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Problem of Indian Administration

schools instead of going to regular schools and colleges for their educational leave, especially if a strong program could be worked out giving them contacts not only with other teachers in the Indian Service. but also with specialists from colleges, universities, or private organizations who can present modern educational problems in order that they may be adapted to and incorporated in the Indian Service.

Removals from the Service. Removals from the service should be less restricted by making the exits wider, a matter already discussed in connection with organization and general administration. This is to be achieved through reducing the retirement age and making the retirement allowance more adequate; increasing the length of the probationary period and requiring positive evidence and reports of fitness in training, experience, character, and personality before a probationary period is ended by permanent appointment; and a much less frequent use of transfers when employees are unsatisfactory in the jurisdiction to which they are assigned.

The Indians themselves and the employees doing real work for the Indians should be protected from four types of employees: (1) The employee who has himself reached the conclusion that nothing can be done for the Indian and that it is useless to try; (2) the employee who has acquired a manner toward the Indians that outrages their self respect and turns them against the government and all its representatives; (3) the hard-boiled disciplinarian who persists after having been shown better methods in following a course that turns the Indian away from the schools, making them quit before they have finished and sending them back to their homes to advise others against attending;^[1] and (4) the employee who has lost active interest and is marking time.

↑ In visiting one school it was found that a certain employee followed disciplinary methods which are now regarded as antiquated even in a reform school. Subsequently in visiting homes in the territory from which this school draws its pupils it was found that this employee’s reputation had spread to the remote sections. The able young Indian employee who was guide and interpreter tried hard to persuade two Indian children who were living with the widowed father of one of them in a desperately poor shack on a barren hillside and who were almost entirely without education, although in their early teens, to go to this school. He presented well its advantages and their needs. They presented their objections, which were based primarily on the reputation of this particular employee.

[1] In visiting one school it was found that a certain employee followed disciplinary methods which are now regarded as antiquated even in a reform school. Subsequently in visiting homes in the territory from which this school draws its pupils it was found that this employee’s reputation had spread to the remote sections. The able young Indian employee who was guide and interpreter tried hard to persuade two Indian children who were living with the widowed father of one of them in a desperately poor shack on a barren hillside and who were almost entirely without education, although in their early teens, to go to this school. He presented well its advantages and their needs. They presented their objections, which were based primarily on the reputation of this particular employee.

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