Volume 3 Number 3
May 1964

Robert L. Bennett and L. Madison Coombs

One cannot speak meaningfully of the place of adult education in the total education program of the Bureau of Indian Affairs without defining the goals of the total program. Stated in the broadest terms, this goal is to help people move, in terms of knowledge, understandings and skills, from an ancient culture into that of the modern world. This must be done in a greatly shortened period of time with due regard to and respect for the virtues of the old culture, and that the reason it must be done is not because the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the State or any other agency of government decrees it but because the inexorable circumstances of life require it and because basically, however reluctantly, the native people wish it. It does not do much good to debate the question of whether the old culture or modern culture is best; change is an inevitable fact of life, affecting all people, native and non-native alike.

What have some of these changes been? First of all, the native population is increasing each year and this is true in most of the individual villages. The population is increasing mainly because with the help of modern medical science we do not let the babies die in such great numbers as they once did, and we prolong the life span of native people of all ages. No one is about to suggest that we stabilize the native population by letting babies die or by withholding from native people the best that medical science can offer. But as the population increases the subsistence economy upon which native people have depended since time immemorial does not increase but rather tends to decline. In most communities the hunting, fishing and trapping is not what it once was. Besides, the modern world, with consumer goods in forms as processed foods and modern appliances, intrudes even to the most remote villages. This kind of economy calls for money, and money means wages. While the Bureau is trying its best to institute a money economy in villages, there is a limit to what can be done in this direction. The conclusion seems inevitable then that many young people must leave the native villages to seek their livelihood and live their lives in larger communities. It is the job of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to help prepare them to do this.

We cannot be sure whether you are familiar with An Over-all Education Plan for Rural Alaska, developed by a select committee appointed by Governor Egan as a result of a meeting held in Washington, D. C. in February of 1962, attended by officials of the State, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The report was submitted to the Governor in May of last year. It was my privilege to serve on the committee. The report faces and analyzes the problems of educating rural youngsters and proposes some remedial action. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs may not fully subscribe to the plan in all of its particulars, especially some of the inferences which are drawn, it has accepted it as a basis for future cooperative planning. The plan envisages a number of regional boarding high schools to be operated by the State, beginning with one at Nome, to be followed by one in the Kodiak-Kenai area, with, perhaps, Mt. Edgecumbe eventually serving the Southeast Alaska region.

Going beyond the over-all plan, however, it would be most helpful to us to develop with you and others in the State deeper understandings of the problems involved in the education of native children and youth, particularly in the more remote rural communities; but, perhaps to a lesser extent, in the larger communities as well. We believe that the interests of all native children in the State would be served by such an exploration. It is most interesting to us in the Bureau of Indian Affairs to note that only fairly recently has the educational profession and the public at large become more fully aware that culturally disadvantaged children have very special educational needs which cannot be met in traditional ways with conventional programs. Now one hears much about what is stirring in our large cities and in such rural regions as Appalachia. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has been struggling with this problem for many years.

To begin with, rural Alaska is composed of very small communities. Because of transportation difficulties, there is no prospect in the foreseeable future for the consolidation of schools such as has taken place in most of the other states. It seems manifestly clear to us that in such small communities education at the elementary level must continue to be provided through a quite large number of relatively small village schools.

The only alternative to this would be to send young children away from their homes to boarding schools, which no one, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, advocates. It goes without saying that such village schools need to be of the highest quality possible, with adequate modern facilities and qualified teachers of real talent. The education of children in these communities, many of them non-English speaking when they come to school and all of them with limited experience in modern culture, presents a teaching challenge of the greatest magnitude. On the positive side, most of these children are bright, pleasant, and eminently educable. It must be recognized, however, that in most cases neither the home nor the community is able to make that contribution to the child’s learning which most schools have matter of factly come to accept. So, in such communities an even greater burden devolves upon the school than is normally the case.

In those communities in Alaska in which the Bureau of Indian Affairs hold responsibilities for education, we are moving ahead at a fairly satisfactory rate in providing adequate modern facilities. The Congress has been generous with funds, and we estimate that we are about half through the job of "catching up" on inadequate and obsolete facilities, although the job of "keeping up" will continue.

Most of our teachers, though not all, are qualified and a large proportion of them are dedicated and talented. Nevertheless, we must redouble our efforts to recruit a uniformly well qualified corps of teachers.

With respect to education at the secondary level the situation presents a different set of problems, we believe. By virtue of their small populations, it is not feasible to try to offer a comprehensive high school program in most of the villages. We are not persuaded that the minimum high school will provide native youngsters with the scope and quality of education which they must have if they are to compete successfully in the modern world outside the villages. This judgment is based on the conviction that our objective is to give native youth an education which will permit them to live and work in larger communities if that is what they desire. We are concerned with providing an opportunity for native people to make choices, and an individual who has no option but to remain in his native community because of lack of training is not truly a free person.

The alternative, then, to small minimum high schools, correspondence courses etc., in our smaller communities would seem inescapably to be boarding high schools or dormitory facilities in connection with already existing public high schools. The State has taken cognizance of this in their planning for regional boarding high schools, albeit on a limited basis. We are aware that boarding schools are unpopular in many quarters, Many native parents, quite understandably, would prefer that their children attend high school at home, or at least closer to home than is now possible. Other persons, particularly the non-natives, inveigh against "segregated" boarding schools and stress the salutary effects of native children attending integrated high schools. There can be no disagreement with this position as a general principle, but there are some more subtle considerations at which we need to take a hard look. First, the transfer of schools from Federal to public school auspices does not constitute integration in fact if the composition of the student body remains substantially unchanged. Second, while the attendance of native children in public schools with non-native schoolmates can and should have beneficial effects, the reverse can easily be true if the special learning needs of under-acculturated native children are not recognized and met. We have seen this happen in more than one instance throughout the country. On the basis of experience, we cannot accept the judgment, as is sometimes implied, that our boarding schools at Mt. Edgecumbe, Wrangell, and Chemawa, Oregon, are not doing a good job with native students. It is our considered judgment that they come as close to meeting the educational needs of native students as any schools in the State. We offer the following information in support of this statement.

The unpalatable fact is that many native children, upon completion of eight years of elementary schooling in either BIA or State schools, are not ready to handle high school work of the normal level of difficulty. Furthermore, they are likely to be from one to three years older than is normal for their grade level. Were these pupils to enter a traditional high school program they would almost certainly fail and drop out. At both Wrangell Institute and Chemawa Indian School we have differentiated our curriculums by such means as ungraded elementary programs and multi-tracks which permit many students to "catch up" to the point where they can handle normal high school work. For other pupils at Chemawa, a terminal program is provided which will permit the acquisition of basic communicative, numerical, and social skills and some marketable vocational skills which will permit them to earn a better living than would otherwise be possible. Other eighth grade graduates are able to handle normal high school work. The entire Mt. Edgecumbe enrollment of 660 is composed of such students. We have a group of 90 able 9 ^th graders at Wrangell and an increasing number of Chemawa students are taking work at the high school level. These are not "watered down" programs. They are accomplished by planned learning activities which go on 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 9 months of the year and by unremitting attention to the special needs of these students.

We believe that these programs are beginning to pay off with some rather dramatic results. According to a survey which we make annually in cooperation with the public and private school people of the State, in 1955-56 there were only 54 Alaska natives pursuing education beyond the high school level. Last year, 1962-63, there were 571, an increase of more than ten fold in eight years. Of the 571 in 1962-63, 250 were graduates of a single high school, Mt. Edgecumbe. The great majority of the 571 were receiving financial support of one kind or another from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Eight years ago a mere handful of Alaska native students were taking college level work; last year there were 174 of whom 109 received BIA grants-in-aid. In 1955-56 few, if any, Alaska native students were attending the BlAs post-graduate vocational school, Haskell Institute, at Lawrence, Kansas; last year there were 107 and this year there were even more. Eight years ago the BIA did not have an Adult Vocational Training Program; last year 209 young native adults were helped to obtain vocational training through this program. We do not offer these figures in a spirit of self-congratulation, but only because we believe they are extremely significant and not generally known.