The responses of American Indian children and Irish children to the school, 1850s - 1920s.

Many people felt that the Government was trying to obliterate our culture by making the children attend school. And if you want to be honest about it, the schooling the children have been getting over the past seventy-five or eighty years has educated them to the [outsider's] ways but made them less knowledgeable about the traditional ways of their own people. A lot of what they have been taught is good ... and [helps them learn to] compete in the outside world. But at the same time, they aren't getting as much of their own traditions as they should. Something important is gained, but something important is being lost.