yesterday was orange shirt day at my 8-year-old's school. she watched videos about how bad the residential schools were, with kids as the protagonists. she came home, & couldn't stop talking about them. Now, I know what you're thinking: jon's set for some reactionary rant. but...

putting aside the films' content, & the need to recognize past sins, this was the 1st time my daughter ever expressed interest in big moral themes taught in school. so that's a plus. (my other kids got turned onto history by other subjs, e.g. WW2. but every kid is different ....)

one reason my daughter was so interested: the films present a simple moral narrative—mimicking the (fictional) stories she knows. Chanie Wenjack stepped into the mental space she's created for Harry vs. Voldemort. all kid films rely on such manichean narratives to some extent...

i'm not sure what the long-term effect of these materials will be. kids rebel against narratives they're taught. and i'm expecting my own kids to come home for thanksgiving in 10 years, & try to shock me with their right-wing historical revisionism. in the meantime, though ...

yes, I'm happy my daughter is getting the spark of historical interest. But she also had difficulty doing some of the moral processing. She knows that, in fiction, it's normal for someone to be "pure evil." but she has no example in her own life of someone who acts like that...

so she kept asking me why christian religious figures in these films—who are presented as either actively evil or at least relentlessly inhumane—would act toward others like ghouls from a novel. Her only (glancing) experiences with observant real-life christians are positive...

there was no way for me to answer her without explaining that, like all dramatizations, this one distorted reality, albeit w/ good intentions. I couldn't explain that without undermining the films' entire message (which I didn't want to do) or using vocab 8 yr olds don't know...

the truth of residential schools is that christians were involved in a misguided project that had horrible results, but which some priests & nuns sincerely believed in. some were good ppl. others weren't, and used the project to sadistic ends. but that's hard to explain ...