The Survivors Speak

Classroom experience
“They used to make an
example of me all the time.”
For many students, classroom life was foreign and traumatic. David Charleson said he
found the regimentation at the Christie, British Columbia, school so disturbing that he
never wanted to learn, so I jumped into my shell. I took Kindergarten twice because
of what happened to me. I didn’t want to learn. I never went home with any a’s, or b’s,
or c’s, and it was all under, under the bad, my baddest part of the book of knowledge.
That’s the way they graded me. That’s what they put in my mind, I’m dumb, stupid,
and they used to make an example of me all the time, ’cause I was one of the bigger
kids in the school. 419
At the Birtle, Manitoba, school, Isabelle Whitford said, she had a hard time adjusting to
the new language and the classroom discipline. “I wasn’t very good in math. I was poor.
And, every time I couldn’t get an answer, like, you know, she would pull my ears and shake
my head. And I couldn’t help it ’cause I couldn’t understand, like, you know, the work.” 420
Betsy Olson described class work at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school as a torment,
in which her “spelling was always 30, 40, it was way down. And when we did spelling,
sometimes I freeze, I couldn’t move, I just scribbled because I couldn’t move my hand.
I can’t remember to spell b, or e, or c. My mind was a blank. I could not bring any letters
out. I just freeze.” 421
Noel Knockwood recalled that he was often frozen with fear in class:
We used to stand up with a reader in our hand and we will be given, each person will
be given a paragraph to read. And when it came my turn I picked up the, the reader
and turned to a page where I was supposed to. And other students took turns reading
their paragraph. And then when it came my turn, I got up and I started to read the
paragraph and I got down a little ways and I come across a word that I could not pronounce
and I stopped, because I could not pronounce the word, I didn’t know what
to say.
[The teacher] had a long wooden pointer, they used to point to the blackboard and
she had it in her hand. And she said, “Read!” And I was very frightened and scared as
a young, young boy. You know, then she took that pointer and pointed it at me and
said, “Read! Read! Read!”
She was shouting at me and I, I couldn’t ’cause I was afraid and she had that pointer,
she came closer, then she took that pointer and I raised my hands and she broke the
pointer over my arms. And in doing so, I dirtied my pants; I shit myself because of