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5 1 - Excerpt From Benjamin Franklin

The Six Nations Indians politely declined the offer from Virginia to send their sons to the College of William and Mary, explaining that the education would not properly prepare them for their way of life. While they appreciated the kind offer, their young men educated in Northern colleges previously had returned unable to hunt, survive in the wilderness, or fight as warriors. Instead, they offered to take in sons from Virginia to educate according to their own ways and values.

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5 1 - Excerpt From Benjamin Franklin

The Six Nations Indians politely declined the offer from Virginia to send their sons to the College of William and Mary, explaining that the education would not properly prepare them for their way of life. While they appreciated the kind offer, their young men educated in Northern colleges previously had returned unable to hunt, survive in the wilderness, or fight as warriors. Instead, they offered to take in sons from Virginia to educate according to their own ways and values.

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Excerpt from Benjamin Franklins Remarks Concerning the Savages of North

America
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of
Virginia and the Six Nations, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians
[Native Americans] by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a College with a fund for
educating Indian youth; and if the Chiefs of the Six Nations would send down half a dozen
of their sons to that college, the government would take care that they be well provided
for, and instructed in all the learning of the White People.
The Indians spokesman replied:
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that
the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We
are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you
heartily.
But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of
things; and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education
happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our
young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the Northern Provinces; they
were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad
runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or
hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our
language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors nor counselors;
they were totally good for nothing.
We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it,
and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of
their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make
men of them.
What does this excerpt tell us about the relationship between culture, values, and
education?
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