Teachers and Progressives: The Navajo Day-School Experiment 1935-1945

Journal of the Southwest

Teachers and Progressives: The Navajo Day-School Experiment 1935-1945Author(s): Katherine JensenSource: Arizona and the West, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), pp. 49-62Published by: Journal of the SouthwestStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40169048 .

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TEACHERS AND PROGRESSIVES

THE NAVAJO DAY-SCHOOL EXPERIMENT 1935-1945

by

KATHERINE JENSEN*

United states- Indian relations have traditionally been charac- terized by insensitivity to Indian cultures. During the 1930s, however, Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier led an idealistic

campaign for humanitarian, Indian-centered reform. Guided by the

principles of progressive education and assisted by leading progressive educators, Collier set out to revitalize not only the Indian schools, but the lives of Indian people. To implement his program, Collier relied upon hundreds of Indian Service personnel, including teachers (mostly young Anglo women), range riders, and principals. Although their experiences often proved to be far afield from Col- lier's Utopian vision, their observations provide the best access to the

history of the period. Their memoirs, autobiographies, and personal letters were filled with biases regarding policy statements, yet these blatant prejudices, as well as sensitivities, help explain local events and relationships, and ultimately the weaknesses of Collier's program. Moreover, in reporting daily routines and crises, the

employees provided a sense of what it meant to practice progressive education in Lukachukai, Arizona, or Toadlena, New Mexico.

*The author is a member of the sociology faculty and Director of Women's Studies at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the August 1981 meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association in Eugene, Oregon.

[49]



5O ARIZONA and the WEST

Despite the long history of its philosophy and programs, the diverse movement called "Progressivism" did not reach down to Indian education until the early 1930s. Prior to Collier's tenure, Indian education had been an avowed attempt to ' 'Americanize" tribesmen. For this purpose a few multi- tribal boarding schools had been established in the 1880s, together with Christian missions, to educate and Christianize native Americans. Collier had a Utopian vision for the revitalization of white and native American societies, based upon a tribal model of communal living. As Indian commissioner, he focused his attention primarily on the Southwest, where he had lived near Indian people during the 1920s, and where the

vitality of native American ways of life - in contrast with their economic impoverishment - made a poignant impression upon him. Next to the legal and administrative restructuring of tribal govern- ments, he believed that education was the most important method for strengthening Indian economies.1

Collier did not view education as simply a commodity given by white civilization to "primitive" natives. In his opinion, boarding- school education had made a meager impact on Indian lives. When the adolescent Indian returned home from the 'Violent and bizarre"

boarding-school experience, Collier wrote, in many cases "a veritable amnesia, including an aphasia for English words, seems to sweep the bitter years and all their evil and good tracings out of the child's soul." Collier, therefore, stressed education over schooling. In the

place of boarding schools, he envisioned decentralized day schools and community education. In the case of the Navajo, he stated that the sub-agencies would be "people's houses, and into them the formal schooling of the Navajo will be merged." If Collier's hopes were realized, there would be "no formal schooling of the cloistrated or standardized order." All education would "start from, and end in, the community group."2

Catherine (Jensen) Iverson, "Progressive Education for Native Americans: Washington Ideology and Navajo Reservation Implementation," Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences, III (Winter 1978), 231-55. In this article, the author explores the roles of W. Carson Ryan and Willard Beatty, directors of Indian Education during the New Deal, who were also presidents of the Progressive Education Association.

2John Collier, "Navajos," The Survey, LI (January 1, 1924), 339; and his "Indians at Work," Survey Graphic, XXIII (June 1934), 263.



The NAVAJO DAY-SCHOOL EXPERIMENT 5 1

Collier's educational program was twofold. First of all, he urged the construction of day schools which would encourage the preserva- tion of Indian cultures and family life; develop native crafts, for both aesthetic reasons and monetary gain; and permit local parental participation and control. Secondly, he advocated community education, for the "scientific advancement" of adults as well as children. Com-

munity education included practical courses in land management, soil and water conservation, and livestock reduction and herd im-

provement. It also incompassed literacy in native languages, arts and crafts, technical assistance, and health care. By offering instruction in such practical matters, Collier hoped to strengthen tribal political organization and foster economic prosperity.

Above all, Collier wanted to correct the common belief that in Indian education a choice must be made between traditional and

contemporary lifestyles. Indian policy, he argued, should not attempt to substitute a new way of life for that which already existed among tribesmen. Collier believed that schools were central to the social education of Indian tribes, but he warned against divorcing Indian schools from the community. "The Indian Schools," Collier

staunchly contended, "should primarily be designed to discover In- dian life, and to discover to that Indian life its own unrealized needs and opportunities/' This abstract and awesome responsibility ulti-

mately rested with the teachers, most of whom were young Anglo women whose struggles in isolated day schools on the roadless Colorado Plateau of the Navajo Reservation illustrated the chasm which existed between progressive theory and the reality of Indian education.3

In 1935 less than fifteen percent of the Navajos had ever been to school. Navajo children had access to ten off- reservation boarding schools, six one-room day schools, and six mission schools. In Sep- tember of 1935, the Interior Department opened thirty-nine new

community day schools on the reservation - built with Public Works Administration funds - and eleven more soon were added. They included carpentry and blacksmith shops, sewing and washing

3John Collier, "New Policies in Indian Education," New Mexico Quarterly, III (November 1933), 203-204.



52 ARIZONA and the WEST

facilities, health care clinics, local government ("chapter") meeting places, and Navajo literacy centers. The basic function of the new

day schools was to promote the economic revitalization of the native social structure.4

In their efforts to implement Collier's program through the

community day schools, agency personnel encountered a number of

problems. The difficulties most frequently mentioned included geo- graphical isolation, cultural and language barriers between teachers and students, the absence of textbooks and a clearly defined curriculum, the problem of fitting education into the larger social plan for the reservation, and eventually the demands of World War II.

Isolation was strikingly obvious to anyone who lived on the

Navajo Reservation. Single white women formed the overwhelming proportion of day-school teachers on the reservation, and they inevi-

tably devoted the initial pages of their memoirs to the experience of

being driven a hundred or more miles from a town, through the roadless high desert, to a school surrounded by a collection of build-

ings that bore little resemblance to a community. Next came the

discovery that, even in fortunate circumstances, the only other

people around who could speak English were a trader's family or

perhaps an itinerant missionary. New teachers either despaired of their surroundings and left within a matter of days or weeks, or they made a lifetime career of teaching on the Navajo Reservation or at other government Indian schools. Principals, all of them men, lived at a boarding school and supervised a half-dozen day schools in the area. Most of these men had extensive experience on the Indian school circuit.5

While Navajo Area supervisors - both men and women -

visited the day schools to assist with the curriculum and with voca-

*The Navajo Indian Problem (New York: The Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1939), 52-59. By 1939 the Navajo day schools averaged between 4,000 and 8, 500 adult visits per week. Ibid. , 59.

typical reactions of newly arrived day-school teachers to the Navajo Reservation are in Elizabeth Ward, No Dudes and Few Women: Ufe with a Navajo Range Rider (U. of New Mexico Press, 1951), 14-72; Gertrude Golden, Red Moon Called Me: Memoir of a Schoolteacher in the Government Indian Service (San Antonio, Texas: The Naylor Company, 1954), 139-45; Ruth E. Werner, Novice in Navajoland (Scottsdale, Arizona; Southwest Book Service, 1972), 1-9, 159. Orpha McPherson to Katherine Jensen, October 24, 1974; James and Bernice Allen to ibid., November 1, 1974, both in author's files. See also Navajo Indian Problem, 45.



The NAVAJO DAY-SCHOOL EXPERIMENT 53

tional and health work, the teachers carried a wide range of solitary responsibilities. Given the 3,000 miles of roads on the reservation, Navajo Education Director George Boyce stated that it took a supervisor two months just to visit each school for a few hours. Teachers, therefore, not only directed classroom work for students of varying ages and educational experience, but also ordered supplies and

supervised kitchen operations, clothing issues, parent activities, and

community meetings at the schools. A measles epidemic might com-

pel a teacher to travel from hogan to hogan taking temperatures, distributing aspirin and oranges, and hauling the sickest victims to a

hospital. Boyce reported that in 1944, ninety-four percent of Navajo teachers were earning thirty dollars per week. Living expenses were minimal and job security great, but survival depended largely on the teachers' relationships with the Navajo people and their world.6

Cultural differences between teachers and natives were a central stumbling block in Indian education. Whereas Anglo teachers had been positive necessities in previous efforts to Americanize the Indians, Collier thought that teachers and administrators -

especially in the day schools - should be Indians. He repeatedly urged that Navajos with at least three years of formal schooling be hired as teachers in a hogan-based program of primary education. Collier found little support, however, for changing Civil Service

employment regulations to make room for Indians, and had to settle for providing scholarship money to train Indian college students as

potential teachers.7 Each day school employed at least one Navajo man and one

woman. But, apart from interpreting for the teacher, they seldom served the community education function envisioned by Collier. One former teacher recalled that the Navajo cook "prepared meals, taught the girls how to use the rest room and shower room, [and] how to set the table. " She also "taught the children table manners and interpreted for the teacher as necessary/' The male custodian,

George A. Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep: The 1940' s (San Francisco, California: The Indian Historian Press, 1974), 94, 102-104, 138-39. 1 Annual Report of the Secretary of Interior [SI], 1933 (Washington, D.C., 1933), 68-69, 75; ibid., 1935 (Washington, D.C., 1935), 133-34; Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep, 149.




on the other hand, "built the fires in the classroom, dining room, bathroom and laundry room." He also "drove the bus to pick up the

pupils, taught the boys how to use the rest room and shower room cleaned all the rooms, helped the cook, and interpreted for the teacher."8

Beyond the fact that teachers were non-native, their profes- sional training had not prepared them for their tasks on the reservation. Ruth Werner admitted in her memoir, Novice in Navajoland, that "there was nothing in my courses at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College to equip me for teaching Indian children." No teacher training programs in Indian education existed anywhere at that time. The most Indian Service officials could hope for was prior experience in rural schools and "experience in adapting curricula to local needs."9

The quality of teaching in the Navajo day schools was debat- able. Elementary supervisor Orpha McPherson claimed that the first

day-school teachers were either experienced or "hand-picked," but admitted that many inexperienced teachers had to be hired to staff the vastly expanded Navajo school system in 1935. Both Commis- sioner Collier and Education Director Boyce suggested that poorer teachers often ended up in day schools because transfer to boarding schools, where there was a larger Anglo community, was often a reward for good performance. Boyce also described annual teacher-

swapping among principals who had found that Civil Service regulations made it difficult to get rid of poor teachers. Collier decried the use of day schools as depositories for unsuccessful teachers and annually urged the need for improvement in day-school personnel.10

Teacher attitudes were critical in bridging the culture gap. Learning the Navajo language might have been even more valuable, but few teachers accomplished that task. Short-term residents on the reservation tended to be preoccupied with odors, "disgusting customs," and the difficulties of "living like a white woman." Those who adjusted to the new environment usually found the Navajo

8Allen to Jensen, November 1, 1974, author's files.

•Werner, Novice in Navajoland, 1; Annual Report SI, 1940 (Washington, D.C., 1940), 385.

10McPherson to Jensen, October 24, 1974, author's files. Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep, 97-98; Annual Report SI, 1933, 75.



(above) "Hogan School" at Navajo Mountain. -Donald Parman, The Navajos and the New Deal (1976), following 144. (below) Navajo children boarding a bus at Cove Day School. - Hildegard Thompson, The Navajos' Long Walk for Education (1975), 53.



(above) Navajo family entering Hunters Point Day School.- Thompson, Navajos Long Walk, 59. -(below) Director of Navajo Schools George Boyce (second from right) confers with BIA personnel on the Navajo Reservation. -George Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep (1974), 126.




people and culture not only interesting but for the most part sensi- ble. They soon reconciled themselves to the fact that "we lived in the

Navajo world, enjoying our experiences but never quite becoming an intimate part of their unique existence. " Such teachers learned the important lesson that their role was that of a respectful and concerned insider.11

The Indian school curriculum posed the greatest problem for Collier's progressive instructional policy. During the 1930s no course of study was available for the teachers and few textbooks could be obtained for pupils. When the 1937 bill funding day schools inadver-

tently omitted appropriations for texts, teachers were advised to use the "project method" and impress upon students that they must "learn by doing." While teachers had almost total responsibility for

determining content and creating instructional materials, their au-

tobiographies make it apparent that they had unclear or mistaken ideas about progressive education and that they had few guidelines to follow. Frequently, teachers used the term "progressivism" as an

epithet when they were unhappy with their situation or were critical of a colleague. In response, Indian Education Director Willard

Beatty warned teachers against "doing a sloppy job and then blam-

ing it on progressive methods."12 In 1937 Lucy Wilcox Adams, Boyce's predecessor as Navajo

education director, explained the educational objectives on the reservation. The most important Navajo problems were economic and centered on land use, she said. Only education could solve the land- use problem. Few teachers, however, had background which would enable them to create an educational program around land use. In fact, virtually no one in the Indian Service but Collier himself had

experience in adult education. Supervisor Orpha McPherson re-

11Werner, Novice in Navajoland, 131. For a contrasting attitude, see Ward, No Dudes and Few Women, passim. 12Do Your Own Best," in Willard W. Beatty (ed.), Education For Action: Selected Articles from Indian Education, 1936-1934 (Washington D.C., 1944), 7-8; Navajo Indian Problem, 45; Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep, 110. Allen to Jensen, November 1, 1974, author's files. Ward, No Dudes and Few Women, 199-200, reported a conversation with a young teacher who perceived progressive education primarily in terms of corporal punishment. The use of "progressivism" as a defense unrelated to the issue at hand is in letters between Toadlena Principal Paul Schmitt and George Boyce, October 23, 1942, in Paul N. Schmitt Letters, in possession of his grandson, Peter Iverson.




called that there were "many, many conferences and even Saturday meetings" during the year with day-school teachers on the reservation. The frequency of the meetings, however, likely seemed greater to the supervisor running them than to the teachers who attended

periodically."13 John Collier recognized the insufficiency of declaring a new

policy in effect. To compensate, he sought to incorporate the program "into the living of a staff which for many years may have been

practicing quite the reverse." To this end, he and Beatty during the summer of 1936 held six- week, in-service training institutes for reservation teachers. At Fort Wingate, New Mexico, the session included workshops in anthropology, the philosophy of education, rural sociology, Indian arts and crafts, vocational agriculture, and home economics, all based upon the needs and resources of the area. There were also demonstrations in the techniques of teaching Eng- lish as a second language. But for teachers isolated on the Navajo Reservation, and overburdened with the daily responsibilities of in-

troducing a new form of education to a foreign culture, the summer school session provided little practical assistance.14

Although Navajo families utilized the new day-school facilities, they remained suspicious of the sudden change in program. The few

Navajos who had attended boarding schools were especially fearful that Collier was advocating second-rate schooling for Indians. Most

Navajos had never attended school, but they had some notion of what a school should be. It should be a boarding facility, with grade classifications and promotions at the end of the year. It should have a course of study like that of white schools, with the goal of educating an Indian to get along in the white world. However useful the day schools may have been to parents, many Navajos did not see them as real schools. And yet, the participation of many Navajos in the new

program signified a measure of acceptance. In December of 1939, fifty-five adult Navajos spent two weeks in a demonstration session at Wingate and apparently came away enthusiastic. The following

13Lucy Wilcox Adams, "A Navajo Education Program," Indians at Work, V (November 1, 1937), 12- 13. McPherson to Jensen, October 24, 1974, author's files.

"Annual Report SI, 1937 (Washington, D.C., 1937), 227.




year bilingual materials and an adult literacy campaign were introduced and received a favorable response.15

But the greatest test of the Navajo community day schools was the attempt to integrate education with political and economic programs. Working with the existing Navajo council structure, Collier set up local political units and arranged for them to hold their meet-

ings in the day-school buildings. Here Navajo families gathered to

express their concerns about government programs, of which the schools themselves formed an important part.

Even more critical to the schools than their political function was their role in stock reduction. In 1930, the Navajos grazed more than a million and a quarter sheep on land able to support only half a million head. As a result, soil erosion had become a serious tribal

problem. In the depths of the Depression, when surplus ewes sold for $1.25 a head and goats were shot for lack of a market, the Indian Service initiated compulsory stock reduction on the Navajo Reserva- tion. Initially, all families were required to reduce their flocks by the same number. This made it possible for owners of large flocks to sell culls, while poorer stockmen were often compelled to dispose of their best animals. Herdsmen went hungry in some cases, and were of- fended by the wanton waste brought on by the reduction program. Navajo philosophy stressed a sense of unity with the land and with all living things upon it; stock reduction directly assaulted that spe- cial relationship. Although the tribal council approved the stock reduction program, this exercise in representative democracy meant little to people who made decisions always by the consensus of local

groups. In overview, the livestock reduction program heightened the economic hardship Navajos suffered, and threatened the traditional

way of life which, ironically, Collier valued greatly. 16

15Davida Woerner, Education among the Navajo: An Historical Study (n.p.: n.p., 1941), 170. Margaret Szasz, Education and the American Indian: Road to Self- Determination, 1928-1973 (U. of New Mexico Press, 1974), 110, omits any mention of native criticism and points to efforts by Navajo parents to build and staff temporary dormitories in order to keep the schools open.

"John Collier, On the Gleaming Way: Navajos, Eastern Pueblos, Zunis, Hopis, Apaches, and Their Land, and Their Meanings to the World (Denver, Colorado: Sage Books, 1962), 62; Robert Young, The Role of the Navajo in the Southwestern Drama (Gallup, New Mexico: Gallup Independent, 1968), 64-70.




Teachers were directed to emphasize land management, but

they regularly avoided the subject. Elizabeth Ward described the

rivalry between teachers and government range riders who felt their

respective interests were in conflict. Supervisor Orpha McPherson called day schools "barometers of Navajo opinion,

" and reported that

Navajo parents who objected to lessons in land management kept their children at home.17

The seemingly trivial matter of providing clothing also threatened the day schools. Boarding-school personnel had always given Indian students new clothes and cut their hair, so that they would look like properly groomed white children. But Congress in

1937 failed to appropriate clothing money for day-school students. Education Director Boyce regarded this as merely a Collier administrative oversight. The omission, however, may in fact have been intentional, for Collier frequently expressed distaste for the material

aspects of white culture and American educational dogma. In any case, the clothing issue once again demonstrated the distance which

separated well-intentioned policy from local conditions. Although government data is conspicuously unclear, school enrollment on the

Navajo Reservation apparently declined twenty percent during 1936, in protest of the new clothing policy.

18

Finally, religious conflict hampered the day-school program. Collier's initial involvement in Indian affairs had been an effort in

1923 to halt government interference with Pueblo ceremonial dances by organizing the American Indian Defense Association. Later, as Indian commissioner, he forbade government employees from engag- ing in religious activities during the work day and permitted only one hour release time per week for religious instruction of children whose parents requested it. Even the 1939 Phelps-Stokes Fund

study of the Navajo Reservation - introduced with the premise that

"McPherson to Jensen, October 24, 1974, author's files. Woerner, Education among the Navajo, 160. A poem written by a Navajo student in 1937 illustrated the Indian attitude: "If I do not believe/The things that you say,/Maybe I will not tell you./That is my way./Maybe you think I believe you/That thing you say,/But my thoughts stay with me/My own way." Quoted in Rose K. Brandt, The Colored Land (Washington, D.C., 1937), 80.

"Woerner, Education among the Navajo, 152-53.




"there must be nothing dominant or aggressive in the attitude of the white man" - criticized Collier's concept of religious liberty, which "rated modern and rational religious organizations with primitive Navajo ceremonialism. "19

Jacob Morgan, a prominent and outspoken Navajo who ran a Christian Reformed mission, testified before Congress against the stock reduction and soil conservation programs. He also complained of the lack of "fundamentals" in the education program on the reservation, asserting that Collier's "Indianizing the Indians" was holding them back. Together with several white missionaries, Morgan mounted a concerted effort for a return to the old boarding-school emphasis on Christianization and Americanization. While Christian

Navajos made up only a miniscule proportion of the reservation

population, their English language skills nonetheless enabled them to articulate effectively their views.20

World War II provided the final blow to the community day- school program on the Navajo Reservation. Wartime scarcity of

gasoline, tires, and spare parts made it impossible to maintain and

repair the buses which carried widely dispersed pupils to the day schools. Because of their language and mechanical skills, Navajo drivers were the most likely to enlist or be drafted into the army. Many teachers, including Ruth Werner and her female colleague at Lukachukai, also joined the military. As a result of wartime neces-

sity, nineteen Navajo day schools had to be closed and makeshift dormitories were constructed at other schools. By 1944 most of the reservation boarding-school facilities were falling apart and six were closed, leaving 15,000 Navajo children without access to schools.21

19Kenneth Philp, "John Collier and the Crusade to Protect Indian Religious Freedom, 1920-1926," Journal of Ethnic Studies, I (Spring 1973), 22-38. Navajo Indian Problem, xiv, 28.

2oCongressional Record, 75 Congress, 1 Session, 1835; Boo Martin etal. to U.S. Congress, January 8, 1938, in ibid., 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 870-71. "Senate Sub-Committee Holds Hearings on Navajo Affairs," Indians at Work, IV (July 1, 1937), 13.

21James E. Officer, Indians in School: A Study of the Development of Educational Facilities for Arizona Indians (Tucson: University of Arizona Bureau of Ethnic Research, American Indian Series 1, 1956), 25; Werner, Novice in Navajoland, 168-69; Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep, 115-21, 133-34. Sleeping facilities in the makeshift dormitories included bunks built in coal bins and shower rooms. Ibid., 115. By 1943, 838 Indian Service employees had entered the military. Annual Report SI, 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1943), 291.



6o ARIZONA and the WEST

Although the Navajo literacy program and local school boards had just been inaugurated in the early 1940s, Collier apparently already had lost hope for his community education program. Educa- tion Director Boyce in February of 1945 went to Washington to

express his frustration with the lack of support for increased postwar Indian appropriations. While Collier had complained in his reports of insufficient congressional appropriations, Willard Beatty report- edly told Boyce that he could have gotten more money from Con-

gress all along if Collier had allowed Beatty to try. In his annual

reports during the early 1940s, Collier gradually gave less and less attention to education and dwelled increasingly on the contributions of Indian people to the war effort. Finally despairing, he resigned in

1945 to become involved in launching Pan-Indian organization in the Western hemisphere.22

Ironically, the visionary Collier had become a villain on the

Navajo Reservation. Stock reduction, soil conservation, and day schools were all villified as parts of his programs, and in complaints they were listed together in that order. Later, Navajos would refer to the thin mangy horses which roamed their land as "John colliers."

Already by 1946, Collier looked back with some regret on his administration of Indian affairs.23

Collier in the 1930s had considered three ways to effect massive

change within the politically unorganized Navajo tribe. First, there was the traditional method of direct federal compulsion, a tactic which he despised. Second, the government could grant full responsibility to the newly organized, but hardly legitimate, tribal council. The third option was slow, patient community organization through local headmen and healer-singers. Collier realized too late that he had erred profoundly by not adopting the third approach. "We could, or did not," he confessed, "move the conservation problem through and

beyond the centralized organ of the Tribe, out to the local com-

22Boyce, When Navajos Had Too Many Sheep, 109, 149-51. Collier intentionally discouraged road- building in certain areas of the reservation in order "to save for the Indian some places that are all his own." John Collier, From Every Zenith: A Memoir, and Some Essays on Life and Thought (Denver, Colorado: Sage Books, 1963), 271, 300.

23In fact, the stock reduction program was primarily the idea of Navajo Area Director E. R. Fryer.



The 1SIAVAJO DAY-SCHOOL EXPERIMENT 61

munities where the Navajos' real profundities and strengths have their abode/' An attempt also should have been made to "move the

Navajos' health problems out there, and their schooling and adult

problems, and all of their other problems and the Indian administration itself." To his lifelong regret, Collier had underestimated the difficulties of Indian education.24

Collier's educational program on the Navajo Reservation failed because of the wide gap between policy formulated in Washington and problems of implementation at the grass roots level. Collier

employed well-known progressive educators to structure his far-

reaching dream, but they could not agree and thus were unable to articulate clearly and consistently their principles to the reservation

day schools. Also, Collier expected too much of the Indian Service teachers. All teachers faced the basic problem of adjustment to living in a foreign land when they arrived on the reservation. Success or failure depended largely on the measure of tolerance to extreme

social, cultural, and physical isolation. If the teacher decided to stay, she faced every day a roomful of students of various ages, none of whom could speak more than a few words of English. But building relationships across such cultural and language barriers was critical to determining the participation of well-meaning outsiders in Navajo education.

Once isolation and culture shock had been confronted, the teacher might worry about the larger meaning of progressive education. But without textbooks and curriculum materials, she had to fall back on traditional methods and objectives. The prime objective of the school was to resolve economic problems of land use, yet teachers

scarcely understood, or were prepared to address, the matter.

Navajos saw schools and stock reduction as one package. As they bitterly resisted stock reduction policies, they also avoided schools.

24Collier, On the Gleaming Way, 65-67. Given the revolutionary nature of Collier's vision and his

long term of service, it is surprising that so little of his dramatic experiment in Indian education remained in the bureaucratic memory on the Navajo Reservation- which because of its size and

population became a laboratory for the Bureau of Indian Affairs' educational efforts. Years later several locally controlled community schools reappeared on the reservation, emphasizing bilingual instruction, tribal history and arts, literacy, and the efficient use of local resources. They were heralded as a new idea in education for native Americans.




The day schools may or may not have survived stock reduction. Had the local school boards and adult literacy efforts been widely embraced, the day schools might have dissociated themselves from stock reduction, or emerged as organized bases from which to raise successful opposition to the program. Clearly, the day schools could not have operated during the war. Without buses, children could not travel the distance - up to thirty miles- to school each day. In the absence of roads, continual maintenance of vehicles remained indis-

pensable. With fewer driver/mechanics and teachers, schools had to be closed, for there were never more applicants than positions until 1946.

Thus Collier's program failed because of a peculiar conjunction of circumstances. It also mirrored the limited utility of non-Indian

leadership in the effort toward native American self-determination. It was a poignant example of problems arising in the distance between educational administration and community wants. Ironically, of all the Indian commissioners who held the position, before or since, it was Collier who saw the most value in an alien way of life and the most beauty in a native culture. And yet, his name would be remembered with bitterness on the Navajo Reservation.



Teachers and Progressives: The Navajo Day-School Experiment 1935-1945

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