Rock Point Community School

Abstract This article combines the perspectives of bilingual teachers, teacher assistants, school administrators and an outside researcher on the 10-year development of a K-3 Navajo bilingual/bicultural program at Rough Rock Elementary School. Growing out of an original collaboration with the Kamehameha Early Education Program, Rough Rock expanded KEEP’s notion of cultural compatibility to include instructional content rooted in the local language and culture. Here we examine transformations in curriculum and pedagogy emerging from the Rough Rock program, and the social and political process by which those instructional changes occurred. Lasting instructional reforms, we argue, involve more than changes in curriculum and pedagogy, but must also reconstitute the relations of indigenous educators to the larger school power structure. Bilingual teachers must “own” the program and their work in it; change must occur from the “inside out.” We conclude with a consideration of the implications of the Rough Rock program for Navajo and other indigenous schools.

The educational literature continues to characterize Native American children as nonanalytical, nonverbal learners. Applied to educational practice, these generalizations downplay the use of questioning, “speaking up,” and analytical or inquiry‐based pedagogies. Here we report on the introduction of an experimental Navajo bilingual‐bicultural curriculum emphasizing open‐ended questioning, inductive/analytical reasoning, and student verbalization in both small‐ and large‐group settings. The critical elements influencing students' and teachers' positive response to this curriculum are examined as they relate to natural learning‐teaching interactions outside the classroom, and to an articulated Navajo philosophy of knowledge. These findings challenge conventional characterizations of holistic/analytical and verbal/nonverbal teaching and learning “styles,” which, when applied to educational practice, can perpetuate patterns of learned dependence that extend well beyond the classroom to the reproduction of structural relations within the wider society.

The authors briefly describe the results of a number of experiments with frequencies above 30,000 kc covering a period of several years. Since the major interest of radio communication companies has been in long-distance communications, this paper includes some qualitative data covering propagation beyond the optical, or direct vision, range. The authors have found that the altitude of the terminal equipment location has a marked effect on the signal intensity, even beyond the optical range. Frequencies. below about 43,000 kc appear to be reflected back to earth at relatively great distances in the daytime in north-south directions, but east-west transmission over long distances is extremely erratic. Frequencies above about 43,000 kc do not appear to return to earth beyond the ground wave range, except at rare intervals, and then for only a few seconds or a few minutes. These frequencies, which do not return to earth, also appear to be free of echoes and multiple path transmission effects. Therefore, they are free from distortion due to selective fading and echoes. The range is also limited to the ground wave range, so these frequencies may be duplicated at many points without interference. As the frequency is raised, the range tends to approach the optical distance as a limit. Experiments with frequencies above 300,000 kc have, so far, indicated that the maximum range is limited to the optical distance. A number of possible applications are suggested, based on the unique properties of these frequencies.