Stereotypes in schools

by Krystofer Penner | Published 15th September 2012 in Ways of Seeing

The Canadian First Nations population represents just 3 percent of Canadians but 17 percent of the Canadian prison population, which leads Amanda Gebhard to conclude that the Canadian prison system is to this generation of Aboriginal people what the residential school system was to previous generations.

The Canadian school system plays a large part in creating this statistic. While it is assumed that this incarceration rate is because of personal shortcomings, much of it is attributable to the school system. Gebhard argues that the current ideologies that govern schools are complicit in moving young Aboriginals from schools to prisons, and that to begin to change this we must question the aspects of the school system that go unquestioned.