This fascinating overview provides a comprehensive introduction to the education of Native Americans in the United States. Historically, schools were seen as essential to formal education but also as the custodians of community values, a way to socialize Native Americans into the European way of life.
Native American Education: A Reference Handbook describes the role played by various churches and missionaries and their different approaches to education against a backdrop of mostly unfamiliar social and legal history. For example, most Americans probably do not know that Indians helped write the Constitution and that an Indian served as vice president of the United States. Author Lorraine Hale provides strategies for preserving Indian culture within the framework of modern American education.