Schooling in Western Canada, 1870–1923: An Anti-racist Interpretation

Abstract

This essay is about the history of schooling in Western Canada for Indigenous people, non-British and non-English-speaking White settlers, and Chinese Canadians and Japanese Canadians. It brings their different schooling experiences into conversation with one another using an anti-racist approach to history. Different racisms, the essay argues, determined the different policies governments used to school these groups in Western Canada, which contributed to different racializations of the groups. Yet Indigenous people, non-British and non-English-speaking White settlers, and Chinese Canadians and Japanese Canadians believed schooling was the best chance the next generation had to access skills and knowledge that would help them adapt to Canada, a society they recognized treated their children as inferior. Racist school policies at many times obstructed their access to schooling and the opportunities it provided. Policies also circumscribed to different degrees their chances to protect their languages and cultures in schools. An anti-racist history of this topic exposes racial inequalities at the heart of settler societies, and schooling, at a critical juncture in their development. Anti-racist histories also help teachers, teacher education students, and the public to understand that racisms are plural; how racialization occurs and confers privileges and disadvantages in the past and present; and Canadians are treaty people with obligations, particularly in education. This history helps us to unpack our racist and colonial baggage and to see better the journey ahead to a different and just educational future.