Decolonization, the latest school fad

Warning: High school may not be what you remember

Photo by Kevin Olson on Unsplash

By Jim McMurtry, Ph.D (an award-winning BC educator).

Warning: High school may not be what you remember. One new ministry-approved course is Genocide Studies 12 in which blurry-eyed, distracted teenagers study “the intentional destruction of peoples and their cultures” and how this “can be disrupted and resisted.” Among the “learning standards” for Genocide Studies 12 is “strategies used to commit genocide.” Myself, I believe the emphasis should be on teaching strategies to prevent genocide. Another learning standard is “origins and development of the term genocide,” which is a lesson all federal parliamentarians should sit in on as they twisted the term when they recognized the Indian Residential Schools system as an act of “genocide.”

The goal of the Progressive Left, who have infiltrated our establishments, is to deconstruct western institutions and enlightenment ideals while promoting the independence of Indigenous bands, which were long called tribes and now First Nations, Inuit and Metis. I am not convinced either is a good idea. To those who think our institutions and ideals are bad, I would ask, compared to what? And since “decolonization” means to take the colonies away, where would they go?

With decolonization, nobody is really going to act on the theory, much like land acknowledgements where people aren’t going to give up their house, condo or cottage. What we have instead is a watered-down version of independence, or sovereignty-lite. Indigenous people will get more rights and have more say over land-use decisions, and the non-indigenous will continue to navel gaze about themselves and any colonial ancestors.

Teachers everywhere in Canada are required to decolonize their classroom experiences by including Indigenous perspectives on just about everything. They must teach about a culture that is not their own, know the ways of learning in a preliterate and school-less society, organize field trips to native communities for dances and feasts, incorporate Talking Circles to facilitate communication, purify school grounds through smudging, and make objects in art class like totem poles and dreamcatchers.  

Almost all teachers see value in studying the original habitants of the continent, for their history on this land is most of our history. The point is that it is not easy for a teacher to be an authority on someone else’s culture, and one wonders why we only talk of Indigenous peoples and cultures from long ago, as though they were museum pieces. The curriculum produced by the B.C. Ministry of Education speaks of the “inequities in the relationships of indigenous people with governments in Canada,” which shows that teachers are indeed supposed to talk about native life today, but over sixty percent live in urban areas.

The very assertion of “inequities” in indigenous and crown relations is contentious, for there are advantages as well as disadvantages in government treatment of First Nations, Inuit and Metis, and many non-Indigenous would like to see the Indian Act repealed. As a long-time teacher, it feels right to me to treat all students and their communities with the same regard?

Oddly, the motivation for decolonization is coming from white city liberals who do not have Indigenous people in their neighbourhood and who assume the latter want to go back in time and live without modern conveniences, like Apple phones, rifles and snowmobiles.

Such liberals have a hero in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is known the world over for his performative, virtue-signalling impulses, to say nothing of black face and costumes. Trudeau scores political points with part of the electorate by hoisting himself up on his own petard as a saviour of aggrieved minorities.

Trudeau’s penchant for exploiting the misery of others led him to lower the Canadian flag for almost six months and declare a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation every September 30th after one archeologist reported finding, in late May of 2021, the remains of 215 children in a mass grave in an apple orchard near the long-shuttered Kamloops (Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc) Indian Residential School. The report is now considered by many as apocryphal for no graves were located by ground-penetrating radar – only soil anomalies, possibly from a 1924 sewage bed.

I don’t think anyone seriously believes decolonization is good for society, for the concept is nihilistic. It is certainly misplaced in schools where the 6-syllable term itself would confuse or bore kids to death, even though it does have the body part “colon” in it, in which case an enema is called for. Most taxpayers want instruction that makes children proud of their country. They favour construction not deconstruction.

Canada is not a perfect country, but perfect is the enemy of good. Immigrant children are the first to tell us that they feel lucky to be in Canada. They have made the comparison between their new country and old one.

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Thanks for reading. For a related story read “Land Acknowledgments” In Peel Schools