Residential Schools In Canada

Residential schools were religious schools set up by the Canadian government, designed to assimilate Aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian culture of Canada. These schools operated from the 1800 to the early 20th century; the last residential schools closed in 1996, but some continued to operate even after this. Residential schools were mainly funded and operated by the Government of Canada and Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United churches. Children were forcibly removed from their families for extremely long periods of time and were forbidden to acknowledge their Aboriginal heritage, culture, or language (despite not knowing any other). If students were to breaks these, or any of the long lists of rules, they would be severely punished. Not only were they punished for breaking the rules but they were forced to endure …show more content…
Most students only attended classes part-time and worked for the school the rest of the time. Boys worked on maintenance and agriculture, and the girls had more domestic tasks such as cleaning and sewing. The students work was involuntary and unpaid; if they weren’t to work the schools would have not been able to run. Because students spent most of their time working for the school and not actually getting educated, they only had a grade five level of education by the time they were eighteen.

Students were given a new appearance when they arrived at the residential schools which were completely different from what they had previously; their long braided hair was cut short and they were forced to stiff wear uniforms.
Boys and girls were kept completely separate, not even brothers and sisters were allowed to