American Indian Identity and No Child Left Behind

1
American Indian Identityand No Child Left Behind

• Jon Reyhner
• http//jan.ucc.nau.edu/jar/

2
No Child Left Behind Act 2001 Title VII, Sec. 710
1. Statement of Policy It is the policy of the
United States to fulfill the Federal
Governments unique and continuing trust
relationship with and responsibility to the
Indian people for the education of Indian
children. The Federal Government will continue to
work with local educational agencies, ensuring
that programs that serve Indian children are of
the highest quality and provide for not only the
basic elementary and secondary educational needs,
but also the unique educational and culturally
related academic needs of these children.
3
Alan Peshkin in Places of Memory Whiteman's
Schools and Native American Communities observed
that students at Santa Fe Indian School would
participate with sustained effort and enthusiasm
in basketball, but regrettably...saw no academic
counterpart to this stellar athletic
performance. In class, students generally were
well-behaved and respectful. They were not rude,
loud, or disruptive. More often they were
indifferent.... Teachers could not get students
to work hard consistently, to turn in
assignments, to participate in class, or to take
seriously...their classroom performance.
4
American Indian Education A History Jon Reyh
ner
Jeanne Eder
5
Cultural Discontinuity Peshkin writes, imbued
with the ideal of harmony in their community
life, Pueblo parents send their child-ren to
schools that promote cultural jangle. The sounds
in the school arent discordant. The discord-ance
is between what Pueblo communities teach their
young and what schools teach, and this
discordance goes far beyond just the matter of
teaching Pueblo languages in the home and English
in schools. School-ing is necessary to become
competent in the very world that the Pueblos
perceive as rejecting themschool is a place of
becoming white.
6
Ethnocentrism Assimilation When he started te
aching in 1899 on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
Albert Kneale found the U.S. Governments Indian
Office always went on the assumption that any
Indian custom was, per se, objection-able,
whereas the customs of whites were the ways of
civilization. Indian students were taught to
despise every custom of their fore-fathers,
including religion, language, songs, dress,
ideas, methods of living.
7
Navajo Students Upon Arrival at Carlisle
8
Navajo Students After Being Civilized at
Carlisle
9
Ganado Mission Schools Entrance About 1950
10
An Indian Agent wrote in 1845 that, It is not a
subject of astonishment that the education, the
civilization, and especially the glorious
religion of the white man, are held by Indians
in so little estimation. Our education appears to
consist in knowing how most effectually to cheat
them our civilization in knowing how to pander
to the worst propensities of nature, and then
beholding the criminal and inhuman results with a
cold indif-ferencea worse than heathen apathy
while our religion is readily summed up in the
consideration of dollars and cents.
11
Returned Students The Superintendent of the Pon
ca Agency in Oklahoma reported in 1917 the story
of, an old Ponca Indian, now dead, once said
that it takes Chilocco Boarding School three
years to make a White man out of an Indian boy,
but that when the boy comes home and the tribe
has a feast, it takes but three days for the
tribe to make the boy an Indian again.
12
Hopi Edmund Nequatewas grandfather told him to
learn the secrets of the white man's black
book. He went to Phoenix Indian School in 1899
where daily bible classes were held. Back home in
1904, he told a missionary, The only thing you
have done for these people whom you have
supposedly converted is to take them out of one
superstition and get them into another.... You
have been telling these people that if they miss
on Sunday and do not come to church, they are
condemned. Now is that not superstition? He
concluded that no one really knows what is going
to happen hereafter, but this has never been
brought out in any publication of any one church
or denomination.
13
Cultural Encapsulation (Tribalism/Whitemans Shad
ow) Deborah House who both took Navajo Studies
classes and taught at Diné College in the 1990s
found that non-Navajo students (Anglo, Hispanic,
and others) were encouraged to disparage their
own upbringing and cultural experiences.
Furthermore, their language, literature,
religion, family life, and ethnic identities are
routinely, and at times painfully, denigrated and
devalued by Navajo and non-Navajo instructors,
administrators, and other students.
14
James Banks Stages that an Ethnic Minority Indiv
idual or Group Can Experience as They Adjust to
Living Alongside an Ethno-centric Dominant Ethni
c Group
15
Stages That New Native College Students Can
Experience
16
Place-Based Community-Based Education Succes
s in school and in life is related to people's
identity, how as a group and individually people
are viewed by others and how they see themselves.
Identity is not just a positive self-concept. It
is learning your place in the world with both
humility and strength. It is, in the words of
Vine Deloria (Standing Rock Sioux), accepting
the responsibility to be a contributing member of
a society. It is children as they grow up
finding a home in the landscapes and ecologies
they inhabit.
17
We Are All Related Amy Bergstrom, Linda Cleary
and Thomas Peacock in their 2003 study of Indian
youth titled The Seventh Generation found that
Identity development from an Indigenous
perspective has less to do with striving for
individualism and more to do with establish-ing
connections and understanding ourselves in
relation to all the things around us.
18
Healing The Elders tell us that it is alright
to feel angry about stuff like this e.g., the
Sand Creek massacre and it is good.
However, in the end you must go down to the rive
r, offer a gift of tobacco to the Creator and
simply let the anger go .... Otherwise the ange
r will poison your spirit
19
Every Iñupiaq is responsible to all other
Iñupiat for the survival of our cultural spirit,
and the values and traditions through which it
survives. Through our extended family, we retain,
teach, and live our Iñupiaq way.
With guidance and support from Elders, we must
teach our children Iñupiaq values
20
Iñupiaq values

• knowledge of language
• sharing
• respect for others
• cooperation
• respect for elders
• love for children
• hard work
• knowledge of family tree
• avoidance of conflict

• respect for nature
• spirituality
• humor
• family roles
• hunter success
• domestic skills
• humility
• responsibility to tribe

21
In 1920 John Collier observed the Taos Red Deer
Dance in which he found a power for living that,
If our modern world should be able to
recapture... the earths natural resources and
web of life would not be irrevocably wasted
within the twentieth century which is the
prospect now. True democracy, founded in
neighborhoods and reaching over the world, would
become the realized heaven on earth.... Modern
society has lost that passion and reverence for
human personality and for the web of life and the
earth which the American Indians have tended as a
central sacred fire.
22
Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from
1933-1945, concluded that, Assimilation, not
into our culture but into modern life, and
preservation and intensification of heritage are
not hostile choices, excluding one another, but
are interdependent through and through.... It is
the ancient tribal, village, communal
organization which must conquer the modern world.
23
The Curse of Fry Bread or Powdered Eggs and Spa
m Students who are not embedded in their tradit
ional values are only too likely in modern
America to pick up a culture of consumerism,
consumption, competition, comparison, and
conformity
24
Gangs Dr. Richard Littlebear writes that, Even
in our rural areas, we are encountering gangs.
Our youth are apparently looking to urban gangs
for those things that will give them a sense of
identity, importance, and belongingness. It would
be so nice if they would but look to our own
tribal characteristics because we already have
all the things that our youth are apparently
looking for and finding in socially destructive
gangs.
25
We have all the characteristics in our tribal
structures that will reaffirm the identities of
our youth. Gangs have distinctive colors,
clothes, music, heroes, symbols, rituals, and
turf.... We American Indian tribes have these
too. We have distinctive colors, clothes, music,
heroes, symbols, and rituals, and we need to
teach our children about the positive aspects of
American Indian life at an early age so they know
who they are. Perhaps in this way we can
inoculate them against the disease of gangs.
26
Another characteristic that really makes a gang
distinctive is the language they speak. If we
could transfer the young peoples loyalty back to
our own tribes and families, we could restore the
frayed social fabric of our reservations. We need
to make our children see our languages and
cultures as viable and just as valuable as
anything they see on television, movies, or
videos.
27
Foundations of ResilienceIris HeavyRunner

• Social Competence
• Cultural Flexibility
• Sense of Humor
• Caring
• Problem-Solving
• Planning
• Critical Thinking
• Help Seeking

• Sense of Purpose
• Spiritual Connectedness
• Optimism
• Goals
• Autonomy
• Sense of Identity
• Self-Awareness
• Adaptive Distancing
• Task Mastery

28
One of the problems with transferring
one-size-fits-all curriculums designed for
main-stream schools promoted by the No Child Left
Behind Act to Indian schools is that incentives
they use may not work with Indian students and/or
may be culturally inappropriate. For example,
Lipka et al. in a study of Yupik teachers
rejected the profuse bubbly praise promoted by
outside teachers because traditional Yupiks
believed overly praising will ruin a person.
29
Yup'ik teachers also wanted to provide their
students with greater comprehensible input, both
in terms of language and content, based on Yup'ik
culture rather than to continue to use the
decontexualized curriculum from the dominant
culture that pervaded Alaskan village schools.
Yup'ik children in the village were raised to be
self-reliant and have a great deal of
responsibility however, in school, they
learned to look upon the teacher as an authority
figure who tells them what to do, when to do it,
and how to do it.
30
Yup'ik teachers emphasized establishing a strong
personal relationship with students, in contrast
to the outsiders ideas that good teachers were
teachers who had the ability to impart content
knowledge, content designed to replace the
Yup'ik language and traditional cultural
knowledge and values. Thus both Yup'ik teachers
and students were faced with cultural conflicts.
Ethnographic studies, such as this one by Jerry
Lipka, are being ignored by the Department of
Education in looking at educational programs that
are supported by scientific research.
31
Navajo Student Learning Style

• Navajo Learners Anglo Learners
  
  
• - Observe - Act
• - Think Reflect - Question
• - Act - Think Reflect

In contrast with Anglo learners who typically
want to try something new, then question, and
then think about a learning, the preferred
learning styles of Navajo children is to observe
first, think about the learning, and then take
action to try or practice a new learning. This
process is one that many new teachers of Navajo
students do not fully integrate into their
teaching. Dr. Joseph Martin
32
A Navajo elder told Dr. Parsons Yazzie, You are
asking questions about the reasons that we are
moving out of our language, I know the reason.
The television is robbing our children of
language. It is not only at school that there are
teachings, teachings are around us and from us
there are also teachings. Our children should not
sit around the television. Those who are mothers
and fathers should have held their children close
to themselves and taught them well, then our
grandchildren would have picked up our language.
33
Dr. Parsons Yazzie found in her doctoral research
that, Elder Navajos want to pass on their
knowledge and wisdom to the younger generation.
Originally, this was the older people's
responsibility. Today the younger generation does
not know the language and is unable to accept the
words of wisdom. She continues, The use of the
native tongue is like therapy, specific native
words express love and caring. Knowing the
language presents one with a strong
self-identity, a culture with which to identify,
and a sense of wellness.
34
Dr. Richard Littlebear quotes an elder Cheyennes
who are coming toward us are being denied by us
the right to acquire that central aspect of what
it means to be Cheyenne because we are not
teaching them to talk Cheyenne. When they reach
us, when they are born, they are going to be
relegated to being mere husks, empty shells. They
are going to look Cheyenne, have Cheyenne parents
but they won't have the language which is going
to make them truly Cheyenne.
35
GRADING Reading expert Richard Allington found in
a study that, Exemplary teachers evaluated
student work based more on effort and
improve-ment than simply on achievement status.
This focus meant that all students had a chance
at earning good grades, regardless of their
achievement levels. This creates an instructional
environment quite different from one where grades
are awarded based primarily on achieve-ment
status. In those cases, the high-achieving
students do not typically have to work very hard
to earn good grades.
36
Lower-achieving students often have no real
chance to earn a good grade regardless of their
effort or improvement. Achievement-based
gradingwhere the best performances get the best
gradesoperates to foster classrooms where no one
works very hard. The higher-achieving students
don't have to put forth much effort to rank well
and the lower-achieving students soon realize
that even working hard doesn't produce
performances that compare well to those of
higher-achieving students. Hard work gets you a
C, if you are a lucky low-achiever, in an
achieve-ment-based grading scheme.
37
(No Transcript)
38
Teachers responsive to their Indian students
needs are more successful than those who
slavishly teach from textbooks, curriculums, and
state standards that almost never reflect the
tribal heritage of their students. It is long
past time to remember what Luther Standing Bear
declared in 1933 about young Indians needing to
be doubly educated so that they learned to
appreciate both their traditional life and modern
life.
39
Angela Willetos (1999) study of 451 Navajo high
school students from 11 different Navajo schools
confirms that students orientation towards
traditional culture, as measured by participation
in ritual activities and cultural conventions as
well as Navajo language use, does not negatively
effect these students academic performance. Thus
a difference between the cultural values of the
school and child per se is not the essential
reason for Navajo children doing poorly at
school.
40
Should Schools Try to Boost Self-Esteem?
Beware of the Dark Side

• The self-esteem approachis to skip over the hard
  work of changing our actions and instead just let
  us think were nicer.

• High self-esteem can mean confident and
  securebut it can also mean conceited, arrogant,
  narcissistic, and egotistical.

• Self-esteem is mainly an outcome, not a cause.
  (Self-efficacy)

41

• In practice, high self-esteem usually amounts to
  a person thinking that he or she is better than
  other people. If you think you're better than
  others, why should you listen to them, be
  considerate, or keep still when you want to do or
  say something?

• Bullies do not suffer from poor
  self-esteem.People with high self-esteem are
  less willing than other to heed advice, for
  obvious reasons.

• Far, far more Americans of all ages have accurate
  or inflated views of themselves than
  underestimate themselves. They dont need
  boosting.

42

• a whopping 25 percent claimed to be in the top 1
  percent! Similarly when asked about ability to
  get along with others, no students at all said
  they were below average.

• There is one psychological trait that schools
  could help instill and that is likely to pay off
  much better than self-esteem. That trait is
  self-control (including self-discipline).

43

• Donna Deyhle (1995) found that students with a
  strong sense of identity could overcome the
  structural inequalities in American society and
  the discrimination they faced as American
  Indians.
• Edward Hinkley (2001) concluded that the modern
  Navajo student has adapted to school learning.
  However, it remains for the Navajo to turn these
  more positive attitudes to their advantage
  concerning school achievement.

44
John Ogbu'sRecommendations for Minority
Communities

• Teach children to separate attitudes and
  behaviors that lead to academic success from
  attitudes and behaviors that lead to a loss of
  ethnic identity and culture or language.
• Provide children with concrete evidence that its
  members appreciate and value academic success as
  much as they appreciate achievements in sports,
  athletics, and entertainment.

45

• Teach each child to recognize and accept the
  responsibility for their school adjustment and
  academic performance.
  
• The middle class minority community must keep its
  ties with their ethnic community versus seeing
  their success as a ticket out. If they return,
  it should not be as representatives of white
  society.

46
Recommendations for EducatorsJohn Ogbu

• Minority students are not just culturally
  different they may have oppositional
  identities
  
• Study the history of your students ethnic
  groups
  
• Provide special counseling to separate school
  success from acting white
  
• Facilitate accommodation without assimilation
• Society needs to provide more job opportunities
  for minority youth

47
A 2003 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report
noted that BIA schools spend half the amount that
public schools spend per student and that the
proposed 2004 budgetdoes not provide the
necessary funding to meet the requirements of the
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 throughout the
United States, but especially in Indian Country.
The Commission noted that only 66 of Native
students graduated from high school as compared
to 75 of the general population and found that
dropout rates among Native American students are
high because, among other reasons, their civil
rights and cultural identities are often at risk
in the educational environment. Research shows
that Native American students experience
difficulty maintaining rapport with teachers and
establishing relationships with other students
feeling of isolation racist threats and
frequent suspension.
48
The Commission noted that community
respon-sibility for and ownership of schools are
crucial for creating a positive learning
environment that respects students civil and
educational rights. It concluded that , as a
group, Native American students are not afforded
educational opportunities equal to other American
students. They routinely face deteriorating
school facilities, underpaid teachers, weak
curricula, discriminatory treatment, and outdated
learning tools. In addition, the cultural
histories and practices of Native students are
rarely incorporated in the learning environment.
As a result, achievement gaps persist with Native
American students scoring lower than any other
racial/ethnic group in basic levels of reading,
math, and history. Native American students are
also less likely to graduate from high school and
more likely to drop out in earlier grades.