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Use some basic reasoning: * Many people are shocked and surprised by these findings * They are sympathetic to aboriginal causes and not sticking their fingers
by graeme 5y ago
Use some basic reasoning:
* Many people are shocked and surprised by these findings
* They are sympathetic to aboriginal causes and not sticking their fingers in their ears. They were not trying to avoid it
You are in the educated set (university), work for the government, and are commenting on a text based forum so you probably easily consume and retain text based information. You also had a school that taught death stats specifically (mine didn’t) and are young enough that these stats were known at the time the curriculum was formed.
If most people were like you, these findings would not be headline news. The fact that the finding are surprising sympathetic people should indicate that you’re not the majority.
And it is not fair to people to say they “choose” to remain ignorant because they didn’t pay close attention and integrate statistics at the time the truth and reconciliation report was released.
Do you have no gaps in your knowledge? In particular outside of bookish, text based knowledge, which you are surely top 1% in.
- defaultname 5y ago"Use some basic reasoning" It is impossible to be Canadian without having been thoroughly exposed to the realities of the residential school system. There have been multiple government inquiries. There were reparations paid. There was a truth and reconciliation commission. This is not at all new news. But it's being presented as new news making people think this is some new discovery, as if unknown murder pits have been exposed. As if it's in addition to what everyone already knew about the residential school system. But it isn't. Aside from some exaggerated, unverified numbers, there is literally nothing new in these claims. And it has become essentially a PR vehicle, so it's going to percolate for months to come.
- highstep 5y agofor some perspective, i went to school in ontario from 1986-2004 and never heard a single word about residential school. I think its safe to say that canada is only starting out on this journey of reconciliation. Its going to take decades of work and focus to right these wrongs.
- graeme 5y agoI certainly agree none of this is news per se. I disagree that most people know about it. I think most people were aware on some level of what residential schools were and had an opinion that bad stuff happened there. I do not think most people knew there was high levels of death. Even though that was quite clear from the report. The other key thing is social media was not big in the era of the truth and reconciliation report. You could easily tune out the details or take it in passively. But finding the graves now, in 2021, allows for virality.
- stevenhuang 5y agoFor what it's worth, elementary schools in Vancouver, BC were taught about residential schools as part of regular curriculum. I know our classes had it.
- graeme 5y agoYeah but did they teach that up to 40% of children died? My argument was that most knew about the schools but not about death counts.
- voisin 5y agoPresented in school? yes (very quickly) Presented accurately in school? No. Never heard about all the dead children or the abuse. Just this week there was an online course being presented to students in Ontario that was found to require students to list the “positives” of the residential school system. It’s propaganda.
- defaultname 5y ago"It’s propaganda." In reality there was a single class in a single school in BC that had such an assignment. Trying to broadly wash that is propaganda. Tiny, isolated case on the other side of the country. Neat.