A mass grave is where a backhoe is used to open a giant pit and dump bodies in en masse. These are just individuals dying and graves made for them as needed. Given most of these were run starting in the 1890s and the first-half of the twentieth century, mortality rates were quite high. Reminder: penicillin was only generally available after 1945. Before that, it didn't matter if you were the US President's son, life could be extremely fragile: > The general story is well-known: while playing lawn tennis with his brother on the White House grounds, sixteen-year-old Calvin [Coolidge], Jr. developed a blister atop the third toe of his right foot. Before long, the boy began to feel ill and ran a fever. Signs of a blood infection appeared, but despite doctors’ best efforts, young Calvin, Jr. was dead within a week. * https://coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-of-calvin-jr-s-untimely-death/ https://coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-medical-context-of-c... A little while ago there was a news article from BC about a former school having 210 graves. People seem to have been shocked that this number was 'high', but it seems that most people didn't do the math: the school ran for over 70 years, and with that many graves, all you need is 3 deaths a year over the decades to get to that number. Given historical child mortality rates, 3 isn't a crazy-high number IMHO: * https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041751/canada-all-time-...