Rock Point, A Navajo Way to Go to School: A Valediction

Roughly two-thirds of school-age Navajo children now attend public schools; roughly a quarter still attend federal schools. Since the mid-1950s, the federal government has put large amounts of money into effecting a shift on the Navajo Reservation from smaller one-community federal schools to larger multicommunity public schools on the Navajo Reservation. The federal schools that remain have become multicommunity boarding schools. The public schools tend to draw students from more Anglo-like, more English-speaking, homes, but these Navajo students and particularly Navajo-speaking students average some years behind state averages. This article is about a Navajo community and school that went back to parental involvement and community control, that went back to the native language and to the community and Reservation as a source of content and curriculum, and that went forward to a more appropriate, more effective education for their children.