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Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part article. Part 1, "Rehoboth," appeared in the January/February issue.
Not long before he was tapped to serve as secretary of education in the Obama Administration, Arne Duncan, then superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, unveiled a pilot program set to open in the fall of 2009: an urban boarding school, created to offer opportunities for the children of the homeless, as well as kids from troubled homes. Urban education in America, by and large, is in catastrophic shape; many inner-city schools are at risk, and no one knows it better than the residents surrounding those schools. "The proposal puts Chicago at the forefront of urban school reform," the Chicago Tribune reported, "as cities struggle to raise the academic achievement of students hampered by dysfunctional homes and other obstacles outside school."
These schools—in contrast to the Indian schools founded more than a century ago—will be located in neighborhoods the kids themselves know well. Furthermore, officials maintain that the intention is not to indict parents for their inability to provide their kids with an environment conducive to educational success. "This is not about doing something to parents because parents are bad," says Josh Edelman, who has served for four years as the principal of The SEED School in Washington, D.C., the nation's oldest and most successful urban boarding school. "This is about doing something in conjunction with parents and the community."
It may well be easier for me, a white man, to say it, than it is for someone who is Native, but what seems clear is that the boarding school concept itself isn't evil. In fact, the off-reservation boarding schools which still exist—whether under management of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or faith-based organizations—today often have waiting lists. The first segment of a two-part story on National Public Radio, "American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many," acknowledged the many failures of this project. But the second part, "American Indian School a Far Cry from the Past," told another story altogether, a story rich with successes—like Seana Edwards, a Prairie Band Potawatomi from New Hampshire, who was failing badly in her public school classes before transferring to Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California. Today, Edwards attends the University of California at Berkeley and frequently returns to Sherman to urge students to excel at what they do.
Charla Bear, the NPR reporter who filed the stories, says that while Edwards is well aware of the flawed history of these institutions, she also understands that boarding schools such as Sherman can offer much-needed help to at-risk students. "You feel part of that history and you get sad," Edwards told Bear, "but at the same time, you realize that it's so much better today and you get the opportunity to change it. You get the opportunity to make it better. Not just for you but for other people, for younger generations."
Discipline is rigorous, typical freedoms are withheld, and students who would rather not live within the well-defined limits are dispatched back home quickly since many other young Native Americans are seeking enrollment at Sherman.
In Chamberlain, South Dakota, St. Joseph's Indian School, founded in 1927 by The Priests of the Sacred Heart (SJC), similarly has a waiting list of students—150 at any one time—who would like to be enrolled. St. Joseph's, which once was a typical dormitory-based facility, has changed over the years. According to its webpage, instead of housing its students in dormitories, St. Joseph's offers "family living units offering a family/home environment." It calls these living units "homes": familial-type residences where a dozen or so students live under the care of the institution's own "trained childcare workers."
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