A wonderful blog post from Montreal-based Métis blogger Âpihtawikosisân about education, indigenous language learning, and Aboriginal-Settler society relations in Canada. Check it out!
Aboriginal languages need to be recognised at the very least as equal to English and French. Why? Oh boy. If you’re even asking me why, it means we are doing a crap job right now of teaching the relevance of aboriginal culture and history. I can’t even begin to answer that question without first making you understand how our cultures are revelant to all Canadians…including our most recent newcomers.
And that’s the point. That’s the learning I’m talking about. I see language learning as a ‘way in’ to a deeper and more respectful (and healthier) relationship… not as a way to increase your job opportunities. I don’t expect everyone to become absolutely fluent in an aboriginal language (though it sure would be nice!), but having some legitimised exposure can’t hurt. Whether we make it a separate class, or integrate it into the curriculum and blend it into every subject, I believe aboriginal language learning for everyone has incredible potential for fostering understanding and cooperation.
In June 2010, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers published the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 English language arts and math. CCSS were ostensibly designed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts to provide more rigorous and coherent academic scaffolding than the diverse patchwork of state standards previously in place. According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, these standards were designed to “prepare our children for college and the workforce,” and since June 2010, 48 states and the District of Columbia have adopted them (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2011). Although not explicitly identifying CCSS, the Obama administration has endorsed and incentivized state adoption of internationally benchmarked academic standards that prepare students for college and career readiness through its Race to the Top program. This decision is consistent with the current administration’s stated goal of leading the world in college graduates by 2020.
While it remains unclear what curricular and pedagogical changes will necessarily follow implementation of CCSS, it is possible to closely examine the justifications given for them, as well as preliminary research about their potential effectiveness. I am particularly concerned with the societal direction those who support national academic standards wish to take us, and what this will mean for indigenous peoples and communities engaged in the struggle for self-determination. The first half of this paper traces the origins of CCSS and critically analyzes the common arguments advocates give for national standards. I argue that at least for indigenous communities, less not more uniformity is needed to meet our educational, societal, and cultural needs. In the second half of the paper, I dissect the philosophical and ideological foundations upon which the proposed educational reforms rest, arguing that CCSS do more to legitimize power discontinuities between indigenous peoples and communities and the state than to advantage those most in need. I conclude by forecasting the possible social, political, and cultural ramifications of national academic standards for indigenous peoples and communities.
Arguments and Evidence for CCSS
On March 13, 2010, the Obama administration published A Blueprint for Reform, outlining the administration’s vision for revising the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), now more than four years past its reauthorization expiration date. “Every child in America deserves a world-class education,” President Obama states in the opening sentence of that document. “Today, more than ever, a world-class education is a prerequisite for success,” he continues. America, we are told, once the world leader in college completion has slipped behind 10 countries, necessitating that we “ensure that every student graduates from high school well prepared for college and a career” if the country is to reach preeminence again (U.S. Department of Education, 2010: p. 1). In order to achieve this goal, Obama’s blueprint calls on all states to develop and adopt standards in English language arts and mathematics “that build toward college- and career readiness by the time students graduate from high school” (U.S. Department of Education, 2010: p. 3). States are encouraged to either upgrade their existing standards or work with other states to develop and adopt common, state-developed standards (read: Common Core State Standards). With the exception of Alaska and Texas, all states have adopted Common Core State Standards since 2010.
In 2008, the National Governor’s Association, Council for Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, Inc. published Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education. This document warns of America’s economic and academic slide in world rankings, sounding the alarm that “As other countries seize the opportunity to improve their education systems so their citizens can benefit from new economic opportunities, the United States is rapidly losing its leading edge in the resource that matters most for economic success: human capital” (NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve, 2008: p. 11). In order to help ameliorate this situation, Benchmarking for Success makes five recommendations for action to state leaders, chief among which is that they “Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive” (NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve, 2008: p. 6). The document also recommends that the federal government fund and incentivize the implementation of this and other changes, which include the standardization of teaching materials and greater reliance on international assessments to measure state progress.
Benchmarking for Success and A Blueprint for Reform provide economic and moral justification for development of Common Core State Standards. These documents are explicit about what the purpose of schooling is vis-à-vis the federal government and, ostensibly, the state governors and commissioners of education who contributed to the conceptualization and development of CCSS through the NGA and CCSSO respectively. This purpose, as articulated in A Blueprintfor Reform and implied through federal adoption of the recommendations made by the NGA, CCSS, and Achieve, Inc. in Benchmarking for Success,is to cultivate the workforce needed to guard and enhance America’s global economic hegemony: “The President clearly recognizes that America must educate her way to a better economy,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated in 2010 remarks to the National Press Club. “As he has said, “the nations that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow” (U.S. Department of Education, July 27, 2010).
On their face, Common Core State Standards seem benign. They are, after all, grade-level guidelines mapping the general skills and knowledge children should possess, not specific content knowledge, such as what novels should be read at each grade level or whose version of history should be taught. They include skills such as the ability to evaluate evidence from text, form and articulate ideas, and engage peers in lively discussion. The question we should be concerned with, then, is how much autonomy teachers and schools will retain in working to meet CCSS, and how teachers and schools will be evaluated to determine whether expectations are being met. Answers to these questions remain unclear because states have not implemented CCSS, but school district predictions from at least one study are illuminating.
The Center for Education Policy surveyed a nationally representative sample of school districts in 2011 to gauge district attitudes and expectations toward CCSS. They found that 64% of surveyed districts agreed or strongly agreed that they would require new or substantially revised math curriculum materials in order to implement the new standards, and 56% believed they would require new or substantially revised English language arts curriculum materials. And half of all districts surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that implementing CCSS will require fundamental changes in instruction (Center on Education Policy, September 2011: 4). With respect to these findings and accepting Kauffman et al.’s (2002: 274) definition of curriculum as “what and how teachers are expected to teach,” CCSS may be more akin to a national curriculum than a reference guide for improving teaching and learning.
This is problematic for traditionally marginalized demographics, such as indigenous peoples and communities[1] wishing to use schooling as an instrument of social, cultural, and political self-determination. Efforts by indigenous communities to transform American and tribal schools into legitimate sites for the reclamation and transmission of indigenous languages, knowledge(s), and histories may yet again collide with a national educational agenda riding roughshod over local community needs and interests. Accommodating globalization through the imposition of a national curriculum is not progressive at a time in human history when 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by only 4% of the world’s population, and when small languages are becoming extinct at a pace that surpasses the rate of extinction of animal and plant species (Osahito, 2004: 3). So what are some of the academic advantages of CCSS cited by advocates that will balance these potentially negative consequences?
The Common Core Standards Initiative website makes several bold claims about the rigor and effectiveness of CCSS that are not corroborated by strong evidence. Most notably, we are assured that CCSS include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills, are informed by other top performing countries, and are evidence-based. The findings of at least one 2011 national comparison of the content of the intended curriculum for CCSS with the content of the intended curriculum for current state standards in math and English language arts reveal holes in these bold claims:
Do the Common Core standards represent a change for the better from existing state standards? If one takes state adoption (or at least states’ intensions to adopt) as evidence of quality, then the answer must surely be yes. From our results, the answer is yes if the hope is to move toward greater emphasis on higher order cognitive demand. In terms of topics, the answer is less clear, although at least for Grades 3-6 in mathematics, the Common Core represents less emphasis on advanced algebra and geometry than current state standards do. Perhaps that is an improvement, or perhaps not (Porter et al, 2011: 115).
CCSS advocates claim they are internationally benchmarked with top-achieving countries. Contradicting these claims, the study found that these top-achieving countries put greater emphasis on “performance procedures” than do the CCSS, running counter to the widespread call in the U.S. for greater emphasis on higher order cognitive demand (Porter et al, 2011: 115). CCSS are largely premised on the belief that standardization will raise American students’ achievement on international tests of academic skills and knowledge so that they can compete globally and close the achievement gap in the U.S. Yet Australia and Canada, two Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries without a national curriculum or standards, have consistently scored high on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in math, science, and reading. Canada and Australia ranked #2 and #4 among OECD countries in science in 2006. In 2003, they ranked #4 and #7 in math, and #2 and #3 in reading (Zhao, 2009: 47). Many critics of CCSS return to the fact that just as OECD countries with national curriculums and standards (such as Finland) consistently score high on PISA and other international academic assessments, there are as many that perform much worse than the U.S.
Narrow focus on the economic outputs of schooling is problematic to those of us who are optimistic that passionate, good teaching can help cultivate and nurture in students the creativity, resiliency, and sense of community and social responsibility needed to develop a more just and equitable society. I accept Martin Haberman’s definition of good teaching, which occurs whenever students are involved with issues they regard as vital concerns. In the Alaskan Arctic, for example, Inuit students need to be made conscious of and encouraged to begin actively grappling with complex social and economic issues related to rapid climate change, an elevated suicide rate, land and resource jurisdiction and management, and institutionalized colonialism and racism. In good schools, Haberman argues, “difficult events and issues are transformed into the very stuff of the curriculum. Schooling is living, not preparing for living” (1991: 293).
Quality teaching and schooling require room for improvisation and innovation if students are to interact with the real-life issues and challenges particular to their place. What is desperately needed, particularly among indigenous populations is, in the words of progressive educator Paulo Freire, an education enabling students to “discuss courageously the problems of their context –and to intervene in that context,” and which offers them “the confidence and the strength to confront those dangers instead of surrendering their sense of self through submission to the decisions of others” (Freire, 2010: 30). In the next section, I will explore the ideological and philosophical assumptions and attitudes at work in the standards movement. These assumptions and attitudes must be resisted and dismantled in order to secure a meaningful existence for future generations.
The Ideological and Philosophical Bases of the Standards Movement
The aspect of the current national standards movement that I am most interested in here is that the arguments made to justify them accept as inevitable and permanent, globalizing economic and political forces that require environmental, economic, political, and social subjugation and exploitation of others in order for American prosperity and progress to occur. These ‘others’ include not only nations of peoples and individual cultures and societies, but also the sentient life forces of the planet that are responsible for sustaining our existence as a species. “America’s economic strength and standing in the world economy are directly linked to our ability to equip students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the 21st-century economy,” write Jeb Bush and Joel Klein in a June 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed in support of national standards. “Students are no longer competing with their peers in other cities – they are competing with students across the globe” (The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2011). The abstract notion that “we” are locked in the arms of perpetual, global competition lacks coherence: we are expected to take for granted that global economic dominance is virtuous, and that the goals of the state are aligned with the goals and needs of society at large.
The tunnel-vision push for college and career ready standards formalize the project of ramping up national economic development, which reliant on limitless resource extraction, has profound spiritual and moral, as well as environmental implications for the future generations. In this section, I reveal that the attitudes, assumptions, and activities motivating this latest national school reform initiative flow from Eurocentric beliefs about the position of humankind at the center of the universe. Although always present in our education system, these attitudes, assumptions, and activities are being explicitly validated by the standards movement in ways that limit the creative potential of schooling in our respective societies. I describe what is lost when we concede to operate from the basis of an ideological and philosophical framework in which “Everything must be transformed, changed, improved, so that ever greater productivity can be attained” (Apffel-Marglin, ed. 1998: 37).
American schooling is rooted in a liberal ideology of education that is based on the belief that schooling can simultaneously create and sustain progressive social change through the equalization of educational opportunity, while at the same time attending to the supposed imperatives of ceaseless technological advancement (Dale, Esland, and MacDonald, 1976: p. 1). These goals are fundamentally incompatible, however, because the latter – incentivized by competition and free market capitalism – precludes achievement of the former at nearly every turn. The origins of this liberal ideology can be traced to the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe. During the Enlightenment, notions of time, space, and history were reconstituted as linear progressions, and Christianity’s anthropocentric orientation toward the natural world facilitated the elevation of scientific empiricism as the only legitimate lens through which to interpret reality. This Eurocentric orientation toward time, space, and reality is what gives dominating societies license to label indigenous and other “undeveloped” societies – lacking economically redemptive technology – as prehistoric and primitive. This orientation is exemplified, in the words of Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, in “unremitting drive of white people to conquer the natural world and exploit it to impose the predictability and order needed for capitalism to function smoothly” (Alfred, 2005: p. 110).
The Eurocentric worldview, based on the arrogant and racist assumption that white is right, saturates modern American schooling and thinking, and is the sieve through which “legitimate” knowledge, languages, and values (read: economically redemptive) are constantly being sifted. The standards movement sits squarely upon this matrix of values and beliefs about progress and modernity because it situates schooling at the nexus of capitalism and individualistic competition and consumption. The skills CCSS were designed to impart react to what employers want, and are intended to serve the institutions and hierarchies of power responsible for much of the human suffering and misery on this planet. Likewise, a national curriculum is doubly threatening because it permanently marginalizes indigenous knowledge(s), languages, values, and histories at a point in time when we are struggling for their recognition and affirmation as distinct knowledge systems with their own epistemologies and scientific and logical validity (Battiste 2008: 85). Tokenizing gestures to “accommodate” and “include” will not result in intellectual decolonization for indigenous communities, nor will it lead to social justice and educational equity for indigenous communities.
Within this Eurocentric framework, the primary function of schooling becomes the socialization of students to accept certain values and beliefs (the idea that competition and economic development are fundamentally good, for example) by habituating them to dominating discourses of hierarchy, power, and competition. Western knowledge, culture, and values are so privileged that “justice” is often confused with the right to participate and excel within the dominating discourse and at the behest of global capitalism: “Education is the civil rights issue of our generation,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cautioned in his July 2010 remarks at the National Press Club. “It is the only way to make good on the American promise of equality” (U.S. Department of Education, July 27, 2010).
Fulfilling this promise of equality is, at least rhetorically, at the heart of efforts to reform education, measured not in terms of large-scale societal change, but by abstract benchmarks: student test scores, high school and college graduation rates, and GDP expansion and retraction. Contradictorily, scholars such as Jean Anyon (1981: 38) have documented some of the ways schooling maintains class hierarchy and power discontinuities by reproducing the tensions of the larger society in classrooms, with sharp pedagogical differences between affluent and impoverished communities that guard class privilege on the one hand and secure its human and economic foundations on the other. Rather than an argument for sweeping educational reforms, however, Anyon locates the seeds of inequity in the flawed logic of capitalism, noting that “extreme pressure is necessary, and excruciating struggle is demanded in a capitalist political democracy to actually maintain one’s position of economic power and privilege” (Anyon, 1981: 38).
The implication is that as long as we live within the framework of free-market capitalism, educational inequity must be maintained to safeguard the status quo.
Conclusion
Rapid global climate change, set in motion by more than a century of unchecked industrialization and resource extraction, is the most tangible and ubiquitous consequence of a myopic Eurocentric worldview. (Looking out my window, the streets of Cambridge, MA are snowless in mid-December with temperatures high above freezing). This worldview is operating latently at points of power and privilege that can make it difficult to discern or seriously question. According to Muskogee scholar Daniel R. Wildcat, a climate shift in our thinking is needed to counteract the destructive changes, attitudes, and behaviors it causes.
The web of life, if taken seriously, implies that our human intelligence must be framed in the context of learning how to live well and sustainably as one small but powerful part of nature, as opposed to strategizing how to mange nature. In short, the atmospheric climate change we must try to avoid, or at least minimize, as a result of our climate-burning activities can only be addressed with a climate shift in our thinking and behavior: a cultural climate shift (Wildcat, 2009: 6).
Schooling is a tool that can help encourage this shift in thinking and behavior. A climate shift in human thinking and behavior is unlikely to occur in schools that are products and progenitors of the very forces causing climate and other hazardous changes in our world, however. We must be humble to the social and cultural diversity of this country, and respect the multiplicity of reasons humans seek education and the ways and contexts in which that education takes place. Localized schooling is needed that fosters divergent, creative, original thought by encouraging students to grapple with the contemporary challenges of their time and place. There is little hope for a dignified existence for all peoples, cultures and societies in the U.S. if those advocating for alternative, more just and equitable ways of organizing society are castigated as hopeless idealists or radicals. As indigenous peoples, we need to question CCSS and the language about technology, progress, and success used by their advocates to justify smoothing over rich differences in how societies define knowledge, progress, and success. Doing so must precede serious discussion of whether or not CCSS will actually be effective at fulfilling desired goals and expectations. That said, the preliminary research cited in this paper does not indicate reason for optimism that CCSS will create a sea change in American schooling. It is high time that states and the federal government recognize the plurality of values, cultures, and worldviews in this country. Doing so may save us from our selves.
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Alfred, T. (2005). Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Broadview Press.
Anyon, J. (Spring 1981). “Social Class and School Knowledge.” Curriculum Inquiry. Vol. 11, No. 1
Apffel-Marglin, F. ed. (1998). The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development. London & New York: Zed Books Ltd
Battiste, M. (2009). Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance. Harvard Educational Review. No. 44, p. 85
Bush, J. and Klein, J. (June 24, 2011). “The Case for Common Educational Standards.” The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070104576399532217616502.html,accessed December 11, 2011.
Center on Education Policy (September 2011). “Common Core State Standards: Progress and Challenges in School Districts’ Implementation.” http://www.cep-dc.org/publications/, accessed December 10, 2011.
Common Core State Standards Initiative (2011). Website: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards, accessed December 10, 2011.
National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, & Achieve, Inc. (2008). Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education
Osahito, M. (2004) “Endangered Languages: The Crumbling of the Ecosystem of Language and Culture” ABD, Vol. 34, No. 2
Porter, A., McMaken, J., & Yang, R. (2011). “Common Core Standards: The New U.S. Intended Curriculum.” Educational Researchers. Vol. 40, No. 3, p. 115
Tienken, C.H. (Winter 2011). “Common Core Standards: The Emperor Has No Clothes, or Evidence.” Kappa Delta Pi Record
U.S. Department of Education (March 2010). A Blueprint for Reform: Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Wildcat, D.R. (2009). Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. Fulcrum Publishing
Zhao, Y. (Fall 2009). “Comments on the Common Core Standards Initiative.” AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice. Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 47
[1] The Obama administration wishes to see Common Core State Standards or equivalent national college and career-ready standards legislated in the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. On-reservation tribal schools, under federal rather than state jurisdiction, will likely remain free to choose whether to adopt CCSS until this time.
My dad was visiting me recently, and while showing him around the library we decided to search the catalogue for “Kotzebue,” a Northwest Arctic Iñupiat community. We came up with some cool archival photos, and then this gem: Hippler 1969. To my knowledge, this is the only case study of acculturation and education in Northwest Alaska, and the only cross-community comparison of acculturation and education in the Alaskan Arctic.
The following paper was written for a graduate school course about school reform. These are my views, as an urban Native from Anchorage, writing about a school system I did not grow up within. However, based on research I have read and work experience and conversations I have had with friends, relatives, and acquaintances in the region of interest, I believe the following words have some relevance.
The purpose of schooling for the Iñupiat (Inuit) of Nunaqatigiich (Northwest Alaska) is to reinforce local knowledge, values, and beliefs and provide our children with the tools and experiences needed to fulfill our ancestral obligations to future generations of Iñupiat. These ancestral obligations include land and environmental stewardship, language and cultural maintenance and transmission, and improvements to the health and wellbeing of our people. These obligations are “ancestral” because fulfilling them enfolds past, present, and future generations of Iñupiat within the cycle of intergenerational reciprocity that defines our purpose on this planet. Intergenerational reciprocity means maintaining our language, culture, and land base from one generation to the next. Schools in Nunaqatigiich can do much more to help ensure that these obligation are met by changing underlying attitudes about the purpose of schooling, in addition to what is actually taught and how. By doing so, schools will be able to function as genuine tools we can use to help ensure our survival as a distinct people and culture on this continent.
My beliefs about the purpose of schooling are shaped by numerous conversations I have had with Iñupiat elders, youth, friends and relatives, as well as my evolving worldview as an Iñupiaq male working with others for the social, political, and cultural self-determination of Alaska Native peoples. They arise from years of personal reflection and attempts to make meaning of the tremendous changes our people have experienced in the last century, and how these past experiences are translating into contemporary social challenges that at times seem insurmountable. In the following section (section 1) of this paper, I provide historical and contemporary context for my beliefs about the purpose of schooling in Nunaqatigiich. This context provides important frames of reference as I describe what my vision for Iñupiat schooling might look like in practice in section 2 of this paper, as embodied by a fictional school, Sivuniksraqput Iḷisaġvik (“Our Future” School).
Section 1: Background
In the blink of an eye, Iñupiat have transitioned from living in seasonal camps on the land as self-reliant, self-governing, self-determining autonomous nations, to American citizens living in sedentary communities. In my mother’s generation, snowmobiles replaced dog teams as the main mode of winter transportation, and in my great, great grandfather’s lifetime, Nalauġmiut (Western) medicine and religion supplanted his role as an Aŋatkuq (shaman) in his community. Schools have been at the nexus of social, economic, and political changes in the region as the institutions primarily responsible for extending American hegemony over Iñupiat. In the recent past, schools exercised this power overtly and with impunity, employing physically and psychically violent tactics (such as the universal abuse and humiliation of Iñupiaq language speaking children) in order to expedite our complete assimilation into white-stream society. Schools have only been partially successful at accomplishing this pernicious goal.
Iñupiat have lacked real control over our own schooling for the entire 100-year period of government-run schooling in our communities. Today, power imbalances remain between schools staffed primarily by white teachers and administrators, and ethnically homogenous Iñupiat communities. Proficiency in Nalauġmiut language and ways lead to academic success, higher education, and job opportunities, whereas no such access is associated with Iñupiat cultural competencies. Teachers and administrators generally lack Iñupiat social and cultural competencies, compounding feelings of distrust and apathy toward schools among parents and community members (Dinero, 2004: 414). Iñupiaq language, knowledge, and life-ways largely remain marginalized or tokenized within schools, and lacking the power and stature accorded Nalauġmiut ways of speaking, thinking, and valuing by the dominating society, face the real possibility of extinction.
The shrinking number of Iñupiaq language speakers in our region (just 14% of regional residents indicated language fluency in 2005) is perhaps the most disconcerting signal that we lack coherent direction as a people. Yet for decades elders in Nunaqatigiich have expressed deep concern that the incidental manner in which language, knowledge, and life-ways are transmitted from one generation to the next are not sustainable. Iñupiat youth generally express a strong desire to learn our language and gain the requisite skills, knowledge, and experiences needed to fulfill cultural expectations and responsibilities, but opportunities to do so are piecemeal. Iñupiat students and parents understand schools for the socializing and acculturative forces they bring to bear on our society. This contributes to mistrust of teachers and schools, yet elements of Nalauġmiut education are needed to survive. This ambivalence toward schools partially helps explain the region’s low high school graduation rate (55% in 2009-10) (Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2011).
Public health researcher Lisa Wexler studies patterns of Iñupiat youth suicide in our region, where the rate of suicide for youth ages 15 to 19 was 185/100,000 between 1990 and 2000, nearly 16 times higher than the national rate (11.6) (Wexler, 2006: 2938). Wexler argues that schools contribute to conditions that increase the likelihood of youth suicide by maintaining “Blindness to current forms of oppression” which “perpetuates individual and collective subjugation” (Wexler, 2005: 232-33). I agree with Wexler that schools’ failure to provide students with the lenses needed to interpret and counteract the immediate challenges in our world is a form of oppression. As a consequence, when students fail in school, their failure is more likely to be internalized as personal, community, and cultural failure rather than that of institutions, despite having “little control over the institutional or structural frames that increase the likelihood of their failure” (Wexler, 2006: 233).
In his 1969 case study of acculturation and education in Kotzebue, the largest community in Nunaqatigiich, Hippler (1969: 51) observes: “The education thus far provided native students, so far as we can determine, has produced uncertain, anxiety-ridden and unhappy young people, paying a terrible price for what little they have “achieved.”” These negative outcomes, though not entirely attributable to students’ schooling, manifests in low self-esteem, and ultimately the self-destructive conviction that “White ways of life are considered better and more respectable than Eskimo” (Hippler, 1969: 52). It appears little has changed in the past forty years. In section 2, I describe my vision of schooling in relation to this background, as embodied by a fictional school, Sivuniksraqput Iḷisaġvik.
Section 2: Sivuniksraqput Iḷisaġvik
Sivuniksraqput Iḷisaġvik (“Our Future” School) is a charter middle-high school located in Kotzebue, AK, a predominantly Iñupiat community of approximately 3,200 located in Northwest Alaska, 33 miles above the Arctic Circle. Approximately 100 students are enrolled in the school, the overwhelming majority of them Iñupiat. The school’s physical structure reflects Iñupiat architectural aesthetics, with five classrooms divided by removable partitions surrounding a circular open space at the center of the building. This communal space is used for school and community events such as Iñupiaq language classes, Iñupiat dancing, a women’s sewing group, and to prepare for hunting trips and school outings. The school’s large woodshop is open to the public, and is frequently used to repair hunting, fishing, and related equipment. All signage is written in the Iñupiaq language.
Organization: Relationships between the school, parents, and community are fluid, and monthly meetings of the school’s nine-member board of directors are open to the public. Board members are parents of students limited to three-year terms, and are advised by a five-member Elder council. A curriculum development team, acting on the guidance of the school board and director, oversees development of school curricula and professional development activities. Monthly board meetings double as community potlucks, and are opportunities for students, parents, and community members to comment and voice concerns, as well as to learn about what is being taught, how, and why. The school board and elder council are responsible for selecting the school’s director. Classroom teachers hold university degrees and are Iñupiaq language learners, each working in equal partnership with a fluent elder aide due to the scarcity of certified fluent speakers. This work involves contextualizing lessons within the Iñupiaq language and worldview, such as discussing the different properties of snow, ice, and wind conditions in an Iñupiaq science context. Elder aides are respected as resident experts, much as a visiting fellow would be at a prestigious university, and teachers are responsible for helping to facilitate their knowledge to students.
Curriculum: Iñupiat are a circumpolar people, and curriculum is consequently developed through the lens of circumpolar Arctic and local affairs. Course content largely focuses on differences and similarities between Alaska Native and Inuit governments, institutions, organizations, and contemporary developments in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, as well as how these different entities impact the lives of our respective peoples. These international comparisons and contrasts help facilitate critical thinking about state and federal policy. Teachers, parents, and community members help bring this vision to fruition by including students as much as possible in relevant community and regional meetings, events, and organizations in order to reinforce classroom learning. For example, select tribal council meetings give real-life dimension to issues students learn about in middle and high school courses, such as Alaska tribes’ evolving relationship with the federal government, and issues related to federal funding allocations for tribal health care services and the reach of tribes’ legal jurisdiction. The school curriculum also tasks students with confronting and developing solutions to local challenges, such as suicide, language shift, climate change, and economic development.
The centricity of land to Sivuniksraqput Iḷisaġvik’s curriculum is unusual. Because the relationship between school and community is fluid, regular hunting, fishing, and camping trips, as well as visits to historical sites in and around Kotzebue, are financially and logistically possible. Elders and community knowledge bearers share insight about the significance of our surroundings while on the land, where classroom lessons about major battles, trade routes, and animal behavior are reinforced. Through these experiences, the school aims to cultivate in students an appreciation of land as a sentient source of identity and empowerment, with which comes enormous, intergenerational responsibility to past, present, and future generations. These ideas are buoyed by students’ grasp of the oral, political, and social history of Nunaqatigiich, a history which is well documented by elders, explorers, and anthropologists such as Burch (1998, 2005, 2006). Lessons based on these documents are designed to enhance students’ self-esteem, pride, and sense of agency, direction, and responsibility as members of our community.
Pedagogy: All students are addressed by their Iñupiaq names[1] in order to reinforce their Iñupiaq identity, and for non-Iñupiat students to appreciate their place as valued members and equals within our society. The hunter success and other accomplishments of students and their family members are acknowledged and celebrated as the accomplishments of our entire community. Consistent with our Iñupiat values, emphasis is placed on group rather than individual problem solving and accomplishments, and the value of individual accomplishments to the group. Teaching is tailored to each individual student, but generally utilizes what Gay (2001) calls “culturally responsive teaching methods,” utilizing “the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of… students as conduits for teaching” (Gay 2001). Teachers do so, for example, by modeling Iñupiaq language use in the classroom, and by reinforcing the values of sharing, respect, and humility through activities that require older students to teach younger students, assist elders in the community, and carry out selfless good deeds. Classroom learning is loosely based on curriculum units and plans developed by teachers, with discussion facilitated using the Socratic method of inquiry. Doing so is believed to facilitate critical thinking habits and cooperation as students develop new knowledge and solutions to pressing issues.
Assessment: Students are expected to meet internal assessments developed by the school board and elder’s council that measure variables such as community volunteerism, generosity toward peers and community, and compassion for others. Assessment of this kind complements the raw reading, writing, and math score data measured by state standardized testing. As a school, we work to ensure proficiency in these areas, but our main focus is on producing genuine human beings.
Conclusion: The largest weakness in my vision is the absence of significant numbers of certified Iñupiat or Alaska Native educators, underrepresented in the teaching field for reasons discussed in the first section of this paper. At least for a time, this would create reliance on non-Native teachers, who would need to be taught many of the subtleties (such as the significance of hunter success) that would help make this experiment more meaningful for students and communities. The enormous challenge of teaching students content that many of our own people (let alone outsiders) are unaware of, also presents significant problems, as would community sensitivity to relatively taboo subjects such as suicide and the dark legacy of American schooling in Alaska. Of course, opening up this can of worms is partly the point.
Schooling for Iñupiat and other Alaska Native peoples has had a profound effect on our cultures and societies. It has too often played a destructive role through attempts to pacify our resistance to power. I am optimistic, however, that if existing schools work in equal partnership with students, parents, and communities in an environment of humility and mutual respect, we can use our imaginations to turn schooling into a tool of empowerment for current and future generations of Iñupiat. Doing so will be necessary if we wish to coherently counteract the detrimental changes we have experienced as a people, and in order to help provide future generations with a rich heritage they can be proud of.
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Alaska Department of Education & Early Development (revised October 21, 2011), Report Card to the Public, accessed November 7, 2011: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/reportcardtothepublic/
Burch, E. S., Jr. (2006). Social Life in Northwest Alaska: The Structure of Inupiaq Eskimo Nations. University of Alaska Press
Burch, E.S., Jr. (1998). Inupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska. University of Alaska Press
Burch, E.S., Jr. (2005). Alliance and Conflict: The World System of the Inupiaq Eskimos. University of Nebraska Press
Dinero, S.C. (2004). The politics of education provision in rural Native Alaska: the case of Yukon Village. Race Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 7, No. 4
Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2
Hippler, A.E. (1969). Barrow and Kotzebue: An Exploratory Comparison of Acculturation and Education in Two Large Northwestern Alaska Villages. Training Center for Community Programs in coordination with Office of Community Programs Center for Urban and Regional Affairs
Wexler, L. (March 2005). Suicide Prevention/Hope Project. PhD diss., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Wexler, L.M. (September 2006). Inupiat youth suicide and culture loss: Changing community conversations for prevention. Social Science & Medicine, 63
[1] At birth, most Iñupiat are given an Iñupiaq name, often after a recently deceased relative. These names, cycled through the generations, tie us to past and future generations. Non- Iñupiat long-term residents in our communities are commonly given Iñupiaq names as a sign of their acculturation into our society.
Edit: You can find this op-ed here, published September 6, 2011.
“By failing to raise the question of “what is or should be the purpose of schooling for Alaska Native peoples?” talk of truancy in the article takes place within a historical and political vacuum, and we as readers are expected to take for granted that schools have and continue to play a benevolent role in Alaska Native communities.”
Tyack and Cuban [1] raise important questions about what purposes and interests it is possible or desirable for formal education systems to serve, and for whom. Declining public faith in schools seem to hint that most of the public has a specific set of expectations when it comes to education, namely that education systems evolve along some vague, linear progression that the two authors call an “animating ideal that gave direction and coherence to reform.” If schools are products and progenitors of progress in our society, it is valuable to consider what constitutes “progress” for schools and society, and who is held responsible for preserving the privileges and institutions that uphold this concept.
The concept of “progress” is loaded, and in considering its scope I am reminded of indigenous intellectual Waziyatawin’s powerful words in her essay, “Decolonizing Indigenous Diets,” featured in For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook: “In a society that values progress,” she writes, “our colonizers taught us that conditions are perpetually improving, that with each new technological advancement, each new discovery, each new way to utilize resources, each new way to alter the environment, that the world is getting better, that it is advancing. These are all lies…Microwave ovens and satellite television are poor compensation for the extinction of life-forms and a toxic earth.”[2] Notions of social and economic progress differ in each culture and society, and education systems play a powerful role by denying, affirming, or regenerating these notions. Unequal power relations are evident between schools and communities in which community views of progress – imbedded with specific values and worldviews – have not been reconciled with those of schools. Talk of educational progress cannot be divorced from specific views about what constitutes social progress in society as a whole, and these views must be interrogated for their latent political, economic, and cultural biases and motives.
Carter has taken the stance that the educational “playing field” for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans can be equalized through student integration; that somehow, in keeping with the views of W.E.B. DuBois, blurring race and culture lines will lead to higher self-esteem and accomplishment for students. This view is simplistic at best, because it ignores the cultural, linguistic, and social capital that inform distinct views of human, and thus educational progress, and which should be reflected in the schooling of distinct cultures and societies. Maintaining this capital is vital for resisting the homogenizing forces of globalization and colonialism that favor Western societies and elide colonized ones. This view is assimilationist and colonialistic at worst, because it locates the sources of power and success for students of color in white, middle-class America, and seems to bow to the assumption that what constitutes educational success for whites is fundamentally the best thing for Latinos, Blacks, Native Americans, and other distinct peoples.
Indigenous societies have survived white conquest, for example, largely because our Constitutional right to maintain separate but equal polities and societies creates a degree of space for our own cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resilience and survival. Racial integration has defensible benefits for some, but is certainly not prerequisite to the educational success of all. Focus on greater integration as a goal can also miss more important opportunities to focus time and energy on the true sources of inequity, such as gentrification, colonial schooling, and inherent educational biases.
[1] Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of school reform. Progress or regress. Chapter 2 (pp. 5-42) in The Jossey-Bass reader on school reform. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.
[2] Wilson, W.A., & Yellow Bird, M. (2005: 67) For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook. Sana Fe, NM: School of American Research Press
In recent years, research has revealed symbiosis between seemingly disparate public policy areas such as education, health, housing, indigenous political, cultural, and socio-economic self-determination and development, and suicide prevention. Some advocates and policy makers are utilizing this research to identify the web of through-lines that run across policy areas, with the policy implication being that as advocates and researchers, we can no longer focus exclusively on one area without considering its interrelation with a range of others. This more holistic understanding and approach to advocacy and public policy development places emphasis on developing whole communities and societies, rather than narrowly concentrating on progress within isolated policy areas. The idea is that improving the health and wellbeing of any society requires a more coordinated approach. In Indian Country, the term “nation building” is the metaphor used to describe this practice. In Alaska, we might think of this approach more appropriately as the mapkuq of policy making, research, and advocacy.
The mapkuq is the walrus or bearded sealskin blanket used by Inupiat coastal communities to throw community members high into the air during celebration, and in the past was also used to fling hunters into the air to spot whales breaching on the horizon. The metaphor is appropriate because it more accurately symbolizes the nature in which policy research and advocacy must be undertaken if there is to be improvement in the health and wellbeing of Alaska Native peoples. During celebration, community members surround the mapkuq, holding on to its rope rungs. They must work in perfect synchrony in order to hoist the participant on the blanket high into the air, and to hold the blanket bellowed upward in order to catch and ensure a graceful landing. These blankets are made from rawhide and are not soft, and participants are frequently injured when those holding the mapkuq are not able to move quickly enough as a coordinated unit to catch participants. Similarly, Alaska Native communities are being hurt by the inability of advocates, researchers, and policy makers to utilize policy through-lines cross cutting issues that negatively impact us, resulting in slowed progress toward healthy communities and societies. We are not moving in synchrony as a community, and as a result we are failing to catch our own people.
Inadequate education for Alaska Native peoples and the absence of sustained advocacy and leadership on this issue is at the heart of social, economic, political, and cultural inequity for Alaska Native peoples. Not only does the quality of schooling that we receive suffer, but the ideological and philosophical orientation of schools in Alaska Native communities tend to be subtly racist, often evident in the conspicuous absence of curricula focused on local people, language, culture, history, and land. Shockingly, 22% of enrolled K to 12 students are Alaska Native and more than half of all school districts are majority Alaska Native, yet a mere 4% of teachers are Alaska Native. Many parents today are educational products of the present day power imbalances and tend to view the status quo as normative. In only two known cases have school districts – prompted by internal Alaska Native leadership – reached out to communities to seek direction and feedback in the development of schooling.
Formal schooling has always failed Alaska Natives, and our communities have never been equal partners in the conceptualization and development of school programs, with potentially debilitating socio-psychological consequences for children and families. It is within the education field that the urgent need for a mapkuq approach to research, advocacy, and policymaking is most clear to me. The need is clear because formal schooling has such profound, far reaching effects that permeate every layer of our respective societies, and yet when advocacy does happen, it almost always focuses on the need to close the achievement gap between Alaska Native students and their white peers. Below, I demonstrate the great potential for Alaska Native education by highlighting policy areas that correlate with the education field:
Suicide: In her 2005 dissertation about Inupiat youth suicide in Northwest Alaska, social scientist Lisa Wexler drew a casual relationship between schools’ persistent failure to arm Inupiat youth with the intellectual tools needed to understand our own subjectivity in relation to the larger framework of colonization in which our ongoing colonization and oppression take place, with prevailing social dysfunction the most obvious symptom. In a region with only a 50% high school graduation rate in 2010, Wexler questions the psychological impacts of school failure being interpreted by youth as an additional failure of themselves and their communities.
Mental Health: A longitudinal study of at-risk blacks who attended a high quality preschool program between 1972 and 1977 found that at age 21: those who had not attended the childcare program showed higher levels of depressive symptoms, and 37% met diagnostic criteria for clinical depression. Among the childcare attendees, 26% scored high enough on tests of depressive symptoms to be considered clinically depressed…[i] Significantly, the correlation between a bad home environment and depression risk did not apply to the young adults who had participated in the program because “The program buffered the effects of that difficult home environment.”[ii]
Life Expectancy: Between the 1980s and 2000, life expectancy increases in the U.S. occurred nearly exclusively among high-education groups.[iii] “Low education” was classified as 12 years or fewer of formal education while “high education” was classified as at least 13 years of schooling.
In 2000, a 25 year old with a high school diploma could expect to live until 75 while a person the same age but with some university education could expect to live until 82.
Smoking: By 2000, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) death rates were twice as high among low-education white men and women and black men, compared to the more educated in these groups. There are two main forms of COPD: chronic bronchitis, defined by a long-term cough with mucus, and emphysema, defined by destruction of the lungs over time. Smoking is the leading cause of COPD.[iv]
Housing: Social scientist Frank J. Tester has demonstrated a correlation between overcrowded housing and food insecurity for families in one Nunavut community, as well as domestic violence and other social issues that place stress on children and youth.[v] Food insecurity and social stress and trauma at home affect student performance in schools. And in turn, educational attainment determines economic security, mobility, and housing. Overcrowding is an issue in Alaska Native communities, especially in the Arctic. To what degree remains unclear as there are no available data, but the policy implication is that housing, social and economic indicators, and educational attainment are closely related.
Employment and income: In the most comprehensive longitudinal study of the long-term effects of pre-school found that at age 40: significantly more of the preschool program group than the no-program group were employed (76% vs. 62%), which continues the trend from age 27 (69% vs. 56%). The program group also had significantly higher median annual earnings than the no-program group at ages 27 and 40 ($12,000 vs. $10,000 at age 27 and $20,800 vs. $15,300 at age 40).
Culture and Language: American schooling for Alaska Natives has almost always prioritized language stealing as a first step toward the erosion of the cultural, intellectual, philosophical, and religious foundations of indigenous societies, weakening our spirits and expediting assimilation into the dominating society. This is ongoing today, obvious in the fact that K to 12 bilingual Alaska Native language schooling has never existed as an option, and all Alaska Native languages are either endangered or severely endangered, and at least in the case of Eyak, now extinct.
Leadership development: For many Alaska Native high school and college students, learning about our history, cultures, political development and layers of governance, issues and challenges is a highly incidental, extra-curricular affair that often begins during an internship, or during employment with an Alaska Native organization. This lag time in understanding, the highly incidental nature in which it takes place, and the variability of action-oriented leaders in our community is preventing or slowing progress on key issues. We praise those who graduate from college and participate in the discourse on Alaska Native issues, yet have done little as a community to take sustained action to guarantee this same outcome for all Alaska Native students from K to post-secondary.
Alaska Native advocacy organizations need to exploit these areas of overlap in their work, and in doing so will ensure that other important issues such as suicide, housing, mental health, and leadership are not neglected. The mapkuq approach is not new – we have always worked in cooperation to adapt and move forward as distinct societies – yet we are currently exhausting our energy and resources attempting to surmount each obstacle individually. Beginning with the prioritization of educational reform as the most vital policy issue facing Alaska Natives, the mapkuq approach to policy advocacy will be the key to Alaska Native health and wellbeing.
[i] McLaughlin, A. E. et al, “Depressive Symptoms in Young Adults: The Influences of the Early Home Environment and Early Educational Child Care” (2007) Child Development, Vol. 78, Iss. 3, p. 746
[iii] Meara, E. R., Richards, S., and D.M. Cutler, “The Gap Gets Bigger: Changes in Mortality and Life-Expectancy, By Education, 1981-2000, (2008) Health Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 2, p. 353
[iv] National Center for Biotechnology Information (National Institute of Health: October, 9, 2009), Retrieved: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001153 February 3, 2011
[v] Tester, F. J., Iglutaq (in my room): A Case Study of Housing and Homelessness in Kinngait, Nunavut Territory (The Harvest Society, April 2006)
“Mr. Chairman, you have heard our witnesses. This is our Land. From the Brooks range to the Arctic Ocean, and from Canada to the Native village of Pt. Hope. It has been just a few years ago when you white people started coming in to stay. Even for the exploration of oil within the 2 petroleum reserve number four you didn’t do anything until 1945.
Mr. Chairman, when we were in Washington four months ago you asked us to answer a number of questions, one of these related to “unproven aboriginal title”. In the first instance, the words unproven aboriginal title is a misconception. There is no such a thing as unproven aboriginal title. The mere fact that you say “aboriginal” implies that someone was there before you were. So we were offended by the use of that phrase. Perhaps they are not proven to you, but that is because you do not know us. These claims are proven, just look at these barren lands out of which we four thousand Eskimos made our living. You can see that we had to travel many times a hundred miles to our various hunting camps. We occupied the whole 55 million acres on the North Slope.”
“Unfortunately, there are intellectual landscapes that have been forced forced on Aboriginal peoples – for example, the languages of rights, sovereignty, and nationalism. These intellectual traditions, stained by colonialism, have created discourses on property, ethics, political sovereignty, and justice that have subjugated, distorted, and marginalized Aboriginal ways of thinking. Throughout the history of the relationship, these Eurocentric discourses have created for Aboriginal peoples an intellectual landscape that in some cases has been purposefully designed to exclude Aboriginal ways of thinking.”
Dale Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Toward a Critical Indigneous Philosophy
