| OCR Text |
Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. xix ' in every Indian school; and by LLindustriatlr aining" is not meant the mere teaching of the trades and arts. The Indian child most be taught many things which come to the white child, because of environment, without the school-master's aid. From the day of its birth the child of civilized parents is constantly in contact with civilized modes of life-2 of action, thought, speech, dress-and is surrounded by a thousand beneficent influences that never operate upon the child of savage parentage, who, in his birth-hour, is encompassed by a degrading at-mosphereof superstition and of barbarism. Out from the conditions of his 'birth he must be led in his early years into the environments of civilized domestic life. And he must be thus led by the school-teacher. But under the present school sxstem, with its large boarding-school-buildings crowded with pupils, and its many-bedded dormitories and great dining-rooms, the Indian child can not receive an adequate idea of civilized home-lift,. At the schools conducted in large buildings, matrons, cooks, seamstresses, laundresses, and other employ6yi who should teaah the girl pupils the difficult art of the housekeeper, are too busily occupied in keeping up their respective departments of work to devote the time necessary for the painstaking training of awkward or ignorant girls in the skillful performance of the number-less duties which appertain to civilized housekeeping and home-making; and of just this sort of instruction these pupils stand more in need than they do of literary attainments. For a large boarding-school it would therefore be better to have amain building, which should contain only the recitation rooms, with perhaps quarters for the superintelldent and literary teachers, and to have other buildings which should each accommodate a small number of children. Each of these buildings could be made the home of the children domiciled therein, and in this home the girls could he taught, by actual practice, how to cook, to wash, to make and mend clothes, to sweep, to make beds-in short, could he instructed in all things that are taught to white girls in the homes of civilized communities; and the boys, while thus enabled to enjoy the advantages of home life, could be taught farming and trades suitable to their various localities. Gardens attached to these homes could be cultirated by both boys and girls. The effect of such an industrial school system would be to build up a community, a little village, in which the children would become ac-quainted with and would actually practice the customs and habits, the arts and the trades, which, aileast in part,, distiuguish civilized life from barbarism. The adoption of an industrial.schoo1 system of this sort would necessarily require a larger number of emplog6s than are now in the service, and would be more expensive than the present system; but certainly the American people would not, therefore, hesitate to adopt such a plan of Indian education if they could be assured that by its adoption the Indian race would he lifted out of darkness and super-stition into the light of Ohristian civilization. |
