Education is undergoing great change today!!
And education for Indian people is undergoing even greater change.
The change is badly needed.
Education has not served Indian people well. The case can be made that education has not served Indian people at all.
The long, sad statistical accounting of drop-outs, age-grade deceleration, failing grades, repeating grades, absenteeism, truancy and more recently, vandalism, destruction and sabotage in schools have taken their heavy toll and have cost a horrible price both in human and monetary terms.
At the root of these basic problems is the very basic question: "What is or should be the very purpose of education for Indian people?" From this flow other questions: Is the purpose of education for Indians to develop and maintain their identity as Indians? or is the purpose of education for Indians to integrate and assimilate into the White Canadian society?
"To be Indian, or not be Indian or how much Indian to be, that" to modernize Shakespeare, "is the question".
In the minds of the Church and government officials who controlled Indian education in the past there was no doubt about the answer. The purpose of education was to de-Indianize Indians. This was part and parcel of the taking over of this land by Europeans. Indians have to be wiped out.
If they could not be exterminated physically, they at least could be terminated culturally over a period of time through the process of integration and assimilation.
At first this was done in the name of Christianity and civilization. Presently there are some Indians, me for one, who question the effects of both Christianity and civilization.
In examining the state of both today, we are left to wonder just how one relates to the other, and how benficial either has been to Indian people.
At one time in the very recent past, both church and government officials who controlled Indian education operated on the following beliefs and assumptions:
- Indians are uneducable
- Indians have limited intelligence
- Indians are slow learners by nature
- Indians have limited capability
- Indians are inherently lazy
- Indians are unreliable
- Indians are irresponsible
- Indians are untrustworthy
- Indians are dirty
- Indians have no morals or ethics
These beliefs and assumptions, charitable and civilized as they are, were the basis of the Indian education system.
There are some people in Indian education today, even some Indian people, who still hold these beliefs and assumptions.
Two current examples: one, we hear constantly from people, even Indian people, who say Indians are "not ready" to control and operate their own education systems; two, we know that in provincial schools many Indians are placed in "social" classes, or "special" classes, or "remedial" classes which are all cover-up names for "slow-learners" classes meaning "Indian" classes.
Now it follows that people who hold such beliefs and assumptions will treat Indians in a certain way that limits, prevents and disallows Indians to act and believe in such ways that do not conform to such beliefs and assumptions. Indians who do not conform to these beliefs and assumptions are labelled "exceptions".
The results of such beliefs and assumptions is now well-known; Indian students in schools suffer discouragement, regression, disengagement, incompletion, failure, drop-out.
All in all education for Indians has been labelled "education for failure". But then a curious thing occurs. In examining, studying and analyzing the situation, the question is asked "Why do Indians fail the education system?"