Report recommends education return to traditional values

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Seven-year-old Tyson Atleo started Grade 2 this year at Royal Heights Elementary School in Surrey, British Columbia. He's a bright child with high hopes for his future. He loves science class and says he's going to be a Marine Biologist when he finishes school. Tyson or 'Dindinash', (Little Drummer Boy) is proud of his First Nations heritage. He is excited about the day he will follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather and father - the day when he becomes chief of the Nuu-Chah Nulth Tribal Council with Vancouver Island Ahousaht Band.

Tyson knows what he wants and where he's going. His parents, Shawn and Nancy, know what he wants and what's expected of him in order to make his dream a reality. They are two of the few parents who do. A recent report has indicated few Native parents are aware of what's expected of their children in today's educational system, and that more than half of BC's Native children never even graduate from high school.

A new study of Native education in B.C. says that Native children's abilities to deal with the public school system actually deteriorates the more they are exposed to it.

"Not because of lack of academic ability on the student's part," said study director, Dr. Richard Atleo, a U.B.C. teacher, anthropologist, and Native Chief, "but from a lack of orientation."

"Education for Native children in the B.C. school system begins well, but ends badly," said 54-year-old Atleo. "Our children are well-oriented to the Native culture and have a healthy self-image, but they are greeted at the schoolhouse door by a teacher who expects a middle-class white orientation.

The three-year educational research report, conducted by the Native Brotherhood and Native Sisterhood of B.C. Education Society, surveyed nine kindergartens and 10 elementary and secondary schools throughout British Columbia - from band-operated schools in northern isolated areas like Fort St. John, to provincially-run schools in large metropolitan areas like Vancouver.

The study found that three out of four kindergarten-aged Native children are ready and prepared for school - some are more than ready and even excelling. Today, 80 per cent are performing well at the elementary level, but only 40 per cent of them have satisfactory work habits.

the time they reach high school, many Native students have become so disoriented that 60 per cent have inadequate work habits and more than half (52 per cent) are failing or have dropped out. Atleo believes that although the study shows a dramatic improvement since the 1950s, when the majority of teachers didn't expect Native children to perform at the same level as white children and the failure rate was at about 94 per cent, there has to be further improvement in the performance of Native children.

His recommendations are simple: adopt traditional Native education techniques, give Natives more influence over school curriculum and make schools more bicultural.

"We need a joint academic and cultural programming system," says Atleo.

In order for that to occur, Native families must be more involved with their children's education, said Atleo.

"Traditional parents understood and could anticipate what was to be taught at every stage of a child's life," explained Atleo. "Today the modern Native parent may not understand what is to be taught at school entry and therefore be unable to anticipate that phase of training. We have to reestablish the traditional understanding about training children."

Traditional Native people were well-oriented to their worlds Atleo said. The study's recommendations attempts to redirect today's process and perspective about education back to traditional ideas, that preparation and practice are inseparable from content.

"We have to become re-oriented to today's world just as our ancestors were to their world.," said Atleo. He admits the difficulty trying to compare today's world and the traditional world.

"The traditional world was composed of one,which was divisible into spiritual and temporal," explained Atleo. "The spiritual was the source of the physical - you can't parallel that to today's world because that is not the perception."

Atleo said the major problem in Native education goes back to misconceptions assumed by Europeans when they came to this continent.

"They collectively held negative, destructive opinions that viewed Natives as savage and barbaric and weak-minded, without laws," said Atleo.

A policy statement written in 1632 by a Jesuit missionary influenced legislation, policies and practices in education, according to Atleo.

"It was a policy of cultural genocide that said habits, thoughts, feelings of the Native children should be completely destroyed and replaced with European culture," said Atleo. That policy, was in a variety of expression, maintained until 1973 when the federal government accepted the National Native Brotherhood's proposal for control of Native education.

'"The 1973 Native control of education policy completely turned around the destruction of Native culture to the affirmation of Native culture," says Atleo.

It focused upon giving the control of education in Native children by government, missionaries, outside agencies, back to local control - management by parents, Native parents, Native communities. It marked the beginning of band-operated schools, schools on reserves managed by Native people and over time, more Native teachers entering the teaching profession.

For the last 15 years Native communities have been working at raising the level of self-esteem and it has paid off. The study shows that today's Native children think very well of themselves. The home context is positive - Native parents consider education to be important and expect their children to do well..

The recommendations of Atleo's report are based on traditional educational practices which include parental involvement, parental management and an understanding by parents about where their childrn are going.

"This means today that Native parents in Native communities, whether they are on reserve or off-reserve, should begin to become more knowledgeable about what the school curriculum contain, beginning at the kindergarten level," said Atleo. "We're not talking about overnight change," he admitted. "It may take a generation or two or maybe more to begin to restore the well-being, the balance and the harmony that was in Native communities prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

"bringing awareness about, parents and children will hopefully be able to see the beauty, the goodness, the greatness, the effectiveness of their ancestors' educational system and begin to attempt to apply this to today's educational process."

There is hope, then, that 15 years from now, little Dindinash will be surrounded by a host of fellow Native graduates when he steps up to the podium to receive his degree in Marine Biology.