Personally, I am always skeptical of the emotional appeal in editorial articles. It’s important not to neglect the pathos involved in any situation, but when it comes down to it, I’m much more of a researched based kind of guy. If they can post some numbers about how doing education this way or that leads to this improvement or that based on this criteria or that one, then great. If not, and the majority of the argument is going to be based off anecdotal evidence, then quite frankly, I am going to remain unimpressed. Now don’t get me wrong- there was definitely some good evidence from past nations such as the Sami and Maori people, but to my mind, there seems to be so many differences that are not taken into account that those examples may be irrelevant. It’s hard to put blanket statements down such as “all native education like this: ____ is wrong/right.” I do agree that place based learning and skills that are relevant to the student’s lifestyle is super important for natives, but I also think it is equally important for everyone else too.
I was surprised to see how impassioned people were getting about the topic in the comments. Actually, I guess I’m not so surprised because it is the internet after all and everyone has a really passionate opinion about everything, but I typically do not read comments on articles on the net. Some people had multiple posts that were pushing the page long length. I guess some people just have an axe to grind on certain topics.