An Analysis Of Indian Education By Sherman Alexie

Theodore Fontaine is one of the thousands of young aboriginal peoples who were subjected through the early Canadian system of the Indian residential schools, was physically tortured. Originally speaking Ojibwe, Theodore relates the encounters of a young man deprived of his culture and parents, who were taken away from him at the age of seven, during which he would no longer be free to choose what to say, how to say it, with whom to live and even what culture to embrace. Theodore would then spend the next twelve years undoing what had been done to him since birth, and the rest of his life attempting a reversal of his elementary education culture shock, traumatization, and indoctrination of ethnicity and Canadian supremacy. Out of these experiences, he wrote the “Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools-A Memoir” and in this review, I considered the Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd publication.

Many believe his play to humor and writing betrays Indian “people by presenting them as clichés to be laughed" person’s name says hey "while other persona says he Avoiding to educate white readers and re instill cultural pride in Indian readers he actively works against such goals with his humor" . However I believe Sherman Alexie humor is central to

Throughout the story, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior goes through many ups and downs. This story is about how Junior, an indian from the Spokane reservation, decides to go to Rearden, the school for non-indians because of how run-down his school is and has trouble fitting in. Some of the ways Junior dealt with those downs include his uncanny sense of humor, his love for his friends, and the want to fit in and prove he’s just as good as everyone else at his new school.

Sherman Alexie, in “Indian Education” tells his experiences in school on the reservation. Some of his teachers did not treat him very good and did not try to understand him. In his ninth grade year he collapsed. A teacher assumed that he had been drinking just because he was Native American. The teacher said, “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sherman Alexie didn’t listen to the negatives in school. He persevered and became valedictorian of his school.

Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his

Authors write for many reasons; most often because they want to tell a story. This is definitely the case with Sherman Alexie, “a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker known for witty and frank explorations of the lives of contemporary Native Americans.” He grew up on the Spokane and Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservations, and has devoted much of his adult life to telling stories of his life there. Alexie expertly uses language and rhetorical devices to convey the intensity and value of his experiences.

Alexie suggests that people should not limit themselves based on stereotypes of their environment or backgrounds. The author supports this by claiming, “A smart Indian is a dangerous person…” (6). Here, Alexie is showing that when someone overcomes the stigma surrounding them, they can be a force to be reckoned with. Alexie also discusses the personalities and habits of Native kids. He states, “We were Indian children expected to be stupid…” (6). He then goes on to describe how Indian children struggle with basic reading in classes but can seem to remember dozens of traditional Powwow songs. Lastly, Sherman Alexie also alludes to how Indian kids are expected to fail in the non-Native world. “Those who failed were accepted by Indians and...pitied

Education —an institution for success, opportunity, and progress — is itself steeped in racism. In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Indian Education” from his book The Longer Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is set in two places, the Spokane Indian Reservation and a farm town nearby the reservation. The story is written in a list of formative events chronologize Victor’s youth by depicting the most potent moment from each year he is in school. Alexie addresses the issue of racism in education by examining examples of injustice and discrimination over twelve years in a boy’s life. Victor faces his initial injustice in first grade when he is bullied by bigger kids, but his understanding of injustice becomes much more complex in grades two through twelve as he experiences discrimination against his American Indian identity. Familial experiences of a Native woman, Alexie’s style and humor, and Victor’s awareness of discrimination from grade one to twelve all reveal the grim reality of growing up and being schooled on an American Indian reservation.

At the beginning of Alexie’s life teachers and classmates demonstrate the racism. Sherman Alexie’s classmates are the first example of racism, with racist nicknames and bullying that start the chain of hardship in his life. Alexie narrates, “I was always falling down; my Indian name was Junior Falls Down. Sometimes it was Bloody Nose or Steal-His-Lunch” (Alexie 3). This quote is important because it conveys the racism that Alexie’s see in the early parts of his life with racist nicknames and the bullying that is brought. One way that this quote is racist is that Alexie refers to these nicknames as “Indian names”. It also depicts the bullying that Alexie endured with getting his lunch stolen, getting bloody noses, and falling down. Although this is a minor plot point to the story, this sets the reader up for the more and more detailed hardships that racism brings. Another example of racism in Sherman Alexie’s life is his teacher who bullies him for no reason. She makes him stay in for recess, hold books for fifteen minutes, and force him to cut his braids, and on top of all that she uses a negative connotation when describing

Growing up as a Native American boy on a reservation, Sherman Alexie was not expected to succeed outside of his reservation home. The expectations for Native American children were not very high, but Alexie burst out of the stereotype and expectations put by white men. Young Native Americans were not expected to overcome their stereotypes and were forced to succumb to low levels of reading and writing “he was expected to fail in a non-Indian world” (Alexie 3), but Alexie was born with a passion for reading and writing, so much so that he taught himself to read at age three by simply looking at images in Marvel comics and piecing the words and pictures together. No young Native American had made it out of his reservation to become a successful writer like he did. This fabricates a clear ethos for Alexie, he is a perfect underdog in an imperfect world.

I recently read chapter 1 of the book Next Steps: Research and practice to advance Indian education, edited by: Karen G. Swisher and John W. Tippeconnic III. This chapter is titled: The unnatural history of American Indian Education. The chapter was about the colonial education and stereotypical beliefs about the culture and capability of Native Americans. I noticed the words natural and true showed up quite often, natural to me means not human made and true meaning the truth with facts. It was stated that there are four tenets of colonial education (the reculturing and reeducation of American Indians by the secular and religious institutions of colonizing nations). 1. Native Americans were savages and had to be civilized. 2. Civilization

The short story, “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie is about Victor, a native and his story first grade through his high school education. In the story Victor’s father is an alcoholic. Victor;’s environment was not healthy, his 2nd grade teacher, Betty Towle, was a racist teacher who made him do unusual punishments . His whole education at the reservation was not good. Victor narrates, “That was the year my father drank a gallon of vodka a day and the same year that my mother started two hundred quilts but never finished any. They sat in separate, dark places in our HUD house and wept savagely”(Alexie 5).Victor is narrating that his father was a heavy drinker and his mother would entangle herself in her knitting. Victor came from a home where one would look for the solutions to their problems at the bottom of a bottle and keep it to themselves. Victor’s whole life was in an environment where there was always a serious issue impacting his happiness and psychological well-being. With his second grade teacher he would be picked on by his teacher all the time. His father was an alcoholic, his mother was his mother, he was living on a reservation where the dogs wouldn't eat the food that is given to them. He was not happy in this situation, being in unhealthy environment makes your chance of happiness

In spite of the fact that Sherman Alexie, Plato,Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm x, the four experienced childhood in various eras, in various conditions, and at last in various universes. The trio confronted distinctive battles and had diverse victories, yet at last they weren't generally all that extraordinary. In spite of the fact that they experienced childhood in various circumstances they both had similar perspectives on the significance of a training. The considered training to be opportunity and as a feeling of self-esteem and however they accomplished their instruction in various ways they both had a solid will and a solid feeling of self-inspiration.

My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern” (Alexie2). This quote from Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education” represents how reservation life results in a life cycle of depression and large amounts of risk-taking among Indians who feel confined to what the reservation has to offer. Throughout the short story Junior, whom is both narrator and protagonist gives great insight into what life is like for a young Indian boy on and off the Spokane reservation. He is able to both identify with and distance himself from his Indian ancestors. In “Indian Education”, reservation life reveals the social depression experienced by the Indians, it defines who Junior is and who he

They would make him stay quiet in class because most of them did not like to speak during class with their non-Indian teacher. Even though at home they would talk nonstop about anything. These kids did not grow up to have opportunities they could have had because they were not given a proper education. The non-Indian teachers did not push the kids to learn and they did not care about their student's education. The kids knew that they were expected to fail with their education, and they grew up knowing it was okay to fail because they were Indian. However, Alexie did not accept that. He knew he could pass and that he was smart, so he challenged himself to learn out of the classroom. Reading became the center of his education; he read late into the night, at recess, during lunch, after class, and whenever he could make time to. As a boy he read everything he could find with words on it including all the books his dad had at home, newspapers, library books, cereal boxes, posters, manuals. Even though he loved books he knew reading saved his education and his entire life. His future was opened up to new opportunities because he was educated.