book review: education for extinction by david w. adams

7/30/2019 Book Review: Education for Extinction by David W. Adams

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with lower savagery and ending with civilization (14). Unsurprisingly, in this vein of

thought, civilization was exemplified by the progress of Western Christian society, while

savagism was undoubtedly reflected in the stone age culture of Indians. Quoting Roy Harvey,

Adams further adds that the history of American civilization wasa three d imensional affair,

progressing from past to present, from east to west, from lower to higher (13). The message to

indigenous Americans could not be any more clear, either they assimilated into civilized society

or suffer the fate of complete elimination.

Philanthropic activists viewed assimilation through the lens of education, and by 1877

there were 150 schools in operation consisting of both boarding schools and day schools. From

the onset, controversy surrounded these schools in one way or another. Parents were reluctant to

send their children away to boarding schools for long periods because they feared for their safety

and well being. Only reassurances from officials that the students would be taken care of helped

assuage their concerns, but parents still preferred the day schools located at or near the

reservation. Educators and Indian advocates approached the matter from a paternalistic and racist

point, claiming that they only had the childrens best interest at heart, and in sisted that the only

way to eradicate savagism was to immerse the pupils in white society and as far away from their

tribal lands. The children, for the most part, found ways to adapt and cope with the culture clash

they were encountering.

The students at these schools learned elementary education, proper Victorian etiquette,

and tracked into gender specific trades agriculture and shop for boys, and sewing and

housewifery for girls. The expectation was that the students would return home and become

examples for their communities by reformers and government officials, and businessmen were

eager to help the students make use of their learned skills by employing them as cheap wage


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labor. Needless to say, many students were perpetually homesick and depressed, and great many

died of disease, failure to acclimate to their new environments, or malnutrition that resulted from

the constant food shortages as a result of underfunded schools. Students were aware of their dire

conditions and the invasions on their personal being and found ways to resist their horrid

conditions (223).

One form of resistance was simply to runaway, especially during tribal events and

ceremonies. Another form of resistance was to set the school on fire just so that they did not have

to return to school and have a prolonged vacation (229). Among the girls, they would pluck

their eyebrows and braid their hair, both things that were strictly prohibited by the dress code of

the school. Still another way was to give Indian names to their schools or people they did not

like, this way reversing the action taken by the officials when the students themselves were

stripped of their indigenous names. All of these methods of resistance served as an outlet for

indigenous students, but in the end, the schools left a deep psychological imprint on their lives

evinced from the recollections depicted in the Indian schools documentary.

Drawing from an array of sources, from peer reviewed journal articles and archives to

government reports and personal letters from officials, Adams offers us a detailed view into the

evolution of the Indian schools, their cultural and emotional impact, and how that period of

Native American history fits into the larger view of American history. He succeeds in presenting

this as a war that was waged psychologically through education, and how Euro-Americans firmly

believed they could ki ll the Indian, and save the man by introducing him, and her, to the

advanced ways of modern society. The end result was a coalescence of Western progressive

ideals with a heightened sense of indigenous cultural identity still very much alive and well

today.

book review: education for extinction by david w. adams

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