Nonformal Educational Strategies
for Rural Development in Native Alaska
Michael J. Gaffney
Alaska Native Studies Program
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
(Ed. note: This paper- was originally presented
to the Conference on Rural Education and Development, Kuusamo, Finland 9-14
September, 1979, sponsored by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, Fromce; and
the Ministry of Education, Helsinki, Finland.)
This paper focuses on the
relationship between rural education and development. It attempts to examine
this relationship as it applies directly to the changing socio-economic conditions
of an indigenous minority group whose cultural organization and traditions
are different from the larger industrial society in which its members live.
I
shall first describe the development context of the Alaskan Native situation
with special emphasis on the emergence of new institutions, both social and
economic, resulting from Native self-determination efforts. Secondly, I shall
specify critical
aspects of the relationship between education, and development within the context
of Native institution-building. I shall then describe the salient features
of one proposed nonformal education strategy -- the development of a network
of
village-based Native youth organizations. Finally, I shall conclude with a
conceptual statement on the mutually complementing functions of formal and
nonformal education
as illustrated by the Native youth organization proposal.
The Alaskan Native
Context
The 1970s have seen the Alaskan Native community subjected to extraordinary
pressures to quicken their adaptation to alien social and economic institutions
of the
larger American industrial. The ways of thinking and forms of human relationships
implicit in these new institutions are having far-reaching, change-producing
impact on the entire fabric of Alaskan Native cultural life. This is most particularly
the case in rural Alaska where approximately 77 percent of the Stateês
60,000 Native citizens live in villages consisting of 25 to 3,000 residents,
the majority of whom support themselves mainly by subsistence hunting and fishing
activities supplemented by seasonal firefighting and construction work. It
is not a melodramatic exaggeration to suggest that what is at stake is the
future
survival of a significant culture and its life style. The issue is succinctly
stated in the title of a Native nonprofit corporation publication: Does
One
Way of Life Have to Die so That Another can Live? (Yupiktak Bista, 1976).
These
pressures for socio-cultural change arise from a complex of recent events ranging
from the emergence of Alaska as a critical petroleum-producing region
to changes in the –special” relationship between the United States
Government and Native American peoples. As Alaska becomes increasingly central
to the formulation of both government and corporate energy policies, two resulting
mineral resource development activities and concomitant growth in the Stateês
non-Native population places considerable stress on the vital culture-sustaining
link between Native subsistence land-use patterns and Native social organization.
Moreover, in contrast to past periods of –termination” and –assimilation,” the
current era of U.S. Government relations with Native American peoples can be
characterized as one of –self-determination,” with the government,
mainly through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, seeking to convey to local Tribal
Councils and equivalent organizations large measures of policy-making and
fiscal management responsibility in the areas of Native health, education,
and welfare. Within this era of self-determination, the most momentous event
for the Alaskan Native community has been the passage of the Alaska Native
Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) on December 18, 1971, as compensation for aboriginal
land
rights.
Through ANCSA, Alaskan Natives received 40 million acres of Alaskan
land and 962.5 mil lion dollars. To receive and invest this money and land
in ways that
collectively benefit the Native community, twelve regional Native profit-making
corporations were established in different cultural/linguistic regions of Alaska.
These corporations are directly accountable to their respective Native shareholder
constituencies as they make capital investment, resource development, and
land management decisions affecting the social, economic, and cultural conditions
of these reg ional constituencies. Moreover, within each regional corporation
boundary there exist numerous village-based corporations which receive and
invest ANCSA monies and land under the guidance of the regional parent corporation.
The
drive for self-determination among Alaskan Natives has also brought about the
establishment of Native nonprofit corporations in the twelve regions
to administer wide-ranging social service delivery programs, many of which
were formerly under the control of federal and state government agencies. These
non-profit
Native corporations annually administer over a hundred million dollars in education,
health, employment, and other social programs. Like the profit corporations,
they, too, perform strategic socio-economic planning and development functions
within the Native regions of Alaska.
As with many Third and Fourth World societies,
Alaskan Native institution-building must deal with a colonial legacy and the
imposed development imperatives of
the world-wide, political economy. The acceptance of the provisions of ANCSA
by the
Alaskan Native community signaled their recognition that new forms of social
and economic life are essential for their survival as a culturally distinct,
indigenous people. Yet at the same time they do not accept a linear theory
of social change; that is, while there can be no turning back of the historical
clock, it does not necessarily follow that their only development option is
an
institutional order imitative of the dominant Euro-American social system.
And herein lies the key Native development issue: Can enduring social forms
and economic-occupational
structures be created in Native regions which are at once consistent with evolving
cultural patterns, yet offer adaptive resilience to the imposed imperatives
of the larger political economy? As, for instance, African societies want their
nation-building efforts to have a distinctly –African” quality,
so also do Native Alaskans want their development efforts to have a distinctly –Native” quality.
The aspiration is clear when a Native spokesman says, – . . . please
try to fathom our great desire to survive in a way different from yours” (Yupiktak
Bista, 1976).
Education and Development In Native Alaska
For the Alaskan Native community,
the achievement of genuine self-determination and self-reliance is doubly difficult.
Not only must their institution-building
proceed, within certain legally prescribed parameters and on the basis of a
number of externally determined political and economic realities, but the Alaskan
Native
human resources available to lead and manage this enormous effort at all professional
and managerial levels are appallingly lacking. This high-level manpower bottleneck
is amply documented in Kleinfeld, et al., Land Claims and Native Manpower
(ANF/ISER, 1973). They find that the –. . . 1970 census figures indicate
that only 73 Natives in Alaska had any graduate level training and only 235
had
college degrees (and) . . . a special survey indicates that over the last four
years, only 19-23 Natives per year have graduated with four-year degrees.” In
light of this, it is further confounding that nowhere in the ANCSA document
is there provision for or mention of the kinds of trained Native manpower required
for effective, self-determined implementation of the Act.
That this human resource
bottleneck exists is hardly surprising. Comparable to the colonial experiences
of many Third and Fourth World societies, the Alaskan
Native experience historically included the school systemsê –cooling
out” of Native academic and professional aspirations in favor of vocational
educational goals and village artisanship. Consider also that only 150 Natives
have been awarded Baccalaureate degrees from the University of Alaska during
its fifty-year history. And like the Third and Fourth World, the Alaskan Native
community is finding the achievement of indigenously chosen social and economic
goals to be very elusive when the colonial legacy persists through the importation
of large numbers of non-Native professional, technical, and academic personnel.
Indeed, the –Nativization” of its professional work force, through
both formal and nonformal educational processes, is as much a development
goal of the Alaskan Native community as are, say, the –Africanization” programs
of post-colonial Africa.
Furthermore, the problems of the uneven quality of
public education and the professional manpower shortage bottleneck are exacerbated
by a general malaise
among many
village youth as they are consistently frustrated in their search for socially
significant roles and directions within the normless conditions of rapidly
changing cultural patterns. The extraordinary pressures on Native traditional
life, coupled with the lack of a rural economic-occupational structure capable
of absorbing young people (and many other segments of the population) in productive,
culturally consistent ways, is resulting in classic cases of adolescent
alienation manifested by increased alcohol and drug abuse, generational conflicts,
and violence.
Perhaps the most tragic indicator of Native youth alienation is
the steadily increasing incidence of attempted and accomplished suicides. During
1965-69
the suicide rate among Alaskan Natives aged 20-24 was 47 per 100,000.1 From
1970-73, this rate climbed to 170.6 per 100,000. As a point of reference, the
suicide
rate for the total U.S. population in 1970 was 11.6 per 100,000. Of course
problems of random statistical variation in small populations must be kept
in mind when
interpreting these figures, but, by any reasonable measurement standard, the
seriousness of the problem is evident.
Indeed, village adults are disturbed
over the alienated behavior of many village youth and they, too, are searching
for understanding of the phenomenon and
for ways of coping with it as parents. Traditionally, a subsistence life style
within
an environment free of pervasive Western intrusion found Eskimo and Indian
parents exercising subtle rather than overt controls over children, relying
heavily on personal example and culturally institutionalized character ideals
which sharply
defined the adult roles of the good and generous hunter and the hardworking,
supportive wife. These traditional socialization processes now appear to be
losing their
effectiveness under the stress of changing socio-cultural conditions.
Youth
Organizations as a Third Educational Environment 2
In an attempt to address the
problem of Native youth alienation in a way that fits with evolving Alaskan
Native self-determination efforts and development
activities, the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Alaska, Fairbanks,
proposes consideration of the notion of –youth organizations as a third
educational environment.” This strategy seeks the integrated development
of networks of village-based Native youth organizations and a cohort of formally
trained Native professionals whose university degree program is oriented to
facilitating youth organizations and similar forms of human resource development
in rural
Alaska. It is reasoned that within the press of socioeconomic change and
development, such Native youth organizations could play a critical role by
offering an indigenously controlled third educational environment to complement
the formal
curriculum of the schools and the socialization processes of the home. As a
third educational environment, these organizations may be expected to provide
opportunities
for (a) more active youth involvement in community affairs, civic service efforts,
and cultural heritage projects; (b) the development of individual occupational
and educational career goals in both the public and private sector as these
relate to regional and community needs; (c) constructive testing grounds for
leadership
and organizational skill development; and (d) a comfortably structured forum
for discussion of the wide range of issues surrounding the impact of change
and development on Native adolescents.
The formal training component of this
strategy involves the enrollment of Native university students in a field-based
Baccalaureate degree program. These
students would intern under the auspices of Native village and regional corporations,
working as youth organization coordinators and pursuing a course of study emphasizing
adolescent growth and development, community development, and relations
between various forms of education, both formal and nonformal, and socio-economic
change and development.
A distinct advantage of a field-based approach to university
instruction is its inherent capability of capturing true praxis of the learning
situation:
a continual
interplay of theory and practice and, in P. Friereês terms, a movement
away from the conventional –banking” approach to education and
toward a –problem-solving” approach which offers a framework for
student-instructor collaboration in the learning process. This proves especially
important when dealing in cross-cultural settings and with the uncertainty
and fluidity of the development context.
This dual approach to the development
of youth organizations as third educational environments is further supported
by a series of systematic research activities
conducted over the past ten years. This research has focused on the effects
of different formal educational environments, such as public boarding schools,
urban
boarding home programs, parochial boarding schools, and village high schools
on the development of village youth.3 These studies have
led to the following conclusion: Formal instruction in different types of school
settings is highly
comparable and makes little difference to the development of technical skills
such as level of English language achievement. What does make a profound difference
to all dimensions of adolescent development, however, is the degree of nonformal
education complementing the formal educational setting through out-of-classroom
activities, social relationships between adults and youth, and structured opportunities
for formulating socially productive roles.
In the past, many public
boarding school programs displaced village adolescents to regional high schools
characterized by sterile dormitory situations devoid
of any culturally consistent social dynamic which could lead to productive
and lasting social accomplishments. The result was the creation of a marginal
adolescent
society oriented around passive consumption of entertainment, e.g., movies,
T.V., and dances, punctuated by sporadic episodes of drinking and dormitory
violence. Graduates from these schools have had low rates of college, success
and low rates
of participation in community service roles.
By contrast, many village youth
who graduated from one particular parochial boarding school have done unusually
well in higher education, are active as
adults in
village leadership roles, and have a striking quality of personal integration
despite the disorganizing effects of culture change. The school used such educational
methods as volunteer teachers who developed significant informal relationships
with students, the preparation of youth for leadership through practice in
organizing extracurricular activities, and provision of a comfortable framework
for
group discussions of values, character ideals, and community needs. In sum,
the schoolês influence occurred not so much through the formal educational
process as through the creation of a micro-adolescent society which espoused
a clear value system oriented around community service. This ideological underpinning
has helped these adolescents form productive adult directions, bringing them
respect within both the traditional village context and the larger society.
In important ways, these methods parallel typical educational strategies of
youth organizations as they have developed in Israel and under many other social
conditions.
Among Indian and Eskimo adolescents, there have been numerous intriguing,
although undocumented, reports of successful youth group experiences. In some
villages, for example, religious youth groups appear to have had dramatic
effects in reducing adolescentsê alcohol and drug abuse by creating group
support for a religiously based value commitment. These groups discuss such
issues as individual responsibility and choosing between right and wrong. They
act out
value commitments by organizing picnics, cleaning up town refuse, and going
to peopleês homes when someone dies to sing and cheer up the survivors.
Nonreligious youth groups, for example, Boy Scout summer camp or 4-H clubs,
also have been
described as quite successful, especially when contrasted with the level
of adolescent interest that usually occurs in schools. Unfortunately, these
youth groups are usually transitory phenomena which fade away as soon as the
instigator
leaves the community.
One documented exception to this pattern is a Chevak village
youth organization which was implemented by Native graduates of St. Maryê s,
the parochial boarding school mentioned above as having important, positive
effects on Native
adolescent development. Consequently, the strategy discussed here places
great emphasis on training local Native facilitators, to organize youth groups,
in part as a long-range strategy for maintaining youth organizations within
village life, but also in part as a means for increasing the pool of Native
professionals
working throughout the Native community in human resource development.
Nonformal
Education Strategies: A Concluding Note of Caution
The proposed notion of Native
youth organizations as a third educational environment gains transcending conceptual
significance by proceeding from the premise
that, in relation to formal education (–schooling”), nonformal
education can as well play a complementary counterpoint function. As presented
here, the
youth organization concept presumes a broad, eclectic definition of nonformal
education, it holds with Phillip Coombs that nonformal education:
. . . is not,
as some people assume, a separate •systemê of education
in the same sense that formal education is a system, with its own distinct
structure, interlocking parts, and internal coherence. On the contrary, nonformal
education
is simply a convenient label covering a bewildering assortment of organized
educational activities outside the formal system that are intended to serve
identifiable
learning needs of particular sub-groups in any given population -- be they
children, youths, or adults; males or females; farmers, merchants or craftsmen;
affluent
or poor families. 4
The importance of Coombsê definition arises from what
it says nonformal education is and what it is not: –a separate system
of education.” It
is the explicit intent of this definition and of the youth organization
concept not to polarize formal and nonformal education; that is, the –deschooling
of society” is neither the basic assumption nor rationale for nonformal
education. The fact of the matter is, for better or for worse, schooling
in a large-scale, bureaucratic society will continue as the predominate social
institution that prepares people for and legitimates their access to authoritative
decision-making positions at all levels of the social structure. Given that
in the foreseeable future there is unlikely to be any radical shift in the
structure of authoritative roles in society, no amount of polemics or tinkering
is going
to change this basic –credentialing function” of the formal
school system. Furthermore, it must be equally recognized that, regardless
of nonformal educationês capacity for assisting individuals in areas
of skill development, vocational training, and in certain forms of social/political
consciousness-raising, the evidence surely indicates that it will not displace
the school as the essential institution for preparing and legitimating societyês
decision-makers. 5
Therefore, in the case of colonized
and subordinated minority groups, it is especially counterproductive to hold
out nonformal education strategies
as offering some magical social mobility route around the formal school system
and
its credentialing function, Indeed, the real challenge is to break down
the bureaucratic rigidities and insensitivities of schools so that they may
better carry out their basic charter for all segments of the population: the
increased
academic achievement of students in preparation for greater authoritative role
participation in societyês decision-making structures.
As a nonforrnal
education strategy, the youth organization concept seeks to complement the
academic charter of rural Alaskan secondary schools, It even
goes so far
as to make the claim that the more effectively a village-based youth organization
can carry out its nonformal functions, the more effective will be the small
rural secondary school in performing its formal academic functions.
In 1976,
the Alaska State Department of Education signed a Consent Decree stipulating
that the State of Alaska would take immediate responsibility
for the construction,
staffing, and maintenance of small high schools in 126 villages in rural
Alaska. This action was forced by legal suit brought by several Native
adolescents in a Lower Kuskokwim Native village against the State. The essence
of the
suit
was
that they and other Native adolescents were being denied equal educational
opportunity because in order to obtain secondary education they had to
relocate either to
the nearest urban center having regional high schools or to boarding school
programs operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In both cases, Native
students were
separated involuntarily from their families and communities for considerable
periods of time. The documented evidence strongly suggested that this separation
caused extraordinary hardship for the dislocated student and his family.
With
the advent of small high school programs, the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies,
supported by federal grants, moved quickly to establish a field-based
research and development effort. The purposes of this effort have been
to: (a) design alternative secondary curricula and develop materials
more appropriate
for these small high school programs and their cultural/environmental
settings, (b) suggest principles upon which the University might develop a
small
high school
teacher training program as a degree option, and (c) inquire into the
impact small high schools and the process of their establishment are having
on
the communities involved.
During the course of this involvement it became
clear that small high schools cannot be expected to successfully meet the
range of social,
physical,
emotional, and recreational requirements of village adolescents. That
is, many of the
extra-academic functions we ordinarily expect comprehensive secondary
schools in urban/suburban areas to accomplish simply cannot be done
by one-or two-teacher
multigraded village high schools. A primary conclusion of the report
issued this year by the Center on the findings of its small high school
project
was that,
while appropriate interdisciplinary academic and vocational programs
and methods can be developed to meet any graduation standards set by
the State,
this development
will suffer substantially if small high schools and their staffs also
are expected to assume major responsibility for meeting the other dimensions
of Native adolescent
needs, particularly those existing from conditions of alienation.6
In
summary, the youth organization concept suggests that these needs can be
met best through nonformal, indigenously promoted structures.
To have
such
expectations
small high school programs will eventually set them up for failure
along all dimensions and thus, ironically, have the effect of perpetuating
the historic
failure of the formal school system to accomplish its charter within
the Alaskan Native community.
ENDNOTES
- These statistics have been collected by Dr. Robert Krauss, cited
in 2-C Report, Task I, Federal Programs and Alaska Natives, Part A, Section
2, p. 24.
- Portions of this section of the paper have been taken from the proposal, –Youth
Organizations as a Third Educational Environment,” submitted to the
Bernard van Leer Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands, by the Center for Cross-Cultural
Studies, University of Alaska, Fairbanks and Tanana Chiefs Conference, Fairbanks;
Alaska. I would like to thank Dr. Ray Barnhardt, Director of the Center,
and Dr. Judith Kleinfeld for their cooperation in this endeavor.
- This research
is reported in such sources as J. S. Kleinfeld and Joseph Bloom, –Boarding
Schools: Effects on the Mental Health of Eskimo Adolescents.” The
American Journal of Psychiatry, 134(4), 1977; 411-417; Ray Barnhardt,
et al., Small High School Programs for Rural Alaska, Fairbanks: University
of Alaska, Center
for Cross-Cultural Studies, 1979; J. S. Kleinfeld, Eskimo School on the
Andreafsky: A Study of Effective Bicultural Education. New York: Praeger Publisher, 1979.
- Coombs,
Phillip. –Nonformal Education: Myths, Realities, and Opportunities,” in
Comparative Education Review, Vol. 20, No. 3: October, 1976, p. 282.
- See: Bock, John. –The Institutionalization
of Nonformal Education: A Response to Conflicting Needs,” in Comparative
Education Review, Vol. 20, No. 3, October 1976, pp. 346-367.
- See Barnhardt,
Op Cit.
