What the White Race May Learn from the IndianJames, George Wharton
Religion
What the White Race May Learn from the Indian
James, George Wharton
Indians of North America
Let the wails of agony of the uncounted dead who have been hurried
to their graves by this idolatrous worship of a senseless, godless,
heartless Moloch called “education” answer for me when people ask me
to respect this feature of our higher civilization, and to these wails
let there be added those of awakened parents who have seen, when too
late, into what acts akin to murder their blind worship of this idol
had led them. Add to these the cries of pain from ten thousand beds
of affliction occupied by those still living, but whose bodies have
“broken down” as the result of “over-study.”
[Illustration: A SABOBA INDIAN WITH BASKET IN WHICH IS SYMBOLIZED THE
HISTORY OF HIS TRIBE.]
Then add to the vast pyramid of woe the heartaches of hopes banished,
of ambitions thwarted, of desires and aims completely lost, and one
can well understand why I am not a worshiper at this shrine. If I were
to choose--as every parent must for his young children who are not
yet capable of thought--between a happy, because physically healthy,
life, though uneducated by the schools, and an educated and unhappy,
because unhealthy, life for children, I would say: Give me ignorance
(of books and schools) and health, rather than education (of books and
schools) and a broken down, nervous, irritable body. But it is by no
means necessary to have uneducated children, even though they should
never see a school. While I now write (I am enjoying a few days on the
“rim” of the Grand Canyon) I am meeting daily a remarkable family. The
man is far above the average in _scholastic_ and book _education_. He
is a distinguished physician, known not only within the bounds of his
own large state, but throughout the whole United States and Europe;
his methods are largely approved by men at the head of the profession,
and his lucrative and enormous practice demonstrates the success of
his system, with the complete approval of the most conservative of
his rigidly conservative profession. He was until quite recently a
professor in one of the largest universities of the United States, and
was therefore competent from inside knowledge to pass judgment upon
the methods of the highest educational establishments. He has money
enough to place his two daughters wherever he chooses, and to spend
most of his time near them. Yet he has deliberately (and I think most
wisely) kept them out of school, and made the strength and vigor of
their bodies his first consideration. Both ride horseback (astride, of
course) with the poise and confidence of skilled vaqueros; both can
undertake long journeys, horseback or afoot, that would exhaust most
young men students; and now at 15 and 17 years of age they are models
of physical health and beauty, and at the same time the elder sister
is _better_ educated in the practical, sane, useful, living affairs of
men and women than any girl of her age I have ever met. I take this
object-lesson, therefore, as another demonstration of the truth of my
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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