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Notes -
UPDATE:
a) 4 other people had no orange shirt, and 5 more had shirts of strategically (cowardly!) ambiguous orangeneity.
b) A kid GRIEVOUSLY injured himself in the shop class, which made everyone forget about Orange Shirt Day entirely. Apparently he's fine.
As an aside, I have come to doubt the sincerity of the people who are the public face of this stuff in schools. Twice now I have seen people go all in on this stuff, then 2 years later apply to become principals, fail to become principals, and then set it all aside. I believe I am seeing a third case now. For a day of grim solemnity, the video they used to Educate students was some instragram girl's "Top 5 questions about truth and reconciliation" [it's really called that here] but it was an actually an ad for her online feather-and-bead store. The bathos boggles the mind.
I need advice on what amounts to conduct in the Canadian culture war.
For a little over a hundred years, indigenous (native/Indian/aboriginal) children in Canada attended boarding schools designed to drag them into the modern age. For about 40 of those years (a bit longer, depending on the area), attendance was compulsory, and at all times physical and sexual abuse were at least common, though not universal. A little less than half of all indigenous children who lived during that period attended these schools. 4100 deaths are known to have occurred at these schools, most of them from tuberculosis. While the death rate of the schools was not way higher than the death rate generally, it was higher and most of the children who died in the schools would not have died if they had not attended the schools.
Indigenous people in Canada today are not well integrated into society. Many live on reserves (reservations, if you're American) and these reserves are isolated, sometimes accessible only by air. Almost no economic activity occurs on these reserves, so unemployment is widespread. The reserves are plagued by extreme substance abuse problems, sexual violence, parental neglect, lack of education/credentials and the shame that results from knowing that these problems are much less severe everywhere else. Even people who move away from the reserves are affected by these problems, or from having grown up surrounded by them.
For the past 20 years or so, but especially following the George Floyd affair, there has been a major push by the people who set the cultural tone in Canada to establish that (2) is a direct result of (1), just as in the US there is a great yearning to prove that the problems faced by black Americans are the direct result of slavery. In Canada, this has led to strident narrative-crafting. It is commonly (but mistakenly) accepted that residential schools were a big secret, that children were murdered routinely in them, that attendance was always compulsory and, most recently, that there are hundreds of tiny graves hidden all around Canada concealing the remains of the victims of what all bien-pensants agree was a cultural genocide (Side note: While the culture is definitely damaged, there is much evidence to suggest that it was damaged before the imposition of the residential school policy, but this is a matter of historical debate, and no such debate is currently permitted in Canadian society). These graves are in some cases the confirmed rediscovery of previously marked graves in community cemeteries, but the most cited example is of 215 ground-penetrating radar hits near a former residential school in Kamloops, BC. 2 minutes on Google will explain that GPR cannot find human remains, it can only find disturbances, and that those disturbances must be investigated by excavation. No excavation is happening in Canada because it would be disrespectful to the spirits of the children.
One former residential school student once received a special orange shirt for her first day of school, but this shirt was confiscated by the nuns when she arrived at the school and was made to wear a uniform. Therefore, orange shirts have become/been made a symbol of public regret (in a bizarre inversion of the American culture war they bear the slogan "every child matters"). Regret over what? Formerly, it was regret over the abduction of children by the state, though this was always the policy, but more and more they have become a symbol of regret that the Canadian government literally murdered children and hid their bodies and used residential schools as a way of making this possible.
Ironically, schools are the main institutions pushing the new narrative, in many cases explicitly as a means of correcting the backward thoughts of the students, since they cannot correct the backward thoughts of their parents. This was precisely the rationale for residential schools.
Advice time: I am a teacher. Tomorrow is my school's Orange Shirt Day. I have lived in the fly-in communities I described above. I have seen the mind-boggling material and moral squalor of reserves. I have lived in it. I do not see how anyone wearing an orange shirt will bring about one iota of improvement in the lives of the people I knew Thus, if I were to wear an orange shirt, it would only be to avoid the consequences of being literally the only member of a 60-person staff without one, but these consequences would be entirely social. Canadian teachers are virtually impossible to either reward or punish. I would be something like Havel's Schoolteacher, only worse, because of the much smaller threat.
-I could wear the shirt but inwardly resist acquiescence to the narrative. This is what Havel argues quite convincingly against.
-I could wear the shirt so my friends on the staff are not marred by their association with me, although the consequences would be entirely social.
-I could wear the shirt because, having argued against pretty much every hyper-compassionate wine-mom idea my fellow teachers have, I am now regarded as a mere contrarian, so if I don't have a shirt they'll just roll their eyes and whatever statement I think I'm making will fail.
However, if I were to wear an orange shirt, in addition to just feeling like I took an L, it would also greatly undermine every argument I have made to my students regarding the value and possibility of resisting conformism. I am not so naive as to think that any of this will be remembered a year after they graduate, but day-to-day we all have to look each other in the eye.
Not wearing the shirt incurs only social consequences, but I have been incurring them for years now, and it's getting tiring.
I don't want to wear the shirt, but I also don't want to make a scene, but I also want to be credible to the people I ask to believe me.
Someone talk me into the right course of action here.
Canadian here. I don't quite understand what you're objecting to? You say that certain specific claims about residential schools are false (e.g. 215 kids established as buried in Kamloops). And that (2) isn't fully a result of (1). But I've never been under the impression that wearing an orange shirt implies you think otherwise.
What it does imply is that you think aspects of residential schools (and Canada's historic treatment of indigenous people) were very bad. Do you disagree with this? If so, then wearing an orange shirt would be misleading for sure. Otherwise it might even be valuable to consider whether the suggestion that you're contrarian is on the mark - contrarianism is an easy trap to fall into without realising it. (I've certainly fallen into it.)
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I'm too late to contribute anything on this, but I would just like to request that you post a follow up to this in the new Culture War thread for this week and let us know what choice you made and how it went.
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To give an opposite option: If you really want to go down in flames, find a charity relating to the church burnings that happened in 2021 (there's gotta be one, either generally linked to churches that were burned or specifically trying to repair them). Put that on your shirt.
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Order a custom orange shirt with an appropriate quote from Havel printed on it.
If you signal something, but nobody understands the signal, did you really signal?
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I suggest a pink shirt -- then when people complain about your shirt, you can either pretend to be confused about which propaganda-shirt day it is -- or ask them whether they are bullying you because of the colour of your shirt.
Seriously though, glad to hear there is at least one teacher in the land who's actually thinking this stuff through -- your concerns echo mine.
If you do choose not to wear the shirt, the line I've been emphasizing lately is that there was plenty of real shit around the residential school system that was actually horrible, which has been well known at least since I was in high school in the 80s -- the real problems are cheapened when phony stories are emphasized. (the orange shirts I've seen around here last week mostly had explicit "never forget the 220 children we murdered" type messages on them, so this complaint is not out of place.
Best luck; fight on!
(and let us know how it goes either way, ofc)
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This is the framework I'd start with; you might find it helpful.
There are two distinct but related concepts here--your character and your reputation.
Your character is the objective picture of your moral self. It's the accumulation of all the choices you've made, within the context of each of those choices. You have usually got the best access to what this picture looks like--the shiny spots and the black marks--but there are many varieties of self-deception that can produce a distorted view of yourself, either better or worse than accurate (or both, in different areas).
Your reputation is the socially-constructed external view of your moral self. While your character will constantly provide evidence of itself, contributing to your reputation, there are other factors: others' limited knowledge of you, unearned compliments, malicious rumors, etc. Your reputation may be better or worse than your character, or a mix in different areas, but while you can provide the most reliable evidence of your character through your actions--and therefore influence your reputation--the full social interpretation of your character is not within your control.
I think both are important, and you have some level of moral responsibility to maintain both, though not equally. Your choices are what define you in your character; your public choices have the biggest impact on defining your reputation. That's why compelled speech is so powerful--it affects both. The choice to comply or defy contributes to your character; how your choice is viewed by others contributes to your reputation. Other people don't have direct access to your actual character, either to know it or affect it. Only you can affect it, and your knowledge of it is usually the best available, if imperfect.
So, actual advice--I would start with considering your character. You're the one who has to live with yourself indefinitely; make the choice that will minimize your long-term regret in your own view of yourself. Second, consider how to implement that choice in a way that best preserves your reputation, starting with the people whose views you most value. For myself, I believe I would show up with a non-orange shirt, and if questioned, state that I oppose compelled social signaling, even in a good cause (...without specifying whether I think this is a good cause).
Good luck.
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I always like the approach of, "actually try and do good to solve a real problem, and use the visibility others are creating to signal boost the solutions that you think are productive."
It sounds like it is tomorrow so maybe too late to prepare, but here is one thing:
get a white or grey or black shirt and have printed on it, in big orange block letters, information about organizations you trust and how people can legitimately give to them in some way.
prepare an elevator pitch for what you think are the enduring hardships and difficulties and why the organizations you referenced can actually directly help
people will notice the inversion of your shirt (orange letters on non-orange shirt) and ask about it. Excellent! Deliver your elevator pitch.
This is one way to turn this into an actually productive thing for something you care about, instead of only being performative as you noted. It also demonstrates to your students how to still be mildly contrarian but also productive for a thing you genuinely care about and want to make better.
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It's one day, right?
Just call in sick. The only winning move is not to play.
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It's so strange reading this because when I was in school (in the US) there was never any hint of a compulsory nature to these kinds of thing, which happened often enough (and I often partook).
There was always respect towards people's autonomy and personal feelings, and I never sensed or felt any judgement towards either decision people made.
I'd wear a different shirt for the sole reason of making kids who chose not to feel comfortable. It doesn't even matter what the cause is or how credible. A socially enforce uniform to determine "good person" status is basically an illiberal environment.
I feel like people used to understand this.
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My dad went to two Indian residential schools in his youth (he's white, just grew up in the north). Every now and then I mention it and it kind of breaks people's brains because they never consider it a possibility. Because 1947 was the end of mandatory attendance most of the indigenous people around where I live don't have parents who went to residential schools (or at least my three friends in high school didn't).
Though let me say I never use this as kind of a trump card or whatever. My dad's experience was fairly out of the norm and it doesn't really have any relevance to the years (mostly the 1890s-1910s) where the residential schools were pretty awful for students.
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Do you have a dark yellow shirt or a red-orange shirt with a color ambiguous whether or not it is orange? If I were you I would wear a dark yellow shirt and tell people (truthfully) that it is the closest thing to orange I have in my wardrobe.
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I can't really give you advice from experience: I mostly try to avoid these things by slinking about unnoticed and slipping through cracks. It's worked for me before - from what I have heard, there's an act of fealty I would ordinarily have to perform to satisfy my employer (it's a sort of thing anybody here has probably heard of), but through luck and by keeping a sufficiently low profile, this is a threat I believe I have passed under unnoticed.
I would not do it, but exactly because I'm chicken enough to prepare to slip underneath conflicts like this ahead of time that I think I would be in a not-so-noticeable position. I cannot speak to anything likely to involve confrontation.
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This makes me think, while the bien-pensants proclaim that the state literally perpetrated genocide (regardless of whether it is true or not, they seem to believe it), they usually do not support restricting the abilities of the state to do such things again in any way. Moreover, the same category of people (generally speaking of course, there might be individual exceptions but I suspect if they exist, they are rare) they support things like forced vaccinations, lockdowns, school closures, blocking bank accounts of people who protest the government, widespread speech censorship and punishment for speaking against the government-approved narratives, equating dissent or doubt about the dogma with violence, etc. - all look like the things which while do not compare to a genocide, could be easily deployed to enable one if the government decides to do something like that again. A person with systemic thinking would use the opportunity of the dedicated day - shirt or no shirt - to discuss these things and maybe make the students start thinking about such matters, and may be how it is possible to make a society which would make things like that less like, and how to evaluate government actions with the lens of "can this also be used to oppress people?".
As for the shirt itself, wearing a non-orange shirt saying "this shirt is not orange, ask me why" would be heroic, in my opinion, but I understand not making a scene part. Taking a stand is usually very costly and only rare people can handle it. If you feel it'd be too much for you, just wear the shirt and try to do what you can to make it mean something you'd want to mean instead of meaningless guilt-absolution gesture. I think as a teacher you have a good opportunity to do so.
People's thinking about genocide generally starts and ends with "goodies in charge means no genocide, baddies in charge means genocide". I think the topic of the state infrastructure required to enable genocide will go over their heads.
You're right about lockdown-related state infrastructure also being indicative of what countries could carry out genocide. The infrastructure Canada used to carry out a political and social purge of unvaccinated people could trivially be pointed at ethnic minorities and used for genocide too. And there's certainly something in how China's covid surveillance infrastructure and Uighur surveillance infrastructure are the same infrastructure. But again, I think "If you can do lockdowns, you can also do genocide" is likely to go over people's heads (or, in Canada, mark you as one of the anti-vaxxers to be purged). OP is a teacher at a school, having to impress other teachers at that school, in a society that for the past two years has marked people who dissent on these matters as persona non grata. They'd be more likely to survive just outright ignoring the day than by trying to point out the connections between lockdowns and the oppression of ethnic groups, even if it's likely relevant to why Nunavut had the least stringent vaccine mandate policies.
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Fellow Canadian here. I do not believe you should wear a shirt if you are not comfortable with it. Problem with our society is we kneel on social matters that we do not agree with and stay quiet.If you think to be only person not wearing it would have serious consequences for your work you can either sue them but best middle ground would be to call in sick and not to go on that day. Also remeber that trans teacher with large boobs? I mean he did something outrageous. I dont think you should think too hard on whether wearing an orange shirt or not.
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wear an orange shirt, and put some writing on it that expresses how you feel. Maybe something like "how does this shirt help indigenous people?". You can also put a QR code on it that goes to somewhere to donate money.
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Simple suggestion: is there a charity whose work with indigenous Canadians you respect and think is valuable? If so, make a donation to them - maybe as little as $10. Do not wear the shirt. If anyone asks you, grumble that you feel there's too much performative politics, and instead you chose to mark this day by making a donation, as you think that's far more meaningful.
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I think it comes down to a simple question. What do you value more, minor social consequences at work or your integrity?
I don't personally think wearing the orange shirt is that wrong (just kind of stupid), but it sounds like you do think it's wrong. And it sounds like you're going to face the same social consequences either way, because it sounds like the other staff think poorly of you already. So, maybe wearing this shirt will get you a brief reprieve, but it probably won't change anyone's opinion of you either way. With that in mind, it's really a question of what is more important to you here.
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The pope recently went to Canada to apologize to the indigenous people for the treatment of kids in residential schools. I've been meaning to ask about this but this is a good opportunity. Is there any new discovery that prompted that pope visit? Because last time I've read about this stuff I got the impression that, as you say, these graves were just detected from the surface with some radar but there were no excavations, prompting suspicion that these may not actually be mass graves. Has this changed?
As for the question. I think it depends on how seriously you take this "mission". Because you are going against the mainstream here, if you simply don't wear the shirt, people won't be able to wrap their heads around why. Like are you actually so evil that you support the murder of indigenous children? Remember, most people, including teachers, probably know much less about the details and have read up on it much less than you have. Simply rejecting the narrative and symbolism won't change any minds, it just puts you into the "bad person" category in people's minds. If you want people to understand your resistance, make sure that you explain your rationale (this will be good towards ignorant normies, but it may attract the wrath of the already invested activists). If you don't trust yourself to keep calm and explain your reasoning over and over, then it's probably better to just wear it and shut up. Or maybe wear it but explain your reservations about the whole thing at watercooler conversations etc.
One thing that changed is that there has been an excavation of 33 GPR hits at a former hospital site in Camsell. It turned up zero actual bodies.
But that's probably not what prompted the pope's visit. The the best of my knowledge, no actual human remains have been found yet as a result of the GPR canvassing. Why risk it?
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No, there were no new discoveries to prompt the pope visit. He’s just an octogenarian in poor health who does not speak English(notoriously, unlike JPII who spoke a mid-double digit number of languages and BXVI who spoke all the major European languages plus Latin, pope Francis speaks only Spanish and Italian, both natively, although he can read English and Latin aloud) and relies on one of the oldest and least efficient bureaucracies on earth to do everything for him.
The visit to Canada was controversial within Catholicism in part because the aforementioned inefficient bureaucracy wrote his speech with not totally up to date information.
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No it has not. And per OP:
This means that there will be no excavations, and whoever doubts that these are the graves of children will be called a genocide denier. You may think "well, they've done pretty extensive excavations in other contexts, so why would this particular excavation be verboten?" It's because they know that if they excavated the entire thing would be exposed as a giant fraud.
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My favorite part of Kamloops-gate is that Franz Boaz personally excavated on the school property and discovered lots of old corpses, which he writes were previously buried by the injuns. This is my favorite part because, first, it’s so interesting, second it’s completely ignored, but third it proves that the corpses might not even be TB victims who attended the school — they might have been buried dozens or hundreds of years before the school was founded. Another favorite part is that Indians have a higher rate of severity from TB, explaining most of the high mortality rate in residential schools.
The whole thing was, uh, bullshit. Canadian George Floyd but somehow even worse? It was a psy-ops tier event that ushered in church burnings.
Anyway to answer your question, wear an orange prison jump suit and talk about George Orwell or something.
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The main problem I have with it is the motto for it: "Every Child Maters". That's the attitude that created this mess in the first place! The motto should be something like "Mind your own damn business". But I mean...how do you express that?
Not that I'm not sympathetic to the plight of far-rural communities, right? I think there's a real problem there. But I don't think there's any sort of good solution for it, unfortunately. The best I can do is suggest help for people who want to exit those circumstances...but this is seen as essentially genocide.
(The reason I say far-rural is my understanding that near-rural reservations are doing much better in these regards)
That's a great idea, a blm slogan for the grillpilled. How about "Your life matters" - with the motte being the concept of focusing on fixing personal issues and the bailey being that it is about positivity and opposing the feeling of futility which many people grapple with every day.
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KulakRevolt's reply is solid, but I've a couple things to add:
A shirt speaks to more people than one's words, in a setting like a school (or really, most RL settings). Hundreds of people will see a non-orange shirt in the course of a day, which is more than he'll speak to in person.
He's caught between a rock and hard place re: credibility; if he wears the shirt and complains, he seems like a hypocrite.
(I wouldn't recommend a black or brown shirt, though, as when attention is drawn to shirt colour this is going to wind up with being called a fascist.)
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One wonders how many of the great crimes in history have occured from the efforts of "Team players"
How one does one thing is how one does all things and With the first link the chain is forged.
This is OPs opportunity to either show their students that yes they can insist on being honest to the themselves and others, or no they must constantly lie to both and lead a life of shame.
I'd say OP is \obliged, for the sake of their own virtue, to live honestly EVEN IF IT WOULD COST THEM THEIR JOB.
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
Who you are right now is who you are choosing to be in your brief moment on the stage and who you will be for the rest of eternity as your actions echo down the endless halls of time.
You have a brief 80 years out of millions to make your change to the world... are you really going to spend that one chance you've got speaking another's words, doing another's work, living another's dream?
I guess you're right. I did love the orange prison suit option, though.
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I'm going to be a contrarian (as I expect, in this place) and say just wear the damn shirt. Then tell all those students you taught the value of contrarianism that sometimes you can just put on your football team's jersey even if it doesn't help that team play football.
I do consider it "contrarian" to conform to social pressure and just go with the flow.
After all, in places so contrarian as this, conformity can be the most rebellious act.
I am reminded of the self-justifying politician in In the Loop, who justifies his decision not to resign over an unjust war, so he can keep making things better from the inside: "Isn't the braver thing to not resign?"
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After reading this comment I feel like a star bellied sneetch who must immediately join the line for star removal.
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For your own mental health, I suggest you employ the old trick of flipping a coin, then do whatever option you find yourself hoping for.
That said, I think it is the duty of those who are insulated from formal reprisal for non-conformity to non-conform. You are a teacher; you don't even need to fear being passed up for promotion. Of course, I am assuming you are an upstanding citizen in the non-culture war parts of your life. If you are a callous, uncharitable, self-absorbed, or god-forbid criminal person in other areas, non-conformity will not make you a saint, and I'd prefer you restrain your non-conformist streak, lest other non-conformists be so tarred.
The major price you'll pay is the scorn of peers who have already elliptically disclosed you have a low opinion of, and maybe being pilloried by activist students. Being pilloried with dignity is, likewise, a duty. There will be no reward.
I thought this was a really good comment, except for this bit. Personally I think you are missing the point of non conformity a bit if you are worrying about the reputation of non conformists. Criminality is already associated with non conformity, and it always has been. When you don't have free speech or enfranchisement, non conformity is criminal. Callousness, lack of charity and self absorption are also already associated with non conformity, because many conformists can't understand people who refuse to conform and think "why would I refuse to conform? I would refuse if I was being callous or uncharitable or self absorbed, or if not refusing might get me arrested, so that's what motivates all non conformity".
I disagree with this. Your reputation is important when you are trying to convince others of things, especially in a setting like work with many repeated interactions.
Spend your contrarian points wisely @gog
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During the height of the pandemic, a fairly well-known IDW figure tweeted something to the effect of "To be resistant to hive mind programming, you must either be autistic or an asshole." I agree with a weaker version of her sentiment. I'd say: To be resistant to hive mind programming, you must either be the sort who processes society's rules intellectually, not intuitively, or you must hate society and not find its opinion relevant.
This set of people obviously includes sociopaths, assholes, disagreeable misanthropes, and socially illiterate nitwits. But I don't agree that it's the entire set. Jesus Christ, MLK, and Buddha were in that set. They may have been "criminals" but only in a non-central way.
@gog should boycott if they are a non-central non-conformist. (AKA not criminal, self-absorbed, or an asshole.) That is the only sort of non-conformist who can set a positive example and start a preference cascade towards the end of moral panic. If they are a "central" non-conformist, they should not boycott, but will ignore moral advice in any case.
Yeah, I'm saying non conformists will always be perceived that way by conformists. And sometimes even non conformists it seems. Even though, as you say, Jesus, MLK and Buddha are non conformists, the perception remains.
You will be tarred by association regardless. That doesn't mean you should say 'fuck it, may as well crime it up', but it does mean you should stop caring about being called something by conformists.
Also I assume that you are a good person yeah? You are worried about society and other people's feelings certainly. So if someone called you a sociopath or a misanthrope, you would know they were wrong because you know who you are right? So why would you think they were right about anyone else? Isn't it more likely they are just using the same brush they used to tar you?
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I think you already know what you have to do, and from your other points I think it's what you want to do (otherwise you wouldn't point out that the consequences are only social). But also schools are a very conformist environment, everything about them is built towards that end. Which makes non conformity incredibly strong. Outrageously strong. Once they leave school your students will forget most of what happened, but that's because it is a blur of uniformity - everyone looks the same and does the same thing all day every day, what is there to remember? The instances where something different happened.
If I really wanted to be a dick to my co-workers about it, I would get my hands on a shirt with the indigenous Canadian flag on it. "Are you really going to roll your eyes at the flag? I should hook you up with my racist cousin, he does that all the time."
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Tough call. You might be ignored or you might receive the Bret Weinstein treatment. I don't envy your position.
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Integrity here suggests you don't wear the orange shirt. You've made the argument yourself and if you're looking for validation/affirmation, you now have it. Go forth, and fret no more.
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Bart Simpson T-shirt
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Just don't wear the damn shirt. Doesn't seem very complicated. You already know that you don't want to and the consequences are insignificant either way, so you may as well be true to yourself.
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