The Negative Effects Of Residential Schools

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The truth about Residential Schools For most of us we don’t know what happened behind the doors of residential schools. You will soon come to find out exactly what happened at these schools, who attended, how many attended and such. There were very many negative effects of theses schools and not so many positives. Also a lot of abuse and violence occurred at these schools. The time of residential schools was a very sad time. A residential school refers to a school system set up by the Canadian government and was administered by christian churches.There were two primary objectives that the government tried to do with these residential schools. They were to remove and isolate children. Over all about 150,000 First Nations attended theses schools.…show more content…
All of these effects were very traumatizing to these children between the ages of 4 and 16. The main purpose was to take away the children’s culture from them, The residential school system was a formalized government campaign to "take the Indian out of the child," this alone was a huge negative affect one them. The kids would be punished for speaking there first language or practicing there culture. These residential schools worked on a half day system. Students spent half the day in the class room and the other half of the day working. This half day system was made to operate the schools inexpensively. The boys and the girls at the school were kept separate and even siblings were kept separate causing family to lose bonds. Being taken away from there family’s was one thing but to not be able to interact with there sibling at the same school is another thing. Most of the residential schools had very poor conditions. The food was often rotten or the lefts overs that the priest and nuns did not want. A form of punishment was to put the children on a water and bread diet. These children were being treated as if they were in prison. Many schools failed to meet the basic standards of…show more content…
The abuse came in all forms from mental, sexual, and physical. As many as 6,000 children died in these residential schools. Some students committed suicide because of the abuse they were facing or because the life after residential school that they would struggle with. Others perished in fires, others died as runaways and ended up freezing to death or overcrowding in the schools was a huge problem. The mental abuse was caused by separation from there family also traumatic experiences led to mental abuse and causing Psychological disorders. Many of the children at the residential schools were subjected to sexual abuse, children were frequently assaulted, raped, or threatened by staff or by other students. Usually there was nothing done about it, this was devastating for the victims. Most of the times other children knew what was happening, and if they tried to speak up about it they would end up getting punished. The major abuse factor was physical abuse, physical abused occurred several times daily. Any one on the staff usually would abuse the children. They could be punished for speaking there language not following rules, not participating in class. These punishment were usually a beating or strapping. Other punishments consist of sexual abuse, forced eating of rotten food, repeatedly being hit to the face by a priest of nun, or being deprived of water and
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