Residential Schools: A Century of Cultural Genocide
60% - Roman Catholic
25% - Anglican
15% - United and Presbyterian
The four churches that ran residential schools were the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, the United, and the Presbyterian Church. The following graph/chart represents the proportion of schools ran by each church as they were at the peak number of these schools. In a typical facility, nuns were teachers, and priests had higher positions, such as principals.
The Churches
In the schools, education was minimal. Education focused on religion, perhaps because the goal of the schools was to assimilate the children. Children were strongly influenced to think that their native cultures are savage, and uncivilized. The teachers taught similar subjects to children of all ages, so progression was difficult. Furthermore, children were not allowed to speak their own languages in school. This aspect made learning progressively difficult for them. There also existed a fear among high officials that the children would grow up and take too many white Canadians' jobs. However hypocritical this sounds to the promised goal of allowing First Nations to exist in Euro-Canadian culture as similar individuals, it was existent. This is perhaps why education was so minimal, teaching manual labor skills, (intuitively), by making the children work on site. Seemingly, it led to difficulties later in the graduates' lives.
These children are being punished, by an equivalent of writing lines. They may have not done well in the lessons, or spoken in their own language. Most disciplinary actions were very strict.
These children have the job of baking for the school. Others may cook, still others clean, and the remainder would not be left unbusy.
This picture of Thomas Moore (1874) exemplifies the purpose behind the residential schools as clearly as possible.
These children are being punished, by an equivalent of writing lines. They may have not done well in the lessons, or spoken in their own language. Most disciplinary actions were very strict.
Schools were ran very military-style, disallowing spoken Indigenous language, and punishing disobedience with the strap
Children were disallowed to have a sense of self.