True Story 1.18
Navajo pupils’ “game” at the science activity center
The setting for this story
This event was videotaped during a summer science camp on a Navajo reservation, attended by fifteen boys and girls in the second, third, and fourth grades. Anglo teachers Doris and David were supervising the children’s activities. Here’s how one activity unfolded.
A story of misaligned minds20
Doris has just returned from a trip to Alaska. She places a large stack of photographs from her trip onto the center of a round table where five pupils – four girls and a boy – are seated. The photos are of clouds, mountains, forests, trees, lakes, and animals. But before Doris has time to introduce the photos to the five tablemates …
One of the girls picks up the pile, looks at the top picture, and passes it to her right. She repeats the action rapidly with all the photos. Each pupil does likewise – glances at the photo and passes it to the right – until all photos have been passed around the table.
Now another round of passing begins. The pupils begin to select and hold photos that seemingly appeal to them, which they do not pass. The pupils’ sparce dialog consists of single words, e.g., “lakes,” “mountains,” “deer,” etc. Next, pupils begin pulling photos out of their hands and passing them to each other. Remarks include “take all those,” “give me those,” etc. The photos no one wants are placed in a pile at the center of the table.
Next, a girl named Lara grabs the reject pile and begins passing the photos to the right; she then switches to passing one to the left, one to the right, and so forth. The others pass them on. When the entire reject pile has been passed around, the pupils stop passing and start laughing. All the photos are now in five piles, one in front of each pupil.
Lara now grabs and looks through each of the five piles, taking some of them and putting them in the center and giving others to her tablemates. The others start to say things such as “I’ll take four,” “Who wants this?” and “Do you want a deer photo?” as they take cards from the center and either hold them or pass them on.
Finally, all the passing and negotiating stops. Lara gathers all the cards and piles them in the center, where they were originally. She sits back and looks very pleased with herself. The other four pupils also sit back, smile, and look pleased.
Doris and David’s question
Should we stop this strange game-like activity and engage these pupils in a more scientific project?
Critique of story 1.18
Teachers all over the world look for evidence that their students are participating in a classroom activity the way they’re “supposed to,” which teachers associate with learning gains. Their beliefs about how children are supposed to learn are derived from the perspective of their home cultures, which in the case of Doris and David was largely if not entirely assumptions and pedagogical practices whose origins ultimately can be traced to Northern Europe.
The Navajo pupils’ activity was outside the range of the teachers’ “supposed to.” Being game-like, it didn’t seem conducive to the learning of science. But what was the learning objective? These youngsters probably had never traveled far beyond their reservation and were unlikely to do so soon. Giving them photos of another region was intended to expand their perspectives. The researcher who was videotaping this activity wrote in her report that “the pupils developed an awareness of the objects in the Alaska photos enough to be able to classify them.” Wouldn’t that be a desirable outcome if the pupils had learned in the supposed-to Northern European way?
For thought
Many readers will be pleased that the teachers did not stop the “game” but allowed the pupils to deal with the photos in a way that reflected Navajo culture. But there’s a broader question.
The few Native American students who make it all the way to a university are challenged by science courses, which they find impersonal and coldly analytic, with unfamiliar vocabulary and conventions of evaluation that ignore the students’ strengths. This suggests that their previous teachers had respected their native culture’s ways of transmitting knowledge. But in mainstream university and professional contexts, they find it difficult to “fit in.”
To what extent, if any, do you think teachers should acquaint Native American students with mainstream patterns of thought? Here’s an example: The researcher implied that the pupils could have classified the photos. Should the teachers have asked the pupils to formally classify them?
If you agree that indigenous students should be introduced to mainstream practices (such as formal classification), when during the students’ ascent through the grades should the changeover begin? Are second, third, and fourth grades too early? Too late? What about middle school? When do you think is optimal?
Related stories
Stories 1.15, 7 .09, and 10.19 also depict indigenous American pupils behaving in ways that their Anglo teachers found perplexing or annoying.
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Endnotes:
20 Beck, 45–46.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.