When it comes to improving the graduation rates of aboriginal students, there are no easy answers and it’s an issue that is not unique to the Vernon School District.
“The difference between male and female success rates is that about 15 per cent more females have been successful than their male counterparts, and I have found reports as far east as Saskatchewan and Ontario where this kind of thing seems to be universal,” said Gerry William, director of aboriginal programs for the district in a presentation to trustees last week. “It’s an ongoing issue in aboriginal communities, but no one has found the one solution to address it and it’s usually a variety of different reasons.”
In the 2015/16 school year, 62 per cent of aboriginal students graduated from Grade 12: 71 per cent were female and 56 per cent male. This compares to an 82 per cent graduation rate for non-aboriginal students. In addressing the disparity in graduation rates, William said the solution needs to involve all parties, including parents, teachers, school administrators and aboriginal support workers
“One of the things I want to do is to involve the aboriginal communities: anybody who I think can help figure some of this out and maybe develop some strategies, but however successful we get, there will always be disparity because I think some of the reasons are reasons that we cannot control.”
William said in speaking with the district’s aboriginal support workers, addressing the issue of graduation rates begins with understanding the aboriginal community, both culturally and historically.
“First of all in many of our aboriginal communities, it’s a matriarchal society — a lot of the power and a lot of the cohesion in the community depends on the female aboriginals and they tend to value sticking to a particular thing longer and tend to stick to the school system more than the males. The aboriginal males tend to go to the trades so they often leave school earlier than Grade 12. It’s another strike against trying to stay in Grade 12 if you can get some money in your pocket.
“Within the First Nations community there are very few male role models that are visible within the schools; in most areas you will see outside of the trades that the majority of the workers are female, and that is perpetrated within the school district: I have 24 workers and only four of us are male, so that tends to be a rule wherever we go in North America.”
William said another factor is the cultural disengagement that many aboriginal students feel about a school system in which aboriginal values have been secondary to other types of learning.
“We’re trying to turn that around by making sure that aboriginal ways of learning are included in the new curriculum as much as possible, again it’s going to be a slow process and it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.
William added that many male students prefer hands-on learning such as building a smokehouse as a way of learning math. Family values also play a role and have a huge impact on test grades of both male and female aboriginal students.
“A lot of our parents, mine included, didn’t do well in the regular school system and felt disenfranchised, disengaged and those kinds of things affect them and have a direct impact on their children. When I went home after school from W.L. Seaton I could count on nobody at home to help me with my homework. It was very much an individual and solitary effort that I had to do every night. I was the kid in the back of the bus who was reading all the time.
“It’s no fault of the parents because they were disenfranchised, a lot of them were residential school survivors who were taught that aboriginal values are not good, you need to learn English, you need to assimilate, so a lot of those values still have huge impact on our aboriginal communities.”
William said growing up, his parents did not speak Okanagan because they wanted their children to learn English as they believed it was the only way to succeed in the regular school system. But he added that the family dynamic has changed drastically, with many parents and grandparents today feeling distant from the current education system.
“Residential schools do play a role: schools are seen as institutionalized approaches to education — before contact, learning was very much a hands-on thing, sitting around the fire, talking about stories, it’s a far different education than watching a teacher at the front of the class, talking and getting feedback, so that comes into play.”
William said some of the solutions include offering trades programs for Grade 11 and 12 students, which is already under way in the district, as well as including non-aboriginal students in aboriginal academies as a way of breaking down the walls of racism.
“It’s going to take the rest of this year to come up with a plan with the help of the aboriginal advisory community.”
