The Alaska daily empire., 1915-09-25
NATIVE SCHOOLS
 ARE DISCUSSED BY
 sUPT. w. e. BEATTlE
(By supt. W. c. Beatllo.)

lby oupL. w. N' htAttio.j
 In Alaska the school service is sub. ordinate to the United States Bureau of Education and has under its charge only schools for natives-that is. the descendants of the aboriginal peoples of Alaska.
 The work done in these schools is of a practical character Sewing. cooking. and general home keeping for the girls and useful hand work in wood and metal for boys are applied and emphasized as rapidly as equip. ment and conditions win permit Stress is also laid upon elementary English subjects, for the natives must learn to speak. read and write Eng fish since they are compelled by forco of circumstances to deal with Eng fish speaking people. It is also ob. vious that they should learn practi- cal work in numbers. Not only ar0 there provision and clthing to bo pur- chased. but fish arc Go bo counted and their value reckoned; thoro arc boats and houses to be built and repaired. and an ever increasing number 0f problems to solve as theso people pro thrown more and more into tho dlfl entities of the complex civilization of the whites.
 Adults ln School
 The work is conducted for tho bono. fit of adults as well as children. The development of native industries is encouraged. principles Of personal hy- giene and village sanitation are taught. and their value to the individual, fam fly and community are constantly set before the people. In fact, as far as possible, the schools arc endeavoring to promote the mental, moral. physi- cal and industrial welfare of tho AL aska natives.
 The special aim of these schools is to train the child to think, to prepare to make a living for himself, to un- derstand his environment as far as possible and to become a sl1illful fac tor in the betterment of that envir- onment. In brief. 1t is to give to the children increased powers and to train them to apply such powers towards the development and enrichment of the life of their own communities.
 Schools 34 Years old
 The first of these schools was es- tablished about @ third of a century ago. The progress seems slow when measured by standards of schools among peoples who have flowing through their veins centuries of civ ilization and education and culture. but rapid, indeed, when 1t is realized that the work has been in progress for less than Q generation among a people who had no means of com munication but the spoken word of a meagre language and whose veins were sluggish with an economic and social system and religion SO foreign to that which has been thrust upon them since Alaska became a part of the United States.
 Eighty Native Schools
 Today there are about eighty na- tive schools with a total of more than a hundred teachers among the twen- ty-fiye thousand natives in Alaska. Probably twenty thousand of these live along the coast. in villages of from two hundred to five hundred population. from Metlakahtla on the southeast approximately 55 degrees north latitude. 131 degrees west lon gitude, to Atka on the southwest, lati- tude 52. longitude 174, and to Point Barrow-the northernmost school in the world-on the Arctic coast, lati- tude n degrees, longitude 154. The remainder are scattered through the river valleys of the interior of the Territory Nearly four thousand pu- pills have enrolled in these schools but the average attendance is far be- low this, due to various local condi- tions and the fact that many of the natives do not realize the value of sending their children to school reg ularly The attendance in some plac- es has risen in the past four years from S5 per cent to 40 per cent. of the enrolment to an average Of 70 and 75 per cent.
 Thus slowly but surely the native is being brought to realize the need of fitting himself for the new condi- tions of life that are rapidly surround ing him as the white population of Alaska increases and changes his old environment