The idea of school segregation seems so distant from where we are today, but looking at this week’s readings we remember that it was not that long ago that it was common and even demanded. Each of this week’s readings display the opposition and difficulties faced by the oppressed minorities the paper focuses on. The educational oppression experienced in the 19th and 20th century is indisputable. Claudette Knight’s paper is written on the experience of those who came to West Canada to escape slavery and/or racism.[1] They, like the Chinese in Stanley’s paper and the black women in Moreau’s paper, faced a lot of resistance while trying to attend or have their children attend the public schools. In their desire to be educated and educate their children, separate schools were opened by women in their own homes to educate the children.[2] Similarly, the Chinese parents resisted the segregation being forced on the children by having them strike.[3] The Chinese community also resisted the segregation by using and promoting literacy in written Chinese.[4] The last paper, by Moreau, I found most interesting. Like Knight’s paper, it focuses on the educational oppression of black people, specifically black women. What I liked best about Moreau’s paper was that she actually conducted interviews with women who were part of the oppression.[5] These three papers share the same ideas of oppression and resistance by minorities. They knew what they wanted and they took what they believed to be the necessary steps to try and achieve their goals.
References
Knight, Claudette. “Black Parents Speak: Education in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada West.” in Sara Burke and Patrice Mileweski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 225-237.
Moreau, Bernice. “Black Nova Scotian Women’s Experience of Educational Violence in the Early 1900s: A Case of Colour Contusion.” Dalhousie Review 77, no. 2 (1977): 179-206.
Stanley, Timothy J.. “White Supremacy, Whinese Schooling, and School Segregation in Victoria: The Case of the Chinese Students’ Strike, 1922-1923.” in Sara Burke and Patrice Mileweski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 237-252
Citations
[1] Claudette Knight, “Black Parents Speak: Education in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada West,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Mileweski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 229.
[2] Knight, “Black Parents Speak,” 228.
[3] Timothy J. Stanley, “White Supremacy, Whinese Schooling, and School Segregation in Victoria: The Case of the Chinese Students’ Strike, 1922-1923,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Mileweski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 238.
[4] Stanley, “White Supremacy,” 244.
[5] Bernice Moreau, “Black Nova Scotian Women’s Experience of Educational Violence in the Early 1900s: A Case of Colour Contusion,” Dalhousie Review 77, no. 2 (1977): 182.