Every Once in a While

Note: I try not to go off on preachy tangents. It's really not what I want everyone to read. Every once in a while, though... it comes out. Skip it if you wish. I promise tomorrow I'll post something about honey buckets or first-graders on pixie sticks or how much I could use a beer. I swear.

And now... you've been warned...

Not very often, mind you, I'm usually not so deep, but occasionally I wonder... who the hell am to teach anyone here anything? Am I just a (*cough, cough*) pretty face on the total transformation of what's left of one of the native cultures of the Americas? I mean, yeah, we've got Yup'ik first language programs in the schools. They're really quite well-planned and executed in many cases. But we're still trying to fit everything (educational and otherwise) into a new framework. Give economic power to native people, but that's assuming that there's going to be a certain kind of economic system... OURS. Educate students in "culturally appropriate" ways, then make them pass standardized tests where you have to read and answer comprehension questions about stuff that's so far outside their realm of experience.

In college, we did a project where we developed a few sample SAT-style "w is to x as y is to z" questions based on ideas that average Americans don't know much about... in our case we used cycling. I can't remember the questions, but we administered it to a class of graduate students... no one passed. I asked if anyone had taken the SAT as a high school student and felt comfortable sharing how they did on that test's verbal section compared to our little mini-test. A woman raised her hand and said she scored above the 90th percentile (being a nice Minnesota girl, she qualified that with a "But my math wasn't nearly as good") and got zero out of five on our in-class example. My point? Right. I've got a point, somewhere. Oh, yeah. We feed them the "We want you to have culturally appropriate schooling, to learn academic skills that are relevant to your life and culture" line. Then out of the other side of our mouths, we lament that they're "not up to standards" with other American children. Up to whose standards?

Change-induced social issues (alcohol and family issues... there's another rant for another day) aside, our students are no less intelligent than white kids in, say, the Twin Cities. The teachers here are wonderful and hard-working, using the latest methods and generally being caring people. And yet our school district "fails" to meet federal standards. Why? Because the standards are from a place so far away, written by people who probably couldn't find and kill a caribou as well as some of our 4th graders can. Heh... let's make that a No Child Left Behind requirement... "The student will, individually or in a small peer group, successfully provide food for his/her family, including preparing it to be safely stored for at least a month."

But... knowledge like that isn't valued by the people making the decisions. I'm certainly not dissin' on da book learnin'. Ask those who knew me as a kid... I was a straight-up bookworm, iffy grades aside. My main beef with what's going on here is the unidirectionality of the knowledge flow. Native knowledge isn't frowned upon like it used to be, and for that I'm grateful. Our students don't get whacked upside the head for speaking Yup'ik. It's encouraged. Great! They learn the kass'aq (White... or generally non-native) stuff, too. Fine. But the giving of information is strictly from Kass'aq to Yup'ik. Native knowledge isn't valued by non-natives beyond an often simplistic (but well-meaning and complimentary) appreciation of "spirituality" or "connection with the earth" or whathaveyou. Kass'aq knowledge is for everyone, Yup'ik knowledge is just for Yup'ik people.

I think all this. And then I get a little cranky.

But THEN I remember, if I am some kid of benign educational conquistadora, killin' 'em with kindness, so to speak... is that anything so different than anything else that's gone on in the history of the world? Let's face it, as a species, we've not established a great record when it comes to "love your neighbor." More cultures have been squashed, assimilated, or erased it boggles the mind. Thousands of years of it. Honestly, what's our problem? Didn't we lose a lot of physical strength in the name of evolving bigger, smarter brains?

I'm becoming a pessimist in my old age. I'm way too young to be fatalistic and jaded. But like I said on New Years Day... maybe 2005 will be our year. Go, humanity, go!

Tomorrow: Something non-cranky/preachy/cynical.