
Pupils at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Pennsylvania, circa 1900
Wikimedia Commons
At various points during the past three centuries, Native Americans from across what is now the United States were taken from their homes, sometimes forcibly, to be educated at Indian boarding schools like the one at Carlisle, Pa. They were expected to give up their Native beliefs, languages, and religions and assimilate themselves into white American culture. Children were taught reading and writing and instructed in other daily-life skills with the expectation that they would bring this knowledge back to their families and tribal groups and “assimilate” them as well.

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The Idea of America
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Contents

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in central Pennsylvania, which opened to students in 1879, was one of the most influential boarding schools for American Indians. Students, many of them forcibly taken from their homes on reservations far away, attended classes to learn to read and write, as well as acquire daily-life skills. The hope was that they would take this knowledge back home and teach others. Students will compare/contrast their own lives with children in the boarding schools and explore three perspectives to walk in the shoes of the students, parents, and teachers.
Colonial Williamsburg offers a variety of quality American history instructional materials, including:
- Discovering the Past Through Archeaology Classroom Simulation
- American Indian Bandolier Bag Hands-on History Kit
Check out our lesson plans on ABC-CLIO!

Quotation of the Month
"We can end their existence among us as such separate people by a broad and generous system of English education and training, which will reach all the 50,000 children … instead of feeding, clothing and caring for them from year to year, put them in condition to feed clothe and care for themselves. … that not only may we fit him to go and come and abide in the land where ever he may choose, and so lose his identity."
— Richard Henry Pratt, founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. From The Indians: Origin and History of Work at Carlisle, The American Missionary Volume 0037 Issue 4 (Apr 1883), p. 108-111.

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