I think Mark makes a significant argument here that you can't decouple the residential schools in Canada from the motivation as to why anyone was making these schools in the first place- for the sake of universal education. There is no way anyone can implement a program of universal education in the nineteenth century that won't basically end up looking like a residential school, when applied to a minority community. Universal education in general creates assimilationist outcomes. It's the whole reason why Irish and Italian as ethnic markers in the United States mostly disappear over the course of the twentieth century.
Where I disagree with Mark somewhat is the idea that you can enforce a universal education standard that won't do this. It's too inherent to the philosophy. Take Xinjiang. There is no way the Chinese government can apply universal education principles there that won't somehow change the local culture. The better question that can be asked is who is most threatened by such changes? But the answers to such questions can prove quite awkward when the answer is just men in strong patriarchal positions of local authority who are abusing that authority to control women's lives, among others, and any program which prioritizes that authority may well be empowering authoritarian elements of that culture that most members of that culture would just as soon be rid of, that they don't consider intrinsic to their cultural identity.
I think Mark makes a significant argument here that you can't decouple the residential schools in Canada from the motivation as to why anyone was making these schools in the first place- for the sake of universal education. There is no way anyone can implement a program of universal education in the nineteenth century that won't basically end up looking like a residential school, when applied to a minority community. Universal education in general creates assimilationist outcomes. It's the whole reason why Irish and Italian as ethnic markers in the United States mostly disappear over the course of the twentieth century.
Where I disagree with Mark somewhat is the idea that you can enforce a universal education standard that won't do this. It's too inherent to the philosophy. Take Xinjiang. There is no way the Chinese government can apply universal education principles there that won't somehow change the local culture. The better question that can be asked is who is most threatened by such changes? But the answers to such questions can prove quite awkward when the answer is just men in strong patriarchal positions of local authority who are abusing that authority to control women's lives, among others, and any program which prioritizes that authority may well be empowering authoritarian elements of that culture that most members of that culture would just as soon be rid of, that they don't consider intrinsic to their cultural identity.