Bilingual Education for Navajo Students.

Last year, on the recommendation of an English as a Second Language Committee and the endorsement of Dr. William J. Benham, the Navajo Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs contracted with me to develop and produce instructional materials for the entire curriculum of the beginner level. These materials are being developed in the context of projected changes in the curriculum of the first four or five grade levels. The expected result is to raise “the academic achievement of Navajo students to that of national norms by the fourth or fifth grades.” The curriculum is spiral in nature, by which I mean adding relations to the systems of knowledge by repeatedly going back to the basic concepts of the systems. And the curriculum is heuristic in that emphasis is placed on learning how to learn. Specifically, emphasis is placed on the tools for learning: for example, the senses-the auditory, the visual, and the tactile in particular-the relevant languages, and mathematics. Emphasis is also placed on the strategies for learning: for example, observing through the senses in five different ways, asking questions, and using the empirical method.