THIS BUFFY SLAYS INDIAN STEREOTYPES Issue: EdTech Academy Award-winning songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie didn't take to her son's fifth-grade curriculum on Native Americans in the mid-1980s. "It was the same old dead text on dead Indians," says Sainte-Marie, who is a Cree. "It was shallow, inaccurate and not interesting." In response to the experience, Sainte-Marie created the Cradleboard Teaching Project (www.cradleboard.org). This year the project expanded beyond handouts and an Internet curriculum to a multimedia CD-ROM based teaching aid. The CD-ROM incorporates science lessons on friction and sound, for example, using examples from Native American culture. It is geared toward children in fifth grade through middle school. Most importantly, the program tackles what Sainte-Marie sees as a problem in traditional education: presenting accurate information on Native Americans. Sainte-Marie says her curriculum differs only in that it is taught from a Native American perspective. The Cradleboard Teaching Project pairs children at mainstream schools with peers at schools on American Indian reservations. [SOURCE: USAToday, 12/12 (10D), AUTHOR: Mara H. Gottfried] (http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20001212/2907567s.htm)
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