3 After brief overviews of colonial education paradigms and the BIA education programs of the early twentieth century, I examine what was taught at the New Deal Indian schools-history, songs, science, and soil conservation-to see if and how Diné beliefs and values were included in the curricula, and who controlled the construction of academic narratives. The reforms took place against a backdrop of public health, sanitation, and ecological improvement campaigns in Arizona, in which academic experts and state officials emphasized the latest scientific solutions to the problems of rural living. These communities received considerable BIA attention during the New Deal as testing grounds for "progressive" education techniques, soil conservation, prioritization of day schools, and the introduction of tribal cultures to government school curricula. This article explores the implementation of the BIA school curriculum on the Navajo Reservation and United Pueblos Agency (UPA) in Arizona and New Mexico in the period 1933–1945.
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This article examines an early attempt to introduce cultural tolerance to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) school system-the short-lived "Indian New Deal" of the 1930s and early 1940s, which succeeded a long period of government-directed coercive assimilation. 2 Bicultural education-a curriculum that successfully integrates key aspects of two cultures, values, and belief systems-remains an elusive goal for many such schools. 1 Scholars of American Indian education have also noted the persistence of a monocultural, Eurocentric outlook at the government schools which denigrates Native cultures and alienates Native children.
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history, economics, and science, sought to maintain the educational and economic primacy of Euro-Americans and the continued peripheralization of ethnic minorities. Forbes warned of a growing movement towards the aggressive promotion of "English-language and Anglo-European perspectives" in education, which bore alarming similarity to "the assimilationist hysteria of the early part of the twentieth century." Forbes cited the push for a standardized curriculum and the dominance of "Euroscience" as evidence of a monocultural educational agenda which, through prioritizing an "elitist" and Eurocentric approach to U.S.