Chapter 3: Research in American Indian and Alaska Native Education: From Assimilation to Self-Determination

Those who have been involved in the formal education of Indians have assumed that the main purpose of the school is assimilation. The Indian would be better off, it was believed, if he could be induced, or forced, to adpot sic the white mans habits, skills, knowledge, language, values, religion, attitudes, and customs—or at least some of them. Assimilation, to be sure, is a reciprocal process, and in the course of it the white man has learned much from the Indian, so that today American culture is immea-surably enriched by items adopted from the Indian. But it was always the white mans way of life which must set the pattern. Formal education has been regarded as the most effective means for bring-ing about assimilation. (B. Berry, 1968, pp. 15-16).