The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 4, April, 1883 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 4, April, 1883Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 4, April, 1883
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
If the Indians are to live at all, they must learn to live like
white men. They can no longer stand in the way of the development
of the country, but they must be enabled to become part of that
development, and thus to be benefited by it. The “white man’s
way” of which they are in the habit of speaking, must not, as
heretofore, remain to them a mere vague, shadowy idea, but they
must acquire a practical conception of what the white man’s way
really is, what its objects are, and by what means those objects
are attained. They must acquire that conception soon, for they will
need it soon. The education of the young generation of Indians
is therefore an immediately pressing necessity. And it must be
an education that takes them out of their traditional ways of
thinking, out of their old ambitions and habits of life. They must
not only learn some reading and writing, but they must learn what
reading and writing is for in the practical competitions of human
existence. They must learn how to work and how to make their work
useful. They must learn to love work by seeing and appreciating the
fruits of it. Industrial training of a thoroughly practical kind
must therefore go hand-in-hand with the ordinary rudimentary school
education. The two things must be carried on with constant regard
to the unity of aim.
The schools at Hampton, Carlisle and Forest Grove are conducted
upon this principle, and the results attained there prove that
Indian youths can be taught the things required to provide for the
necessities of life and to lift the Indian above the state of the
pauper as well as of the savage. Of course we must not expect too
much of them. We must not expect that they will issue from these
schools as model men and model women in every respect. We must not
expect that on the average they will be better than the average of
white boys and girls, raised under the same circumstances and with
the same advantages or disadvantages, would be. In point of fact,
the reports about the young men and women who, after having gone
through their three years’ term at Hampton or Carlisle, returned
to their people in the western country, have been as different as
reports would be about white boys and girls similarly situated.
Some were bright, active and industrious, others dull and indolent.
But a large majority of them have been doing well and showed a
marked superiority in character, ambition and conduct over other
young Indians who had not enjoyed the same kind of education. There
is no doubt that their presence among their people as teachers
and examples and as a moving force generally will exercise a most
healthy and elevating influence, provided the number of Indians so
educated be large enough to make them among the rising generation
the rule, instead of their remaining exceptional cases, as they now
are. It is, therefore, essential that such schools and the number
of pupils in them be multiplied as much as possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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