The Chemawa American, January 22, 1930, Image 1

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CHEMAWA
AMERICAN
P r in t e d a t C h e m a w a , O re g o n , a n d D e v o te d to th e In te r e s ts o f In d ia n E d u c a tio n
»REGO«
Wednesday, Ja n . 22, 1930
Vol. X X X I
No. 19
THE PR O PE R FUNCTIO N OF GOVERNM ENT
IN D IA N SCHOOLS
(From Annual Report, Board of Indian Commissioners)
ARROWS
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SSBUSSRl.
.Sxszsm
( F rom t h e Q uivek . of L is l e d e V aux
M ATTH E W M A N )
The man who is pockmarked has most to say against
freckles.
It is easy to have conscientious scruples when they
are profitable.
Charity covers a multitude of sins which are com­
mitted in her name.
Life is full of golden opportunities for doing what
we do not want to do.
Forbidden fruit has no attractions until we know
that it is forbidden.
The devil is not as black as he is painted.
he.is more like us than we care to admit.
In fact
When we grow old we walk unfeelingly over that
which we, in our youth, madly chased.
Generosity, as commonly understood, consists in
forcing upon others that for which one has no use.
Most of us live as if we expected to be judged from
our epitaph rather than from our conduct.
The trouble with most reformers is that they waste
their time and energy trying to reform somebody eise.
Our own weaknesses we regard as misfortunes from
which we cannot escape; the weaknesses of others we
consider crimes.
We rashly demand that the devil shall have his due,
forgetting that if that gentleman gets ail tnat is com­
ing to him it will go badly with some of us.
The principal reason for the existence of the Govern­
ment’s Indian Schools is to.prepare the Indian chil­
dren to mingle with white people, as eventually they
must do, and to be able to take care of themselves. The
great bulk of the Indian boys and girls in school today
Will not go beyond the high-school grades, and the
majority of them will not complete those higher grades.
A few, comparatively speaking, will stand out as
promising candidates for colleges and universities, and
efforts should be made to provide opportunities for
such students to secure a higher education.
Where Indian children are fitted to profit by the
public schools they should attend them, as half of them
do now. To say that children, merely because they
happen to be Indians, should be provided by the Gov­
ernment with special schools is not a valid excuse for
Indian Service schools. But when the stage of devel­
opment or the environment of the Indiafi child make
a public school undesirable, then the special Indian
school has its task.
This task is to provide the needed development and
supply the lacks caused by a faulty environment, so
that the Indian child may be brought up to that stand­
ard of cleanliness, order, regularity and discipline
which the public school presupposes in its white chil­
dren. Its task is a changing of a way of living rai her
than the carrying out of a routine of academic studies.
If this is not needed, then the Government school it­
self is not needed.
An Indian School, therefore, which tends more and*
more to stress the academic at the expense of the ’
practical, to lay emphasis on the completion of high­
school courses and the attainment of college entrance
credits, is losing sight of its real reason for existence,
which is to prepare the Indian boys and girls event­
ually to take their places as self-reliant members of
an American community.
We are of the opinion that the Indian Service schools
should strive not so much for uniformity and standard­
ization as to adaption to actual and varying needs; they
should not endeavor to reproduce the experiments and
failures of the public schools, but should apply methods
suited to the special problem of the Indian. Above all
they should emphasize vocational training and the
teaching of applicable and useful trades.