Make schools welcoming, says Native professor

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August 28 was back to school day in the Fort Qu'Appelle area, and not just for the students.

More than 100 teachers, administrators, and school representatives came to the Treaty 4 Governance Centre to discuss ways to improve the lot of Aboriginal children in the school system.

Those school systems will be facing a large overhaul - in attitudes as much as anything else - if Aboriginal students are going to succeed in the school system.

That was the message delivered by Dr. Martin Brokenleg, a professor of Native American studies at Augustana College, in Sioux Falls, S.D., during the day-long seminar.

Dr. Brokenleg, a member of South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux Nation, said that high drop-out rates by Aboriginal people in the school system indicate that the school system isn't working.

When children enter school, they learn more than their ABC or number facts, he said. They learn-by accident or by design-about the cultural conflict between their lives at home and the lives described at school.

"Did you learn to read at school through the Dick and Jane books?" he asked. "Did your mother wear a nice blue dress and wear heels when she was at home? Did your father wear a suit and tie to work? Not if you grew up on the reservation. Not if you grew up on a farm."

The "Dick and Jane" series was and is the first clue that the North American educational system was designed for non-Aboriginal, middle-class people, he said. And those who don't fit in-from Aboriginal people to recent immigrants-will face a tough time at school.

For example, many traditional Aboriginal values, such as generosity and respect for the earth, come into conflict with a value system of western society, in which accumulating wealth at the expense of everything else is its main goal.

As well, the parents of Aboriginal children have gone through a residential school system that tried to destroy their culture, he said. That system also soured Aboriginal people on the educational system.

Aboriginal children are also more likely to live in a home "in crisis"-where alcohol, drug abuse, or abuse is a part of life.

"In most instances, what's being done is the exact opposite of what should be done," he said. "In a crisis, a child should be surrounded by special support: the support of adults, the support of peers, family and community, so the child can function once again the way he or she did before the crisis.

"What most schools do, however, is respond in the opposite way, by using 'un-belonging'-suspensions, expulsions-which result in the opposite effect of what is intended.

"It's not so much a 'drop-out' as a 'push-out,' that kids see that there's nothing else to do but to leave, to save their sense of self, because their sense of self is so threatened by the 'get-tough' approaches most schools adopt."

The end result, according to Dr. Brokenleg, is a school system that isn't prepared to teach and pupils who aren't prepared to learn.

The dropout rate of western Canadian Aboriginal youth has been a long-time headache for First Nations organizations and education officials. In the American education system, the figures look even bleaker. Ninety-eight per cent of all Aboriginal children in American schools don't graduate. In fact, 48 per cent drop out by the time they're in the eighth grade, said Dr. Brokenleg.

"It was thought to have been indicative of Aboriginal youth's inability to function in the education system," he said. "In fact, it's a function of the schools' inability to provide the right kind of environment for youth."

The solution, he said is a school system that better reflects the cultures of the children who attend.

"That's to say that teaching lessons are taught but the concepts being taught are being drawn from the real community-not just from the Native community or the white community . . . so the material the kids see is something that's coming from Canadian society.

"A multi-cultural style of education will go a long way to redce the alienation some children from other cultures feel-the alienation that eventually forces them out of the education system.

"We're seeing a real shift in the psyche of schools . . . that schools see that it is much more in their self interest to provide a positive setting for youth."