Interesting things I have found while researching Native American education and poverty:
-50% of Native American school children drop out before completing high school
-36% of males in high-poverty Native American communities have full-time, year-round employment
-30% of Native Americans with families lived in poverty
-the idea of Native American boarding schools was mainly to “exterminate the Indian but develop a man.” said by Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones in 1903
Remember to keep going back to Sherman Alexie, as you want to be analysing his work first.
ReplyDeleteAnother approach to connecting education and poverty is to look at how they work and are funded in dominant culture. Our K-12 schools use local property taxes as part of their basis for funding, which means wealthier neighborhoods usually have better funded schools. Schools with more money can pay for newer facilities, computers, AP classes, etc. So, students in these wealthier schools get better prepared for college, which leads to higher paying job opportunities, so on and so forth.
Now, just reverse this for schools that are not in wealthy neighborhoods and that is part of the connection between education and poverty- I'm not sure if that makes sense, yet I have to go!