Volume 7 Number 3
May 1968

As I sit here in a great city surrounded by a great mass of struggling, striving people spread over many square miles, I think of my whereabouts one week ago: Rough Rock School. My wife, my daughters and my son-in-law came to Arizona to hear what the Navaho people were doing about the education of their children. We listened to many speakers at Window Rock, including Senator Robert Kennedy. And then we came to Rough Rock to see one of the finest new departures in education. We wished that all the teachers and officials at Window Rock could have been moved bodily to Rough Rock where they could see a demonstration of a great example in teaching and school administration. They would talk with the President of the School Board, Mr. Teddy McCurtain, as I did; they would talk to the teacher of arts and crafts as we did; to the lively librarian, Mrs. Ruth Flint, and to her husband who was so busy getting ready to take a group of Navaho children to Disneyland and Marineland. They would have seen children getting ready to ride horseback, and children studying the Navaho language, and children studying the English language, and children studying and doing other things and loving it! They would have seen the beautiful dormitories and the cheerful, efficient cafeteria and the faculty members spending their leisure hours beautifying the front yards around their homes. They would have seen parents coming in to get on the list for the privilege of being dorm parents for an eight-week period. They would have seen those smiling Indian mothers sitting around the table while the teacher guided them in linking English words with pictures of familiar objects. They would have met Dillon Platero, the coming director of the school, a Navaho who was not born in the Rough Rock area but who has come to love it and to love the idea which he has helped Bob and Ruth Roessel and the School Board to develop.

The Rough Rock Demonstration School seemed to us to exude vitality, progress, cheerfulness, hopefulness. We felt the spirit of it every minute we were there. Kind friends of the school invited us to a sing nearby where we could reflect and meditate along with some Navaho friends. The Roessels showed us not only the school but the great valley around Black Mountain and into Utah, where we took a brief look at the Navaho museum and Monument Valley.

We left Rough Rock wishing everyone could see it. We heard that 12,000 visitors had come in the past 18 months and we felt sorry for the overworked information officer, but we were happy that so many people could learn of this wonderful accomplishment. It seemed to us the spirit of living with one another, learning with one another and loving one another was crystallized into action. Since it was an made up of human beings, we knew there must be some frictions here and there. But the total push, the great dynamic purpose of the place was clearly evident, and it stood out in the dramatic highlight of the serenity of the sands and the desert growth in front of us, the black, snowstreaked mountains behind us, and the smiling eyes and laughing voices of little children around us.

This is the picture we shall remember.