Should the Federal Government create a national curriculum and national tests?
- Thread starter Machjo
- Start date
The only things I've ever found "wrong" about you is your combative nature and your propensity for putting down people who don't agree with you. Similarities? 1. Institutions of learning 2. Religion based 3. Catholic involvement - I've never stated that I don't have things to learn about the matter, but yet when I do ask a question you call me an idiot. I've never stepped inside either of the schools so would it be unusual not to have all the answers. What's the f**king use of forums if they can't be a learning medium?
Its really pushing it to call the residential schools "institutions of learning".
The Sepetate school system is not "based" on religion any more than the Public schools.
There was also Anglican, United, and federal involvement in the residential schools.
Putting the Sepetate school system into the same category as the residential is asinine in the extreme.
I have no problem with ANY faith as I think it's entirely up to the individual what he wants to believe. Now as far as the residential schools are concerned I have a few questions. Maybe I've been only hearing the bad side of the news mainly to do with pedophilia and depriving them of their language and culture.............to the point where it would seem that EVERY residential school was like that. Sure there must have been some school where the nuns and teachers were kindly folks who had the kids' best interests at heart. I know the bad is pretty bad, but I can't believe it was all bad. Or was it?
I think Gerry confuses being uninformed with being ignorant. Huge difference!
Why would ONLY a complete moron tie the two together? Could not an uninformed person tie the two together?
I'd read "They Came for the Children", a PDF book available on the Commission's website. That book confirms that indeed many of the teachers were good teachers. The problem was at the top. It was official government policy to destroy the indigenous cultures. Schools were intentionally built away from home to separate children from their parents. Resistance entailed imprisonment and other punishments. Schools were underfunded with little oversite. Even then there were voices of resistance, and the government sometimes expressed its concerns to the Church, but neither did anything about it. Both wete well aware of the problems in the aystem, including the much higher than normal death rates. In the 60s when the Government wanted to take over from the Churches, the Churches resisted. The problem was not necessarily with individual teachers, but with the system itself.
Also, it's no co-incidence the the Churches in the separate school system were the same ones in the residential school system. Canada perceived itself to be a "Christian" state, so education should be Chriatian.
My beef with the separate school system has nothing to do with the residential school system. It has to do the UNHCHR's conclusions in the case Waldman v. Canada that the separate school system is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. How can Canada promote international human rights abroad while ignoring them in its own Constitution?
There is in fact a weak historical relationship between them. The fact that the Government perceived Canada to be a "Christian" country meant that the Government chose to give a special status to Catholic and Protestant schools (there were no public secular schools at the time, and the Catholic concession was due to the French-Canadian situation). After Confederation, it only made sense to most in the Government of the time to extend the residential school system to the same religions that were recognized in the separate schools system as part of the same civilized mission. In that sense, they were in fact parallel systems.
History aside, the residential schools system has now been abrogated, so Catholic involvement in that system is now irrelevant to the question of the present separate schools system. International law is though.
As for it not being based on religion, what might it be based on? Book I of the B&B Commission Report draws a parallel between the separate schools system and official bilingualism, essentially presenting official bilingualism as a extension of the principle of "two founding races" which it defines as "Canadians of British and French origin." According to the Commission's rationale, just as separate Protestant and Catholic schools guaranteed the right of members of the "two founding races" to have their own schools at the time, the introduction of English-speaking Irish Catholic immigrants and the conversion of some French Canadians to Protestantism meant that a religious division no longer sufficed by the 1960's, and that's when official bilingualism came in with separate English and French medium schools too.
If we follow that line of reasoning, then we could argue that the separate schools system had more to do with ethnicity than religion. Historically, many French Canadians perceived the Catholic Faith as the guarantor of the French language, hick was likely the primary motivation for a separate Catholic school system historically.
Just to clarify though, a national curriculum and testing system could not abrogate provincial separate school systems without amending the Constitution.
Additionally, a national curriculum could focus on broad principles rather than details so as to make it adaptable to local needs.
Additionally, a national curriculum could focus on broad principles rather than details so as to make it adaptable to local needs.