No.^78]^' ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE GROUPS — KUPFERER 279 



EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS AND EXPERIENCES 



Many students of social stratification in Western society have used 

 education as one basic criterion for separating disparate groups of 

 people. Some studies simply record the number of school years 

 completed by members of a sample. Other studies search for the 

 value which respondents attach to education. ^^ This second approach 

 has revealed significant differences in the importance divergent 

 groups place on formal education, and suggests that a similar phenom- 

 enon might be present among the Cherokee. Consequently, educa- 

 tion has been used as a second variable for testing the Thomas 

 continuum. 



Almost everyone at Cherokee agrees that education is important. 

 Beyond this, however, there are differences. Aspiration levels differ, 

 reasons for valuing education differ (although sometimes subtly), and 

 the behavior associated with achieving the goal also differs. 



ASPIRATION LEVELS 



I have placed the Cherokee into three broad categories on the basis 

 of what I have learned of their aspiration levels : Those who aspire to 

 a high school education for their children ; those who regard some fur- 

 ther training, usually vocational, as necessary; and those who antici- 

 pate college education for their children. 



CATEGORY 1. HIGH SCHOOL ORIENTED 



Among those who envisage high school education as necessary prep- 

 aration for young people, verbalization on the importance of this 

 achievement is a recurrent phenomenon. By and large, the reasons 

 given for tliis desideratum are similar. A common one is the desire 

 to have children better educated than their parents. Jess, a young 

 father, said in answer to a question about keeping his children in 

 school, "Yes, I don't want them to be like me; I only went to the 

 third grade. My boy is in the sixth grade now." Another informant, 

 Lizzie, a grandmother raising the illegitimate son of one of her daugh- 

 ters, insists that she wants "him to be something when he grows up, 

 not a dummy like me. I most forgot everything I ever learned . . . 

 arithmetic, it's like when you lie down to go to sleep; you put every- 

 thing away." Lizzie's own formal education was restricted to 3 or 4 

 years at the reservation boarding school in the years around 1900. 



Another reason proposed for finishing school, closely related to the 

 one above, reflects concern for employment opportunities. There is 

 a general consensus that nowadays, a high school education is impera- 



15 See, for example: Hollingshead and Redlich, 1958; Warner et al., 1947; Hayman, 1953, pp. 426^32; Kahl, 

 1956, pp. 184-218, 276-293; and Spindler and Goldschmidt, 1952, pp. 68-83. 



