Volume 10 Number 2
January 1971

Kirk D. Peterson

One of the major problems in educating students of a culture different from that of the teacher arises in the different values held, often unconsciously, by students and teacher. An example from my own experience with Navajo students is pertinent here: As a new teacher I assumed that my Navajo students would respond in the classroom to questions just as eagerly as I had when in high school. In fact, this happened only with those few students who were fluent already in the use of English and, I assume, less traditional in upbringing. And of course, just as my teachers had done with me, when I had failed to answer satisfactorily, I had gone on to other students until someone came up with a good answer.

The Navajo by Clyde Kluckhohn has contributed a great deal to my understanding of the importance of this value--cooperation--to the Navajo, and of some of the ways in which it is enforced for the ultimate good of the whole group, but often at the expense of the individual.

One way of enforcing cooperation or economic leveling is through witchcraft, a practice generally scoffed at by "educated" Anglos because of our differing cultural and economic backgrounds (though it is not far back to the witchhunts of the early 50s or even Salem), but causing very real problems for some of The People.

Another personal example is pertinent here, I think: During the last year, a student who had an important part in a play could not go through with her performance, though she had done well up to that point, because she claimed she was being witched by her uncle’s family and, during rehearsals, would go into fits in which she thought she was being strangled, actually collapsing with both hands on her neck. She finally did go home where her mother cured her by wrapping her head in a bandage soaked in specially prepared medication. She did reveal later that her family and her uncle’s family had been quarreling and did not get along. Hopefully, this sickness will bring them closer together as sometimes happens when a trial or suffering occurs (see Note 1). But this very different culture and the values it enforces did cause the girl to lose her part in the play, a part that she very much wanted and had worked hard on in addition to her school work. Thus we see that values, practices and beliefs held by the students also limit their effective interaction in Anglo society, beyond the problems with the teacher.

My approach to these problems has been extremely simple and the solutions I have found have been only partial ones, but they do give some start to a beginning teacher towards bridging the cultural gap.

Recognizing cooperation as an important value to the Navajo student has been my first step. Secondly, I have acted on the assumption that this value should be capitalized on and encouraged in the classroom by such methods as group projects. And this reinforcement within the classroom is made even more important by the growing conflict between old and new caused by the rapid acculturation taking place in Navajo society today. The study by Tom Sasaki entitled Fruitland, New Mexico: A Navajo Community in Transition deals with the problems and clash between "long-established local kinship groupings" (see Note 3) and those Navajos who had been uprooted and brought into a different community and, consequently, felt few ties or restraints binding them to local traditional Navajo values. The conflict that results can be somewhat eased and erased, both in the classroom and outside, if the teacher gives the proper structure and emphasis.

This, then, brings us to the problem of bridging the gap: What kinds of individuals do we need in the classroom and how are they to be trained?

I think the most important criterion for choosing a teacher is that he be open-minded. This is the only essential quality that one attempting to bridge cultures must have. The Bureau of Indian Affairs employee I know has a very thorough understanding of the Navajos he works with, and can offer some good ideas and solutions, but he will never really communicate with The People because he is convinced that the sooner Navajos are entirely educated off the reservation, the sooner the "Indian problem" will be solved. Obviously, this is not the answer.

Nor is the answer all-Navajo teachers for Navajos. There are simply not enough educated Navajos available, and many of those who have the necessary education are not interested because of low salaries or other reasons. But even when a Navajo student has climbed the Anglicized ladder of success and becomes a teacher, he has necessarily lost some of the values his students hold and replaced them with those of the Anglos with whom he had to compete for his degree. One Navajo friend of mine had to go back and relearn his language after he received his degree.

There are many small ways in which a teacher may become more effective for his students (Navajo or other), but the starting place must be a sensitive, open-minded individual, one willing to learn and appreciate the problems and beauties of another’s way of living.

The next step in bridging the cultural gap, after the Anglo teacher once becomes aware of the different values held by him and his Navajo students, perhaps after he has been thrown into such a teaching situation and has struggled by trial and error through the first weeks, may be orientation and language training; these can provide important avenues for reaching and understanding Navajo students.

I had the good fortune to visit the Bisti area south of Farmington over the Christmas holiday; a number of my students are from this area. The occasion was a caroling party which traveled to many of the camps in the area. I noticed that each camp had a mud hogan; usually uninhabited as the people generally have stone cabins. I noticed the groupings of the camps, the variation in luxury from dirt floors to wall-to-wall carpeting, the fact that no matter how poor the house, it was neat and tidy, the kerosene lanterns and lack of electricity, the lack of plumbing, the bad roads which I would have called paths, the shyness of the small children, the Christmas decorations in every home. And I met many of the parents of my students, some who could speak no English.

This physical orientation serves in a number of ways to increase the communication between student and teacher: Very simply, I could say that I had been to where they lived and had enjoyed myself, thus showing genuine interest, not just town or classroom curiosity. Meeting parents also gave me more authority, since Navajo students hold great respect for their parents and when the teacher can say he knows them, he gains another measure of control. And lastly, by visiting stone cabins and realizing that 12 children slept there, and seeing babies asleep on the floor or a little girl trying to read by the light of a stove, the teacher begins to understand some of the difficulties a student faces in studying, and also the importance of his family to him.

The next step, beginning to motivate students in the classroom, might now begin--since we are now aware of different values with an emphasis on common values; that is, those held by both the students and the teacher, and there are a number of these: For example, in my home whenever anyone calls, the coffee is put on and cookies or sandwiches are offered to a visitor just as in Hopi or Navajo society where food is offered. Cooperation, as opposed to competition, is the important value that makes survival possible in Navajoland; this value is also recognized by Anglo society as one necessary to world survival today, and thus should be used and reinforced in the classroom. Some good advice on marriage is offered to both Anglo and Navajo cultures in Sun Chief, where we are told, "Whenever a man meets his brother-in-law on the road, it is good practice to praise his farm, even beyond its due, compliment his herd, and perhaps say, ‘I also note that you are a good hunter, for I see a mountain sheep in your wagon’" (see Note 4). And later Sun Chief admonishes us to "be patient" with our wives, and stay on the sun trail (see Note 5). What better advice for any person of any culture?

Another comparison between cultures might be loosely drawn from the Hopi kachina, the Navajo yeibechai and the Anglo Santa Claus: All three are held out to children to be real persons or gods who will reward or punish according to whether or not the child has been behaving himself. And in all three cases, when a child begins to grow up, he is undeceived by his parents, given the mask and must then join the adults.

From an understanding and building on the common ground between the cultures, we can now begin to bring to the surface our differing values--until now unconsciously held -and begin to understand how they are culturally determined (or environmentally determined) and why the differences occur. I think Frank Waters’ description of the initiation of a Pueblo boy into the secrets of the kiva is pertinent here:

Perhaps Mr. Waters is saying that we achieve manhood when we understand why we act, and that this understanding gives us real power to communicate with others. Perhaps the gods Mr. Waters speaks of are comparable to our differing values and beliefs, that we cling to stubbornly because they are a part of our childhood and our security. And perhaps, when we begin to understand why we cling to these - the realization coming when we look with open minds on another way of life - we slip behind the kachina mask and come of age, henceforth true gods among men and able to use this godly power, understanding, "for the common good" (see Note 7).

But there are some real differences: The Navajo insistence that cooperation dominate any competitive spirit that jeopardizes the common good; the lack of motivation to plan far in advance; the belief that a full life is one lived in harmony, especially with nature; the absence of striving to gain great wealth or power, the lack of acquisitiveness so prevalent in our society at large.

And insofar as these differing value orientations affect a Navajo student’s performance in Anglo education system, these differences greatly limit his chances of success: Competition is the key to higher education and the better jobs; since only a part of the graduating high school seniors can be accepted by colleges or universities, those that best compete win acceptance, and Navajo students here tend to fall further behind. The lack of motivation to plan far in advance makes it difficult for a Navajo student to understand that the grades he earns in geography will keep him out of college because of a low cumulative average; and the lack of long-range planning by his parents may make it impossible for him to attend an expensive college, especially if he has many younger brothers and sisters--as many now have--and does not score high enough to win a scholarship. And the constant striving so characteristic of the Protestant ethic, which nags the Anglo into going to night school after he graduates from high school and while he is often working, does not trouble the Navajo youth who, with only a high school diploma, does not realize that in a few years he will not be able to advance, or that he might get bumped by a more qualified person.

But, if we can understand why these values are held, seemingly different yet all commonly human reactions to differing situations, perhaps we can then compromise, and put the truths of both cultures to work for us. In short, we may then learn from each other.

Cooperation, at the expense of competition has enabled the Navajo to survive in an extremely hostile environment; competition for already scarce resources would be wasteful and lead to extinction; in a society with no scientific control of disease, what would it profit a man to amass a huge sheep flock if he were not generous? He might lose all in one cold winter or a sudden hailstorm. "Broneco didn’t like to write future, he thought the day may not come, and he believed that when one plans for future, things always come wrong" (see Note 9). There’s no scientific certainty here. And certainly, in a technologically primitive society, there are no post-grad courses in sheep-herding. How could one plan for the future; what would be the necessity of higher education here?

What, then, do these culturally and environmentally determined differences have to offer the Anglo educator and his educational system? And how can our increased understanding from them be applied to the society at large?

There can be little disagreement that harmony and cooperation are needed in our tension-fraught world today: Harmony with nature is possibly the most important lesson we can learn from the Navajos in an age of threatened extinction of many animals, including man, due to the irresponsible use of chemicals and industrialism in general. Harmony among men is another dire need. And a rapidly shrinking supply of natural resources makes us look to the Navajo reservation, to a people that have survived only by conserving scarce resources.

The Navajo view of time as a continuum, with the past, present and future intimately intertwined, as opposed to our view of separate compartments, may also offer us some valuable advice. Conrad Lorenz and Robert Ardrey have tried to tell us recently that our millions of years of evolutionary habits cannot be instantly molded to industrial super-technology without danger, that we must go slowly and recognize the past in our present acts. Of course, the Navajos have no problem here, for they are secure--traditionally--and recognize the claim of the past on the present. They have not been so hasty as we.

Are not the local parents best able to decide what the needs of their children are? Is not the most important fact of education, the one on which all else rests, a feeling of self-worth in the student, a feeling of confidence and acceptance? Is not identification with one’s culture and past necessary to give one the foundation on which to build a successful life? These are the keys not only to Navajo education, but to all of education and life.

2. Zintz, Miles V., Education Across Cultures, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963), pp. 144-49.

3. Sasaki, Tom T., Fruitland, New Mexico: A Navajo community in Transition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960). p. 10.

4. Simmons, Leo W., ed., Sun Chief, the Autobiography at a Hopi Indian, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), p. 274.

5. Ibid., p. 312.

6. Waters, Frank, Masked Gods, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1950), p. 211.

7. Ibid.

8. Sasaki, p. 176

9. Mitchell, Emerson and T. D. Allen, ed., Miracle Hill, the Story of a Navajo Boy, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), p. 167.

10. Johnson, Broderick, Navajo Education at Rough Rock, (Rough Rock, Arizona: DINE, 1968), p. 109.

11. Ibid.