The Importance Of Traditional Education

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If you were an indigenous, what do you think would be the best for you and your community? Should indigenous students have a special treatment? It is well known that indigenous people live in remote places and that they live as they have always been living, with their own customs and traditions, which include ways to educate. Nowadays, it is debated whether or not indigenous students should attend public schools. However, indigenous people have culture we all must preserve. This creates a conflict between indigenous needs and traditional education system because the last one does not consider the first one. By comparing the risks of both options, it sounds logical that indigenous students need to be integrated to the educational system guaranteeing…show more content…
Indigenous cultures are very rich civilizations in knowledge, traditions and history and no matter the age of the students, the integration of indigenous students to public schools takes the opportunity to preserve their culture from indigenous people’s hands. Sadly, schools focus on teaching the common knowledge and this causes that indigenous students learn more about the common culture and less about their own. As Romero stated, schooling in early childhood has affected the learning of the language of the community in children, proving that societal goals for children conflict with community goals (2010, p8). And, as if that were not enough, once the possibility of indigenous students attending to public schools has become a reality, they face a new and terrifying challenge. Indigenous students have to deal with a different culture with different rules, even though they will still being in the same country. The cultural shock is harsh for them, and it is only one of the reasons of low attendance of indigenous students to schools. This specific situation has been documented by Bourke in Better Practice in School Attendance: Improving the School Attendance of Indigenous Students, where he found that students were unhappy and angry because they had a lot of trouble with teachers due to the differences in customs and style of learning (2000). The feeling of fear could On the other hand, Indigenous people taking the responsibility and teaching indigenous students doesn’t show great outcomes, educationally and socially speaking. The problem is not that indigenous don’t have the abilities to teach, the problem falls on the needs and lifestyle of indigenous people. Some of the “common knowledge” could be totally unnecessary in indigenous communities, and

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