“Reconciliation Education”- Part 1

Disharmony and Hostility

Today we bring readers the first in a new series by regular Woke Watch Canada contributor, and Canadian educator, Igor Stravinsky. It will most likely be and 8-part series, based on the outline of the "journey of truth and reconciliation" being promoted by the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). According to Igor, his “motivation for this series is to expose the fact that kids are not being educated about Indigenous history but rather indoctrinated into a narrative which serves the Indigenous grievance industry, not the vast majority of Canadians, neither Indigenous nor non-Indigenous.” -

James Pew

“Reconciliation Education”- Part 1: Disharmony and Hostility

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

Introduction

Most Canadians would agree that we want children to be educated about reconciliation with our Indigenous citizens. But what should that look like? What does reconciliation even mean in this context? To answer that question, we must start with some basic definitions.

What does it mean to educate? 

Dictionaries are not much help when it comes to trying to nail down exactly what education entails. Merriam Webster offers up the principal definition “to provide schooling for” and a secondary “to train by formal instruction and supervised practice especially in a skill, trade, or profession” Dictionary.com suggests “to develop the faculties and powers of (a person) by teaching, instruction, or schooling” or “to qualify by instruction or training for a particular calling, practice, etc.”.

But it is fair to say that most Canadians view education as a means to inculcate students with knowledge and skills within the framework of the broader enlightenment traditions of the West. According to Fred Van Leeuwen of the Royal Academic Society,

The enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries sought to liberate the human mind from dogmas and encourage skepticism, tolerance, and critical thinking. It rejected the blinkers that limit exploration and human development.

This enlightenment view sees education in opposition to indoctrination, which is simply to imbue with doctrine or idea, and this has been its bedrock principle in Western societies for centuries (not that they always lived up to it!). If you ask most Canadians today, they would still support it.  But is this the approach we are taking with regard to Indigenous studies in Canadian schools today? Based on my experience in Ontario, specifically the Peel District School Board, I would say it is not, and I have good reason to believe that the PDSB is not an outlier in this regard, but rather is typical.

What is “reconciliation” in the context of Canadian Indigenous-non Indigenous relations?

Dictionaries align pretty well on this one. Merriam Webster suggests that to reconcile is to “to restore to friendship or harmony”, while dictionary.com tells us reconciliation is “the act of coming to an understanding and putting an end to hostility, as when former enemies agree to an amicable truce”. The need for reconciliation with Indigenous people in Canada is thus predicated on the assumption that they have been treated wrongly in the past by non-Indigenous people, resulting in current disharmony and hostility. 

Thus, in schools, an enlightenment-inspired study of Indigenous reconciliation would entail a dispassionate and conscientious analysis of the events that led up to the estrangement between Indigenous people and the rest of us here in Canada. It would start by asking what the conditions are today which are symptomatic of this discord, then go on to determine the root causes of these symptoms. Finally, such a study would consider rational and practical remedies for these symptoms and identify a feasible pathway to reconciliation. 

In this series, I will attempt to show that the approach being taken in our schools reflects that taken by our political class, and that it is failing in every way to meet the standard outlined above. 

Disharmony and hostility: The need for reconciliation

Canada is a rich and democratic country. It is consistently rated as one of the best in which to live by various authorities based on overall measures such as quality of life. Yet the standard of living for Indigenous people here lags well behind other Canadians. This includes (but is not limited to)

• Higher rates of poverty

• Lower life expectancy

• Lower levels of education

• Higher incidents of serious health problems, physical and mental

• Higher infant mortality

• Higher rates of substance abuse

• Higher rates of all types of violence

• Higher rates of criminality

There is no credible evidence that Indigenous people are in any way intrinsically inclined towards any of the above socioeconomic problems. So the official narrative is that these things are all the result of “colonialism” and various forms of “oppression”. The educational resources made available to school teachers in Canada promote this narrative to the exclusion of any other kind of explanation. They take what is, in fact, a complex situation and present it as a simple case of racism and injustice. 

In this series, I will be demonstrating that this simplistic and dishonest narrative is in fact an obstacle to ameliorating the long list of problems facing Indigenous people, thus the education young people are receiving, far from enabling them as agents of positive change, is setting them up to perpetuate, and even exacerbate these issues moving us ever farther from rather than closer to reconciliation.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Letter to Member of Provincial Parliament

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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2) By making a contribution to the Investigating Wokeism In Canada Initiative, which raises the funds necessary to maintain and expand Woke Watch Canada’s research and investigation into Dysfunctional Canadian School Boards, Education, Indigenous Issues, Free Speech, and other areas of Illiberal Subversion and the Canadian Culture Wars.