Complete Coverage

Nations at Top of the World Share Schooling Tactics

Common Challenges Addressed in Educating Indigenous Children

In wintertime in the Alaskan village of Kwethluk, the temperature outside the Ket’acik/Aapalluk Memorial School can dip as low as 60 degrees below zero, and the sun barely peeks above the horizon for months.

Kindergartners and 1st graders enrolled in the public K-12 school learn to read first in Yup’ik, their parents’ tongue, and the school calendar cleaves to nature’s rhythms so that children can join their parents at fishing or berry picking when the weather warms.

While those conditions may sound exotic to educators living in the “lower 48” states, the teachers, administrators, and students at Ket’acik/Aapalluk Memorial have much in common with students living at the same latitudes in Russia, Greenland, or Scandinavia. In all those regions ringing the North Pole, the harsh climate, the effects of hundreds of years of life under colonization, and the encroaching influences of Western culture have combined to pose special educational challenges for the indigenous groups that...