A Cultural Committment to Educational Excellence - Step One

The Basic Issue

Over the years, the Colonists who settled United States and Canada developed a strong cultural commitment to excellence in education. As Luther Tweeten in his Foundations of Farm Policy noted, this policy started out as a commitment to elementary school education for all, ( #1014) and the it expanded to its present level of free universal education for Kindergarten grade 12, and then widely accessible education in College and University.

This strong pressure for education and the research which resulted in both academic and technical fields has proven to be a very successful enterprise, as the pages on this site promoting both education and technology transfer as approaches to economic development point out.

Tweeten also points out that it was this successful drive towards excellence in education and research which resulted in the transformation of agriculture in both North America and the world. This transformation in turn, gave rise to a widespread transformation of society in both agricultural and technological sectors.

But the pursuit of excellence in education down through the years, caused more than indirect disruption of life in present day Western Manitoba. In 1991, Rod Dignean, a Mohawk teacher Working in White Bear First Nation, Saskatchewan, pointed out to me that one of the big problems with the educational system in the mainstream culture is that it works on an educational principle which is the reverse of that of the First Nations, a fact which is seldom commented upon by either First Nations or Mainstream culture teachers. It may well be that the forced application of mainstream educational philosophy in both residential and day-schools is the "active agent" in the stress brought upon those nations through the Educational system. If so, it is a good example of an entitlement, (referred to above) to a culturally appropriate educational system, coming under pressure from social change, and in this case doing a great deal of harm.

It was the successful pursuit of excellence in education which turned out to be "step one" in a domino-effect disruption of mainstream North American society. Step two of that effect was the resulting agricultural success.

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