Community Relationship

Arizona; *Hopis; Project Follow Through The social and cultural distance between the schools serving American Indian children and their communities has bean viewed as the source of many of the basic problems in Indian education. In 1968 the Hopi Indian Tribe of Arizona instituted a Follow Through Program to provide for such parental involvement in their schools ' educational processes. This study looked at how Hopi parents defined formal education and the school and how that definition was affected by participation in the school program via Follow Through. Between 1970 and 1972 studies were made of Hopi attitudes toward formal education utilizing participant observations and semi-formal interviews. P. T. A. meetings, classrooms, teachers' and principals ' meetings were observed. Using a standard questionnaire, 178 parents were interviewed. As a result of Hopi-Anglo interactions within the school context for the past 100 years, Hopi parents degined the schools as Anglo institutions where their children are sent to learn Anglo skills, especially Enylish. P,Arental involvement via the Follow Through Program did not significantly change his definition because the program, designed and implemented from without the community, tended to reinforce and perpetuate the basic patterns of Anglo-Hopi interactions. (Author/NQ