Conflicting Landscapes: American Schooling and Alaska Natives

Conflicting Landscapes offers a different perspective

I am an educator (teacher and administrator) with twenty-five years experience in rural Alaska education. I have read Conflicting Landscapes and agree with Babette Herrmann's review in Indian Country Today (http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/living/reviews/38477414.html) that the authors¿ narrative approach is both engaging and effective - more so than hard statistics alone can portray, because the stories they tell put a human face on all the depressing numbers about dropouts, substance abuse, suicide, and so on. Impersonal numbers are readily forgotten, but disconcerting and tragic stories of real people paint a picture that¿s not so easy to erase. As the authors take pains to point out, there¿s a lot more to be understood about school-based education in different historical-cultural situations than is usually imagined, and certainly more than is provided for by the wholesale imposition of another culture¿s educational system. Hopefully, Ms. Herrmann¿s review will stir up more interest in this topic, and hopefully Alaska Commissioner of Education LeDoux, as well as his counterparts throughout Indian Country, will bring new scrutiny to the assessment of the effectiveness of our educational system for Native children. One thing mentioned in the review, which should be emphasized, is that the authors make a number of constructive recommendations. Conflicting Landscapes looks like both a great introduction for teachers thinking about or presently teaching in Native communities and a sourcebook of ideas for experienced teachers, administrators and school boards. Unfortunately, school systems are for the most part notoriously resistant to anything other than incremental change, while what is actually needed is, as with the current economy, a systemic and comprehensive overhaul.