12
THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
courses in home cooking, sewing, laundering and nursing and also in
struction in poultry raising, kitchen gardening and the care and use of
milk.
This course and this period should not only prepare the Indian youth
for better industrial efficiency, but it should help them find those ac
tivities best adapted to themselves and their capacities—it is to these
that serious attention is to be paid in the vocational period. At the
pre-vocational period an effort is made to determine the amount and
character of the academic work by its relative value, importance and
application to the problems (and their solution) of the farmer, mechan
ic and housewife. Many non-essentials are eliminated. One-half of
of each day is to be devoted to industrial training and instruction and
a simiiar time to scholastic work. The entire aim and purpose is
to direct all effort to training Indian young people for active, useful and
efficient lives under the conditions and in the environment which they
must meet after leaving school. Incidentally the course also di
rects special attention to health, motherhood, child welfare, civics, ex
tension work, community meetings, etc. The development of this idea
will virtually and eventually convert the school into a sort of civic and
community center.
The course of study thus outlined has received the hearty approval of
the commissioner of Indian Affairs and he desires to initiate it as soon as
practicable. At this writing the course is in the hands of the printers at
the Government Printing Office. It should be ready shortly. On that
account the Commissioner has issued orders to have his committee return
to Washington by January 3rd for final plans and instructions relative to
the general introduction of the course. A number of superintendents
will also be called in at this time to confer with the Indian office and the
committee relative to the installation of the new course in all of the In.
dian schools of the country and to assist in that work. It is expected
that the course will be introduced in all Indian schools under the juris
diction of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs immediately after the close
of the January meeting in Washington City. Perhaps a few pertinent ex
tracts from the introduction to the course of study will better indicate
the aim, nature and broad scope of the course:
The economic needs of all people—of the Indian especially—demand
that the schools provide for instruction along eminently practical lines.
It is hoped that the actual accomplishment of the scheme of education
herein scheduled will stimulate many bright, capable and worthy Indian
youth to desire to enter other and higher institutions of learning where
such institutions possess anything of interest and actual utility to such
students.
Indian schools must train the Indian youth of both sexes to take up