If you don’t first succeed…

For too many of us, a proposal to create a boarding school for Aboriginal students is like the return of a bad dream.

Educator Harvey McCue (aka Waubageshig), who once worked for the Cree School Board, spoke of the proposal recently on the CBC program The 180, saying a new type of boarding school might be the best hope for Aboriginal children and youth.

“A lot of boys and girls in the elementary and secondary school levels would be removed from what I describe as a toxic environment of overcrowding, poor nutrition, presence of alcohol and drugs, the threat of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and put into warm and protective living conditions where proper nutrition and less overcrowding and in particular staffed by individuals who would care and protect these kids,” said McCue.

In the US, McCue says, the Bureau of Indian Affairs runs over 30 boarding schools and the Navaho Nation alone has more than a dozen supported by leaders and parents.

Though McCue claims the idea got a “fairly positive” reception, one wouldn’t know it from the comments on the CBC website, where only a tiny minority supported his call. Many listeners were outraged. Some called his boarding schools proposal just a way to rebrand the residential school system to make it more acceptable. Even McCue recognizes his model is based on the residential school system but says with community input and support it could work.

However, even some non-Natives who were forced to attend boarding schools said it has affected their lives to this day even though they weren’t abused. The concentration of children away from their families and culture is not suggested for non-Native communities that face similar problems, however.

Boarding schools are nothing new and continue to this day. Just look at Thunder Bay where from 2000 to 2011 seven First Nations students died while attending school away from their community.

Another question is who and how will they decide what children should be taken away from their families? Is this another way to show Aboriginal people can’t handle their lives, families, communities and future? Do we want private operators to profit from the difficulties some children face?

Perhaps the most telling response to this proposal came from one website commenter, “Is it April 1st already? Is this a joke?”

McCue’s call to save the children is one that we have all heard before, and it is flawed. At best it would be a stopgap solution that would solve nothing in the long run. Instead, we need to address the issues that affect First Nations – the overcrowding, the poor nutrition, abuse, drugs and alcohol and so on. Those deep-rooted problems in many First Nations were nourished and flourished as a result of the residential school system. Giving it a new name and a few changes would not change anything for the better.

The answer is to properly fund and manage our own education systems, in our communities, while facing our social problems head-on with adequate resources to do so.