Residential schools focus of new Grade 9 class

Every Grade 9 student on P.E.I. is now taking a new social studies class that looks at the impact of residential schools on Aboriginal communities.

The new course, Practicing Reconciliation through Education, focuses on both the history and the legacy of Canada's residential school system. Students are being taught how those schools and the Indian Act itself left scars not only on the children who attended, but the generations that followed.

"We wanted to really work the inter-generational impact of Indian residential schools, so it's really just not a history piece," said Bethany Doiron, a curriculum specialist with the Department of Education.

"When you take an issue in current day, like missing and murdered Aboriginal women, you can trace it right back. It's a systemic thing and you can trace it right back to the whole policy of assimilation."

The new 45-minute classes will run every day for six to eight weeks. The course was developed on P.E.I. with the help of the Mi'kmaq Confederacy.

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