Volume 15 Number 1
October 1975

Clyde Thomas Gray

THE history of cultural pluralism in American Indian education has been a story of recommendations followed by inaction, and promises followed by disappointments. Until the 1970s, it appeared that federal schools which served Indians were never going to become culturally plural. In the last five years, however, encouraging progress has been made, as a recent survey by this author shows.

Lewis Meriam (1928) was the first to recommend that Indian people be given more influence in their schools. It had become obvious that the strict policy of assimilation pursued by the federal schools was totally inadequate to meet Indian needs. An avalanche of talk favoring all sorts of Indian-oriented programs continued through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; but nothing substantial was done to make Indian schools more culturally plural. During the 1960s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs insisted that serious attempts were being made to involve the tribes in their schools (see Hawkins, 1972). Yet, in 1969, the Federal Boarding School Evaluators (U.S. Senate, 1969) found that parents had no opportunity to influence their children's educational program, no decision power over the courses their children studied, and they did not even choose the school the child attended when such a choice was possible.

It was also reported by the Federal Boarding School Evaluators (1969) that in all but one of the schools surveyed, curricula and library facilities were inadequate to meet the needs of Indian students, considering their cultural background. The National Study of American Indian Education (Havighurst, 1970) indicated that the curricula of the BIA schools tended to parallel that of the public school system in the states where they are located. The National Study also showed that Indian faculty were rare at the end of the 1960s: only 11% of the teaching faculty in all the BIA schools were American Indians. As late as the school year 1972-73, only 13 of the approximately 200 schools operated by the BIA were contracted to the local Indians, although the only official requirements for such a transfer was "tribal consent."

In a 1974 survey (Gray, 19175) however, this author found some encouraging increases in the amount of cultural pluralism in BIA day schools in the Southwestern United States. A questionnaire was sent to every principal of a BIA day school located in the Phoenix BIA area of Arizona (14 schools in all). Thirteen principals replied. The principals were asked to rate their schools on each of four indices of cultural pluralism: community participation, local control, bicultural curricula and percent of Indian teachers, for the years 1969, 1974 and 1979. As expected, the reports of the principals revealed a nonculturally plural school situation in 1969 (see Table 1). In the 1974-75 school year, however, principals reported a substantial increase of cultural pluralism in the school and expected a steady rise in all measures through 1979.

The typical school reported that its community had participated "some of the time" in school activities in 1969 (mean = 2.3 on a four point scale). But by 1974, 77% of the principals saw the community participating "a lot of the time" (mean = 2.8). Community participation was expected to increase steadily during the remainder of the 1970s.

Only one school in the sample reported substantial contracting of school services to the local tribe in 1974-75; it was 100% Indian controlled. The remainder of the schools contracted 10% or less of the educational services from the BIA. This was less local control than was present in 1969 since one day school, which was contracting 40% of its services in 1969, had returned control to its BIA agency by 1974.

However, school principals indicated that many communities were preparing to contract educational services from the BIA in the near future. Thirty-nine percent of the principals expected that 100% of their school's services would be contracted to the tribe by 1979 and another 31% expected to contract 20% to 50%.

No courses in tribal culture were offered by any school in the sample in 1969. But in 1974, 53.8% of the schools offered one or more courses especially devoted to Indian language or history. Principals projected this trend to continue so that by 1979, 69% of the schools should be teaching at least one course in Indian culture and 46% will teach two or more. Two schools, however, plan to drop their present courses.

Principals reported that in 1969 their school employed an average of 11.5% Indian faculty--approximately the same average as The National Study found nation-wide. However, in the 1974-75 school year, nearly 25% of the teachers in the sample schools were Indian. By 1979 school principals expected 54.2% Indian faculty. In spite of the severe shortage of school teachers of Indian extraction, the BIA day schools are trying to replace their non-Indian teachers with Indians.

Two interesting relationships were found among these indicators of cultural pluralism. As participation of the local community in education rose, the percent of Indian teachers also increased (r = .73, df = 11, p = 01). One possible explanation for this correlation is that the concerned community puts pressure on the schools to hire more Indian teachers. The alternate explanation is that Indian teachers are more active and well accepted in the local community and encourage and promote community participation. Indian teachers are a highly visible and acceptable concession to cultural pluralism. They represent a return of qualified, successful Indians to work on the reservation and are not perceived by the Indian people as a threatening "return to the old days" that bicultural curriculum often represents.

The second interesting correlation was that principals predicted greater increases in local control of schools on reservations where community participation in school affairs was high (r = .65, df = 11, p = .05). Since nearly all the local control differences between schools were based on the principal's future projections, it seems reasonable to assume that community participation precedes local control. Communities which are more educationally active seem to be preparing to assume a great role in school governance.

These results should be very encouraging for those who have worked for cultural pluralism on the reservation. The figures reported here are only summary statistics and do not reveal the many local problems and specific needs of particular reservations. They do, however, show that real progress is being made toward transforming BIA schools into culturally plural institutions. More progress has been made in the last five years than in the prior history of federal Indian schools.

Gray, C. T. American Indian Education Cultural Pluralism or Assimilation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, June, 1975.

Havighurst, R. J. The National Study of American Indian Education. Illinois: University of Chicago, 1970.

Hawkins, J. E. Indian Education in the BIA. Educational Conference. Seattle, Washington, November 3, 1972, ERIC ED 075 130.

Meriam L. (Ed.). The Problem of Indian Administration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

U. S. Congress, A Compendium of Federal Boarding Schools Evaluation of American Indians. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1969, 3, ERIC ED 068 210.