The Impact of Cultural Erosion on Native Education

 

When going on a walk with my wife, electronically we count our every step as if there is something magical or scientific in the number 10 000, but that is the motivating number, our quest. As a teacher ascending to the next pay grid level also had a satisfying and motivating influence on me.  There are numerous carrots and sticks, large and small that motivate us throughout life.  However, with all candor, I would have to say I enjoy walking with my wife whether I count the steps or not. I honestly enjoy being in the classroom, it is a career not just a job.  Perhaps, I have just outlined some of the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

 

Motivation is something we all have in order to move forward in life for what some would consider the trivial and the mundane to the core of what makes us human and everything in between. In other words what motivates one person may be of no relevance to another.  Motivation is the energy that we direct towards achieving a goal and those goals significantly vary from person to person and between cultures.  

 

The reward/punishment system is built into every facet of life from home to the work place, from the monetary allowance we give our kids for jobs done well or not, the use of cell phones, or the withdrawal of their use when situations are abused or boundaries crossed.  Our society largely operates on the premise that human behaviour is driven by the opportunity to receive either a reward or a sanction. 

 

It is a truly simplistic approach however society seems to be programmed to function in this mode. For example, a direct result of an over reliance on extrinsic motivators is a superficial level of learning such as cramming for a exam when pulling the proverbial “late nighter”.  This manner of preparation may get one through the exam but for the most part there is very little long term retention of content.  Teachers have been using threats, detentions, various punishments including the strap at one point, writing lines, grades all only to create fear with very little in the way of positive change. As for myself I know now that I should not throw snowballs in the no snowball zone after the bell rings as that was five stokes on each hand with a leather strap.  That was a lesson learned in fear and pain.

 

Intrinsic motivation operates on a higher plane and is based on the premise that we learn or do something because the learning or the activity is rewarding in and of itself.  The learning process creates a stream of positive emotions which serve as the inherent rewards thereby making any extrinsic reward superfluous. In fact studies do demonstrate that if extrinsic rewards are given to students for an already rewarding activity the net result is to make the activity less intrinsically rewarding.  This is referred to as the over justification effect.  

 

Students’ lives must also be viewed in the context of a highly complex world, both in school and out, and although it should be obvious that teachers who have knowledge and skills make a large difference so does the cultural world surrounding the lives of our students.  We sometimes make the very naive assumption that students actually do live in a vacuum and that school is the ultimate change agent.  I think sometimes at best we are minor players.

 

Common sense reasoning suggests that motivated students will learn faster and better and retain information and concepts more effectively than those who are not motivated it also follows that instruction should be passionate or motivational in nature and rich in meaningful content, these seeds of learning are then cast on a field of students with various abilities, ages, incomes, learning disorders, ethnicity, from educated families to those who are not, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, bilingual, male, female, those with gender identity issues seeking pronouns, indigenous, diverse cultural back grounds and all of these myriad of factors and many more impact on motivation and learning and serve to determine whether a student will persist in learning or simply give up, whether students feel safe, connected and respected all pertaining to learning.  Its complicated. 

 

I have taught in several native communities where many approaches of instruction have been tried and failed where teachers and boards have been fired en masse out of sheer frustration for lack of results.  Often these cases involving rewards to motivate have utterly failed usually because there is a complete mis-reading of cultural factors at play.  When this happens educators are too quick to play the “blame game”.  Students “they” will say lack all ambition, the parents just don’t care, the families are dysfunctional, there is no initiative or self direction.  In this negative feed back loop students feel defeated and quit school, teachers are frustrated and quit their jobs, administrators get fired for lack of results.

 

Had the planning begun with a greater awareness of native culture and awareness of its history and traditions and incorporated a higher degree or any degree of teaching to the culture or culturally relevant teaching instead of perpetually battling against it, indigenous education, in many places, would turn a corner and become more relevant to students as what is taught is more culturally and emotionally significant to them and will therefore serve to cultivate a new level, or maybe germinate the first level of intrinsic motivation and therefore break the negative loop.  Cultural understanding in the native case or for any culture is everything in terms of success and motivation.

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I have lived and worked in several native communities in Canada and in an anecdotal way wish to make the connection between residential schools and their negative impact on native motivation and education.  Native culture and likely most native communities, value the importance of the family.  The role of the elders as a source of knowledge and wisdom is recognized and almost revered in native culture.  However, I discovered that there is a significant disconnect between what is valued and what is practiced.  I was soon to learn that many families with links to residential schools are severely dysfunctional and native traditions were rapidly eroded as a result.

 

Despite the fact that children are valued they are given very loose structure in their lives and little discipline. This type of scenario often translates into students who do not know how to behave in a classroom and don’t want to be in school.  Many students rebel against the authority of the teachers.  They are openly and frequently defiant.  Students   spend a disproportionate amount of time with video games.  I had grade one students tell me about the joys of playing “Grand Theft Auto.” 

 

Many of my native students were several grade levels behind in their literacy and numeracy skills.  I had high school students who could barely read and grade 3 students who did not know the alphabet or the sounds the letters make.  I worked with a grade five student who wished to improve his reading skills only to the point of being able to successfully take his driver’s test.  Grant it that is motivation.  Many of these students were about to give up or already have.  Their anger and frustration quickly translated into acting out behaviour and severe discipline issues.

 

When a typical, if there is such a thing, middle class southern suburban child gets to school he/she has been read to, talked to and exposed to a wide range of vocabulary words and ideas thousands, or tens of thousands of times before entering the classroom.  In the native communities in which I have worked students arrive at school not having the  advantage of the English spoken word, story times and chances at adequate vocabulary development. For many, English is a second language. My students begin the literacy race long after the green flag has gone down and too many of them never see the checkered flag.  

 

The sad thing about many of our students at all ages, but especially in the junior high grades is that they have given up on themselves. They have an unfortunate reverse or negative pride and seem to revere a lack of progress. It is just the opposite of self esteem expressed through a near total lack of achievement. The school in which I worked had no teams, or mottos and very little school spirit.  Motivation was dead because the local native culture was dying.

 

Residential schools were a systematic and sanctioned way of robbing the natives of their culture and whatever vestige of heritage they might have left after they were cheated of land and other rights.  I’m no expert in this, but I know enough that this was a period of shame in our history.

 

I was told one reason for the huge disconnect with cultural values had to do with residential schools.  Because of the harsh treatment experienced by many at Indian Residential Schools many natives lost their connection to families and family values. 

 

The government’s goal, through the school system, was to break down the culture and the family structure, thereby developing a group of people who were institutionalized; then when one throws alcohol into the mix with the dislocation of many communities from their lands that they knew, to poorer lands it eventually creates an entrenched cycle of poverty. Some of the former students of the residential school system where I taught, now adults and parents, attend support groups in order to deal with their horrible experiences as children while at the residential school.

 

After all of the social trauma inflicted on native populations “we” blamed natives for being useless. Due to the reserve system and residential schools  linked with a combination of government and church policies, it resulted in creating a true sense of learned helplessness with little sense of connection to anything, no sense of family, no sense of trust in others, or in themselves, and no sense of trust in authority. In fact the very concept of family was destroyed, but I guess that was the point of the residential school. 

 

Is it no wonder that because of abuse and extreme methods of discipline students who left those schools became parents who didn’t know how to parent and were reluctant to discipline.  Soon a generation developed robbed and devoid of heritage and tradition and seemingly helpless to rectify the situation. The evil of residential schools created more than one monster.  The legacy plays on in families and schools today.

 

 

The reality is that much of the parenting in native homes is done by members of the extended family and more often than not by the grandparents.  In traditional native culture there was good reason for the grandparents to handle child rearing because parents would be “out on the land” making a living and surviving.  In modern society some parents seem to rely too heavily on tradition with the continued expectation that grandparents raise the children.  As contemporary society has developed the traditional roles have not changed and possibly family life has suffered in some ways because parents excused themselves from their parenting role at the great detriment of the family as a whole. 

 

Motivation to learn and achieve is solidly linked to culture but once the culture has been stripped away, as was the case with many Canadian indigenous families through the residential school system, any reasonable semblance of family cohesion or motivation to learn in a systematic organized away has also been damaged.  Extrinsic motivation alone would be unproductive in the long run in regaining educational lost ground for native populations.  Likely, only through greater levels of self governance in educational decision making through control of their own educational goals and curriculum based on local native cultures will they have any chance to develop a true sense of intrinsic motivation to rebuild what has been taken from them.

 

Marty Rempel