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Problem of Indian Administration

pointed out, this proposed project method of planning and development will furnish an effective means by which the aid of other organizations such as state boards of health, the American Public Health Association, the National Tuberculosis Association, the American Red Cross, the Commonwealth Fund, and the American Child Health Association can be brought in, not to do an independent unrélated thing, but to do a particular part of a carefully worked out program.

The field of public health nursing also might properly be considered under this heading of health but it seems better to take it up later under family and community life as it is so closely concerned with the education and development of women for home life.

Education. As will be repeated again and again throughout this report practically all activities of the Indian Service should be educational in the broad sense. All employees in the Division of Planning and Development will be primarily concerned with Indian education, whether they are specialists in health, in economic advancement, in family and community life, in legal affairs, or in the more formal education given in schools. Under the present heading of education, however, will be considered only those positions concerned more directly with schools.

In the vitally important field of the school program much planning and development is needed to meet changed conditions and to bring the Indian schools abreast of the schools in progressive white communities, to make them fit better into the general educational systems of the states in which they lie, and to bring about that greater diversity of educational practice and procedure called for by the great diversity in the advancement of the Indians in the different sections of the country and in the economic and social conditions which confront them. Fortunately in this field the national government already has in its service a considerable body of well qualified specialists in the different branches of educational activity which will be involved, notably, in the Bureau of Education and the Federal Board for Vocational Education. Much can therefore be achieved through cooperative effort. It would seem as if the wisest procedure would be at the outset to secure for the Division of Planning and Development one permanent specialist in education, selected because of his breadth of knowledge of the