On Choosing a Topic

When I think about the research that I have done during my time in university, I realize that much of it focuses on Indigenous issues. Whenever I was given the opportunity to choose a topic, I gravitated towards ones about First Nations people. For this course on childhood and education, it seemed a natural choice to write about residential schools. What I did not realize was how difficult it would be. It was difficult not only because of the subject matter but because it was hard to narrow the topic down. The schools ran for over one hundred years, with the last school closing in 1996. Once I thought I had my topic narrowed down, I kept reading. I was looking for sources that would help me answer the questions I had. What I found after reading through a few chapters from several different books was that I would not find many testimonies from Survivors that had good classroom experiences at residential school and also received good grades. The children who were sent or taken to residential school did not speak English when they arrived, which meant that most of their time spent there would be about learning the language and unlearning their first language. I had to find a new approach to this topic and it was becoming clear that the majority of Survivors did poorly at these schools, which was by no means their own fault. They had to learn a new language and endured severe punishment when they made a mistake in class or spoke their Native language in or out of the classroom. Instead of writing about academic success in residential school, I decided to write about the residential school experience and how some Survivors succeeded after residential school.

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