The Indian Boarding Schools/Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality

The Indian Boarding Schools

By Michelle Bollinger

“At the heart of these schools was a barbaric form of racism-one that aimed to strip American Indians of any resemblance of cultural identity, tradition, and spirituality.”

In Focus on the Indian Boarding Schools, Michelle Bollinger shows us how in the late 1800s, the United States supported an educational experiment that the government hoped would change the traditions and customs of American Indians. Special boarding schools were created in locations all over the United States with the purpose of "civilizing" American Indian youth. Thousands of Native American children were sent far from their homes to live in these schools and learn the ways of white culture. These were schools where children of Native American parents were taken from their families and put into institutionalized prison-like settings and taught the "superior" ways of white American culture and Christianity. The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to “assimilate” Indian tribes into the mainstream of the “American way of life,” a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and Christian values. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people, make them accept white men’s beliefs and value systems.

The boarding schools hoped to produce students that were economically self-sufficient by teaching work skills and instilling values and beliefs of possessive individualism, meaning you care about yourself and what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership, which held that the land was for all people. The Indian children were forced to cut their hair, wear military-style uniforms and get rid of their customs and language in order to Anglicize themselves.

With the founding of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, the U.S. Government launched an effort at what is now called cultural genocide where Indian children were taken away from their families and put into boarding schools. For Col. Richard Henry Pratt, the goal was complete assimilation.  As Headmaster of the school for 25 years, he was the single most impacting figure in Indian education during his time. Pratt’s motto was, “Kill the Indian, 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 living among white families during the summer. He hoped Indian youths would not return to the reservations but rather 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.

Many struggled with loneliness and fear away from their tribal homes and familiar customs. Some lost their lives to influenza, tuberculosis, and measles outbreaks that spread quickly through the schools. Others thrived despite the hardships, formed lifelong friendships, and preserved their Indian identities. These schools, guided by an essentially racist ideology, had a devastating psychological, social, and cultural impact on many native communities that can still be felt today. There are so many videos by Native Americans describing the accounts of what these boarding schools were like. This Youtube video Interview with Andrew Windy Boy was one that really struck me.  It gave a heart-wrenching account of what Native American children endured while they were at the boarding schools.

Today, we see the policies of the past with a different perspective. I wonder how the nation's indigenous population became "inferior" cultures in their own land, or how a nation could have committed such cruelty in the name of "progress".  Although the severity of the treatment of Native Americans and the “educational policy” deemed acceptable for them does not compare to today’s issues in education, I couldn’t help but see some similarities. The inequity in educational resources and opportunities among social classes and ethnic groups continue to be prevalent.  Decisions regarding educational policy are often made by stakeholders that often do not include the sound input of educators who are working with students and their families day and night. In our last reading by Jean Anyon, Anyon argues that government and educational policies do not do enough for people in poorer communities. Throughout history, there has been an overabundance of policy reforms of both federal and state levels regarding education, yet Anyon argues that none of the policies had a focus on the poverty of families or the communities they reside in. Education policy has not addressed the unemployment and joblessness of families who will have few if any resources for the further education of their children, even if they excel in K–12 classes. I really question how it is acceptable to make rational decisions without involving the individuals who are most involved (teachers) and those who will be most drastically affected (students and families) by the decision making process.

Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality
by Joel Spring

In his article, Spring argues that the school policies imposed on dominated groups in the United States were ways to deculturalize them.  The schools would strip away family languages and cultures and replace them with those of the dominant group. Spring focuses on the deculturalization of the Native Americans when the Europeans came to America.  The Europeans believed they were culturally and racially superior to the Native Americans. They believed that the Native Americans were inhumane and needed to be civilized. They performed cultural genocide-they destroyed the culture of the Native Americans and they began to try and assimilate them into the European Culture. They began schooling them and forcing them to learn English.  Teaching only English in the schools destroyed the customs and habits of the Native Americans. He argued that the ways in which the Native Americans were portrayed as primitive and savage by many American textbooks was not only unjust and misleading but had a real, material impact upon the ways in which the community was treated in the U.S.

The struggle for equity continues to be a challenge for minorities even in today's world. We've made strides in race relations and improvement of equality but the fear and the constant move to take away people's culture continues and leaves minorities asking if true equity is even possible.

The Full Cost of Incarceration in the U. S./What "Counts" as Educational Policy? Notes towards a New Paradigm

Text: The Full Cost of Incarceration in the U. S.

Author: Matt Ferner

Ferner argues that the cost of incarceration in America is much higher than typically reported. He argues that the cost is inflated due to social costs on the incarcerated and their immediate families. We are faced with not only the 1 trillion dollars cost of incarceration but also the expense of the emotional and divisive cost to families, neighborhoods and societal infrastructure overall.

Talking Points:

1. The children of incarcerated parents are five times more likely to go to prison than their peers. They’re likely to suffer long-term emotional and behavioral challenges. They also have a greater chance of living in poverty or lack stability in their homes or end up becoming homeless themselves.

2. By locking up a young offender for even a few years, we destroy not only their economic and social opportunity, but we harm entire families and communities. Childhood is a time for growth through opportunities, health, and second chances. The criminal justice system impairs all of these, and at high societal costs. How can we support families of incarcerated individuals? How can we keep disadvantaged teens from entering into the judicial system?  What can we do to break the cycle?

3. Policymakers need to reexamine long sentences, mandatory minimum sentences, and policies on enforcement of drug laws.  I also think they need to take steps to improve prison conditions and programs to encourage successful reintegration of former prisoners when they are released.

Text: What "Counts" as Educational Policy? Notes towards a New Paradigm
Author: Jean Anyon

Jean Anyon argues that government and educational policies do not do enough for people in poorer communities and that the many urban school reforms implemented in the past hundred years have failed because they have not addressed this problem. Anyon argues that the definition of education policy should be expanded to include the consideration of economic policies. She states that the impact of economic policies, such as minimum wage laws, largely impact the experiences of urban students. Even small annual salary enhancements can have direct effects on the experiences of urban families living in poverty, and on the educational experiences of children in those families.

Talking Points:

1. Anyon included this alarming statistic in her article; “The graduation rates for large comprehensive schools in NYC, for example, only "10 percent to 20 percent of ninth graders in 1996 graduated four years later".

2. Education policy has not addressed the unemployment and joblessness of families who will have few if any resources for the further education of their children, even if they excel in K–12 classes. How do we address this so youth/teens are able to be successful and not fall into the judicial system.....ho do we get them to not become a negative statistic but a celebrated one?

3. Policies that worked against U.S. poverty in the past could be reinstated: U.S. government regulation of the minimum wage,  federal support for union organizing; a federal program of job creation in cities and federal programs for urban youth that would support further education. These national policies were important supports of the widespread prosperity of the United States’ working and middle classes in the quarter century following 1945.  If we know these policies were effective in the past, why can’t we revisit them to see how they might benefit individuals today.

Unnatural Causes: In Sickness and in Wealth

5/22/2018

Unnatural Causes:  In Sickness and in Wealth

Directed by: Larry Adelman

I never realized how much social status really did affect your health. I knew that those with a lower income had less access to health care which could in some way or another affect a person's health. However, it had not occurred to me that the stress associated with certain income levels alone would negatively impact a person's immune system. This film titled “In Sickness and in Wealth” from the documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is inequality making us sick? argues there are key health disparities that affect communities in the United States and the roles that social determinants of health play in these disparities.  The video followed four people of different socioeconomic statuses. As we see throughout the video, the family with the highest socioeconomic status is also able to maintain the highest level of health; they have time to exercise, take vacations, and are able to eat well. They also have the highest life expectancy. As the video starts to show families with lower and lower socioeconomic status, we see life expectancy decrease. These families tend to not have the time or resources to make choices to eat well or exercise frequently. Additionally, the video describes a study about chronic stress and corresponding high cortisol levels, which could contribute to poorer health and lower life expectancy. The CEO, lab supervisor, and janitorial worker were all linked later in the video because they all worked in the same hospital.  It was interesting how the video linked the people of different socioeconomic statuses to the same place of work. Although you don’t normally think about it every day, most places of work are divided into a hierarchy according to your socioeconomic status. This means that people are always under the stress of their socioeconomic status, at home and at work.

Health care can deal with the diseases and illnesses. But a lack of healthcare is not the cause of illness and disease. It is like saying that since aspirin cures a fever that the lack of aspirin must be the cause of the fever.  -Ichiro Kawachi (Epidemiologist, Harvard School of Public Health)

This quote from the film really struck me. I think most people automatically blame the lack of health care for people being sick or having a younger life expectancy but when you actually sit and think about all the determinants of health I think you will begin to see there are so many areas that contribute to the inequalities among individuals of different socioeconomic status. The video looks at a very clear social gradient in which the health along the gradient can be predicted to decrease as socioeconomic status decreases.  I believe in order to shrink the disparities in health along socioeconomic lines, you need to ensure that everyone is allowed access to the same opportunities even if they do not have the economic resources. This would involve providing resources such as quality education, decent housing, access to affordable health care, and access to healthy food and safe places to exercise to everyone despite gaps in affluence. Having access to such resources would simulate the control felt by the affluent when they come to make such choices regarding health.

Research over the past few decades has demonstrated that other factors have a greater effect on health than medical care. These underlying determinants of health, from food security to adequate housing to early childhood education, are inequitably distributed across communities. 

We all don’t begin life at the same starting line or have the same circumstances moving forward, and that makes all the difference in our relative health and well-being. This is why, despite advances in medical technology, the gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor continues to widen.-Robert Hughes

Socioeconomic status plays a large role, if not the largest role, in determining a person’s overall chronic stress level. It’s important to realize that wealthy individuals have better access to resources that can improve their health conditions, as opposed to lower income people who are not able to afford it. Constantly worrying about not only housing, food, and money but also where they’re going to receive their medical care and how they are going to pay for it adds additional stress to their lives. The healthcare that they receive is often worse than that of the higher class; this is ironic since they should be receiving better care because they are more at risk for developing a variety of diseases and illnesses. People of higher socioeconomic statuses, simply have better financial means to deal with the stressor they are exposed to. However, this does not mean that they are exposed to less, they are just more equipped to deal with them.  The United States spends more than twice the average of other industrialized countries yet has the highest:

• Infant mortality rate
• Homicide Rate
• Child Poverty Rate
• Gap between high and low mortality rates in the country
• Gap between the wealthy and the rest of the population.

If the United States is the country with the highest gross national product, spending nearly half of the world’s medical dollars, why is the U.S. the sickest out of the industrialized nations?  Much of the money is being used to treat chronic and infectious diseases, and far less money is being spent on preventative measures or social policies to target the key problems regarding chronic and infectious diseases.  Other industrialized nations are spending more money working to improve general health as a form of prevention as opposed to using the majority of the money to treat after a disease is contacted.

Access to resources is greatly hindered if you do not have the money to access them, or are constantly having to worry about not being able to access them.   Not everyone can afford higher education, meaning that it is that much harder to afford a ticket out of poverty. College graduates live on average two years longer than high school graduates.  Life expectancy should not have to depend on the resources you have access to.

Test your knowledge of health equity! How does the U.S. stack up against other countries on key indicators? How do groups in the U.S. compare to one another? Are the conditions that shape our health as simple as what we eat, what’s in our genes, and whether or not we have good medical care?   Healthy Equity Quiz

I definitely would not be putting my results for this quiz up on my refrigerator….I only got a few answers correct but it was very eye-opening.

From the film:

• Americans spend $2 trillion annually on medical care, nearly half of all health dollars spent in the world.
• Among industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks 29th in life expectancy.
• 47 million Americans have no health insurance.
• In the U.S., the wealth of the top 1% is greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 90%.
• The majority of poor people in the U.S. are white.
• A 2005 study revealed that each year, more than 83,000 preventable African American deaths are attributable to the Black-white mortality gap.
• People who grew up in a house owned by their parents are less likely to get sick as adults when exposed to a cold virus.

Additional Resources:

Social Determinants of Health: Claire Pomeroy at TEDxUCDavis

Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing

Hello!!

Hello!!

My name is Katie and I live in Warwick.  I am a second grade teacher in South Kingstown.  I currently have my certification in Elementary 1-6, Reading K-12 and will have my ESL/Dual Language 1-6 certification this summer.  I  have been teaching second grade for the past 9 years at Wakefield Elementary School. As an undergrad I went to URI and then went on to complete a M.Ed. in Literacy from Providence College. This is my last class for my Master's in the TESL program!!!!!  When I am not teaching school or taking classes, I am a figure skating instructor.  I coach individual students and teams of skaters.  Last year I became the Director of our Learn to Skate program for children and adults.  During the summer I will be spending a few days a week at the rink and hopefully spending some time at the beach.  The rest of my time will be spent with my very active 8 year old son Riley!!