Sen Youngblood is an American Indian Boy in a sixth grade classroom. His teacher called for a parent teacher conference due to his academic performance in the classroom. Problems such as not doing his homework, not communicating with the teacher in a timely manner, not showing up to class on time, and cheating on tests were noticed in Sen’s education. Sen’s teacher wants to talk to his parents about it because she wants to see a difference in his education. This is a case study done to consider why an American Indian boy is not able to keep up in the classroom. By looking into nine different concepts of his deep culture and creating advice for his teacher, one can see how a person’s culture can affect their life as they venture into another …show more content…
Other than relocating them to reservations, they were also ways to guarantee education for the children. Through the education, the Christians use them for evangelism. Boarding schools were created as a tool to separate the children from families, so they could influence them to assimilate with out interference from the parents. New treaties made it so they were not allowed to speak in their native tongue. In cases where they did, corporal punishment was implemented. In current public schools, the students have a difficulty maintaining the expectations from both groups. The Native Americans expect them to maintain values, viewpoints and practices while the mainstream culture expected assimilation. Due to this difficulty, many Indian Youth find themselves involved in truancy, school dropouts, arrest, substance abuse, and suicide. Sen has the opportunity to travel down this path. He is struggling with this very sense himself. As a teacher, one should notice this (Boxer, …show more content…
Due to a non-materialistic orientation, they are credited for their work ethic. Educationally or in the work force, they avoid “busy work” as it is pointless without a goal in mind. They do not truly need to do it, so it is a waste of time. School and professional work must have an authentic tangible and immediate purpose. On the other hand, their work ethic is relaxed. Deadlines are flexible and timeliness is not necessarily enforced because they work long hours. There are a lot of assignments in school that students see as busy work. Sen might have problems doing assignments because he doesn’t see the importance in them. He is more focused on the “important” things in his life (Stith-Williams,
In this analysis includes a summary of the characters and the issues they are dealing with, as well as concepts that are seen that we have discussed in class. Such as stereotyping and the lack of discrimination and prejudice, then finally I suggest a few actions that can be taken to help solve the issues at hand, allowing the involved parties to explain their positions and give them a few immersion opportunities to experience their individual cultures.
The collaborating individual chosen for this case study is Eva Pollinger-Middleton, a twenty-three year old undergraduate student in the College of Education at the University of North Florida. Eva is majoring in Secondary English Education and is currently in her junior year. Eva is ethnically Lumbee, which is a Native American tribe native to the north Florida Area. Although Lumbee is not a federally-recognized distinct tribe, Eva is highly invested in furthering her culture’s recognition in educational settings, including both increasing Lumbee presence in curriculum relating to Native American studies for students in the general education program and in furthering educational opportunities for students who are Lumbee. Eva is
In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Residential schools were first established in the 1880's to solve Canada's “Indian Problem”. Settlers in Canada thought of the First Nations people as savages, and the goal of the residential schools was to civilize them and integrate them in to white Canadian society. The first operators of residential schools thought of their forced integration as a benefit to native peoples. One of the overseers of residential schools wrote to the Sisters in charge of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake that “It now remains for ...
At these boarding schools, Native American children were able to leave their Indian reservations to attend schools that were often run by wealthy white males. These individuals often did not create these schools with the purest of intentions for they often believed that land occupied by Native American Tribes should be taken from them and put to use; it is this belief that brought about the purpose of the boarding schools which was to attempt to bring the Native American community into mainstream society (Bloom, 1996). These boarding schools are described to have been similar to a military institution or a private religious school. The students were to wear uniforms and obey strict rules that included not speaking one’s native tongue but rather only speaking English. Punishments for not obeying such rules often included doing laborious chores or being physically reprimanded (Bloom, 1996). Even with hars...
“To kill the Indian in the child,” was the prime objective of residential schools (“About the Commission”). With the establishment of residential schools in the 1880s, attending these educational facilities used to be an option (Miller, “Residential Schools”). However, it was not until the government’s time consuming attempts of annihilating the Aboriginal Canadians that, in 1920, residential schools became the new solution to the “Indian problem.” (PMC) From 1920 to 1996, around one hundred fifty thousand Aboriginal Canadians were forcibly removed from their homes to attend residential schools (CBC News). Aboriginal children were isolated from their parents and their communities to rid them of any cultural influence (Miller, “Residential Schools”). Parents who refrained from sending their children to these educational facilities faced the consequence of being arrested (Miller, “Residential Schools”). Upon the Aboriginal children’s arrival into the residential schools, they were stripped of their culture in the government’s attempt to assimilate these children into the predominately white religion, Christianity, and to transition them into the moderating society (Miller, “Residential Schools”). With the closing of residential schools in 1996, these educational facilities left Aboriginal Canadians with lasting negative intergenerational impacts (Miller, “Residential Schools”). The Aboriginals lost their identity, are affected economically, and suffer socially from their experiences.
Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a reservation, and that he decides to go to an all-white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation, impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because it helps gain confidence, it teaches new things, and it changes one’s outlook on the world.
Boarding school experiences resulted in direct causes for interpersonal violence within the Native American communities. While the experiences of Native Americans in boarding schools is not entirely lost on the dominant American population, the brutal reality and resulting consequences for Native communities is not fully appreciated. Poupart (2003) explains that it is estimated that nearly three quarters of Native Americans that attended Euro-American ran boarding schools, where they were forced to assimilate into dominant culture or else, experienced physical and sexual abuse regularly. Native Americans were forced to cut their hair, don dominant culture clothing, were beaten if they spoke their Native language, and removed from their cultural way of life to learn skills that the dominant culture found fitting. In fact, boarding school abuse was so prevalent for Native Americans that there are existing communities where not a single living adult did not experience or witness abuse. What results out of generations growing up in boarding schools is not only a loss of culture, but a loss of
The Meriam Reported, “Most Indians lived in extreme poverty, suffering from a poor diet, inadequate housing and limited health care. Schools were overcrowded and badly resourced.” They wanted to take them in and help them, so they convinced the student’s parents that it was for the better. “Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, and be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up our parents couldn’t refuse their offer” (Russell 283) they wanted the parents and students to think they were going to help them become new people, start new lives, and become civilized. “Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) which ended the policy of allotment, banned the further sale of Indian land and decreed that any allotted land not yet sold should be returned to tribal control. It also granted Indian communities a measure of governmental and judicial autonomy. “(Boxer) the people were no longer able to buy and sell Indian land so it made it harder for the assimilation to take in Indians and make them civilized because it was to be returned to tribal control. With the assimilation not being able to buy Indian land, it was difficult to teach a new religion and the girls at St. Lucy’s has trouble
To remain anonymous and for the purpose of this paper, the student’s name will be Alex Smith. Alex is twelve, is in the seventh grade and is quite smaller than the rest of his peers. His demeanor is very warm, outgoing, friendly and is not the least bit shy. His physical developmental features are young for his age. Alex still has that boyish look to him and his voice is very high pitched. His siblings are triplets; there are two younger sisters and one younger brother (all age 6). He was born in Egypt, moved to Indiana, and has been here in Texas for the past five years. Alex’s dad is full American from Louisiana, and his mother full Filipino from the Philippines. In a Filipino family, the “family is the center of their social structure. It is their family that is main source of strength and support. Shame is a motivating factor and one must live up to others standards; even if this means over spending for a party,” (http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/). I found this statement clearly evident when I was invited to attend a recent family
Additionally, Garcia Coll and Trawick Smith state, “Asian Indian parents are faced with the issue of rearing their children in a culture very dissimilar to their own, and with trying to help them retain their cultural identity while at the same time fitting into the larger society” (Coll, 1996; Smith 1997; 408). This signifies how many Indian parents are limiting their parenting style, so their children can fit within the society. Commonly, there is a saying about how Indian parents are always doing the best for their
Culture is a powerful influence plays a big role in our interactions. Culture may also impact parenting style and a developing child. Having a strong sense of their own cultural history and the traditions associated with it helps children build a positive cultural identity for themselves. This also supports children’s sense of belonging and, by extension, their mental health and wellbeing. This class is crucial in understanding and working well parents, staff, and children. An effective educator understands how students’ cultures affect their perceptions, self-esteem, values, classroom behavior, and learning. As director, I need to use that understanding to help my students and staff feel welcomed, affirmed, respected, and valued. One way that I can do this is by using multicultural literature, especially children’s literature, to honor students’ culture and foster cross-cultural understanding. If cultural differences are not understood by teachers and management, it can lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings on both sides. It will be my job to do all I can to overcome both language and cultural differences to ensure a positive learning environment for