Post by Okwes on Feb 7, 2007 12:40:07 GMT -5
Education-Boarding Schools
Posted by: "Alice" o7silverhawk@yahoo.com o7silverhawk
Thu Dec 7, 2006 8:59 pm (PST)
Boarding Schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and
ideologies that stood in the way of republican millennial destiny.
Schools would be able to quickly assimilate Indian youth. The first
priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments
of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English
language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added
to open the possibility of discovering the "self directing power of
thought." Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training
in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic
society, institutions and the political structure would give the
students citizenship training. The goal was to eradicate all
vestiges of Indian culture. By the 1880s there were 60 schools with
6,200 Indian students in the United States. There were two forms of
schools on the reservation: the reservation day school and the
reservation boarding school. The reservation day school had the
advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least
opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent one-
half day teaching English and academics and a half-day was given
over to industrial training. However, it was felt that reservation
schools were not sufficiently removed from the influences of tribal
life. The non-reservation boarding school would be, in the eyes of
the assimilationists, the best school for changing Indian children
into members of the white society.
The most well known of all the non-reservation boarding schools was
the school established in Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Col. Richard
Henry Pratt in 1879. His goal was complete assimilation. Headmaster
of the Carlisle Indian School for twenty-five years, he was the
single most important figure in Indian education during his time.
His motto was, "Kill the Indian in him and save the man."
Pratt believed that off-reservation schools established in white
communities could accomplish this task. By immersing Indians into
the mainstream of American life, the "outing" system created by
Pratt, had students live among white families during the summer. He
hoped to have Indian youths not return to the reservations, but
become part of the white community. Carlisle was the only off-
reservation boarding school built in the East, all others were built
in the West.
Carlisle as well as other non-reservation boarding school instituted
their assault on the cultural identity by first doing away with all
outward signs of tribal life that the children brought with them.
Boys had their long hair cut. All children were given standard
uniforms to wear. They received new "white" names, including
surnames which it was felt would help when property was inherited.
Traditional Indian foods were abandoned and students had to acquire
the food rites of white society, including knives, forks, spoons,
napkins and tablecloths. Regimentation was the order of the day and
students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and
dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized
values of white society.
Discipline, which varied at different schools, consisted of
confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal
punishment or restriction of diet. In addition to coping with the
severe discipline, Indian students were ravaged by disease at
boarding schools. Tuberculosis and trachoma, "sore eyes," were the
greatest threats. In December of 1899 measles broke out at the
Phoenix Indian School. By January it had reached epidemic
proportions. Before it ended 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of
pneumonia, and nine deaths had been recorded within a 10-day period.
Students were not allowed to speak their native languages, not even
to each other. The Carlisle school rewarded those who refrained from
speaking their own language, most other schools relied on
punishment. At the better non-reservation schools a reasonable
degree of literacy was attained in a relatively short period of
time, while at other schools the method of teaching English, showing
students an object card such as CAT, shown, written, pronounced and
traced did not produce the comprehension for those words which had
no equivalent in their native tongue.
The schools hoped to produce students who were economically self-
sufficient by teaching work skills and instill values and beliefs of
possessive individualism, meaning that you care about yourself and
what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of
communal ownership, the land was for all people.
Half of each school day was given over to industrial training. Girls
learned to cook, clean, sew and care for poultry. Boys learned
industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed
manual labor such as farming. Since the schools were required to be
as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the
work. Boys farmed and raised food, girls made clothes, cooked,
served meals and did the laundry for the entire institution. By 1900
practicality became the goal and schools moved even further toward
industrial training while academics languished.
The "outing" program developed at Carlisle placed Indian students in
the community during the summer. The program took three forms:
summer months only, one year at a time, with children placed , in
urban and industrial settings, where they could learn skills other
than farming. While monitored carefully at Carlisle, other outing
programs were often exploitive. In Phoenix girls became the major
source of domestic labor for white families. Boys were usually only
able to obtain jobs as seasonal harvest workers or take jobs that
neither white or even immigrant labor wanted. In Phoenix the
children were not well supervised and learned very little from their
outing experience.
Conversion to Christianity was deemed essential. Schools were
expected to develop programs of religious instruction. Emphasis was
placed on the Ten Commandments, the beatitudes and psalms.
Implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt were part of Sunday
schools. Christianity governed gender relations at the schools and
most schools invested their energy in keeping the sexes apart, in
some cases endangering the lives of the students, by locking girls
in their dormitories at night, so that they might not get out, even
in the case of fire. There were, however, ritualized social
activities such as dances and promenades.
Carlisle had a football team, coached by "Pop" Warner, Phoenix also
had football that played against other local white schools. Phoenix
also had a band that performed all during the summer at various
festivals and parades. Both activities were meant to support the
idea that Indian people were capable of competing with whites.
The schools taught history with a definite white bias. Indian
students were taught that Columbus Day was not only a banner day in
history but also a beneficent development in their own race's
fortune. Only after discovery did Indians enter the stream of
history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate "good" Indians
having aided the brave pilgrim fathers. New Year's was a reminder of
how white people kept track of time and Washington's birthday served
as a reminder of the "great white father." On Memorial Day some
students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves
of soldiers sent to kill their fathers.
Indian people resisted these schools in various ways. Sometimes
entire villages refused schooling. When they refused to enroll their
children in white men's schools, Indian agents on the reservations
normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency
police. In some cases police were sent onto reservations to seize
children, whether they were willing or not. The police continued to
take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were
offered and in other cases families would bargain, negotiating a
family quota. Navajo policemen avoided taking "prime" children and
would take less intelligent or physically impaired children or those
not well cared for.
Parents would band together to withdraw the students en masse,
encourage runaways and undermine the schools influence during
vacations. In 1893 the U.S. courts said that parents had a legal
right to deny their children's transfer to off-reservation schools.
Once the courts ruled in the parents favor, some families used this
right keep their children on the reservation. Some parents saw white
education for what it was the total destruction of Indian culture.
Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the
manner of discipline, the drilling. Still others were concerned for
their children's health. They associated the schools with death.
Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the
schools broke the most fundamental of human ties, the parent child
bond.
Posted by: "Alice" o7silverhawk@yahoo.com o7silverhawk
Thu Dec 7, 2006 8:59 pm (PST)
Boarding Schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and
ideologies that stood in the way of republican millennial destiny.
Schools would be able to quickly assimilate Indian youth. The first
priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments
of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English
language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added
to open the possibility of discovering the "self directing power of
thought." Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training
in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic
society, institutions and the political structure would give the
students citizenship training. The goal was to eradicate all
vestiges of Indian culture. By the 1880s there were 60 schools with
6,200 Indian students in the United States. There were two forms of
schools on the reservation: the reservation day school and the
reservation boarding school. The reservation day school had the
advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least
opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent one-
half day teaching English and academics and a half-day was given
over to industrial training. However, it was felt that reservation
schools were not sufficiently removed from the influences of tribal
life. The non-reservation boarding school would be, in the eyes of
the assimilationists, the best school for changing Indian children
into members of the white society.
The most well known of all the non-reservation boarding schools was
the school established in Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Col. Richard
Henry Pratt in 1879. His goal was complete assimilation. Headmaster
of the Carlisle Indian School for twenty-five years, he was the
single most important figure in Indian education during his time.
His motto was, "Kill the Indian in him and save the man."
Pratt believed that off-reservation schools established in white
communities could accomplish this task. By immersing Indians into
the mainstream of American life, the "outing" system created by
Pratt, had students live among white families during the summer. He
hoped to have Indian youths not return to the reservations, but
become part of the white community. Carlisle was the only off-
reservation boarding school built in the East, all others were built
in the West.
Carlisle as well as other non-reservation boarding school instituted
their assault on the cultural identity by first doing away with all
outward signs of tribal life that the children brought with them.
Boys had their long hair cut. All children were given standard
uniforms to wear. They received new "white" names, including
surnames which it was felt would help when property was inherited.
Traditional Indian foods were abandoned and students had to acquire
the food rites of white society, including knives, forks, spoons,
napkins and tablecloths. Regimentation was the order of the day and
students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and
dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized
values of white society.
Discipline, which varied at different schools, consisted of
confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal
punishment or restriction of diet. In addition to coping with the
severe discipline, Indian students were ravaged by disease at
boarding schools. Tuberculosis and trachoma, "sore eyes," were the
greatest threats. In December of 1899 measles broke out at the
Phoenix Indian School. By January it had reached epidemic
proportions. Before it ended 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of
pneumonia, and nine deaths had been recorded within a 10-day period.
Students were not allowed to speak their native languages, not even
to each other. The Carlisle school rewarded those who refrained from
speaking their own language, most other schools relied on
punishment. At the better non-reservation schools a reasonable
degree of literacy was attained in a relatively short period of
time, while at other schools the method of teaching English, showing
students an object card such as CAT, shown, written, pronounced and
traced did not produce the comprehension for those words which had
no equivalent in their native tongue.
The schools hoped to produce students who were economically self-
sufficient by teaching work skills and instill values and beliefs of
possessive individualism, meaning that you care about yourself and
what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of
communal ownership, the land was for all people.
Half of each school day was given over to industrial training. Girls
learned to cook, clean, sew and care for poultry. Boys learned
industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed
manual labor such as farming. Since the schools were required to be
as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the
work. Boys farmed and raised food, girls made clothes, cooked,
served meals and did the laundry for the entire institution. By 1900
practicality became the goal and schools moved even further toward
industrial training while academics languished.
The "outing" program developed at Carlisle placed Indian students in
the community during the summer. The program took three forms:
summer months only, one year at a time, with children placed , in
urban and industrial settings, where they could learn skills other
than farming. While monitored carefully at Carlisle, other outing
programs were often exploitive. In Phoenix girls became the major
source of domestic labor for white families. Boys were usually only
able to obtain jobs as seasonal harvest workers or take jobs that
neither white or even immigrant labor wanted. In Phoenix the
children were not well supervised and learned very little from their
outing experience.
Conversion to Christianity was deemed essential. Schools were
expected to develop programs of religious instruction. Emphasis was
placed on the Ten Commandments, the beatitudes and psalms.
Implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt were part of Sunday
schools. Christianity governed gender relations at the schools and
most schools invested their energy in keeping the sexes apart, in
some cases endangering the lives of the students, by locking girls
in their dormitories at night, so that they might not get out, even
in the case of fire. There were, however, ritualized social
activities such as dances and promenades.
Carlisle had a football team, coached by "Pop" Warner, Phoenix also
had football that played against other local white schools. Phoenix
also had a band that performed all during the summer at various
festivals and parades. Both activities were meant to support the
idea that Indian people were capable of competing with whites.
The schools taught history with a definite white bias. Indian
students were taught that Columbus Day was not only a banner day in
history but also a beneficent development in their own race's
fortune. Only after discovery did Indians enter the stream of
history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate "good" Indians
having aided the brave pilgrim fathers. New Year's was a reminder of
how white people kept track of time and Washington's birthday served
as a reminder of the "great white father." On Memorial Day some
students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves
of soldiers sent to kill their fathers.
Indian people resisted these schools in various ways. Sometimes
entire villages refused schooling. When they refused to enroll their
children in white men's schools, Indian agents on the reservations
normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency
police. In some cases police were sent onto reservations to seize
children, whether they were willing or not. The police continued to
take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were
offered and in other cases families would bargain, negotiating a
family quota. Navajo policemen avoided taking "prime" children and
would take less intelligent or physically impaired children or those
not well cared for.
Parents would band together to withdraw the students en masse,
encourage runaways and undermine the schools influence during
vacations. In 1893 the U.S. courts said that parents had a legal
right to deny their children's transfer to off-reservation schools.
Once the courts ruled in the parents favor, some families used this
right keep their children on the reservation. Some parents saw white
education for what it was the total destruction of Indian culture.
Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the
manner of discipline, the drilling. Still others were concerned for
their children's health. They associated the schools with death.
Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the
schools broke the most fundamental of human ties, the parent child
bond.