Some Initial Observations about Egerton Ryerson’s Significant Involvement in the Establishment and Design of Residential Schools.

 

  • In his role as Ontario’s Chief Superintendent of schools, Ryerson was asked by the department of Indian Affairs to make recommendations on how best to establish and conduct “Industrial Schools for the benefit of the aboriginal Indian tribes.” (p. 73) He complied with this request in 1847.
  • For non-Aboriginal children Ryerson advocated non-sectarian, publicly funded, day schools.
  • For Aboriginal children he argued the opposite. He recommended:

 

  1. That the schools be boarding schools -  away from parents and communities and away from White society too.
  2. That the schools be religious – for White kids he argued for secular education. He didn’t want religious interference in public educational institutions. On the other hand Aboriginal children had to “feel” the religion. In the report he states that: “it is a fact established by numerous experiments (he does not name those experiments), that the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings.”
  3. That the purpose of the schools with respect to secular learning, unlike schools for poor White kids in which learning is the end goal, is to make industrious farmers. “Learning be provided for and pursued only so far as it will contribute to that end.”
  4. That “Indian youth” only be trained in agriculture because training them in any kind of trade would cost too much money, management of schools would prove difficult and “attended with perplexing embarrassments”, and there would not be enough jobs to go around.
  5. Since he deemed agriculture as the “most suitable employment of the civilized Indian”, he also recommended that in preparation to become farmers the children be forced to work 8 to 12 hour days (with lessons taking an additional 2 to 4 hours a day), unlike for the poor White kids who should only work 3 to 4 hours per day.
  6. That the language of instruction be English only.
  7. That the students not be permitted to speak their one languages.
  8. That Indian Schooling be a cooperative arrangement between the churches and federal government – the churches would administer the training and the government would mandate attendance. For White kids he recommended that it be provincial governed with no interference from any church.

 

  • In short Egerton Ryerson recommended and advocated the very thing that made the Residential School system as devastating as it was – the church/federal government collaboration.
  • Loss of language, incarceration and religious indoctrination were also key ingredients in the havoc wreaked by residential schools. This too was Ryerson’s brainchild.
  • That he was the superintendent of schools and a highly respected expert on education ensured that his recommendations would be taken seriously.