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Show I BEPORT OF THE COMMISBIONEE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 53 EDUOATION. When I assulrled charge of this office I held the opinion that thesolu-tion of the Indian question la^ chiefly in thb line of education, and that oonsequantly one of the most important functions of the Commissioner of Indian affaijs was the perfecting. of the scheme for bringing all Indian youth of suitable age liuderproperinstruction. Accordingly I have given to this subject my most earnest attention during the more that] two years of my adrni~~istrationI. have considered i t in well-nigh every possible phase, and am more and more convinced of the truth of the position which I have stated. I t is not to be expected that any people can be raised suddenly from a plane of barbarism or semicivilization to one of enlightenment and complete civilization. Race prejudices are strong, heredity and envi-ronment are hard to overcome, and it is not to be presumed that any single force operating alone can bring about so great a transformation. A scholastic knowledge of books merely will not accomplish it, neither will a knowledge of trades. Even a complete change in the environ-ment will not effect it. There are living to-day in the heart of the oity of London people who are as degraded as the North American Indians on the Indian reservations. There are people living in close contact ' with a superior race, by whom they have been surroonded for centuries, whose language they do not yet understand and whose customs and. mode of life differ largely from their own. On the other hand, it is true, and the truth is illustrated in innumerable iilstances in our own aonntry, that the children of foreigners taken into our public schools, where they learn the English language and associate with our children, imbibe their ideas and grow up to be in allrespects Americans in spirit, in habits, and in character. The process now going on by which nearly 20,000 Indian children are gathered into English-speaking schools, where they are taught by. English-speaking people, where they learn the correct use of the English language, and come into relationship with American life and American thought, and have begotten within them new hopes and desires and changed ideas of life, is certain to work s revolutionin the I Indian character and to lift them on to a higher plaue of civilization, ! if it call be allowed to operate long enough. 1 That there should be indivi(1ual exceptions to this statement; that there should be lapses on the part of those who have enjoyed the I advalltages of these schools; that there should be many instances in - , which pupils of these schools have gone away without bearing the fIWress of the school with them, either from one cause or another; that there should be many who ~uccumbto the tribal in0uences of reserva-tion life to which they often return, is not at all to be wondered at. I All that I contend for, and for that I most strenuously do contend, ' 18 that the practical industrial English education now being furnished |