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Jerry Paquette and Gerald Fallon. First Nations Education Policy in Canada: Progress or Gridlock? Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 464 pp. Preface. Notes. References. Index. $39.95 sc. $85.00 he.
In 1986, Jerry Paquette observed that, "Not only have 'simple' solutions to narrow problem definitions in the Canadian aboriginal education arena tended to produce outcomes totally unintended by their architects, such policies have also generated outcomes that have been much less than helpful for Canada's aboriginal peoples" (Aboriginal Self-Government and Education in Canada, 2). A quarter-century later, in the wake of repeated prodding from parliamentary inquiries, Royal Commission reports, action plans, working groups, and damning indictments by Canada's Auditor General, only limited progress has been made to advance from this unforgiving scenario towards an effectively financed, managed and delivered system of education for First Nations in Canada. These issues are the focus of a sequel of sorts, co-authored by Jerry Paquette and Gerald Fallon. In First Nations Education Policy in Canada; Progress or Gridlock?, the authors outline in stark terms how this bleak landscape has persisted for so long, drawing out lessons which they integrate into a vision to produce a truly representative and functioning system of education for First Nations.
Paquette and Fallon, who have published widely in areas of educational administration and finance and Aboriginal education and governance, draw on their extensive knowledge of how politics and education operate and intersect, inserting into the extensive literature on Aboriginal education in Canada unique insights that take the reader well beyond common litanies of educational problems confronted by Aboriginal communities. Their blunt assessment of the damage inflicted by over three centuries of...