Boarding School and Colonization

In “The Man on the Bandstand at Carlise Indian Industrial School”, Jacquelin Fear-Segal wrote the-man-on-the-bandstand’s physical and mental influence on students. Built on the center of the school, bandstand functioned as the place for visual and auditory surveillance. The information gotten from the bandstand was shared in public using “Indian Helper”, a weekly news paper published in school. “Indian Helper” took a role not only placing children on “public display” (102) by recording children’s everyday life, but also targeting children as main readers so that man on the bandstand can show that children are always under strict surveillance system. It was surprising for me that the school constructed a system which was similar to prison. Bandstand was created in order to make “both [prisoners and Indian students]… [imbibe] a new morality… Indian students, like prisoners, were required to participate in the process of their own correction and consciously reject their previous lifestyle and behavior” (109).
Teachers in the Carlise Indian Industrial School, colonizers, and the teachers in City Spring don’t regard students as an individual who has one’s own will, own thoughts, own culture, own tradition. Students are merely subjects to “demonstrate the success of the educational experiment“ (102).
It is always this structure…oppressors and the oppressed…prevailing in American history and society. What are the students deprived of under this kind of structure? They are deprived of dignity, freedom, culture, tradition, creativity, value…everything.