Volume 20 Number 1
May 1981

Leona M. Foerster and Dale Little Soldier

THE MARRIAGE of education and anthropology may not have been made in heaven but is certainly sound enough to produce many blessed events, anyway. Although this union has not been of long duration, many educators, including the writers, hail the event as one of the most promising occurrences which can impact the teaching/learning arena in America and resolve some of the really critical issues which we face.

The failure of American education to hold Native American students in schools, or to raise achievement levels of those who are in school, has been well documented in the literature beginning with a 1928 study by Lewis Meriam. One of the critical findings of this early study was that the educational system which had been imposed upon the Indian people up to that time was designed for another culture. It required that Indian students look, talk, dress and otherwise behave like the majority culture. The schools expected Indian students to fit into a system which not only was foreign to many of their ways but frequently conflicted with many of the teachings of their families. Is it any wonder, then, that schooling for Indian pupils who were reared traditionally was ineffective at best and destructive at worst?

Years went by and the Meriam report grew withered with age while the same educational problems of Native Americans continued to perplex educators.

A 1969 report conducted by the Senate Committee on Indian education and entitled, Indian Education: A National Tragedy - A National Challenge supported the findings of the Meriam Report and indicated that the schooling of Native Americans had not improved much during the intervening 40 years. Quality and effectiveness of instructional practices were found to be quite unsatisfactory, levels of achievement of Indians continued well below the average for non-Indians, and by and large the public schools virtually ignored Indian history, culture and language in the curriculum. Indians were expected to fail by many teachers and administrators, and often they did. School personnel often were ignorant of and insensitive to Indian values and culturally learned behavior patterns.

In an effort to address the many serious problems in Indian education so briefly alluded to in this article, Congress in 1972 passed the Indian Education Act (P.L. 92-318, Title IV). Basically the Act provided supplemental assistance for public school programs for the more than 330,000 Indian students attending public elementary and secondary schools. Many innovative educational programs were and are supported under the Act and provide for the development of cultural awareness and the provision of such supportive services as counseling and transportation.

Despite this grandiose thrust on the part of the Federal government in the form of the Indian Education Act, many of the salient problems in Indian education remain. In addition, the system of federally sponsored schools administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and serving more than 50,000 Indian students both on- and off-reservations is riddled with difficulties. Although the Bureau presently is more effective in providing quality educational experiences for these students, achievement levels frequently are not what they should or could be and a disproportionate number of students either fail to attain a high school diploma, or if they do, simply are ill-equipped academically to compete with non-Indians in a college or university setting.

As a new decade is entered, Indian education offers a fertile field to plow for the educational anthropologist. If positive changes are to take place, we need to use the tools and techniques of the anthropologist and apply them to the educational problems of Native Americans. Here is a closer look at some of the implications and applications which are possible.

To begin with, educators need to recognize the difference between the process of enculturation and acculturation. Enculturation is learning one's own culture, a process that is influenced strongly by home and family. Acculturation, on the other hand, is learning aspects of a culture other than one's own - particularly those aspects which will enable the individual to survive in that culture. When children from the majority culture, mainstream America, enter one school, the process of enculturation continues. Basically the same values are espoused and behaviors are rewarded at school and at home. These children meet the expectations of the schools and the transition from home to school is relatively smooth for most.

For the Indian child from a traditional home, this is hardly the situation. Rather than a continuing of the process of enculturation, it is acculturation that begins to take place. Educators need to recognize that for many young Indian children, entering school is a culturally shocking experience offering may discontinuities; this "rite of passage" may represent the first formal interface of the child with an institution of the majority culture. The values promoted by the school may conflict with those of the home. A different set of behaviors may be rewarded and the rewards offered by the school may have little meaning for the child. The language of the classroom may be foreign to the child, not to mention the furniture and equipment found therein. Sex role expectations may differ. Learning styles may be different, too. Surely many other discontinuities could be added to this list.

Acculturation is a more demanding process than enculturation when applied to the school setting. If children are to get a good start in school, educators of Indian pupils need to work as anthropologists and make in-depth and systematic studies not only of the home culture of their pupils but also of the culture of the school in which the acculturation process is to take place. In other words, if we are to be effective in the acculturation process, we must conduct ourselves as learners or information-gatherers first before we can assume effectively the role of "teachers" for "culturally diverse" pupils.

Below is a model which could be helpful in studying the school as a cultural unit.

How does the educator gather the information to fill in this model? By acting as a "participant observer," just as the anthropologist would in studying systematically a culture while functioning within that same cultural milieu. This is really an ethnographic account which will provide a valuable description and analysis of human behavior within the school setting.

Having accomplished the ethnographic description of the setting in which the child will be expected to function effectively, we must turn our attention to the child him/herself and the culture which was deeply imprinted in that child. Following is a model to help accomplish this task.

Obtaining the information needed to complete the model above will require the educator to use the case study approach of the anthropologist. It will mean gaining the trust and confidence of the "informants," in this case family members of students with whom the educator will work. It will demand time and persistence to observe the family in a variety of settings over a period of time, to ask questions and record information. Yet the rewards of gaining such depth of understanding of students will far outweigh the investment of time. Also, once the educator gains a "feeling" for the culture(s) represented in the school, the task becomes less onerous the next time as the only "new" information which will have to be gathered will concern individual differences among families.

Once data to complete the two models suggested here are gathered, it becomes a matter of analyzing and comparing aspects of the home culture and the school culture to locate possible discontinuities and/or conflicts between these two systems.

Let's look at values, for example. Sharing and cooperation are part of the core of Indian values; yet individual ownership and competition are aspects of school experience. Indian children don't have to change their behavior in the home setting. But they must be helped to learn to compete at school and to develop pride in ownership if they are to "succeed" in the majority culture. But educators must start where children are with respect to these behaviors, not where they want them to be.

Next, an educational plan can be developed which will use children's home culture in a positive way to build healthy concepts of self and strong prideful identity. Further, this ethnographic study can help students whose life outside of school may differ drastically from the majority culture.

Other important fringe benefits of this type of study include providing the school staff with an awareness of and, hopefully, appreciation for the Indian students' history, legacy and culture. This is bound to affect positively the attitudes of school personnel who may discover that many Indian people have managed to retain their cultural integrity despite efforts on the part of the majority culture to eliminate the Indian way of life. Educators have much to gain personally as well as professionally from gaining insight into Indian cultures. For some of us, this may mean unlearning many of the stereotypes of and misinformation about Indians which we have learned from our own school experiences and which have been reinforced through the media.

The involvement of Indian parents is likely to be enhanced as these parents discover a thrust on the part of the schools not only to recognize their culture but to bring that culture into the schools as something to be cherished and transmitted. As the link between community and schools is strengthened, - the walls of the school will "crumble" and the community will become a vital extension in the educational process of its children. Such a link obviously is invaluable.

Educators most often are not trained anthropologists; yet it is critical that we begin to utilize some of the methods of anthropology to solve, or at least mollify, educational problems. The need in Indian education is urgent. Without such cross-cultural studies as suggested here, the majority culture will never attain a high degree of success in helping Indian students function well within mainstream America as well as within their own culture. If the dream of equal educational opportunity for Native Americans is to be realized, then education must be studied as a cultural process and this process must be made compatible with the Indian way of life. The Indian student dances to a different drummer. He/she hears Indian drums, not white man's drums. Educational anthropology offers the promise of finding solutions to many of the pressing problems in Indian education. A sound research base will need to be built. And we need to add to the growing number of educators and anthropologists who join together to engage in relevant research. Finally, research findings will have to be applied in the classroom context by sensitive and perceptive educators who recognize that for schooling to be successful, it must complement the culture each student brings from home.

Harmony in all things is the Indian way. The blending of home and school cultures can be more harmonious for Native American students; it can provide a vehicle for realizing their dreams and help them soar the heavens with the eagles.