Volume 13 Number 3
May 1974

James R. Parker and Martin Zanger

Jonathan Kozol described the horrors of urban education for Black American children in his classic book, Death at an Early Age, but it remains for someone to apply Kozol’s analysis to the problems of rural Indian education that have proved equally destructive to the hearts and minds of America’s Indian children. Our experiences in coordinating a tutorial project for Winnebago children in Wisconsin convinced us that Kozol’s contentions had broad application. He showed that public schools may not only educate, but that they may also destroy children. Probably only the parents of Native American children can change that tragic and unnecessary result.

In the summer of 1972 we offered a forum open to the public in the history of Indian Americans in order to fill an obvious gap in the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s academic offering. During the course a young Red Cliff Chippewa, Ray De Perry, walked in to listen and ended up speaking to the group. De Perry, now Director of Native American studies at UW-River Falls, told us that some Winnebago parents near Tomah, Wisconsin, desired special tutoring for their children. He said that there would be no financial support for our work. We developed a program in consultation with local parents, a social worker, and a school principal, but we personally selected students from our history classes to volunteer their time. The University agreed to subsidize the cost of transportation. As a result the Bluewing Tutorial Project was born in February, 1973.

The coordinators from Tomah secured space in the Bluewing Community Center located east of Tomah in a Winnebago Housing Project. We began with 12 university tutors and 20 Winnebago children and slowly expanded to 20 tutors and an average of 35 children. Meeting one night a week for 2 1/2 hours, we created a very loose structure which even, occasionally, seemed chaotic. It took its toll of university student tutors because of the many frustrations involved in creating a learning process in the midst of apparent disorganization. And yet that loose, casual structure seemed essential to develop the children’s trust and interest. The result was a series of close, personal relationships between children and university students which was rewarding for both.

Since its inception, the tutorial project has had some problems and a few failures, but it has survived and been successful. We have improved the educational environment with books and supplies which individuals in the La Crosse community contributed. We also received grants from the Roman Catholic Campaign for Human Development for a children’s library and other supplementary materials. The Wisconsin Division of Family Services, which originally had provided a grant to support the Winnebago community co-director of the project and costs of transportation for the children, withdrew its financial support as part of an economy move; but the Winnebago parents filled the gap by voluntarily bringing the children and providing money for the weekly refreshments.

Generally the program has made us face a number of unpleasant truths about the education of Indian children in predominantly white schools in western Wisconsin. First and foremost is the influence of racism, which is taking a horrifying, though often unnoticed toll of Indian children. Overt and active racism is seldom a problem for the children in dealing with their teachers. Usually the form it takes is either a paternalistic "concern" which indicates the teacher’s acceptance of an underlying stereotype of Indian children or a studied pose of objectivity and neutrality toward the child.

For example, we encountered a number of teachers who are liberal and "concerned" about the children. Few children fail to discern this condescending attitude. Another problem teacher is one who aims his or her teaching exclusively toward white children, ignoring the Winnebago child. In both cases the teachers assume that the child will perform more poorly than the whites. This level of expectation may well determine the child’s future because the child frequently performs only up to the expectations, despite the fact that he may well be able to surpass that level. Essentially the teacher is informally tracking the child into a second-rate education and maybe a second-class life.

The most dramatic example, which is one of many, is that of a fourth grade student we will call Bill. Bill is a Winnebago child living in a foster home. His foster family is one which places its highest priority on education and which has attempted to assert this value. Nonetheless, his public school teacher evaluated his mathematical abilities at a second grade level. Mr. Royce Curtis, a computer science professor who began working with Bill, quickly discovered that his math abilities were closer to seventh grade than to second. Within six weeks, Bill could operate a computer terminal and could understand difficult, abstract mathematical concepts. Bill’s poor performance in school presumably resulted from timidity and intimidation stemming from the attitude of his teachers. Even more heartbreaking was Bill’s self-stated ambition. At an age when most children aspire to be outstanding in some area of their special personal interest, Bill's imagination soared to the position of gas station attendant! It became abundantly clear that his teachers either did not know Bill well enough to be aware of his goals, or their expectations for Bill’s future were no greater than his own.

A second case is that of a girl named Jean. A second grader from a broken home, Jean too, is shy and retiring. Her teacher evaluated her reading abilities as second grade level. We discovered that she can read and comprehend fifth grade readers with ease. Additionally she has demonstrated an exceptional retention and memory of detail well beyond the norm. Nonetheless, her teacher considered her no better than average until very recently when she scored in the 87% category on her Iowa Basic Skills Tests.

In yet another case, a fifth grade girl we shall call Ann shows average abilities and enthusiasm for her work. In each subject her work approximates fifth grade level. Yet her Iowa Basic Skills Test average placed her in the 6% group. Moreover, her teacher claims that she does not retain skills. It is abundantly clear that this is an inaccurate evaluation of her ability. Ann, a personable and able little girl, finally confided in her tutor that she could not see well enough to read, but she was reluctant to tell her teacher because that element of trust so essential in the classroom apparently was missing. What surprised us was the fact that the teacher did not probe the difficulty more deeply to determine the cause of the problem.

What is apparent is that the teachers’ levels of expectations help to predetermine these children’s performances in the classroom. The teachers’ toleration of a second-class performance reinforces such a performance. There are obviously other dynamics at work, among them the fact that teachers mirror community attitudes that are fundamentally racist. A hostile white society frequently intimidates Indian children. Taking the children out of their environment and placing them in white schools reflecting white middle-class culture is in itself intimidating. The tutorial program is probably more successful because tutors meet the children in their own environment.

It comes as no surprise that the basic elementary readers which the children use in class contain stereotypes of Indians as savage, lazy, shiftless and cruel. Short stories for third graders justify white brutality in the settlement of the West on the basis of these assumptions. Such stories are frequently laced with condescending and simplistic characterizations of Native American culture and values. Nor is it surprising to learn that most Winnebago children have little interest in their own traditional culture and language. They did not take advantage of the opportunity to learn Winnebago language from one of the older Winnebago men probably because the community has successfully conditioned them to ignore such values.

Even the standardized testing process includes a cultural bias and reflects predominantly white middle-class concerns and values. The importance of the Iowa Basic Skills Tests is often clear to white parents but seldom so for Indian parents. White teachers frequently consider test results as sacred and immutable and the tests may well determine a child’s future without sensitive and intelligent intervention. Yet these tests are not the enemy. At best, they measure the damage already done by a racist environment. Such is the ugly abyss of racism in its more passive and less obvious manifestations.

Many, perhaps most teachers, are fundamentally authoritarian-oriented and victims of their own anxieties and fears. They react to white parental pressures and white school boards. In any case, the teachers share the parents’ cultural biases and are usually attuned to one another on their racial stereotypes. The Winnebago parents are less influential and powerful because issues of survival, not affluence, consume their mental and physical energies. Consequently, they are more passive about the Board of Education. Since they place less pressure on many of the teachers, the teachers apparently feel little compulsion to deal with Indian students in the same way as white students; and lacking that pressure, teachers are not cognizant of the fact that they treat Indian children differently than white children. The teachers’ acquiescence in this kind of education for the Indian child frequently creates quiet little victims unable to cope with the imposing white educational structure.

None of this argument is designed to deny the fact that white children from low-income families often experience many of these same problems as a result of a class bias. The issue of class is in many ways inextricable from the biases associated with race. Yet it seems clear that the fundamental problem of the Indian child in the white community is more appropriately one of racial antagonism. After all account is made of the child’s low-income status, his racial and cultural background further exacerbates the situation.

What is the solution to this nightmare? It is easier first to point out what is not the solution. The average white teachers cannot be relied upon to solve the problem. Their racial prejudices are products of the community environment and few teachers are ever required to confront their attitudes. Teachers will continue in the aggregate to be liberal and paternalistic or passive, both equally destructive. This is not to deny that some teachers are truly sensitive and able. In fact, we have met several who understand the problem and work hard to alleviate differential treatment. It is obvious that there are some who teach the children we tutor, but they must have the courage to challenge their peers and transcend group pressure if they wish to help prevent educational injustice.

Nor can one depend upon the "humane and liberal" academy. The university is an institution which responds to pressure more frequently than justice. For example, our university nominally supports the Bluewing project because it contributes to its "image" of humane concern for minority groups. The University can now afford to provide funding that was scarce when the legislative appropriations did not recognize these imperatives; but the Black and Latino explosions of frustration and anger on several UW System campuses in the sixties compelled the state legislature and the University to begin to redress the legitimate academic grievances of ethnic minorities.

Potentially, the most important product of that explosion was a Wisconsin State Department of Public Instruction directive that required every student seeking a degree in education to take a course in human relations. This course was supposed to sensitize potential teachers to the special problems and cultural differences of non-European ethnic minorities in the school system. Obviously a single course in "humanism" could not be expected to reverse a lifetime of the community pressures that produce racial antagonism, but that was to be the "solution" as far as the State Department of Public Instruction was concerned, no matter how absurd. At best, such a course could only acquaint students with the biases and perhaps help them to guard against acting on them in the teaching process. As teachers, they may at least begin to realize that there is a problem and that they are potentially part of it. Additionally, few of the professors who taught humanism in education were fully trained or comfortable with it. Therefore, these teachers began to focus entirely on psychological "game theory" and "role playing" rather than on the problems of ethnic minorities. Several of the instructors, unfortunately, seem to lack even the necessary sensitivity to deal with these problems effectively when they persist in characterizing Black Americans in their classes as "colored people." Such attitudes are less unusual than most of us like to admit. So much for the university as the direction for the solution. Even if at some schools such as UW-River Falls, the university creates a program of Native American Studies, including an Indian adult educational project, this will not solve the problem of Indian education for the children.

The problem is capable of solution, but that solution will come not from a few concerned teachers or from the university; it must come primarily from within the Indian community. There will be difficulties. We have seen schisms and factions develop on many occasions within the small Bluewing community. For example, we watched several months while a contest between the local Housing Authority, the Headstart Program Directors, and the Tomah Coordinators for the tutorial program took place over personalities, not issues, and threatened the children’s programs. Despite such problems, only the Indian parents can prevent the school system from destroying their children. They must form pressure groups and learn how to use the local boards of education to protect their children. The innovation of the Home-School Coordinator authorized under Johnson O’Malley funding is a start. An adult education course that teaches Indian parents the operation of the Board of Education and familiarizes them with educational opportunities and HEW directives at UW-River Falls is an excellent step.

Ultimately the parents in each Indian community must organize to pressure and to "watch-dog" the schools if they want to prevent their children from becoming institutional victims. It is not an easy task for the parents to continue to earn a living, to attempt to retain their identity and important elements of their culture, and to learn the political complexities of trying to manipulate the white school board. Indian parents must now place Saul Alinsky’s studies on community organization beside their books on Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Black Kettle.