Schoolin'!

As a future elementary school teacher, I really enjoyed learning about the advent of schools for Native Americans. Despite their horrible central purpose, to remove Indians of their culture, schools were actually really interesting.

Richard Henry Pratt, who was apparently a jerk as well as an educator, got the idea for educating Native Americans from his experience with prisoners in Florida. How strange that an idea for designing a heavily regimented school that strips students of their heritage and individuality came from an implementation used with prisoners. This is terrible. Students clearly are not prisoners and should not be treated as such. I cannot see how a school that separates student from parents for years at a time ever was approved.

Despite all the horrible attempts to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man," providing Native peoples with educational opportunities could have been a great idea. The problem was that the schools focused so heavily on vocational skills and cultural assimilation. I feel if the schools had not been mandatory and so heavily regimented, and also didn't attempt to completely strip the parents of access to their children, they actually could have been very successful. After seeing some of the successful tribal leaders who were products of the school and were able to assist the tribe in legal dealings and such, you would think that parents would be more than happy to send their children to such a school. Unfortunately, the schools sole purpose was to remove the children from their native culture, and education was secondary at best.