tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/boarding-schools-14612/articlesBoarding schools – The Conversation2023-06-15T12:37:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1946912023-06-15T12:37:48Z2023-06-15T12:37:48ZAmerican Indians forced to attend boarding schools as children are more likely to be in poor health as adults<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503911/original/file-20230110-24-749og5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C19%2C4341%2C2883&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research reveals what generations of tribes know firsthand: that forced assimilation and unhealthy conditions at compulsory boarding schools takes a permanent toll.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/senior-healthcare-assistance-in-a-home-royalty-free-image/1397246903?adppopup=true">RichLegg/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many American Indians attended compulsory boarding schools in the 1900s or have relatives who did. My family is no different. Three generations of Running Bears – my grandparents, parents and those from my own generation – attended these residential schools over a period stretching from approximately 1907 to the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>American Indians are very resilient, given the harsh history we have endured. Drawing upon the strengths of our spirituality, cultural practices and family and community interconnections, we continue to persevere. </p>
<p>Even so, as a young adult I recognized that – compared with the broader society – my community experienced <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-018-1494-1">higher rates of mental</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242934">physical health problems</a>: depression, anxiety, suicide, diabetes and cancer, to name just a few. I wondered whether attending compulsory boarding school – an experience that sets American Indians apart from other minority groups – contributed to these health disparities. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://und.edu/directory/ursula.runningbear">scholar who studies public health</a>, so this question – and the fact that little quantitative scientific inquiry into it had been undertaken – was at the forefront of my thoughts when I had the opportunity to investigate the health effects of boarding schools on American Indians. </p>
<h2>Truth in the data</h2>
<p>When I embarked on this research in 2014, I began by analyzing a portion of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.9.1723">data collected from</a> the American Indian Service Utilization, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Risk and Protective Factors Project. That project focused on the prevalence of mental health disorders and service utilization among Northern Plains and Southwest tribes and collected some data on boarding school attendance and experiences. </p>
<p>For my study, I used the Northern Plains sample that included more than 1,600 randomly selected tribal-enrolled members from the Northern Plains and assessed quality of life – specifically overall physical functioning and well-being. I found that those who attended boarding school had on average <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-017-9549-0">statistically significantly lower scores</a> than those who did not attend. </p>
<p>As a researcher, I felt vindicated to find a statistically significant relationship between boarding school attendance and poor physical health – quantitative evidence of what I and many other American Indians already knew instinctively. Yet this finding was also deeply painful. Throughout my life I have sensed the unspoken pain and emotion of my family’s boarding school experiences. </p>
<p>These results made their devastation undeniable and much more tangible. </p>
<h2>Forced assimilation takes a physical toll</h2>
<p>American Indian boarding schools used brutal methods to assimilate their students into the dominant culture and inculcate Christian beliefs and practices. Although <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-and-healing-commission-could-help-native-american-communities-traumatized-by-government-run-boarding-schools-that-tried-to-destroy-indian-culture-169240">those practices are well documented</a>, quantitative research into whether they had an effect on the long-term physical health of American Indian people who were subjected to them was hard to come by. </p>
<p>Using a subset of the Northern Plains sample, which included more than 700 American Indians who had attended boarding school, I examined the effects of five well-established aspects of boarding school experience. They included an age of first attendance of 7 or younger, rare or nonexistent visits with family, forced church attendance, punishment for use of their native language and a prohibition on the practice of American Indian cultural traditions.</p>
<p>I found that those who endured these experiences during boarding school had worse physical health status than those who did not. </p>
<p>However, the poorest physical health status occurred <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1742-y">among people who had been older than 7</a> when they entered boarding school and had also experienced punishment for speaking their tribal language. I am not sure why this is the case, but one possibility is that older children were more proficient in their first, tribal, language, making it more difficult to transition to English, which led, in turn, to more punishment for failure to speak the colonizing language.</p>
<p>Again, although the findings hit me deeply, I was not surprised. Fortunately, today there are efforts to revitalize and restore American Indian languages and culture, such as the <a href="https://sicangucdc.org/wakanyeja-tokeyahci">Wakanyeja Tokeyahci Lakota Immersion School</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kfpz8Jn8ZQM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In this 2021 MSNBC report, former attendees of American Indian boarding schools recount experiences of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Chronic health issues</h2>
<p>Recognizing the seriousness of all of this, and its potential effect on my immediate family, I examined whether <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097%2FFCH.0000000000000205">15 chronic health conditions</a> were statistically associated with having attended boarding school. These conditions include diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and kidney disease, among others. I found that former boarding school attendees were 44% more likely to have chronic physical health conditions, with seven out of the 15 chronic conditions statistically related to boarding school attendance. </p>
<p>For example, those who had attended boarding schools were more than twice as likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12092">report tuberculosis</a>. This, too, was not surprising, since historical accounts and health reports have <a href="https://narf.org/nill/resources/meriam.html">documented the overcrowded conditions</a>. In addition, windows were often boarded to prevent students from running away, which led to inadequate ventilation. </p>
<p>Boarding school attendees likewise had nearly four times the risk of any type of cancer as those who were not subjected to boarding school. One reason for this could be <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/DDT_FactSheet.html#">exposure to the pesticide DDT</a>, which was banned in the U.S. in 1972. Upon arriving for the school year, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129402172/interior-secretary-haaland-is-documenting-abuse-in-federal-indian-boarding-schoo">students were often coated in DDT powder</a> to target disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes. </p>
<p>I also found higher rates of diabetes, high cholesterol, anemia and gallbladder issues – diseases that can be associated with changing from a whole food diet to one higher in sugars, starches and fats. Given that this shift has been widely reported throughout the American Indian population in recent decades, it is worth noting that these effects appear to be even more pronounced in former boarding school students than in their peers who did not attend.</p>
<h2>Generational effects</h2>
<p>Finally, I examined whether a participant’s mother’s and father’s attendance was related to the number of chronic physical health conditions the person experienced. </p>
<p>I found that someone whose father attended boarding school had, on average, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/fch.0000000000000205">36% more chronic physical health conditions</a> than someone whose father did not attend. Notably, I did not find this effect from a mother’s boarding school attendance, although the reasons for that aren’t yet clear.</p>
<p>Although this study did not specifically look at epigenetics – shifts in gene expression that are heritable – <a href="https://doi.org/10.4161/epi.6.7.16222">it points to the possibility of epigenetic effects</a> that can produce biological changes that span generations.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that compulsory residential boarding school education has had profound consequences for several generations of American Indians. As troubling as that is, I have faith that, as evidence mounts on the impacts of boarding school attendance on American Indians, our communities and their allies will develop solutions that improve health and healing for all of our people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ursula Running Bear receives funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.. </span></em></p>Native Americans sent to government-funded schools now experience significantly higher rates of mental and physical health problems than those who did not.Ursula Running Bear, Assistant Professor of Population Health, University of North DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873392022-07-29T12:23:34Z2022-07-29T12:23:34ZChristianity was a major part of Indigenous boarding schools – a historian whose family survived them explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476185/original/file-20220727-22-gbef0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C1019%2C682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gilda Soosay, president of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Parish Council in Maskwacis, Canada, where Pope Francis visited the site of a state school for Indigenous children.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gilda-soosay-president-of-our-lady-of-seven-sorrows-parish-news-photo/1242004674?adppopup=true">Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During a weeklong trip to Canada, Pope Francis <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/pope-address-maskwacis-alberta-1.6531231">visited a former residential school</a> for Indigenous children in Maskwacis, Alberta, on July 25, 2022. <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8943436/pope-visit-alberta-emineskin-indian-residential-school-facts/">The Ermineskin Residential School</a> operated between 1895 and 1975 in Cree Country, the largest First Nations group in Canada.</p>
<p>As at many boarding schools set up to assimilate Indigenous children, students were punished for speaking their language and sometimes experienced abuse. According to the <a href="https://nctr.ca/">National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation</a> at the University of Manitoba, <a href="https://nctr.ca/residential-schools/alberta/ermineskin-hobbema/">15 children died</a> at this particular school over the years. Several of them succumbed to tuberculosis.</p>
<p>During his visit, the pope <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9013958/pope-francis-residential-school-apology-full-text/">said he was “deeply sorry</a>” for “the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples.”</p>
<p>Like many other Indigenous people of the U.S. and Canada – especially those, like me, whose family members attended the schools – I listened with interest as Pope Francis asked his audience for forgiveness “for the evil committed by so many Christians.” He apologized “for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated” in projects of forced assimilation while not acknowledging the role that the Catholic Church as an organization played in residential schools.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/child011">a historian</a> who has written about <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">American Indian boarding schools in the United States</a>, and as the granddaughter of school survivors, I have often been troubled by the misinformation in regional and the national media about this complex history. </p>
<p>Religion was a pillar of the forceful campaigns to assimilate Indigenous peoples on both sides of the border but played out differently in the U.S. and Canada. Christianity’s central role is responsible for lingering resentment today, and many Indigenous people, me included, question whether the pope’s apology fell short in holding the church responsible.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows rows of boys making simple cot beds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476187/original/file-20220727-23-975m5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous boys in their dormitory at a Canadian boarding school in 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/north-american-indian-children-in-their-dormitory-at-a-news-photo/3268482?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Outsourcing assimilation</h2>
<p>Canada’s residential schools were different from those in the U.S. in two significant ways. First, the Canadian government <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/#:%7E:text=The%20early%20origins%20of%20residential,the%20pinnacle%20of%20human%20achievement.">farmed out</a> First Nations education to the Catholic and Anglican churches and other Protestant denominations.</p>
<p>The U.S. federal government, on the other hand, operated its own Indian school system both on and off the reservations. Twenty-five were off-reservation boarding schools, the first of which was established in 1879: the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, whose most famous student was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/sports/olympics/jim-thorpe-olympics-medal-restored.html">the Olympic gold medalist</a> Jim Thorpe. The boarding schools <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">dominated Indian education</a> in the U.S. for a half-century.</p>
<p>Significant political and educational reforms led to new Indian policies under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, backing away from the previous generation’s goal of assimilation. Many boarding schools closed during the 1930s as FDR’s bureaucrats started to integrate American Indians into public schools. Ironically, that same decade saw the highest enrollment at boarding schools – largely at the request of American Indian families who used them as <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">a form of poverty relief</a> during the Great Depression so their families could survive.</p>
<p>In Canada, however, residential schools continued to be the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-indigenous-children-60-minutes-2022-02-06/">dominant form of Indigenous education</a> for another 50 years.</p>
<h2>‘Civilizing’ students</h2>
<p>U.S. government boarding schools and Canada’s residential schools did share features in common. Family separation, enforcing the English language – or French, in some areas of Canada – manual labor training and the imposition of Christianity were core characteristics.</p>
<p>Though churches did not operate the U.S. schools, most Americans and lawmakers in Washington, D.C., were committed to the idea that Indian people <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2960-2.html">needed to be “uplifted” from an “uncivilized” life</a> through education and assimilation into American culture, and that included Christianity. <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">Native spirituality came under assault at boarding schools</a>, and students were given “Christian” names to replace their “pagan” and “unpronounceable” ones.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows two rows of girls in black dresses with white collars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476188/original/file-20220727-14-d3ewmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Girls from the Omaha tribe at Carlisle School in Pennsylvania in 1876.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/native-american-girls-from-the-omaha-tribe-at-carlisle-news-photo/615314492?adppopup=true">Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Christianity was also imposed on Indigenous people through the reservation system. I sometimes like to give the example of my own grandparents, Fred and Jeanette Auginash, who “married” before an Episcopal minister on the <a href="https://www.redlakenation.org/">Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation</a> in northern Minnesota in October 1928. </p>
<p>According to the Ojibwe community in which they resided, they were already married. As my mother had been told, her father asked my grandfather to marry his daughter, and he brought the family gifts of money, food, blankets, horses and other items. For an Ojibwe family, the ritual exchange of gifts is what made a marriage. </p>
<p>However, when my grandparents went to apply for a housing loan on the reservation, they needed a marriage certificate signed by the local Christian minister. In this way, Christianity and the federal government blended their authority in another form of <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0029.xml">settler colonialism</a>.</p>
<h2>Cultural survival</h2>
<p>Not surprisingly, Indigenous children and youths were often resistant to the boarding school regimen of family separation and enforced assimilation and Christianity. Young people frequently expressed themselves through <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-native-students-fought-back-against-abuse-and-assimilation-at-us-boarding-schools-165222">rebellions large and small</a>, most often through running away from school. They stowed away on trains and headed home to visit their families. </p>
<p>Parents and other relatives, meanwhile, demonstrated their commitment to their children by writing letters, staying in touch despite the distance and school terms that could last four years without visits home. Parents of boarding school children also wrote to school administrators, insisting that their children visit the doctor and <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">maintain their good health</a> in an era when there was no cure for diseases like tuberculosis and trachoma, an eye infection that can cause blindness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The pope sits in a wheelchair, his hand to his face, while three men in headdresses stand nearby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476189/original/file-20220727-17-7r1slz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pope Francis pauses in front of the site of the former Ermineskin Residential School, alongside the Maskwacis Chiefs, during his visit on July 25, 2022, in Maskwacis, Alberta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pope-francis-pauses-in-front-of-the-site-of-the-former-news-photo/1242110454?adppopup=true">Cole Burston/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps it is not surprising that Francis’ visit to Alberta was met with mixed emotions on the part of Indigenous Canadians. He also blessed a Native church known for blending Christian and Native traditions that is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/pope-francis-canada-visit-alberta-1.6529304">being rebuilt in Edmonton after a fire</a>. In Maskwacis, site of the Ermineskin school, one Cree man gave him a headdress.</p>
<p>The act of generosity was widely <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/professor-indigenous-rights-activist-question-why-pope-was-gifted-a-headdress-1.6532030">criticized and mocked</a> on Native social media. Many Indigenous people felt Pope Francis did not deserve the honor, and that his apology did not acknowledge the Catholic Church’s role in family separation and the abuse of children in residential schools. </p>
<p>As many Indigenous people work to rebuild their language and spiritual traditions, Christian traditions no longer have the same influence over their lives and destinies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenda J Child receives funding from The University of Minnesota, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation. </span></em></p>A historian of the residential schools explains how religion played a key role in assimilationist systems for Indigenous children in Canada and the United States.Brenda J. Child, Professor of American Studies, University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1724102021-11-25T14:33:29Z2021-11-25T14:33:29ZActs of violence or a cry for help? What fuels Kenya’s school fires<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433888/original/file-20211125-19-1ar0sua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A young boy walks by a burnt-out dormitory building set on fire by students after a night of school unrest in western Kenya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The torching of schools by students has become a <a href="http://crimeresearch.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Rapid-Assessment-of-Arsons-in-Secondary-Schools-in-Kenya-2016.pdf">regular occurrence</a> in Kenya over the past two decades. The most infamous of these is the <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/kenya/article/2001253987/kyanguli-school-fire-tragedy-that-claimed-67-lives">dormitory fire</a> at a secondary school near Nairobi in which 67 students were killed 20 years ago. This year, another spate of dormitory and school building fires forced the government to <a href="https://www.pd.co.ke/news/all-learners-to-break-for-midterm-in-two-weeks-clarifies-magoha-102117/">close all primary and secondary schools</a> for a few days. </p>
<p>Amid a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41145324">wave of deadly school fires in 2017</a>, the government-run National Crime Research Centre conducted <a href="http://crimeresearch.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Rapid-Assessment-of-Arsons-in-Secondary-Schools-in-Kenya-2016.pdf">“a rapid assessment of arson in secondary schools”</a>. The centre outlined possible causes and strategies to address the problem. The causes listed included exam-related anxiety, schoolwork load, peer pressure, school leadership, and lack of guidance and counselling. </p>
<p>These explanations overlooked other important factors. These include deplorable conditions in many public schools, oppression of students and violation of their rights to humane treatment. A focus on external factors ignores the psychological impacts of institutionalisation and authoritarian governance.</p>
<p>There have been few academic studies of the Kenyan school protest phenomenon. A 2013 <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336278980_Students_Violent_Protests_and_the_Process_of_Self-Realization_in_Kenyan_Secondary_Schools">study</a> concluded that violence was a means to self realisation that only served to perpetuate cycles of violence. Another in 2014 drew the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817396">conclusion</a> that students have learned over the years that protest is the language that elicits response from authorities. Finally, a third study observed that school violence is the outcome of conflicts due to <a href="https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=95131">political and social differences</a> that could be managed by peace education.</p>
<p>My own <a href="https://www.eujem.com/boarding-schools-as-colonizing-and-oppressive-spaces-towards-understanding-student-protest-and-violence-in-kenyan-secondary-schools">research</a> found that student violence was a response to the devaluing and oppressive environment in boarding schools. We argue that school authorities could mitigate violent protests by providing formal political means of representation and democratic decision-making. They should create new spaces for negotiation and peaceful protest and listen to the voices of students.</p>
<h2>The Kenyan boarding school</h2>
<p>Boarding schools in Kenya are closed off facilities where students live and learn for a period of nine months in a year. Historically, they were set up by colonial governments and Christian missionaries with the purpose of <a href="https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/IPS_Boarding_Schools.pdf">assimilating or civilising indigenous people</a>. These schools were patterned on colonial models of education to produce needed skills and labour to serve the colonialist. </p>
<p>Today, there are three tiers of secondary boarding schools in Kenya – national, county, and district. National schools are well equipped and attract the highest performing students and wealthy parents. The least endowed are the district schools.</p>
<p>Overall, parents prefer secondary boarding schools because they tend to have better facilities than day schools. Students have more time to focus on education, and parents leave teachers to discipline the children on their behalf. Other benefits of boarding schools include learning social skills, independence, and extracurricular activities. They also form part of government policy to bring children from different regions of Kenya to learn together and <a href="http://repository.kippra.or.ke/bitstream/handle/123456789/1359/MEST-Sessional-Paper-No-1-of-2005-on-a-Policy-Framework-for-Education-Training-and-Research.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y">for economies of scale</a>. </p>
<p>But these schools have <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Works-Disorder-Political-Instrument/dp/0253212871">retained</a> their colonial hierarchical legacies of control, authoritarianism, violence, alienation, bureaucracy, and strict discipline. There is limited consideration for student needs, balance of power, technological advances, changes in the economic structure, and emerging progressive laws. They are what the American sociologist Erving Goffman called <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/pluginfile.php/638332/mod_resource/content/1/chapter13.pdf">“total institutions”</a>. Students are organised under strict rules and singular authority. Daily activities are carried out collectively on a rigid schedule of explicit order. </p>
<p>Punishments are severe and consequences predictable – rebellion. </p>
<p>My co-researcher and I undertook a three-year project of gathering data about boarding schools in Kenya for the purpose of understanding the roots of persistent student protests and violence. The study focused on three boarding schools that had experienced protests and violence before and at the time of this study. One school served girls only, the other boys only and the third was a co-ed school. </p>
<p>Initial interviews with those who had experienced school protests or violence led to others who were approached to participate in the study. Respondents were teachers, school administrators, county officials, students, and members of the community. The research revealed that students experienced prison-like conditions in boarding schools. As a result of the dehumanising experiences at the hands of the school authorities, students vented their frustration through destructive behaviour, including violent protests.</p>
<h2>Stuck in the past</h2>
<p>Boarding school attendance is resilient in Kenya because of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5821227/A_Comparative_Evaluation_of_Direct_Private_Costs_in_Day_and_Boarding_Schools_after_the_introduction_of_free_secondary_education_in_the_Kenyan_schools">economy of scale, bureaucratic control and efficiency</a>. The result is that the direct supervision of millions of children has been transferred from parents to educators who often know little about the students. Until they get to school, the children know little about boarding schools as there is no preparation for transition.</p>
<p>At any rate, nothing could prepare any student for the worst excesses of boarding school life in Kenya. A 2017 report described <a href="https://nairobinews.nation.co.ke/life/chilling-details-bullying-torture-alliance-high-school-photos">chilling accounts of bullying</a> at the country’s top school. Students pulled out of a dormitory at night and frog marched while being beaten; students forced to wake up at night to clean toilets and classrooms while being whipped with belts and hockey sticks; younger boys missing meals due to inadequate cutlery and short mealtimes. </p>
<p>These experiences are forms of violence with varying intensities on their effects. However, society is more fixated on student violence than the autocratic nature of institutions and the oppressive structures <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1514792">which nurtured it</a>. Until authorities shift focus to the deep negative experiences and anguish in boarding school, the burning is likely going to continue.</p>
<p>Students are political actors and conscientious beings with expectations and capacities to act. When dehumanised, students will act, react, or engage, sometimes with protest and intense violence. Kenyan students <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817396">have learned</a> that arson is effective as a tactic in protest politics. Some of the students we interviewed considered protests and violence as instruments of power to negotiate survival needs. </p>
<h2>What authorities can do</h2>
<p>Although suggestions have been made to <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/education/article/2001418716/magoha-end-of-boarding-schools-to-be-gradual">abolish</a> Kenyan boarding schools, the problems plaguing the institutions are complex and systemic. Closing boarding schools is the path of least resistance by bureaucrats who avoid reform that would change balance of power. Boarding schools are not in themselves a problem, what happens in the schools are the problem and these can be changed. </p>
<p>Democratic space and public participation have expanded dramatically in Kenya in the last two decades. However, boarding schools have been left behind. There is minimal student participation or engagement in decisions that govern them. There is a strong case for school administrators providing formal political <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40223829">means of representation and democratic decision-making</a> to mitigate conditions that lead to strife in boarding schools. </p>
<p>Literature <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513541011080011/full/html">indicates</a> that successful schools embrace democratic principles of leadership, social justice, and community engagement. These would reduce the psychological injury and the pressure associated with total institutionalisation – which offers escape through unrest, protest, and non-gratuitous violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Teresa A. Wasonga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Student violence is a response to the devaluing and oppressive environment in boarding schools.Teresa A. Wasonga, Professor, Educational Administration, Northern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1692402021-10-08T13:40:47Z2021-10-08T13:40:47Z‘Truth and Healing Commission’ could help Native American communities traumatized by government-run boarding schools that tried to destroy Indian culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425304/original/file-20211007-18548-4lkccs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C4031%2C2999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A makeshift memorial for the Indigenous children who died more than a century ago while attending a boarding school, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IndigenousBoardingSchoolsAlbuquerque/32f0502f1cf240d1951b39660b0b6ed3/photo?Query=boarding%20AND%20schools&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=710&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/national-day-of-remembrance-for-us-indian-boarding-schools/">National Day of Remembrance for Native American children</a> honors children who died years ago while attending the United States’ Indian boarding schools each Sept. 30. On that day this year, a <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-davids-cole-reintroduce-bipartisan-bill-to-seek-healing-for-stolen-native-children-and-their-communities">bill was reintroduced in both the Senate and the House</a> to establish an American Indian Truth and Healing Commission on Indian boarding schools. </p>
<p>The bill’s purposes include both truth-seeking and healing. It asks “to formally investigate and document,” the impact of the trauma that resulted from Indian boarding school policies – a trauma that has been passed down through the generations in Native communities. It also urged federal support to heal “cultural and linguistic” destruction to tribal communities carried out by the federal, state and local governments.</p>
<p>Outside of Indian Country, the lasting legacy of boarding school policies has been largely ignored in the United States. As a <a href="https://www.davidrmbeck.com/">historian of federal “Indian policy</a>” in the 19th and 20th centuries, I study the ways that the U.S. federal government has tried to force American Indians to abandon their cultural heritage and the ways in which tribal communities have tried to remedy the damage. </p>
<p>One thing that I have learned is that in order for healing to occur, it is necessary to acknowledge the horrific history and impacts of boarding schools on both American Indian individuals and communities. Knowing the past and healing from it have begun, but both are far from being complete. </p>
<h2>History of boarding schools</h2>
<p>These boarding schools were run by the federal government, or by <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Churches_and_the_Indian_Schools_1888.html?id=cvV7JwYTz2AC">churches using federal money</a>. From the 1870s, when the first schools began operation, into the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of children are estimated to have been taken away from their families and put into boarding schools, sometimes thousands of miles from their homes. They were forced to learn English and practice Christianity in these schools, and were severely punished for not doing so.</p>
<p>The United States Congress and the Department of the Interior were responsible for establishing and supporting the schools across the country. The schools represent a particularly insidious method of attempting forced assimilation because they involved the removal of children, sometimes by kidnapping, from their families and communities. </p>
<p>Children suffered homesickness and were ravaged by diseases. Many were <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-native-students-fought-back-against-abuse-and-assimilation-at-us-boarding-schools-165222">physically and sexually abused and hundreds died</a>. </p>
<p>Children as young as four – who had been separated from their families and community – were punished for speaking their home languages at the schools. When they returned home, sometimes after many years, they would be unable to converse with their elders, or participate in traditional religious ceremonies <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-loss-of-native-american-languages-affects-our-understanding-of-the-natural-world-103984">since they did not speak the language</a>. These ceremonial activities were also banned by federal policy as part of the broader assimilation project.</p>
<p>The U.S. government has neither sought reconciliation nor provided reparations for the harms caused by the boarding school policy. On the heels of the discovery of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012100926/graves-found-at-new-site-canadian-indigenous-group-says">mass graves at residential schools in Canada</a> this past summer, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American in that job, vowed to take action in the U.S. She said that “<a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-announces-federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that we’re all proud to embrace</a>.” </p>
<p>The bill to establish an American Indian boarding school truth and healing commission was <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8420/text">originally introduced in 2020</a> by then U.S. Rep. Haaland and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. For now, the Department of the Interior has <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-announces-federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative</a>, which, it says, will be “a comprehensive review of the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies.”</p>
<p>The big picture question in both of these initiatives is, what does acknowledging the past and embracing the future look like? </p>
<h2>Understanding the past</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old photograph showing students wrapped in heavy blankets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425307/original/file-20211007-26-ykefpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scholar Larry Larrichio holds a copy of a late 19th century photograph of students at an Indigenous boarding school in Santa Fe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IndigenousBoardingSchools/ef3416025bb34632a6381afebf3e5aa8/photo?Query=boarding%20AND%20schools&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=710&currentItemNo=31">AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historians have been working for the past quarter century to broaden understanding of the impact of boarding schools on Indigenous communities. For example, scholar <a href="https://sma-neh-landmark.ku.edu/brenda-child">Brenda Child</a> has written about the <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">experiences of families in her own Red Lake Ojibwe community in Minnesota</a>. </p>
<p>In her nuanced historical record, Child documents that even when children were not kidnapped and sent to boarding schools, their families faced heart-breaking decisions about their children. By the late 19th century federal policies had destroyed tribal economies. Many Native people lived in dire poverty. Parents might send their children away, for example, to avoid starvation at home.</p>
<p>Native children tried to survive the boarding school experience, and, when they could, to challenge its restrictions. <a href="https://www.rdjs.law/attorneys/wade-v-davies/">Wade Davies</a>, a University of Montana Native American Studies professor, in his award winning book “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2909-1.html">Native Hoops</a>”, gives one example of this. </p>
<p>He tells the history of basketball as a key Native pastime in Indian boarding schools. Students reshaped the sport in ways reflective of the fast-paced way it is now played. They used it as an escape from misery and as a way to travel outside of school grounds. They developed lifelong friendships and relationships that they could later use to protect their home communities.</p>
<p>This is an example of what Anishinaabe writer <a href="http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/vizenor/">Gerald Vizenor</a> termed “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803210837/">survivance</a>,” or going beyond survival to create healthy, self-directed futures for individuals and communities. </p>
<p>In order to understand survivance, scholars have worked to broaden the understanding of the impacts of boarding schools on Native communities and families. At the same time, Indigenous people have worked locally and nationally to bring about healing.</p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p>
<h2>Healing from within</h2>
<p>The most effective methods of healing for survivors of boarding schools or their descendants are developing within Indigenous communities themselves. <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/">The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition</a>, a Native-run nonprofit in Minneapolis, is in the process of creating a digital archive as a way of identifying all of the U.S. boarding schools. This easier access to the schools’ records will provide a way for survivors and their family members to better understand their own history.</p>
<p>The coalition is also focused on healing. It works with legislatures and communities to find ways to help survivors heal from the traumas inflicted on them. The organization works to make policymakers accountable to Native community needs. And it works directly in communities to promote healthy recovery. </p>
<p>Other efforts are being made to undo the damages that the boarding schools inflicted on Indigenous communities in the United States, on both local and national levels. Native religious practitioners, for example, are <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-wave-of-anti-protest-laws-may-infringe-on-religious-freedoms-for-indigenous-people-160733">revitalizing traditional ceremonial practices</a>. The <a href="http://www.ncnalsp.org/">National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs</a> supports local efforts to revitalize Indigenous languages and works with U.S. federal and state officials to develop policy and law to address the language loss issues.</p>
<p>These issues have been of key importance among Indigenous communities for some 150 years. Following the recent wrenching headlines about <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-canada-committed-genocide-against-indigenous-peoples-explained-by-the-lawyer-central-to-the-determination-162582">residential school graves in Canada</a>, people outside of Indian country are beginning to recognize the importance of addressing the legacy of American Indian boarding schools. </p>
<p>But, to be able to do so effectively, both acknowledging the history of those schools, and support for Native community efforts to heal from it, will be crucial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David R. M. Beck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For Indigenous Peoples Day, a scholar of Native American studies explains why understanding the tragic history of Indian boarding schools is important for healing to take place.David R. M. Beck, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1652222021-08-12T12:25:51Z2021-08-12T12:25:51ZHow Native students fought back against abuse and assimilation at US boarding schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414849/original/file-20210805-23-16hrt5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C16%2C3618%2C2600&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Native American students at the Carlisle Indian School, circa 1899.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/native-amercian-students-study-at-their-desks-and-line-up-news-photo/640483015">Library of Congress/Corbis Historical Collection/VCG via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Indigenous community members and archaeologists <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/churches-reckon-with-traumatic-legacy-of-boarding-schools">continue to discover</a> unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the sites of Canadian residential schools, the United States is reckoning with its own history of off-reservation boarding schools. </p>
<p>In July 2021, nine Sicangu Lakota students who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania were disinterred and <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/now-theyre-home">returned to their homelands at Whetstone Bay</a> in South Dakota.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white portrait of young man seated in chair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1199&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1199&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415028/original/file-20210806-13-c9bs0x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1199&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Ernest Knocks Off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/images/ernest-knocks-version-2-c1880">John N. Choate/Cumberland County Historical Society</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of these young people was Ernest Knocks Off. Ernest, who came from the Sicangu Oyate or Burnt Thigh Nation, was among the first group of students to arrive at Carlisle, in 1879. He entered school at age 18 and attempted to run away soon after arriving. He ultimately <a href="http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/documents/potentially-terminal-illness-ernest-knocks">went on a hunger strike</a> and died of <a href="http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/documents/report-deaths-maud-little-girl-and-ernest-knocks">complications of diphtheria on Dec. 14, 1880.</a></p>
<p>My new book “<a href="https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/3980-writing-their-bodies">Writing Their Bodies: Restoring Rhetorical Relations at the Carlisle Indian School</a>” explores how Indigenous children resisted English-only education at Carlisle, which became the prototype for both Indian schools across the U.S. and <a href="http://rschools.nan.on.ca/article/the-davin-report-1879-1120.asp#_ftn1">residential schools in Canada</a>. </p>
<p>While digging into archives of Carlisle students’ writing, I found that young people like Ernest were not passive victims of U.S. colonization. Instead, they fought – in Ernest’s case, to his death – to retain their languages and cultures as the assimilationist experiment in education unfolded. </p>
<h2>‘Unspoken traumas’</h2>
<p>U.S. Army Gen. Richard Henry Pratt opened the government-funded Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879. Following his model, more than <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/list/">350 government-funded</a> and church-run boarding schools later opened across the U.S. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition estimates that <a href="https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/">hundreds of thousands</a> of young Native people attended these schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first students were <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/9779183/battlefield-and-classroom">recruited by Pratt and sent by their nations</a> in hopes that they could learn English to continue fighting against treaty violations by U.S. settlers. In 1891, attendance became <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1626&context=ailr">compulsory under federal law</a>.</p>
<p>Boarding schools sought to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Western culture by separating them from their communities. The schools forced them to learn English and practice Christianity and trained them to work in a capitalist economy – often as <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803214804/">servants and laborers</a> on farms and in the households of white people. </p>
<p>Students experienced <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/">physical abuse, sexual violence and hunger</a>, and hundreds died of <a href="https://heard.org/boardingschool/health/">diseases like tuberculosis</a> that spread rampantly in institutional settings.</p>
<p>Canada’s national <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> identified <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/churches-reckon-with-traumatic-legacy-of-boarding-schools">3,201 children who died in Canadian residential schools</a>. No such estimate exists in the U.S., where a formal reckoning has yet to occur. However, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, <a href="https://www.doi.gov/secretary-deb-haaland">a member of the Laguna Pueblo Nation</a>, <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-announces-federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">has pledged </a> to “address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past.”</p>
<p>Even as Indigenous students faced teachers and a government trying to replace their cultures, languages and identities, they resisted the assimilationist education. Their strategies were at times blatant, but often covert. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A tombstone for Samuel Flying Horse, who died May 11, 1893." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414852/original/file-20210805-25-681vjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tombstone of a young Oglala Lakota student buried at the old Carlisle Indian School cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tombstones-of-young-indians-are-decorated-with-small-tokens-news-photo/1195087091">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis News Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Running away</h2>
<p>Ernest may have been one of the first boarding school students to run away, but he certainly wasn’t the last. Scholars have found that <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/away-from-home-american-indian-boarding-school-experiences-1879-2000/oclc/454120244">running away was a tactic</a> used by students in boarding schools across the U.S. and Canada. It became such a significant shared experience that celebrated Native authors such as <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43079/indian-boarding-school-the-runaways">Louise Erdrich</a> and <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/reviews/990418.18rutalt.html">Leslie Marmon Silko</a> capture this act of resistance in their writings. </p>
<p>Running away was a way for students to communicate their rejection of assimilationist education and to fight their separation from their homeland and community. Runaways sometimes succeeded and got back home. But I believe that even when they were forcibly returned to school, running away represented courage and reminded the other students to keep fighting. </p>
<h2>Plains Sign Talk</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.42">Plains Sign Talk</a> is a sign language that serves as a lingua franca for trade and diplomacy among the Pawnee, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow and Siouan peoples in the Southern Plains. It became a powerful tool at Carlisle, where teachers demanded that students give up their languages for another shared tongue – English. Plains Sign Talk was a way for students to communicate with one another and across tribes that was unintelligible to their teachers. </p>
<p>Carlisle teachers underestimated the importance of Plains Sign Talk, viewing it as a primitive form of communication that students would leave behind as they learned English. When Pratt and his colleagues witnessed students using it, they created a <a href="http://constell8cr.com/issue-2/the-historical-work-of-cultural-rhetorics-constellating-indigenous-deaf-and-english-only-literacies/">new curriculum based on techniques</a> used to teach deaf students. They did not realize that students were using the sign language <a href="http://constell8cr.com/issue-2/the-historical-work-of-cultural-rhetorics-constellating-indigenous-deaf-and-english-only-literacies/">to circumvent the English-only policy</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Senior woman stands beside a makeshift memorial of flowers and other offerings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414853/original/file-20210805-307-p91xa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kamloops Indian Residential School former student Evelyn Camille, 82, at a makeshift memorial to the 215 children whose remains were discovered buried near the facility in British Columbia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kamloops-indian-residential-school-survivor-evelyn-camille-news-photo/1233277614">Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pictographic writing</h2>
<p>Students also drew on <a href="https://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_work/6/">Plains pictography</a> to tell their stories. Plains tribes originally painted pictographs – elements of a graphic writing system – on buffalo hides to document victories in battle and record “<a href="http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8993">winter counts</a>,” or annual historical records. After increased contact with settlers, many tribes began to document pictographic histories in ledger books. These texts served as communal histories that would prompt oral retellings of battles and other significant events. </p>
<p>Students at Carlisle <a href="https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/3980-writing-their-bodies">regularly used pictographs</a> on slates or chalkboards. On June 25, 1880, for example, a Cheyenne student who was renamed Rutherford B. Hayes at school drew a <a href="http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/images/slate-showing-student-work-names-r-b-hayes-and-john-williams-version-1-1880">pictograph of a horse and rider</a> on his slate. He labeled the image John Williams – the Carlisle name of an Arapaho boy who was his classmate and friend. </p>
<p>I argue that these pictographic records show how some students understood their time at school in the context of their developing warrior identities, underscoring their desire to act bravely and return home to recount their stories for their nations’ collective memory.</p>
<h2>Speaking Lakota</h2>
<p>When students spoke their languages, they <a href="https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/ccc/podcasts/klotz">faced harsh penalties</a>. This included corporal punishment, incarceration in the campus barracks and public shaming in the school newspaper. </p>
<p>Pratt and his supervisors at the Bureau of Indian Affairs hoped that they could break up tribes by disrupting the transmission of language and culture from one generation to the next. <a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929">By destroying tribal identities</a>, they hoped to take land in communally held reservations and guaranteed by treaties. For U.S. settlers to gain access, the land would have to shift to a private property system. Boarding schools thus became part of the federal Indian policy later codified as the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fed-indian-policy">1887 Dawes Act</a>. </p>
<p>Although students were supposed to speak only English, they began to learn one another’s languages as well. Lakota, or Sioux, became particularly popular, as it was a majority language in the school’s early years when many students came from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations. </p>
<p>In 1881, Pratt was troubled that students were still speaking their languages two years into their term. When student Stephen K. White Bear was found “talking Indian,” he received a common punishment, which was writing a composition about his discretion. In his essay <a href="http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/sites/all/files/docs-publications/SchoolNews_v02n08_0.pdf">“Speak Only English”</a> Stephen revealed that “every boy and every girl would like to know how to talk Sioux very much. They do not learn the English language they seem to want to know how to talk Sioux.” </p>
<h2>Seeds of pan-Indian resistance</h2>
<p>As students met peers across nations as geographically far-flung as the Inuit and the Kiowa, they sowed seeds for the pan-Indian resistance movements of the 20th century. From the founding of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.31">Society of American Indians</a> in 1911 through <a href="https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-american-indian-movement-1968-1978?tags=migration">the American Indian Movement</a> of the 1960s and ‘70s, Native activists unified for advocacy and cultural revitalization. <a href="https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1863/search-for-an-american-indian-identity-the/">Scholars argue</a> that these movements can trace their roots to intertribal communities of solidarity that were built in the boarding schools. </p>
<p>The outcry against boarding schools that we see today across Canada and the U.S. reflects not only a shared experience of trauma, but a longstanding solidarity among Indigenous peoples working together to maintain land, language, culture and identity in the face of oppression at the hands of Euro-Americans. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Klotz received funding from CCCC/NCTE Emergent Researcher Award including a grant of $10,000 for monograph project, Writing Their Bodies: Restoring Rhetorical Relations at the Carlisle Indian School, 2016</span></em></p>Ernest Knocks Off was 18 when he arrived at the Carlisle boarding school in 1879. He was one of many young Native people who fought – in his case, to the death – to retain their language and culture.Sarah Klotz, Assistant Professor of English, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1467452020-09-30T20:04:50Z2020-09-30T20:04:50ZSome private schools need to change their models — they were losing students even before COVID<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360704/original/file-20200930-24-gmkk3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teenage-students-uniform-working-on-project-779645401">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some Australian <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/state-schools-brace-for-enrolment-jump-as-private-fees-put-strain-on-parents-20200707-p559pl.html">private schools have reported</a> lower interest from prospective parents due to the financial pressures of COVID-19. </p>
<p>A number of <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/schools-call-for-overseas-student-return-amid-existential-challenges-20200922-p55y0r.html">Victorian school principals have also called on the state government</a> to re-open borders to international students. They say there’s a possibility schools may be forced to close, due to severe financial distress from the non-return of students. </p>
<p>But the cause of the problem may lie not so much in COVID border closures but in fragile business and financial models adopted by some schools.</p>
<h2>It was getting worse before COVID</h2>
<p>Some schools with large boarding communities, including The King’s School and St Joseph’s College in Sydney, have <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/treasurer-defends-jobkeeper-payments-to-leading-private-schools-20200726-p55fl6.html">accessed JobKeeper payments</a> as their income met the 30% downturn threshold, while their total income is fewer than A$1 billion. These schools enrol large numbers of regional and rural students, as well as international students. </p>
<p>The last few years have also seen a steady increase in weekly boarders — who come from families for <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/weekly-boarding-an-answer-to-fulltime-work-and-parenting-20161112-gsnwnf.html">whom juggling work and study</a> is facilitated by boarding, even when they live in relative proximity to the school.</p>
<p>The costs associated with running these residential facilities is significant, so it’s unsurprising the loss of boarding income for these schools is acute.</p>
<p>The loss of international student enrolments for most schools, though, is unlikely to cause many of these schools to reach the 30% downturn threshold. The <a href="https://www.boarding.org.au/uploaded/news/Media_Statement_180820.pdf">Australian Boarding Schools’ Association</a> notes only 10% of its 21,000 residential students are from overseas. With these smaller numbers, some principals now find themselves with an increasingly stressed financial situation and little direct support. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1306806309388312577"}"></div></p>
<p>This is not new, as the history of the global financial crisis shows. In the five years between 2008 to 2013, <a href="https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Pages/InternationalStudentData2018.aspx">international student enrolments in Australian schools</a> fell from 28,291 to 17,739. The number of new enrolments also fell from 14,281 to 8,753. Both represent nearly 40% declines — far in excess of the 18% decline of international school enrolments <a href="https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Documents/MONTHLY%20SUMMARIES/2020/Jul%202020%20MonthlyInfographic.pdf">reported by Austrade</a> in July 2020.</p>
<p>And international school enrolments <a href="https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Documents/MONTHLY%20SUMMARIES/2019/December%202019%20End%20of%20year%20summary.pdf">flatlined over the period 2016-2019</a>, even as the higher education and vocational education sectors increased by more than 30% across the same period. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-charts-on-catholic-school-enrolments-theyre-trending-down-while-australias-population-booms-121616">Five charts on Catholic school enrolments: they're trending down while Australia's population booms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://isa.edu.au/about-independent-schools/about-independent-schools/international-students/#:%7E:text=In%202019%20total%20international%20student,period%20by%204.7%20per%20cent.">Independent Schools Australia</a>, the peak advocacy body for schools where most international students enrol, also notes while overall international education enrolments increased by 9.7% in 2019 from the year before, international student enrolments in non-government schools declined by 4.7% in the same period.</p>
<p>The case for government intervention due to COVID weakens somewhat in light of these data.</p>
<h2>Some private schools need to rethink their models</h2>
<p>Parental choice — often the preferred ground of legitimacy for non-government schools — may also require some principals to rethink the sustainability of their models. International enrolments are not subsidised by the Australian government and their fees can be very high compared to domestic students. For example, Wesley College in Melbourne <a href="https://www.wesleycollege.edu.au/enrol/international-applications/international-fees">charges A$42,850 for international students in Years 9 to 12</a> (not including the additional $27,000 for boarding), while <a href="https://www.wesleycollege.edu.au/enrol/domestic-applications/domestic-fees">domestic students</a> in Year 10 to 12 are charged $34,610. </p>
<p>A reduction of this income can have a significant and material impact on school operations. When parents cannot afford the fees, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/state-catholic-numbers-tipped-to-boom-as-parents-delay-switch-20200812-p55l0n.html">they will shift their child’s enrolment</a> to a school with more sustainable fee levels. </p>
<p>When school enrolments deteriorate, there is significant human cost to teachers, administration and support staff. That loss, while painful for those directly impacted, could be a gain for other schools in both government and non-government sectors. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uk-labour-party-wants-to-abolish-private-schools-could-we-do-that-in-australia-124271">The UK Labour Party wants to abolish private schools – could we do that in Australia?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As enrolments drift elsewhere, so too does the need to increase staffing in those schools to accommodate additional enrolments. The data above suggest solutions will need to emerge from within the schools themselves as they did post-GFC, rather than from government. </p>
<p>The non-government school sector has long benefited from the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17508487.2013.776990">marketisation of education in Australia</a>. The challenge now is how some schools will reconfigure their operations in light of these changing circumstances. If they do not, or cannot, the future looks quite dire. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1245224386103250944"}"></div></p>
<p>In response to COVID-related financial pressures, some <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/state-schools-brace-for-enrolment-jump-as-private-fees-put-strain-on-parents-20200707-p559pl.html">private schools have reportedly offered </a> fee cuts and deferrals, and asked alumni to help pay the fees of students at risk of quitting due to economic pressures in the family.</p>
<p>The rapid growth of <a href="https://61e921b4-a9e9-4291-9c12-f60d2c38cae4.filesusr.com/ugd/4a371f_086b4d14d6064a83a332a4985c0c07b0.pdf">UK independent school partnerships in China</a> is also providing an increasing range of options for parents seeking international education experience. </p>
<p>Some private schools will likely need to adjust their staffing levels as their enrolments change; if they can do so successfully, their future may be more secure, if not quite the future those school communities and principals may have envisaged.</p>
<p>Such is the logic of market-driven policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Kidson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>International school enrolments have flatlined over the period 2016-2019, even as tertiary enrolments increased by more than 30% across the same period.Paul Kidson, Lecturer in Educational Leadership, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/746222017-06-12T19:56:15Z2017-06-12T19:56:15ZWe need to know the true cost of Indigenous boarding school scholarships on communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163597/original/image-20170403-18846-l1pp6n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seeking out a good education can sometimes take you away from what's familiar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/are-we-making-progress-on-indigenous-education-39329">this series</a>, we’ll discuss whether progress is being made on Indigenous education, looking at various areas including policy, scholarships, school leadership, literacy and much more.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Every year, over 3,000 Indigenous students leave home to attend boarding schools. While many consider Indigenous boarding programs a “solution” generally aimed at remote students who don’t have access to local high schools, most Indigenous students at boarding schools are not from remote Australia. </p>
<p>Some come from cities, but the majority of Indigenous boarders come from regional and rural Australia. </p>
<p>With the government spending <a href="https://ministers.education.gov.au/pyne/54-million-help-indigenous-boarding-school-students">millions of dollars</a> each year to encourage Indigenous students to attend boarding schools, what is the true cost of Indigenous boarding on regional communities, Indigenous families and students?</p>
<h2>Many more will leave remote areas</h2>
<p>By <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3238.0Media%20Release02001%20to%202026?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3238.0&issue=2001%20to%202026&num=&view=">2026</a>, only 8% of all Indigenous Australians are projected to be living in remote Australia. </p>
<p>Within this decade, our Indigenous population is <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3238.0Media%20Release02001%20to%202026?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3238.0&issue=2001%20to%202026&num=&view=">projected</a> to reach upwards of 900,000 people, from <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/latestProducts/3238.0.55.001Media%20Release1June%202011">669,900</a> in 2013.</p>
<p>Huge amounts of government and state <a href="https://ministers.education.gov.au/pyne/54-million-help-indigenous-boarding-school-students">funding</a> continue to be spent on <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201516/Indigenous">boarding</a> programs that enable students to leave their home communities and attend boarding schools in major cities and large towns. </p>
<p>While the government financially supports individual scholarship foundations and providers, private schools often fund their own scholarships. </p>
<p>Students and boarding schools can also access funding from the government’s <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Indigenous_Affairs/Educational_Opportunities/Interim_Report">ABSTUDY</a> initiative. Figures specific to boarding schools have not been released, but in 2015-16 ABSTUDY payments to secondary school students alone cost around <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/10_2016/dss_annual_report_2015-16.pdf">$145 million</a>.</p>
<h2>Little research on impact of Australian Indigenous boarding</h2>
<p>During my years coordinating an Indigenous program for boarding students at a private girls’ college, I struggled to find data and research related to the <a href="http://www.reefandleaf.com.au/etropic%2014.1%20files/14%20Stewart%20and%20Lewthwaite.pdf">experiences</a> and outcomes of Indigenous boarders in Australia.</p>
<p>Through a <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/alumni/our-alumni/spotlight/jessa-rogers">PhD</a> I decided to add to the small body of <a href="http://www.reefandleaf.com.au/etropic%2014.1%20files/14%20Stewart%20and%20Lewthwaite.pdf">studies</a> in this area through analysing the experiences of 25 Aboriginal girls attending boarding schools away from home.</p>
<h2>Boarding better option than local school?</h2>
<p>The majority of students in my study explained that they had chosen not to attend their local school because, based on their own and others’ experiences attending such schools, they believed the teaching and management to be of poor quality. </p>
<p>Students spoke of wanting better educational opportunities, as well as access to extracurricular activities, which were not provided at their local school. </p>
<p>They also described how local schools in their home towns, mostly in regional and rural Australia, struggled to keep teachers for longer than a year. They said that learning often consisted of copying down lines from a whiteboard or “mucking around” in unruly classrooms. </p>
<p>Students saw this as an example of “the teacher not caring”, “not trying” and “not thinking Aboriginal kids deserve a good education”.</p>
<p>But a few students I spoke to were attending boarding school in the city they lived in, and were able to catch the train home to visit their families. Some saw boarding school as opening doors to better opportunities in the future, by being able to put the name of a “big school” on their resume.</p>
<p>Having a good education was seen as a stepping stone toward a better life, even if students felt their education did not support their Indigenous identity and culture. </p>
<p>The pull between wanting a good future and wanting to maintain their identity was palpable, and unresolved. This was often the reason given for Indigenous students dropping out of boarding school. </p>
<p>Statistics <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4714.0%7E2014-15%7EMain%20Features%7EEducation%7E5">show</a> that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in non-remote areas are more likely than those in remote areas to have completed Year 12 or equivalent (28% compared with 18%). </p>
<p>And while boarding school is a way for students from remote areas to move to regional and urban schools, the completion rates of remote students in boarding schools are unclear. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="http://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1391651/004_STEWART_V2.pdf">research</a> indicates that in some remote towns where secondary schooling is unavailable, up to 50% of secondary school aged students who are supported to attend boarding school return as a result of de-enrolling (through self-exclusion, withdrawal, exclusion or cancellation of enrolment).</p>
<h2>Other reasons for attending boarding school</h2>
<p>Students choose to attend boarding for individual reasons. In my research, one student spoke of leaving home because her mother was in a violent relationship, and she wanted to move away to escape the hurt of watching her mother being bashed after letting her boyfriend return each time he left her, bruised and crushed.</p>
<p>Another student spoke of how she and her mother had often searched for boarding scholarship advertisements in the hope of a “better education” and “making her family proud”. The same student told me that getting into boarding school granted her grandmother’s dying wish. </p>
<h2>Impact on communities</h2>
<p>Three in four students in my study said they had been subjected to racism and discrimination while at boarding school. </p>
<p>This included name calling, taunts based on being scholarship recipients, and social isolation by non-Indigenous students.</p>
<p>Many of the events students described were not heard, but were felt. “You just know,” one student said, “it’s the way they look at you”. </p>
<p>Students also described problems with feeling homesick; a lack of understanding of Indigenous content in classwork; their need for Indigenous teachers – who comprise of just <a href="https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/article/increasing-the-number-of-indigenous-educators-in-australian-schools">1.2%</a> of the Australian teaching workforce. They also wanted more access to Indigenous support people in schools.</p>
<p>They talked about feeling disconnected with family, culture and identity when they returned home after boarding. They also retold painful stories of feeling lost and trapped, not knowing who they were when they returned home after changing to fit in at boarding school.</p>
<h2>Desire to stay in city in further education</h2>
<p>Despite this, the majority of Aboriginal students I spoke with said that they planned to remain in major cities and regional centres, to go to university or in getting a job after boarding school.</p>
<p>They saw this future, away from their communities, as bright, exciting, and worth it as an “end goal”.</p>
<p>While scholarships are providing students with opportunities to attend boarding schools that are well out of reach for most families, the cost to identity, culture and connection to community has not been fully explored – and is rarely discussed with students and families before they embark on such journeys. </p>
<h2>Boarding scholarships worthwhile?</h2>
<p>What is clear is that boarding school is not for everyone. Some students will thrive, and others will <a href="http://boardingtrainingaustralia.com.au/2016/04/15/indigenous-boarding-paper/">not</a>, regardless of whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous. Indigenous boarding school scholarship foundations openly state this to potential applicants.</p>
<p>It’s also a reality that a small number of Indigenous students must leave their <a href="http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/high-school-floated-as-solution-to-aurukuns-problems/news-story/e077b609ddc54b2159ff8a19461686af">homes</a> if they wish to receive a high school education in Australia. </p>
<p>More data, however, must be collected if the government is to continue to spend millions on sending Indigenous young people to boarding school. </p>
<p>More research into boarding school models, more discussion around the aims of such initiatives, and an understanding of the true cost of boarding school on students, and their communities, is also required. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>• <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/are-we-making-progress-on-indigenous-education-39329">Read more</a> articles in this series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessa Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the government is to continue to spend millions toward sending Indigenous children away to boarding school, we need research into how effective this model is, and its impact on communities.Jessa Rogers, Assistant Professor, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/691532016-11-24T21:31:22Z2016-11-24T21:31:22ZA burning question: why are Kenyan students setting fire to their schools?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147341/original/image-20161124-15333-1mzz9xu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dormitories are commonly targeted in school burnings</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Cooper</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past few years, students have set fire to <a href="http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2016/07/matiangi-says-special-team-probe-school-arson-cases/">hundreds</a> of secondary schools across Kenya. The tally includes <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/List-of-schools-hit-by-unrest/1056-3318282-14epye8/index.html">more than 120</a> cases in 2016 alone. Why students are setting fire to their schools has been the topic of repeated investigations by police, education officials, government inquiries and journalists. Indeed, explanation – or rather blame – for this trend has been levelled in every conceivable direction. </p>
<p>Kenya’s Education Minister and other members of the government have <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/counties/Kisii/Cartels-fighting-Matiangi-behind-arson-in-schools/1183286-3325876-vth7dpz/index.html">suggested</a> that the fires have been masterminded and supported by “cartels” in retaliation against the government’s crackdown on lucrative exam-cheating schemes. This is a claim <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000210327/students-defy-president-uhuru-kenyatta-s-warning-set-institutions-on-fire">repeated</a> by the President. The government has also fingered <a href="http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2016/07/matiangi-wants-parents-charged-arson-vandalism-schools/">ethnic and clan hostilities</a> as motivating attacks on schools headed by principals who are identified with different communities. </p>
<p>In these ways, the government’s explanations treat students as unwitting pawns in political disputes that are actually not really about them or their schooling. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, many public policy analysts and members of the public have blamed students’ “<a href="http://pjpub.org/perd/perd_147.pdf">indiscipline</a>”. This lack of discipline has been <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/weekend/Education-ministry-to-blame-for-wave-of-arson-in-schools/-/1220/2823442/-/9xxcqaz/-/index.html%E2%80%8B">attributed</a> to lackadaisical parenting as well as the ban on teachers’ use of corporal punishment. </p>
<p>Again, students are understood to be relatively passive receptacles of adults’ management. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/8797764/Students_Arson_and_Protest_Politics_in_Kenya_School_Fires_as_Political_Action%20_">My research</a> with students and in schools across Kenya indicates that most of these explanations miss the mark because they depreciate, rather than appreciate, students’ capacities to engage in purposeful political action.</p>
<h2>Rational political tactics</h2>
<p>In the media, students’ actions are cast as “mindless hooliganism”. But students can rationally explain why they use arson in their schools. Students have learned that setting fire to their schools is an effective tactic for winning acknowledgement of their dissatisfaction. </p>
<p>Their use of arson represents an astute reading of the limited options available to citizens to practice meaningful dialogue and peaceful dissent related to the conditions of public services, such as education. As many analysts have noted, limited options for meaningful citizen engagement in Kenya’s policy arena has given rise to the popularity of a <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201204190425.html">“strike culture”</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, students easily identify other examples from Kenyan political struggles that demonstrate how violence and destruction have proven effective means for citizens to win public and political recognition of their grievances. </p>
<p>As one student explained, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What I see is that in Kenyan society, the bigger the impact, the quicker the reaction. The government sees these people are serious and they can think “if we don’t meet their grievances now, we might see worse”.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Schooling complaints</h2>
<p>Students target their schools because their grievances tend to be school-based. The most commonly cited complaints among students include principals’ overly authoritarian, “highhanded” and unaccountable styles of management, poor quality school diets and inadequate learning resources, including teaching. Many of these criticisms reflect suspicions about how school budgets are being allocated.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of school arson cases have occurred in boarding schools across the country, including boys’ schools, girls’ schools, and mixed schools. Schools that perform well and those that tend to perform more poorly on national examinations have all been affected. </p>
<p>Why are boarding schools such common targets? Some of this is explained by prevalence: nearly <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/images/ICT/2014BasicEducationStatisticalBooklet.pdf">80%</a> of Kenya’s secondary schools are boarding schools. However, students explain that boarding schools are targeted because life for them in these schools can be “like prison”. </p>
<p>The boarding school, like prison, can be considered a “<a href="http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2009/SOC139/um/soc139_16_Goffman.pdf">total institution</a>”. This idea, theorised by sociologist Erving Goffman, refers to a situation where all aspects of life occur in the same place, with the same cohort and according to a stringent schedule. This regime is enforced by a single authority according to an overarching “rational” plan. In practice, boarding school life is often experienced by students as excessively rigid and authoritarian. </p>
<p>The majority of school fires are set in students’ dormitories, thereby also destroying students’ own personal belongings. The rationale given by students is that the destruction of their dorms means that they will be sent home and given some respite from their intensive boarding school lifestyles. </p>
<h2>Understanding adolescents and risk-taking</h2>
<p>Interviews with students as well as reviews of court case proceedings indicate that it can be difficult for students to imagine the long-lasting detrimental consequences that might arise from setting fires in their schools. </p>
<p>In part, this is due to students holding cynical views of the ineptitude of the Kenyan enforcement and judicial systems. Students note, for example, that many prosecutions fail due to deficient criminal investigations, including unlawful interrogation practices. </p>
<p>Additionally, some students who played active roles in setting fires later claimed that they had been unable to anticipate the scale and scope of the damage the fires would cause to their schools as well as to their own futures. </p>
<p>These kinds of experiences jibe with emergent understandings from neuroscience concerning the unique developmental stage of adolescents’ brains. We now know that the brain is still developing during adolescence. The prefrontal cortex of the brain – which is implicated in impulse control – may not be fully developed and functional until the early 20s or later. Consequently, neurodevelopmental researchers <a href="http://jar.sagepub.com/content/25/1/4.full.pdf+html">theorise</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>adolescents may have less inhibition, be more prone to take risks, more impulsive, and less likely to consider the distal consequences of their actions than adults. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recognising these potential differences does not cancel out the immediate deliberateness of students’ acts to affect change in ways that they understand to be effective. But it does complicate the question of how to respond to students’ palpable frustrations. </p>
<h2>Alternative possible futures</h2>
<p>All of this indicates that the government’s intention to respond to the trend of school-based arson with more discipline and punishment of students is misguided in two crucial and connected ways. </p>
<p>First, this approach only addresses symptoms exhibited in rebellious acts. At the root of students’ dissatisfaction and desperation is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-kenya-wants-to-overhaul-its-entire-education-system-62840">gruelling education</a> coupled with often unaccountable authority, both of which are acutely experienced through the “total institution” of the boarding school. </p>
<p>Second, threats of more punishment misjudge the unique conditions of adolescence in terms of neuromaturation, and specifically how this can affect risk-taking and consideration of long-term consequences. More threats and interventions of punishment are unlikely to affect these predispositions. </p>
<p>Kenyan students have learned that arson works as a tactic to express dissatisfaction and opposition. To change this lesson, the government needs to open peaceful and effective channels for young people’s perspectives to be taken into account, both in education and government. Otherwise, we can likely expect more fires next year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Cooper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Acts of arson by Kenyan high school students have been characterised as ‘mindless hooliganism’. But research shows that students are actually engaging in purposeful, reasoned political action.Elizabeth Cooper, Assistant Professor of International Studies, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/366812015-02-05T06:15:33Z2015-02-05T06:15:33ZSend disadvantaged pupils to boarding school and only the brightest thrive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70928/original/image-20150203-25536-2folh6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=923%2C14%2C2248%2C1231&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A French boarding school aimed at disadvantaged pupils. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided. </span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Send a child to a boarding school and they’ll thrive. That’s what <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Preparing_for_Power.html?id=LMo1jbNuUMoC&redir_esc=y">many richer families believe</a> when they send their children away to board, and it’s the belief behind a series of programmes set up around the world in the past two decades, aimed at providing places at boarding schools for disadvantaged children. </p>
<p>Two examples are the <a href="http://www.seedfoundation.com/">SEED boarding schools</a>, started in the US in the late 1990s to teach poor black students, and the <em><a href="http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid50541/les-internats-d-excellence.html">internats d’excellence</a></em> (boarding schools of excellence), introduced in 2008 in France to teach students from poor families. There are 45 such <em>internats</em> are now operating in France, serving 4,200 middle and high school students, essentially for free. </p>
<p>These schools were opened because of concerns that the negative influences students are exposed to in their home environment could impair their academic potential. But very little is known about the effects that substituting school for home produce on students. The only study considering this question found that <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671798">being enrolled in the SEED boarding school in Washington DC increases student test scores</a>.</p>
<h2>Boarding by lottery</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/cdechaisemartin/ready_for_boarding.pdf">research</a> co-authored with Luc Behaghel and Marc Gurgand from the Paris School of Economics, and conducted with the <a href="http://www.povertyactionlab.org/">Poverty Action Lab</a>, we analysed the effects of a French <em>internat</em> on student outcomes. Our findings suggest that while these boarding schools can help boost pupils who are already strong academically, they might not be helping weaker students. </p>
<p>The school we studied was created in 2009, and is located south of Paris. Only 258 places in the boarding school were available, but 395 students applied. Applicants were higher achievers than their classmates in their original schools, but because they came from low-performing schools, their performance was comparable to that of the median student in the French population. Half of them came from families where French is not the main language spoken at home.</p>
<p>Students admitted were randomly selected out of the pool of applicants. We followed both the lottery winners and losers – who stayed at their regular schools – over two years after the lottery and gave them cognitive and non-cognitive tests at the end of each academic year. </p>
<h2>Stronger students do well</h2>
<p>One year after the lottery, cognitive test scores were very similar in the two groups. But after two years, boarders outperformed lottery losers on the maths test. The difference in performance between the two groups was sizeable. Boarders’ maths scores were comparable to that of the seventh strongest student in a representative French class of 20 students, while the lottery losers performance was more comparable to that of the tenth strongest student. </p>
<p>Our cost-benefit analysis shows that the boarding school is <a href="http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/114/2/497.short">as effective as reducing class size</a>. But the effect of the boarding school mostly comes from students who were already doing well in maths before they started boarding. Students who were weaker to begin with did not seem to benefit: even after two years we did not observe any test score gains among them.</p>
<p>From their first year onwards, boarders experienced substantially better study conditions than our lottery losers who didn’t go to boarding school. They benefited from smaller classes, reported much lower levels of classroom disruption and praised the engagement of their teachers. We did not find evidence that the quality of their study conditions changed over the two years.</p>
<h2>It takes time to adjust</h2>
<p>These patterns might be due to the fact that adjusting to the school initially reduces students’ well-being. When students arrive at the boarding school they need to adapt to their new environment. They have to cope with the separation from friends and family and also relinquish a certain amount of freedom. They have to wear a formal school uniform similar to those of English private schools and spend less time watching television than the lottery losers. </p>
<p>The boarders also face higher academic demands. They are immersed in an environment with peers who are academically stronger and teachers who are more demanding. Most of the new students experienced a sharp decline in their grades when they entered the school. </p>
<p>These factors were probably responsible for the lower levels of well-being we observed among boarders in the end of their first year. They were more likely to say they felt lonely or uncomfortable at school. Yet during their second year, students seemed to adjust. Boarder’s levels of well-being caught up with those of lottery losers: their motivation became higher and they also reported spending more time on their homework. This could also explain why the stronger students made more progress than the weaker ones. We found some indication that the initial negative shock on well-being was larger for weaker students, while the recovery was faster for stronger students.</p>
<h2>Lessons for other countries</h2>
<p>Overall, boarding seems to be a disruptive form of schooling for students. Once they have managed to adjust to their new environment, strong students make very substantial academic progress. On the other hand, this type of school does not seem well-suited to weaker students: even after two years we do not observe any test score gains among them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70123/original/image-20150127-17544-1k2b5yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charterhouse, one of England’s oldest boarding schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In England, the Centre for Social Justice think tank has <a href="http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/UserStorage/pdf/Press%20releases%202014/CSJ-education-press-release--29.08.14.pdf">suggested</a> that more children from disadvantaged families should be sent to boarding school. One charity has <a href="https://news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2014/09/03/boarding-school-benefits-for-growing-numbers-of-disadvantaged-children.aspx">already begun placing</a> children in some of the UK’s top schools. Our results suggest that this type of policy might work with strong students, but not necessarily with weaker ones. <a href="http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-in-the-news-the-effects-of-boarding-schools/">Studies currently being conducted about the UK program</a> will tell whether the results we found in France continue to apply across the channel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clement de Chaisemartin received funding for this research from the French Experimental Fund for Youth. All of his research is independent and the views expressed in this article are entirely his own.</span></em></p>Send a child to a boarding school and they’ll thrive. That’s what many richer families believe when they send their children away to board, and it’s the belief behind a series of programmes set up around…Clement de Chaisemartin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.