Monday, December 20, 2010

A school for Attawapiskat

This blog started as a collection of stories from my first field season in Churchill, continued onto a 2nd field season and now is a bit of a forum for sharing news related to my MSc and the activities of the other Planktoneers. I've come across an article that I wish to share and I feel it is appropriate to use as many channels as possible, hence this posting.

This article is about the Cree community of Attawapiskat and their fight for a new elementary school.

Additional information can also be found here.

We talk a lot about education in my lab and usually we focus on education at the post-secondary level, debating the merits of new methods in undergraduate education and perhaps sometimes lamenting resistance we may face in our departments and from students when confronted with new ideas in teaching. However, we take for granted the base education that has gotten all of us to this post-secondary level; our time spent at the elementary and high school levels. However we feel about the education we have received in the past, or the direction we feel the education system is going...we can't deny that many of us have been very fortunate. During the holiday season we often think more about inequality in the world (and rightly so), but let's not forget about similar issues facing people in our own backyard.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Amanda
    I'm so glad you are raising this point on your blog. How can the Canadian Gov't have so much money to give so many other nations in the world and not build schools for our 1st. Nations kids?? I think the Canadian people should be making a HUGE fuss about this and get these schools built. We so often just turn away when we hear of the high suicide rate amongst 1st nations young people instead of taking responsibility for issues of abuse and abandonment that we, through our government, impose on them. Let's get going on this! marion

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Amanda,
    Thanks for that article. I only started really learning about First Nations communities this past semester in Thunder Bay. It's so true, most people (myself included) have no idea of the growing poverty, suicide rate, HIV epidemic, etc happening right in Canada. I saw a film entitled "Third World Canada" that I think you would be interested in, if you haven't heard of it already. Anyway, thanks again for the link. That is a very moving story and an important one to hear.

    ReplyDelete