PME-NA

Of Dimes and Domination: Analyzing Arithmetic Word Problems Used in Native American Boarding Schools

• In Event: Disrupting Western Mathematics

Description

At the turn of the 20th century, the United States government established hundreds of Indian boarding schools with the aim of forcibly assimilating Native children into Anglo-American culture and values. Previous research has shown how different aspects of the boarding school system contributed to Indigenous cultural alienation and land dispossession, including the teaching of mathematics. In this report, we build upon that research by examining some of the arithmetic work used in boarding schools during this period. Specifically, we focus on word problems found in an archive of documents maintained by Estelle Reel, who served as the superintendent of Indian schools from 1898 to 1910. Using settler colonial theory as our framework, we categorize the word problems used for students in Grades K-8 based on their subject matter and discuss how our findings can inform contemporary teaching practices.

Authors

• José Francisco Gutiérrez, University of Utah

• Mary Smith, University of Utah