Sherman Alexie's Indian Education

Purpose: Alexie highlights how he ultimately overcame the hardships suffered during his early years due to his Indian ethnicity and displays how Native Americans were, and continue, to suffer from discrimination.

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.

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.

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

One should get to know a person before judging them because impressions are not always accurate. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior experiences racism on the Spokane Indian reservation and at Reardan, where Junior attends school. Racial discrimination makes the Indians on the reservation lose their sense of self-worth and they feel as if they deserve to be treated this way. At Reardan, Junior is in an atmosphere where his white classmates and teachers make racist jokes and nicknames targeting him. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie explains how prejudice and discriminatory behaviour endorses negative relationships between people. This can be observed through Junior’s

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were the odd one out? In Sherman Alexie’s novel Indian Killer there are many references to the cultures and traditions of Indians and how they are different to others. Alexie also brings up some of the major points of being a true native American and how some are just “wannabes” as he calls them in the novel. He also goes in depth with some struggles of being an Indian and how life is different between Indians and whites. The culture of the Indians in this novel play a major role in the novel as it is how the Indian killer starts killing because of all the racism. Alexie uses many references to

We all have the opportunity to be happy, what we do with that opportunity is on us. We all face challenges, some more difficult than others but there does come a point in our lives where we have to choose.. We have to make the decision to take the opportunity of happiness or to not. We all given them opportunity even if it might not seem so. If a person is in a healthy environment, has an appropriate attitude and has love in their life, they have the opportunity to be happy.

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

The article “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie is an informative article about the author growing up on an Indian reservation, attending reservation school and where he is today. The author's underlying message in the article is cultural differences when not accepted can cause issues not only socially but also in education. The author does a great job in persuading his readers of the issues on education in reservation schools and possibly how to fix these issues.

The non-Indians and Indians alike alienated young Alexie at school. In order to conform to subservient expectations, smart Indian children were bullied into not actively talking or participating in class further emphasizing “Indian children who were expected to be stupid” (Alexie). Teachers would ignore the peer pressuring and bullying happening around them. Because the non-Indians actively denied the Indian kids of participating in school, they could not assimilate. Despite the persistence of non-Indians and Indians to deny Alexie the right to learn, he persevered and overcame adversity. His father inspired him “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” paving the road to the rest of his life (Alexie). Alexie assimilated to the American way of life, but he did not forget his roots. Contrary to what he originally thought the direction his life was heading toward,

He starts off a surly angry young man, and ends the journey a changed, more light-hearted person. Over the years Victor had become closed off and angry because of his father leaving him with no explanation at such a young age. He was impatient with everyone and doesn’t want to spend time over the loss of his father. When he learns more from one of his father’s neighbors about how much Arnold loved him, and how much he regretted that fire, Victor slowly forgives him. Then, Victor and Thomas get in a car accident with a drunk man and Victor sees the similarities of his father and the drunken man but also with himself. He doesn’t want to run away from the issue like his father ran away from his family and his problems. He doesn’t want to lie like his father did, and not tell anyone the true cause of the fire, or like the drunken man did when he said the crash wasn’t his fault. Victor’s choice of running for miles to go get help, change his opinion of himself and other people’s. He is kinder and more comfortable in his own

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Unfortunately Native Americans have deep roots with racism and oppression during the last 500 years. “In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven,” Sherman Alexie tries to show racism in many ways in multiple of his short stories. These stories, engage our history from a Native American viewpoint. Many Native Americans were brutally forced out of their homes and onto Reservations that lacked resources. Later, Indian children were taken from their families and placed into school that were designed to, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In the book there are multiple short story that are pieces that form a larger puzzle that shows the struggles and their effects on Native Americans. Sherman Alexie shows the many sides of racism, unfair justice and extermination policies and how imagination is key for Native American survival.

In the beginning of Victor’s education, Victor’s second grade teacher, Betty Towle, treats him more biased than other students. He has to apologize and get punished when he did

In “The Joy of Reading and Writing : Superman and Me” published in the Los Angeles Times, Sherman Alexie brings attention to the cultural divide between Indians and non - Indians, specifically in the area of education. Alexie uses himself as the example in the article, a “Spokane Indian boy” who lives on the reservation. Alexie chose to mimic his father's love for books, because of that he taught himself to read at a very young age. He learned to read by looking at the pictures in a Superman comic book. After teaching himself he “advances quickly”, unlike other kids he is able to read “Grapes of Wrath in kindergarten”. If he hadn’t been an Indian boy he may have been called a “prodigy” but he was so instead he was an “oddity”. At this point in the article Alexie brings us out of his past as a child and into his present as an educated Indian man. Much to his surprise he has become a writer. He says, “I visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids”. Alexie talks about how Indian children have lower