| OCR Text |
Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 5 tion boarding school, and further, if they have thementalcapacity and manual aptitude, into a lionreservation training school, where some useful trade is taught by means of which they may be equipped to enter the struggle for existence under new conditions. The hope of the Indian race lies in taking the child at the tender age of four or five years, before the trend of his mind has beco~ne fixed in ancient molds or' bent by the whims of his'parents, and guiding it into the proper chaunel. Children who have been thus early placed under the influ-ences of the schools show a percentage of success equal to, or greater than, that which attends the public schools of auy of the great cities of the world which draw their material from the slums. A greater per-centage of the latter sink back into thedegradation of their parents and revert to the life from which they were taken than do the Indian boys and girls who have received proper training in Indian schools. The educated child of the average Indian reservation has no severer or harder lot when he returns to his old home than does his whitebrother of the city slums. It is sometimes stated in the public prints, and by those who should be better informed, that the present method of edu-cating the Indian is a failure, because, in many instances, the pupils, after receiving the advantages of a Government school and living for years in its moral associations, return home, take up the blanket and relapse into the manners and customs of their parents. This may sometimes be true, but, on the other hand, vast numbers of white chi& dreu who have attended the public schools and been surrounded with the refining influences of Christian churches aud happy homes, takeup a life of vice and degradation. But no one willhonestly contend that, because such is the fact, the State slrould abandon its splendid system oE schools or fail to give the children a good common school-education. The statistics of educated Indian children in after life will, so far as the records and experience of this office disclose, hear favorable com-parison with those of the whites. While the Indian educational system appears to meet admirably the conditions requ~sitefo r success, it is not perfect in all its parts. More schools innst be built, methods systematized, ilidividual traits studied, and subsequent environlnent considered in the adaptatio-n of the lines of studies pursued by the pupil while at school. At present the principal objection to Indian education lies not in the system itself, but in the fact that adequate provisions can not at a11 times be made for the future of the student. It is admitted that great hardships are undergone by the young Indian who, having received a good common-school education and a trade, returns, as is sometimes the case, to a bleak and cheerless reservation, there to be surrounded by old customs, iilanuers, aud other evidences of a life he has been taught to leave behind him. These, however, are unavoidable condi-ditions which ouly time, the gradual dying out of the conservative element, and the abrogation of the reservatiou system can obviate. |
