Hi, I’m Leah, and I will be discussing the News Magazine Education Week Video on Residential schools from 1955.
This video, which claims to accurately inform the viewer on the subject of Aboriginal Residential schools, is nothing more than a propaganda video aimed at an audience of white, suburban Canadians to validate their racism.
The video claims that residential schools have a positive impact on the aboriginal children who attend them. Throughout the video, these children are shown playing, learning, and generally having a good time. The voiceover during these video clips excitedly explains how “they not only learn about games and traditions, like the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day, but the mastery of words which will open to them
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They make themselves seem as credible as possible by being a part of “education week” which would have the positive connotations of “education” being a good thing, and that the people at home would assume they are being adequately educated on the subject, because of those explaining the situation, professional educators. They portray the principle as caring (as he “dispenses first aid”) and competent (“among his other duties”). They mention how this is only “one of 69 schools,” insinuating that these schools are so beneficial and effective that they have nearly 70 Canada-wide. The video also mentions the schools being “run by the department of Indian Affairs” which causes people to think that this is something aboriginal people are in favour of, that the experts from this department have decided this is the best thing. They also used their convincing, albeit flawed when examined critically, logic. They show various clips of students learning, as well as discuss how students learn vocabulary which will benefit them later in life, and how they give students scientific explanations for the world around them. This video, however, gets the majority of its weight from the pathos, or appeal to emotion, used. They make the schools sound like a humanitarian effort, a place “[for] orphans, convalescents, people who can’t make it to a daily school.” They show video clips of children being happy and having fun, while the “isolation and neglect of the past” is mentioned, making it seem like now these children are being given a fair and equal chance to “ordinary” Canadian society. The video ends with the line, “For the oldest Canadians, a new future.” This again sounds inspiring, and like these schools are such a kindhearted opportunity given to these people seen as “poor