Ology of Apology

Hey there, thanks for stopping by! Today I’m going to be talking about a recent project I’ve been working on since the beginning of November.

We recently finished a pretty big project called the Ology of Apology, about 3 arguably unjust events in Canada’s history. We used a skill we’ve been developing for a while called historical perspective. Trying to look at things with the lens of the time to get a better understanding of the motives or causes. We also started developing a new skill called ethical judgement, viewing if events where justified or unjust. Our end goal for this project was to design and then build a memorial for our event (I’ll get into that in a sec) which we presented at our Exhibition. To get to that, we needed to review and develop an answer to the driving question: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered – and not repeated – today?” Here are the milestones we made two answer this.

The Chinese Head Tax

The Chinese head tax was a tax law placed over Chinese immigrants in and coming into Canada. I (along with some other classmates) where tasked with researching this part of Canadian history and find evidence of what it was like. We compiled our research into a chart, where we could organize everything and be able to use it efficiently.

While looking at these sources I tried to view them with historical perspective to ensure that I had no biases while making notes or descriptions. With all the primary sources together, I could start on the first Keystone, an interactive slideshow showing the evidence from the event a short summary paragraph and a page with my sources. 

After Keystone 1 was created most of the building knowledge stage of this project was completed so I was able to move onto the next phase, Keystone 2. Within Keystone 2 I was tasked with creating an audio recording about with reasoning to why our topic/event was  justifiable or not. To create this recording we learned about what makes a good apology and looked at specific government apologies for each topic. When writing my script for my audio recording I thought about all the evidence and using ethical judgement to decide wether the Head Tax was unjust or not.

Memorialization

After keystone 2 was completed we moved onto the creation of the final product, a memorial. Semi-surprisingly, this took the least amount of time. Maybe because of our professional Destination Imagination status, good planning or just the simplicity of our structure. I teamed up with my classmates Makenna and Candela to plan and build a modern style memorial to those effected by the Head Tax. In the beginning we struggled to get an idea of what style and shape we wanted our memorial to be, but with some helpful insight from our teacher a couple days in, we where off to the races. We ended up with a super cool looking monument that symbolizes the struggle for Chinese immigrants in the economy as the Canadian government stacks the odds against them.

We showcased this magnificent piece of art at our Winter Exhibition, where we where delighted to talk to many parents and teachers, and answer all their questions. I found this project super cool, and I liked the final product (both the concept and our groups iteration).

Thanks for stopping by, Declan.