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What the White Race May Learn from the Indian

<h2 id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI THE INDIAN AND EDUCATION</h2> Take it all in all, I think I believe more in the Indian’s system of education than our own,—I mean, in the principles involved. Our education is largely an education of books. We teach from books, we study from books, we get our ideas from books. Joaquin Miller’s reply to Elbert Hubbard, before quoted, seems to many people to be a foolish remark. But I see a profound thought in it. It was the poet’s protest against the too great use of books. He regards books as subversive of individual thought. He contends that books retard and prevent thought, and that we read, not to stimulate thought, but to deaden it. And undoubtedly too much reading and dependence upon books does deaden and destroy not only thought, but, alas! far worse still, the power to indulge in individual thought. Hence books are often a hindrance and a curse instead of a help and a blessing. The Indian has no books. While he has tradition and legend, myth and story, he has no written word. Everything that is, as differentiated from everything that is supposed, in his life has to be personally learned by individual contact with the things themselves. Botany is the study of flowers, not of words about flowers. There is but one way we can really study botany, and that is out in the fields with the flower growing before us. It must be seen day in and day out from its planting until its fruition. All its development must be known and understood. The properties 131 of its fruit, its roots, its stem, its leaves, for food, medicinal, manufacturing, or other purposes are all connected with the study. It is well to know the names of the plants, the names of all parts of plants, and the families and species to which they belong, but these latter things, important and interesting though they be, are but secondary or tertiary as compared with the primary out-door personal and intimate knowledge I have referred to. Those who think the Indian uneducated should read Charles Eastman’s (Ohiyesa) book telling of his boyhood days with his Sioux parents and grandparents. Eastman is a full-blooded Sioux, and though later educated at Dartmouth College, still shows by his writings and words how much he reveres his wise teachers of the open air and the woods. The fact is, that in matters pertaining to personal observation the Indian children are far ahead of our own brightest and smartest children; they observe the slightest deviations from the regular order. Who does not know of the Indian’s power in trailing. I know Navahos, Mohaves, Hopis, Havasupais, and others who will follow the dimmest trail with unerring certainty, and tell you the details of the actions of the person or animal trailed. This is education of a wonderfully useful kind; a kind that it would be well to give more of to our own children. Indeed, I have been saying, both privately and publicly, for many years, and I here repeat it, that if my children were trained to observe and reflect upon what they observed I should not care if they never went to school until they were grown up to young manhood and womanhood. That keen, though unusual thinker, Ernest Crosby, 132 in one of his books, presented the following, which perfectly meets my ideas and suggests what I mean in regard to the Indian: <h4>EDUCATION</h4> Here are two educated men. The one has a smattering of Latin and Greek; The other knows the speech and habits of horses and cattle, and gives them their food in due season. The one is acquainted with the roots of nouns and verbs; The other can tell you how to plant and dig potatoes and carrots and turnips. The one drums by the hour on the piano, making it a terror to the neighborhood; The other is an expert at the reaper and binder, which fills the world with good cheer. The one knows or has forgotten the higher trigonometry and the differential calculus; The other can calculate the bushels of rye standing in his field and the number of barrels to buy for the apples on the trees in his orchard. The one understands the chemical affinities of various poisonous acids and alkalies; The other can make a savory soup or a delectable pudding. The one sketches a landscape indifferently; The other can shingle his roof and build a shed for himself in a workman-like manner. The one has heard of Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Comte, but knows precious little about them; The other has never been troubled by such knowledge, but he will learn the first and last word of philosophy, “to love,” far quicker, I warrant you, than his college-bred neighbor. For still it is true that God hath hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes. Such are the two educations: Which is the higher, and which the lower?2 <div class="footnote"> 2 From Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable, by Ernest Crosby. </div> 133 <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_133" src="images/i_133.jpg" alt="" /> A NAVAHO GRANDMOTHER WITH THE BABY SHE LOVES, AND WHOSE EDUCATION SHE WILL DIRECT. </div> I would not have it thought that I am opposed to all systematic and book education, even on our present plan or under our present system. My protest is not so wide and sweeping as that. The main propositions upon which I base my opposition are: 1. That we do not pay sufficient attention to the physical health of our students, making health of secondary, tertiary, or quaternary importance, or often not giving it a single thought; leaving it 134 absolutely to regulate itself, when it should be the first, primary, determinate aim and object of all education. This very day upon which I write I sat at a professor’s table. He is a prominent educator in one of the important cities of the West. We were eating breakfast. He was complaining of indigestion. As he ate I could see his tongue seamed and coated, and his lips were rough and fevered as with stomach trouble. He helped himself to mush,—four times as much as a healthy man ought to have taken, and in far less time than it has taken me to write this he had “shoveled” it all in and “gobbled” it down. (The words in quotation marks are used thoughtfully, and they more truthfully describe what was the absolute fact than any other words with which I am familiar.) He drank two glasses of milk warm from the cow, and ate French bread which had been heated in the oven and then saturated with butter. The night before he had opened a can of sardines,—as he said, “to see what he could eat,” and after the mush he ate a few of them. Then the maid brought in bacon and fried eggs and coffee, and he “did justice” to them. Yet he wondered why he was troubled with indigestion, and his poor wife sent word down from her bedroom that she regretted she could not see me again as she was suffering severely with one of her “regular” sick headaches. My own breakfast consisted of a small quota of mush, some of the hot bread (there was no other), and some cold milk. I felt well and happy after my frugal meal, while he confessed not only to feeling heavy and “logy,” but unsatisfied with what he had eaten—a clear proof of an abnormal appetite and a disordered digestive system. 135 <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_135" src="images/i_135.jpg" alt="" /> AN AGED COAHUILLA BASKET WEAVER. </div> Now, is it to be expected that with our teachers themselves so ignorant of the first principles of healthy dietetics our students should know any better? Our 136 whole system of eating is wrong. We eat anything and everything our tastes—often perverted and depraved—demand, and we never ask ourselves the question as to whether the food is good, or our methods of eating it wise and proper. In my chapter on the Indian and diet I discuss this question more thoroughly, but I refer to it in this connection as one of the great defects of our educational system. 2. My second proposition is, that we keep our students indoors all the time,—as a settled, established custom,—with occasional short periods out of doors, instead of reversing the matter and keeping them out of doors all the time, with occasional short periods indoors. Why keep children or university students indoors? While in the winter climate of the East outdoor life is not as possible as it is in the balmy West, there certainly can be much more time spent out of doors than there now is. We pride ourselves upon our scholastic progressiveness, yet they do these things far better in Germany. The educational and medical authorities of Berlin have organized a forest school for the city children of the crowded districts of Berlin and Charlottenburg. In a wide clearing 150 children follow—out of doors—the usual procedure of school, delightfully varied with nature study at first hand. The hours of work are short, and fresh air and exercise are given a supreme importance. The children cook their own dinners at a camp-fire, and their desks and seats and shelter-sheds were made from the timber felled to form the clearing. At 1 o’clock they are all required to take an hour’s nap, for which each child is provided with a blanket and a reclining-chair. This is a move in the right direction. Our schools 137 cost the nation millions of dollars each year. Surely we have a right to demand that they give us health for our children in exchange, instead of ruining it in so many cases as they now do. In Japan out-of-door schools are quite common, especially when the cherry and plum trees are in blossom. In Los Angeles, California, a business college holds many of its class sessions out of doors, and I trust the time will come when this will be the rule in all schools, instead of the exception. I am perfectly well aware that there is danger that these statements will be taken too literally. They must be taken as broad and general statements. My conception is that in our present condition we live indoors and go out of doors occasionally. I would have that proposition reversed. We should live out of doors and go indoors occasionally. The same common sense and rational mode of reading my words must be applied to all that I say on out-of-door education. Naturally, I am not such a fool as to suppose that all educational or scientific or any other work can be done out of doors. Though I am not a college professor, and never shall be, though I am not a scientific expert, and never can be, though I am not many things that other men are, I know enough—have observed and seen enough—to know that delicate experiments of a variety of kinds need the most rigid indoor seclusion for their successful conducting. But this does not alter my general propositions, viz., that the health of students is of more importance than any and all education given in schools or colleges; that outdoor life is more conducive to the health of students than indoor life, and that, 138 therefore, where possible, all education should be given out of doors. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_138" src="images/i_138.jpg" alt="" /> AN ALEUT BASKET MAKER. THESE WOMEN MAKE THE MOST DELICATE BASKETRY IN THE WORLD. </div> 3. As a result of this indoor scholastic life, we content ourselves by teaching our children from books,—which at best are but embalmed knowledge, canned information, the dry bones of knowledge, words about things,—instead of bringing them in contact (as far as is possible and practicable) with the things themselves. I believe in books; I believe in education; I believe in schools, in colleges, in universities, in teachers, professors, and doctors of learning; but I do not believe in them as most of the white race seem 139 to do, viz., as good in themselves. They are good only as they are instruments for good to the children committed to their care. The proper education of one child is worth more to the world than all the schools, colleges, and universities that were ever built. One Michael Angelo, one Savonarola, one Francis of Assisi, one Luther, one Agassiz, one Audubon, is worth more to the world than all the schools that ever were or ever will be. And if, by our present imperfect and unhealthful school methods, we kill off, in childhood, one such great soul, we do the human race irreparable injury. Let us relegate the school to its right place, and that is secondary to its primary,—the child. The school exists for the child, not the child for the school. As it now is, we put the plastic material of which our nation is to be formed into the mould of our schools, and regardless of consequences, indifferent to the personal equation in each child, overlooking all individuality and personality, the machine works on, stamping this soul and mind material with one same stamp, moulding it in one same mould, hardening it in the fire to one same pattern, so that it comes forth just as bricks come forth from a furnace, uniform, regular, alike, perhaps pretty to the unseeing eye, but ruined, spoiled, damned, as far as active, personal, individualistic life and work are concerned. The only human bricks that ever amount to anything when our educational mill has turned them out are those made of refractory clay,—the incomplete ones, the broken ones, the twisted ones, those that would not or could not be moulded into the established pattern. This is why I am so opposed to our present methods. Let us have fewer lessons from books, and more knowledge 140 gained by personal observation; less reading and cramming, and more reflective thinking; fewer pages of books read, and more results and deductions gained from personal experiences with things high and low, animate and inanimate, that catch the eye and mind out of doors; and above all the total cessation of all mental labor when the body is not at its best. The crowding of sick and ailing children is more cruel and brutal than Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, and so utterly needless and useless that fools couldn’t do worse. What is the use of education to a sick person, and especially when the sickness is the result of the educational process. God save us from any more such education! Doubtless I shall be told that my ideas are impracticable. I know they are and ever will be to those who value “the system” more than the child. Granted that in cold and wet weather students can’t get out of doors much. Then open all the doors and all the windows and give up the time to marching, to physical exercises, to deep breathing, to anything,—romping even,—rather than to cramming and studying a set number of pages, while the air breathed is impure, unwholesome, actively poisonous. When our educational methods thus interfere with the health of the child, I am forever and unalterably opposed to them. We had far rather have a nation of healthy and happy children, growing up into healthy and happy manhood and womanhood, even though devoid of much book knowledge, than a bloodless, anæmic, unhappy nation though filled with all the lore of the ages. Give me, for me and mine, every time, physical and mental health and happiness, even though we have never parsed a single sentence, determined the family and 141 Latin name of a single flower, or found out the solution of one solitary problem of algebra. 4. My fourth proposition is, that as the result of this indoor book-teaching our children are not taught to think for themselves, but are expected and required to accept the ideas of the authors,—often, indeed, they must memorize the exact words of the books. This is, in itself, enough to condemn the whole system. We could better afford to have absolutely no schools, no colleges, no books even, than a nation professedly educated, yet the members of which have not learned to do their own thinking. 5. As a conclusion, therefore, I am forced to recognize that, in a much larger measure than we are ready to admit, our educational system is superficial, is a cramming process instead of a drawing-out—educere, educational—process, and no education so-called can be really effective, really helpful, that thus inverts the natural requirements of the mind. And that, when our system ignores the physical health of the student, no matter what his age, it is a criminal, a wicked, a wasteful system that had better speedily be reformed or abolished. All these ideas are practically the result of my association with the Indian and watching his methods of instruction. His life and that of his family out of doors color all that he and they learn. I think it was John Brisbane Walker who once wrote a story, when he edited and owned the Cosmopolitan, about some college men, thoroughly educated in the academic sense, who were shipwrecked at sea. He showed the helplessness and hopelessness of their case because of their inability to take hold and do things. The Indian can turn his hand to anything. When out 142 of doors few things can feaze him. He knows how to build a fire in the rain, where to sleep in a storm, how to track a runaway animal, how to trap fish, flesh, or fowl, where to look for seeds, nuts, berries, or roots, how to hobble a horse when he has no rope,—that is, how to make a rope from cactus thongs, how to picket a horse where there is no tree, bush, fence, bowlder, nor anything to which to tie it. What college man knows how to picket a horse to a hole in the ground? Yet I have seen an Indian do it, and have done it myself several times.3 He knows how to find water when there is none in sight and the educated white man is perishing for want of it, and he knows a thousand and one things that a white man never knows. <div class="footnote"> 3 See “Indians of the Painted Desert Region,” Little, Brown, & Company, p. 15. </div> As I shall show in the chapter on the Indian and art work, the Indian basket-weaver far surpasses the white woman of college education in invention of art-form, artistic design, variety of stitch or weave, color harmonies, and digital dexterity, or ability to compel the fingers and hands to obey the dictates of the brain. Education is by no means a matter of book-learning. It is a discipline of the eye, the hand, the muscles, the nerves, the whole body, to obey the dictates of the highest judgment, to the end that the best life, the happiest, the healthiest, and the most useful, may be attained, and if this definition be at all a true one I am fully satisfied that if we injected into our methods of civilized education a solution of three-fifths of Indian methods we should give to our race an immeasurably greater happiness, greater health, and greater usefulness. 143 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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