Half-Day System and the Exploitation of Student Labour

Egerton Ryerson believed that the half-day system was necessary for the success of the students in their assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. This belief was based on the colonial notion that "in the case of the Indian ' nothing can be done to improve and elevate his character and condition without the aid of religious feeling,'" and therefore ‘learning’ manual labour was the only way in which students would be able to contribute to Euro-Canadian society. Unanimously, reports from across the country consistently noted that the labour portion of the half-day system often took precedence and overlapped with the student’s academic studies. Students were forced to complete arduous labour at the benefit of the schools and their faculties. The exploitation of student labour was justified as being vocational training, an integral element in Ottawa's goals for the Residential School system. Solomon Johnston, a former student of an industrial school in Saskatchewan claims "the teachers only taught us enough so that we could just begin to read. The older girls taught us in the evening but during the day we cut wood, picked stones - all the worst jobs. We didn't learn anything."