Last night protesters ripped down the statue of Adolphus Egerton Ryerson, the great man who built the educational system in Upper Canada from the ground up.
Ryerson, you see, had the sensible framework for the (excellent) Residential School System:
- denominational (sounds good, the tribal Red Indians needed a well-rounded Christian education)
- boarding-school (again, sounds good: with the reserves spread all over hell's half acre it only made sense to consolidate in a few central locations, making trips back and forth home impossible. Remember too that boarding schools were the education choice for all but the richest of Britons)
- separate (when you consider the problems that integrating them with more dedicated white students causes even today this seems visionary)
- English-only (it made sense not to waste time educating in both English and French, and since the teachers would likely only be able to speak English that would also be the language of instruction. Also, as with any boarding school, "secret" communication in coded languages would be a ridiculously horrible idea, so English-only during non-instructional times as well)
- agricultural oriented (probably the weakest of ideas, Indians were never particularly good farmers as anybody who's seen the land around Hobemma could attest. Still at the time Canada was primarily an agricultural society)
So they hate him...for some reason. He never actually administered any of the Residential Schools: it was 16 years after his death before his writings became incorporated into government documents. Not that it really matters since he could have personally operated the Kamloops school every single day of it's operations and that still wouldn't be a knock against him.
In the meanwhile he also:
- Co-founded the Upper Canada College
- fought to keep the Methodist Church independent of government or Church of England authorities
- Was Chief Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada
- Brought in common textbooks across the education system
- Campaigned for legislation which introduced free public education
- Collected hundreds of works of art
- Served as Founding Editor for the Methodist newspaper The Christian Guardian
Again, the angry losers who tore down his statue in Ontario don't apparently know any of these things. They don't care, they wallow in the same ignorance and tribal savagery that Residential Schools were intended to breed out of the Red Indian. That they have willingly signed onto these despicable traits is a sign that the education system in Ontario as a whole is clearly broken and needs to be reformed and likely privatized.
Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund these whiners who tear down the statue that celebrated a great man who played a huge part in building the successful country they seemingly aren't interested in living in.
