Residential Schools vs British Boarding Schools
According to history books, Britain brought civilization to the colonies. Canada was one of them. The modus operandi (MO) was cancel culture. Replace indigenous knowledge in Africa, Asia and the Pacific with English knowledge.
It was not even knowledge, but a class system related to the British royal family. It was perpetuated through boarding schools for earls, dukes, duchesses, princes and princesses. That education changed in the colonies. The boarding school system was major surgery to make students speak, look and act white.
Residential schools in Canada should be seen in that context. Here is how they differ from British boarding schools.
BRITISH BOARDING SCHOOLS | CANADA RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS |
Subjects were in English, the mother tongue. | Aboriginal kids forced to recite the bible to teach them English. They were punished if they spoke Cree, Ojibwe and other languages. |
Elite kids were taught law of contract, privacy, property and freedom of movement. | Aboriginal people were ruled by the Indian Act, which forced kids to go to school. |
History was the might of the Royal navy, Air Force and “the sun never sets in the British Empire.” | Aboriginal kids learned about how their ancestors were barbarians who did not live in houses and wear clothes. History was how British explorers ‘civilized’ them. |
Kids, parents, grandparents attended same schools. Parents donated money and influenced school policy. | Aboriginal parents did not know where schools were. |
School life was an extension of being British and royal. They played cricket, polo, fencing and took part in boat races. | School life was foreign, the language foreign, food foreign and dormitories that looked like army barracks, were foreign. |
Kids paid allegiance to their king, the British king. | Kids memorized allegiance to British kings and the queen. |
The British elite kept their hair. | They cut the hair of aboriginal kids. |
Parents were confident their kids were safe. | Some Roman Catholic priests sexually abused aboriginal kids. |
Same education system, the boarding school, but used differently in Britain ‘the mother country’ and British possessions like Canada. Colonization defined what a child was. White children were children. Kids of conquered lands were possessions of the Indian Act in Canada and the Native Act in other parts of the British Empire.
Every Child Matters, is the cry of Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang
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