Why the Indigenous Learning Company?
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children?-Chief Seattle
There are at least a half a billion indigenous people on this planet. About 100 million are school-aged children – that’s as many kids as the entire student populations of Canada, the United States, and Mexico combined.
That’s a lot of young people. And every one of them needs – and deserves – to learn how to become a successful adult. Sounds like a tremendous business opportunity for the world’s educational publishers – the companies that create textbooks and other learning materials for students and teachers – right?
Wrong.
There are virtually no professional educational publishing companies anywhere in the world committed to producing accurate, appropriate, and effective learning materials for indigenous learners. Not in the United States. Not in Canada. Not in Mexico. Not in Asia. Not in Africa. Nowhere.
Why not? Because major North American publishers are interested in huge generic, homogeneous markets, where one size fits all. The thought of publishing something for speakers of Kalispel Salish, or Creek, or Apache wouldn’t even occur to them. Internationally, indigenous people tend to be poor. Traditional publishers have no idea how to deliver services to Saa students in rural Namibia, or Mayan kids in southern Mexico and still make money. So they stay away.
We established ILC to change all that.
We are the world’s first Native-owned and controlled, web-based educational publishing company. With a clear commitment to develop outstanding online learning programs for indigenous students, in North America and beyond. Programs intended to help preserve Native languages. Instill a new sense of pride in Indigenous kids. And ensure that Indigenous children have the same opportunities as all other children to become all they can be – for themselves, their families, and their peoples.
Why the Web?
Why not?Classrooms all over the world continue to have a few fundamental things in common: blackboards, desks, teachers at the front of the room – and textbooks.
Even though the world is now firmly entered into the Digital Age, most classrooms look just as they did 50 years ago.
This is bad news for students generally – and Native students in particular. Bad news because textbooks are almost always culturally biased towards the dominant culture. They contribute to the alienation of Native youngsters, and to the slow demise of Native cultures and languages.
Bad news because textbooks only support a single learning style. The fact is, lots of kids – many of them Native – learn far better when dealing with sounds & music, art & animation, video & live interaction.
And really bad news because textbooks are expensive, and getting more so all the time. Go into most schools – let alone Reservation schools – and you’ll find textbooks that are old, tired, and woefully out of date. It’s not that educators wouldn’t like to provide teachers and students with better materials, it’s just that new books are too costly.
That’s why the Indigenous Learning Company – ILC – publishes all its programs on the Web.
This allows us to customize programs that resonate with Native teachers and learners. Programs that reflect Native cultures and languages while addressing state, provincial, or national curricula as required. ILC’s web-based programs address a variety of student learning styles through an effective use of multiple media. And ILC’s web-based programs are never out of date. And they’re significantly cheaper than textbooks.
Any more questions?