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INDIAN SCHOOLS
Liberal Policy Has Been Adopted By the Government In Educating Poor Lo A liberal public school policy has been adopted by the government in its educational treatment of the Indians, says the Washington correspondent of the Newark "Evening News". The work of the public schools is ably supplemented by the numerous mission schools maintained in Indian communities by several church denominations. In the Indian Territory this finds its extreme in the fact that there are numerous public schools for Indians and none for white children. This is one of the flaws in the system that will be cured by Statehood for Oklahoma. The largest government institutions are the non-reservation boarding schools which are outside the Indian Reservations. There are twenty-five of these with an enrolment last year of 8,250 pupils. The largest is the school at Carlisle, Pa., which had an enrolment of 1,000 young Indian pupils. On the reservations the government maintains ninety-three boarding schools, which last year had an enrolment of 11,402 pupils and an average attendence of 10,030. The day schools, though, are the outposts of Indian civilization. It is through them that ideas of better living, better morals and better habits are carried directly home to the old people of the tribes, just as the day schools of our States and cities make home missionaries of the children of our alien inhabitants. There are 139 government day schools among the Indians, and they had last year an enrolment of 4,399 and an average attendence of 3,271. The discrepancy between the enrolment and attendance of these schools shows strongly the disadvantages under which the educational work among the Indians is carried on. The old Indians, uneducated themselves, do not readily comprehend the value of education for their children, and when they do understand it in some degree, cannot readily be made to realize the value of regular attendance at school. Contracts are made by the government for the education of Indian children in nine mission schools, of which eight are conducted by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions and one by the Board of Lutheran Indian Missions. There were 935 pupils in these schools last year, for whose instruction the government paid $102,780. In addition to these contract mission schools, 3,363 Indians were enrolled in thirty-nine other mission boarding and six-day schools conducted by religious organizations. While the industrial features of the mission schools are, usually less prominent than in the government schools, and more time is spent in religious and denominational instruction, the mission schools are encouraged by the Indian authorities as doing good work. Of the fifty-four mission schools, including the contract schools, thirty-six are maintained by the Catholic Church, five by the Presbyterian, four by the Episcopal, three by the Lutherans, and one each by the Reformed Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Evangelical Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists. The two other schools included in this classification, and maintained by contract and voluntary contributions, are the Lincoln Institute in Philadelphia, where there are forty-five Indians enrolled, and the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, at Hampton Va., which last year had 125 Indian pupils enrolled. There has been considerable controversy over the government contracts for Indian education in sectarian schools. The agitation against this system of public aid to religious denominational institutions was so widespread that the appropriations were cut off and the contracts discontinued in 1901. The Indians themselves, however, wanted the contracts plan continued, and last year it was re-established, the money for the instruction being taken from the trust fund for the tribes for whose education it is being used. As it is now, the Indians are really paying for their own instruction in these denominational schools, out of their own funds, so that there isn't much reasonable grounds for objection.
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