MERIAM REPORT
EDUCATION SECTION
A SCANNED-DIGITIZED VERSION

Scanned-Digitized Version
By
Thomas (Tom) R. Hopkins

Original Citation
Meriam, Lewis. THE PROBLEM OF INDIAN ADMINISTRATION. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1928, 872 pp.

2008

Higher Education and the Indian. More and more Indian youth will go on for education of college and university grade. Already hundreds of Indian men and women are in higher educational institutions; the University of Oklahoma has nearly two hundred students with some Indian blood, and the increasing number of Indian boys and girls in high school will undoubtedly lead to a corresponding growth in applicants for college admission. This should be encouraged, not, however, by setting up special institutions of higher learning for Indians, but by furnishing adequate secondary schooling and scholarship and loan aids where necessary for Indian students.

Types of Special Training. Whether it is necessary or desirable to extend upward certain special courses in any of the present non-reservation Indian schools will depend upon the conditions at each school and the opportunities for Indian youth elsewhere. At Haskell Institute efforts have recently been made to provide, at the secondary level and to some extent beyond, teacher-training, business schooling, and some institutional service-training, particularly in physical education and athletic coaching. Such programs may prove to be desirable: (1) If Indian young men and women find it impossible to get such opportunities elsewhere; (2) if especially good resources are available at the institution itself or in connection with it.¹⁴ Under present conditions it is probable that some Indian young men and women could not very well get the special training offered in these courses at other places than Haskell. As to resources, however, Haskell does not have them; and with the University of Kansas nearby it would seem a sounder policy to depend upon the University to furnish such higher technical training as may be needed rather than to try to provide it with the very limited resources the Indian school has. Haskell and other schools have in a few cases been making it possible for qualified Indian students to retain their residence at the school and continue their higher education at the nearby state or other institution, which is a very useful arrangement that ought to be officially recognized and supported.

14 Haskell and other Indian schools should be warned against attempting to train teachers or other school employees at the secondary level. This merely helps perpetuate the very low personnel standards in Indian schools.