Fixing Indian Education

[harvey mccue]

Fixing Indian Education by Harvey McCue

Recent exposure in the national media of the perpetual decline of Indian education invites a considered response. The Auditor General, the Assembly of First Nations and at least one national journalist correctly identify the weaknesses and flaws in what and how education is delivered to Indian reserves as well as the predictable shortcomings that emerge.

The AFN solution of putting all the responsibility of education in each Indian community simply reinforces the misguided overarching policy of Indian Affairs of dealing one on one with individual bands, regardless of their size, capacity or internal resources. For whatever reasons, the department has been unable to shoulder aside or, at least, amend, this approach to Indian concerns that in its entirety is grossly inefficient, ignores economies of scale, motivates mismanagement and, in effect, forces small and fragmented communities to compete anonymously for ever-shrinking education development dollars.

How can any serious observer or bureaucrat reasonably expect all 680 or so bands, the majority of them with fewer than 1000 residents and situated in rural and remote locations, to manage effectively an education program with limited and inexperienced internal resources in the absence of anything even remotely resembling a system of education? Elsewhere in Canada, there are whole departments or ministries of education plus school boards, faculties of education and a variety of commissions and committees to plan, evaluate and oversee the status and future of Canadian education and yet Indian Affairs and the AFN expect each band to deliver an education program with dollars and human resources that don?t even come close to minimum requirements.

Jeffrey Simpson?s solution in the Globe and Mail would be to re-invigorate the timeworn approach to Indian education of forcing round pegs into square holes.

The successful education of Indian youth requires a complete overhaul of what currently exists. The overhaul includes four major reforms. FIrst, create a national system - both in infrastructure and curricula. It is quite reasonable to argue that Indian communities should have the authority to decide on education issues that affect their schools, such as the hiring of teachers and staff, student policies, school calendars and so on. But a larger education infrastructure is essential so that the more technical, pedagogical and planning exercises that are crucial to the health of any education agenda can be carried out by experienced and trained Indian education professionals within a stable and suitably resourced environment. The infrastructure would consist of Indian education bodies at the national, provincial, regional and local levels. Each level would be governed by a set of education responsibilities and authorities that are consistent with their relationship and distance to individual schools.

This infrastructure would also receive and manage the federal dollars that sustain Indian education. In order to enable the new ?system? to function properly and to carry out all of its education responsibilities, the existing Indian Affairs budget for Indian education would have to be reviewed and revised accordingly.

Some observers might argue that putting additional dollars into the creation of national infrastructure for a student population that numbers less than 150,000 is ludicrous. The response is that if dollars aren?t put into creating a responsible and accountable system of Indian education, the cost to Canada and to the health and well being of Indian communities over the next three decades and beyond will be staggering by comparison. The country cannot continue indefinitely to provide increasing levels of financial support to First Nations but unless some substantial changes occur in the how and why First Nations students are educated, there will be no alternative.

Another essential function of the infrastructure would be to ensure that culturally appropriate curricula and teaching materials are prepared for use in Indian schools. Although some observers such as Mr. Simpson believe that these kinds of educational materials in Indian schools impedes the acquisition of the skills and learning Indian students require to succeed in the ?white world?, there are many others who believe that a thoughtful and carefully designed elementary and secondary school curriculum for Indian schools can and should meet both objectives: Indian epistemology and values and the non-culturally sensitive skills and education. To ignore a culturally relevant curriculum in Indian schools is to persist in what is clearly a futile effort of driving Indian students further and further away from the very stuff that emotionally and socially sustains them.

A second reform in the area of goals and philosophy is desperately needed. The only attempt to identify any national goals and a philosophy of Indian education occurred in 1972. At that time, the National Indian Brotherhood published a policy paper "Indian Control of Indian Education" that included several brief general statements on goals and a philosophy of education that went no where largely because they were too general and none fit the definition of either goals or philosophy. The principle theme of the policy - Indian control, however, did strike a chord and Indian Affairs promptly announced shortly after the policy?s appearance that its national policy in education would have Indian control as its main plank and the department doubled its efforts to ensure that the hundreds of millions of dollars that it provided Indian bands for education annually went directly to Chiefs and Councils.

Few observers noticed or cared that both Indian and federal governments quickly equated Indian control with local control. Vested interests at the band level welcomed this interpretation and no one bothered to debate the meaning or application of "Indian control" of education. As a result, control of Indian education, if it exists at all, exists solely at the community level.

To overcome the education failures and inadequacies of the past, a consensus is required on how Indian students should be educated and for what purposes. Once the answers to these questions have been agreed upon, a strategy can be developed to ensure their implementation and adherence. The current goal, if it can be described as such, of education for education?s sake, offers no direction to either parents, teachers or education administrators as to what education in Indian schools should achieve. Furthermore, most students lack any sense of why they are in schools and they have no concrete evidence of what the schools are trying to accomplish. The chronic and severe student absenteeism in Indian schools is directly connected to the lack of direction.

No goals mean no measurements and no evaluations. This is a serious weakness in any education environment and Indian education, historically and at present, has muddled along with bureaucrats and educators, more or less content, to be seen to be doing something, rather than seeing whether or not education in Indian schools measured up to Indian-identified goals and standards. A national exercise to identify a set of agreed-upon education goals for Indian education is absolutely essential if progress is to occur.

While some observers might ignore the value of an education philosophy today, the fact is that in the absence of an articulated philosophy that emerges from consultations with parents, leaders and educators, education in Indian schools will continue to reflect a disintegrated approach where some schools struggle with efforts to include different aspects of traditional tribal culture in the curricula, some maintain a strict adherence to provincial guidelines and objectives, regardless of the outcome and others seek a balance between the two approaches using limited resources and almost no measures to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of what is produced.

Given the variety of programs in Indian schools that emerge from these two extremes, it is no wonder that 75% or more of Indian students who arrive finally at white schools to continue their education arrive there as much as two or three grade levels in academic skills and literacy behind their white peers. A philosophy of education would provide some much-needed direction and meaning to Indian education; it would be a valuable contribution to the establishment of an integrated and responsible system of education; and it would go a long way to redress the serious issue of chronic and severe student absenteeism.

To be sure, there are other reasons than an absence of a philosophy of education that contribute to this problem of Indian students lagging behind their provincial peers. The decision to equate Indian control of education with local control, is perhaps, the biggest reason. Since 1972, both the federal government and Indian governments deceived themselves into thinking Indian education was succeeding as long as the numbers of students who remained in school continued to improve.

No one cared or bothered to see if more students staying in reserve schools longer actually translated into meaningful education or if it simply meant that students were being passed along, regardless of their skills and abilities. And as long as the ?responsibility? for education remained entrenched at the local level, no one beyond the teachers and administrators of the band school and whatever additional education staff might exist in different reserves would be held accountable. Any concerns by parents about their children?s education have been laid to rest as local band schools cycle students through the school with scant regard for their abilities and academic performances.

For too many people, especially those in the federal government, accountability in Indian education consists entirely of fiscal management. Yes, there are serious shortcomings in how Indian governments account for education dollars but they pale in comparison to what has resulted from a lack of accountability in the education program, curriculum and pedagogy. To effectively reform Indian education, equal if not greater attention to accountability in the quality of education and the ?stuff? that makes up the quality of education is needed as much as fiscal accountability. Furthermore, parents and leaders, and by extension, students, must know who is responsible for maintaining the status quo in Indian education or changing it. And those people who have that responsibility should be held accountable by results, or the lack of them, and by evaluations.

The final reform is in the area of federal legislation. At the very least, Indian education should be removed from the Indian Act and placed in an Indian Education Act that, among other things, establishes a multi-level national education infrastructure that is empowered to take responsibility for Indian education at all levels. The legislation would create for the first time in Canada an actual system of Indian education. The system would include education bodies with the power and authority to bring the education of Indian children to levels that exist elsewhere.

Next steps? For the most part, these reforms can be completed in about seven years or less at a cost of roughly $4 million. First, a three or four person commission made up of nationally recognized Indian educators, selected jointly perhaps by Indian Affairs and the AFN should be established and given a one-year task of drawing up a plan of action, timetable and budget for the implementation and completion of the four major reforms.

Second, Indian Affairs working in partnership with the commission should begin to establish a process whereby the current federal education budget can be reviewed and evaluated jointly in anticipation of the results of the commission. An additional task would be preparing for the transfer of the Indian education budget from the federal government to a national Indian education infrastructure.

Third, AFN and Indian Affairs should begin to lay the groundwork for the eventual education reforms. Parents, leaders and educators should be adequately informed about the problems in education and why changes in Indian education will be forthcoming. At every step of the exercise, people need to be informed and consulted.

Once the results of the commission are released, the work to implement and complete the major reforms should be finished in about six years. The work can be completed without a large workforce and with a modest budget. Throughout the process every effort should be made to input and validate the views and opinions of as many parents and leaders as possible. Different strategies can be implemented to ensure that this happens.

Meeting this agenda and timetable will ensure that by the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Indian education will be no longer forced to sit at the back of the class. Classroom results will be measured against nationally chosen and validated goals and objectives; students will be in Indian schools for defined and recognized purposes; curricula and teaching methods will be products of adequately resourced and professional exercises; education standards will be commonplace; and the indigenous intellectual capacities of Indian students throughout Canada will be nurtured and expanded for the benefit of everyone.


Harvey McCue (Ojibway) is a consultant in Ottawa. He helped to found the Department of Native Studies at Trent U where he taught for fourteen years. He has served as the Director of Education, Cree School Board in northern Quebec, the Director General of Indian Education at Indian Affairs, and the founding CEO of the Mikmaq Education Authority in Nova Scotia.