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requisite qualifications, and every effort should be made to give them, or enable them to get, the training and experience essential. The policy is extremely unwise when it is given effect by lowering standards. Teaching positions in Indian schools are created for the purpose of educating Indian children. They exist for the Indian children and not to furnish teaching positions for Indian girls where training and experience would not enable them to qualify for the positions in other schools. Little evidence exists to indicate that the fact that they are Indians gives them any special advantage that offsets their lack of standard training and experience. They are probably neither much better nor much worse than any other teacher would be who had no more training, except insofar as they are limited by the narrowness of their background and experience in life. The object of the Indian Service should be to equip Indian girls to meet reasonably high standards so that they can get positions either in Indian schools or in nearly any public schools. If they can qualify under the same standards which are established for white teachers then it is reasonable to give them preference in the Indian Service. They should not have a monopoly on Indian Service positions and be unable to qualify for positions outside.
When Indians fully qualified are secured the same conditions of employment should be applied to them as are applied to white employees in the same or similar classes of positions. It is a serious mistake to countenance marked differences. For example, certain reasonably permanent Indian employees are not included under the retirement system. No deductions are made from their salaries to aid in the support of the retirement system and no benefits are available for them as they grow old or incapacitated. Because of this omission some superintendents are placed in a distinctly embarrassing situation. One Indian has for many years been employed at a station remote from the agency. He is the only representative of the government there. He is said to have done excellent work in the past and apparently he is popular with the Indians in his vicinity. Advancing age is obviously impairing his efficiency. He gets about only with considerable difficulty, and is forced more and more to require Indians to come to him instead of going to them. The superintendent feels the need for a younger man; but if this faithful Indian employee is dismissed, he will be turned out of the government quarters he has occupied as a home