American Indian Concerns
About Education
In the early United States, the Cherokee
were leaders in formal education
In 1801, the Cherokee Council
allowed the Moravians to
establish a school at
Springplace. In 1803, the
Presbyterians established a
mission school near Tellico.
Sequoyah and the
Cherokee Alphabet
After Removal to Indian
Territory, they established
some of the first schools west
of the Mississippi River.
"Kill the Indian, save the man"
Richard Henry Pratt and off-reservation boarding schools
•Between 1880 and 1900 the Indian Bureau opened
several off reservation schools.
•By 1888, there were 126 boarding and 107 day
schools with an enrollment of more than 10,000
Indian children.
•By 1900, the direction of Indian schooling shifted to
an expanding network of federally supported
schools.
Manual Training
The curriculum in the schools was made
uniform from 1898-1910, with all students taught
certain basic courses like those taught in white
schools, as well as vocational training to
prepare students for reservation life.
Girls were taught domestic science by cooking,
washing, sewing, and cleaning the schools.
Boys were "given instruction in manual training"
while they worked on the school farms raising
food for the school or constructing buildings or
making repairs on them or providing janitorial
services on the school buildings.
Institutional labor was thereby transformed into
vocational training.
In 1922 the Uniform Course of Study was revised to
approximate more closely that given in the public
schools.
Day schools were expanded so that all of them
included six grades, and reservation boarding schools
were made uniform with eight grades.
Nonreservation boarding schools began to offer high
school work as a matter of course.
In 1921 only Haskell Institute in Kansas offered high
school courses, but by 1929 six schools did.
In 1928 almost 90 percent of all Indian children were
enrolled in some school.
About half of these were attending public schools, and
about 10 percent, private and mission schools.
Of those attending schools operated by the BIA, 27
percent were enrolled in reservation and off-reservation
boarding schools and a much smaller percentage in
day schools.
Bad Results Redux
Behind these statistics, education was limited.
A large proportion of the children dropped out of school
early. For those who remained, the education they received
was poor.
The educational level of the day schools was low, but it was
better at the boarding schools where more advanced course
work was offered.
This course work was usually unrelated to the environment
and culture from whence the students came.
Canada? Pretty much the same story.
The Meriam Report
‘The Problem of Indian Administration’
Main Target? BIA Boarding Schools
John Collier
•All the bleak conditions at the boarding
schools came under attack: inadequate
food, overcrowding, poor medical service,
underpaid and ill-suited teachers, and
harsh discipline.
•Many of these conditions resulted from a
stringent budget.
•Others reflected the assimilationist goals.
Read the full report.
See especially Chapter IX on education
Boarding School Problems
A concept of a uniform curriculum was seen as
unrealistic: it ignored local conditions and deliberately
avoided Indian cultures.
The vocational training program had evolved into mere
student labor necessary for the schools to operate.
Where schools did teach vocational training, the trades
were either disappearing from the market or were
taught at levels inadequate to secure a job.
The concept of training for reservation life had never
fulfilled the goals anticipated in 1900.
The problem of the runaway became the symbol of the
failure of the boarding schools.
The tragic stories of children who had died attempting
to return home prompted the conclusion that preadolescent children should attend day schools near
their homes.
Solutions?
The Johnson O'Malley Act of 1934
Will Carson Ryan named director of Indian education for the
BIA in 1930
Ryan attempted to improve training to more rural job-training
geared to the needs of educational conditions by developing
community schools on the reservations, alleviating poor
conditions in boarding schools themselves, and closing
others.
He was responsible for the legislation that simplified the
process by which schools were paid by the federal government
for their Indian students.
The Johnson O'Malley Act of 1934 enabled the states, rather
than the individual school districts, to sign contracts with the
Education Division of the BIA.
Results? Some Good, Some Bad
During the mid-1930s, the bureau offered to Indian youth the
first outside effort in American history to provide schooling
that acknowledged the diversity and significance of native
cultures.
Removed subjects such as algebra, geometry, and ancient
history from the regular course of study and added rug
weaving, silver making, pottery making, and tribal history
Developed bilingual texts for Sioux, Navajo, and Pueblo
children recognizing the need to teach children in their own
language and began one of the earliest programs in the
country for training teachers in the techniques of bilingual
instruction.
The state school systems often used the money for general
programs. As a result, from the 1940s through the early
1970s public schools failed to develop special programs for
Indian students.
Between 1933 and 1941 the enrollment at the community day
schools almost tripled as nearly 100 new schools were
opened.
By 1941 the number of Indian children attending the
community day schools surpassed the enrollment of 14,000
at the 49 boarding schools.
The stringent discipline at some of the boarding schools was
eased and the military routine removed.
Specialized training in arts, animal husbandry, business
On the other hand, financial exigencies forced a continuation
of the practice of student labor to support the schools.
Post World War II Education
•Beatty remained director of education BIA until
1952 and remolded education.
•Success of the Navajo Special Education Program,
which provided basic schooling for 4,300 overage
Navajo students, largely at Intermountain Inter-tribal
School in Brigham City, Utah.
•The goal was to provide in five years the same
education the child would have received in 10 or 12
years had he started school at the usual age.
•The students received vocational training to enable
them to find jobs.
•Hildegard Thompson, director of Indian education
in the BIA 1952-1965, continued the postwar policies
begun by Beatty.
•She accelerated effort to enroll thousands of Indian
children not yet in school including 13,000 Navajos
unaffected by the Navajo Special Education Program
and about 1,000 Native Alaskans, many of whom
were sent to Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma.
Indian Self-Determination in
Education
In the mid-1960s over 90 percent of all
Indian children were enrolled in school.
By the early 1980s those in BIA schools
accounted for only 15 percent of this
number; most of the remaining 85 percent
were in public schools; only a small percent
were in mission school.
Indian schooling had, therefore, witnessed
another major shift-from BIA domination to
that of the public school.
By the mid-1960s the BIA had established
Indian advisory boards for almost all its
schools and begun contracting with Indian
groups to operate their own schools.
A new form of "contract school" had come
into being.
Title 1: A greater Indian voice in Indian schooling.
•The new laws focused on developing the Indian voice in public
school programs funded by the federal government for Indian
children.
•Under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965, Indian children in public school qualified for special
benefits as "children of low-income families."
•This legislation increased the amount of money available to
schools already reimbursed for Indian children through the
"federally impacted area" legislation of the 1950s and the
Johnson-O'Malley Act.
•Of all the public school programs affecting Indian children only
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act had
provided an opportunity for parental involvement and local
control.
•As a result, these special funds, which totaled reservation
about $630 million in 1969 and which Congress intended for
Indian pupils, generally were spent for all the pupils in a school
district.
The Indian Education Act of 1972
• Mandated parental and community participation in
the programs engendered by the impact aid laws.
•Encouraged programs that stressed culturally
relevant and bilingual curriculum materials.
•Established the Office of Indian Education in the
Department of Education
•Created a National Advisory Council on Indian
Education to review applications for grants under
the new act.
The Indian Self-Determination and Education
Assistance Act of 1975 introduced a revolutionary
tactic: it incorporated regulations, drafted by Indian
leaders, that shifted the traditional control of
Johnson-O'Malley programs from public school
districts to Indians by direct contracting with Indian
groups.
Title VII Office of Bilingual Education,
Department of Health and Human Services
•Has grown steadily since 1968.
•In 1976, the Title VII Office funded 27 Indian language programs in
32 schools in 13 states;
•In 1979, 30 Indian language programs in 55 schools in 16 states.
By 1986, the number of projects had grown to 89 in 18 states,
covering 55 Indian languages and 14,384 enrolled Indian students
Restoring Control of Tribal Education