Meriam, Lewis (1883–1972)

Lewis Meriam was a statistician and editor of many studies on public administration, including The Problem of Indian Administration (1928), better known as the Meriam Report, which prompted reforms in the education of Native Americans. After graduating from Harvard in 1906, Meriam joined the Census Bureau and enrolled in George Washington University Law School, where he completed his studies in 1909. In 1916, he joined the Institute for Government Research, now known as the Brookings Institution.

In the aftermath of severe federal cuts to Indian services in the early 1920s, Secretary of Interior Herbert Work requested from Meriam in June 1926 a survey of the “economic and social condition of the American Indians.” Meriam assembled a staff of nine experts who traveled to Indian reservations, schools, and hospitals over 7 months. The final report, published in February 1928, made several important recommendations for reform of administration, personnel training, and salaries, as well as improved recordkeeping, health facilities, economic opportunities, legal protections, and a reexamination of the role of women and missionaries in American Indian policy. The most important recommendations, however, were directed at Indian schools.

The educational section was written primarily by progressive educator W. Carson Ryan, Jr., and the Reverend Henry Roe Cloud, a Winnebago and graduate of Yale who led the American Indian Institute in Wichita, Kansas. Referring to the entire reform effort as an “educational problem,” the Meriam Report advocated a “fundamental change in the point of view” away from a strict separation of Indian children from their homes in order to “civilize” them, toward “upbringing in the natural setting of home and family life.” The report also advocated better understanding of Indian culture, language, and traditions with the belief that limited cultural pluralism would hasten “their absorption into the general citizenship of the Nation” and “make the Indian cease to be a special case in a comparatively short time.”

The Meriam Report recommended six fundamental changes to Indian education. First, the individual and unique characteristics of tribal cultures required curricular reform. The report strongly criticized the Tentative Course of Study for United States Indian Schools (1915) for being rigid, uniform, and outdated, and called for more community surveys to learn about unique tribal needs. Curriculum for Indian students should teach the “duties of citizenship” through “directed experiences,” including the necessity of paying taxes to support public education.

Second, the Meriam Report recommended improved training for administrators, teachers, and school staff. The report noted that many Indian schools were employing teachers who could not meet established state standards and that many teachers in Indian schools were not trained in modern pedagogical methods. Administrators and dormitory “matrons” were [Page 556]found to be underprepared, and compensation was found to be lower than “any ordinary standard” in Indian schools.

The third recommendation emphasized better attention to the students' home lives in order to improve attendance. While avoiding discussion of the use of police power to forcibly enroll children in boarding schools, the report called for a “school social worker” type of attendance officer and better coordination between school and home.

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