DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Douglas McKay, Secretary
UNITED STATES INDIAN SERVICE
Glenn L. Emmons, Commissioner
BRANCH OF EDUCATION
Hildegard Thompson, Chief
Single Copy Price 15 cents
Printing Department 
Phoenix Indian School
Phoenix, Arizona
Second edition 5,000 copies—February 1956
NAVAJO NEW WORLD READERS · 1
AWAY TO SCHOOL
’ÓLTA’GÓÓ
by CECIL S. KING
Navajo Text by
RAMONA M. SMITH
Illustrated by
FRANKLIN KAHN
UNITED STATES INDIAN SERVICE
NAVAJO NEW WORLD READERS
At this writing (1951) there are approximately 26,000children of school age on the Navajo reservation. About 40 percentof these are between the ages of 12 and 18. The greatmajority have never been inside a school, and do not speakEnglish. Recently the government has provided space for morethan 4,000 of these non-English-speaking adolescents in ten of itsoff-reservation boarding schools. A five-year intensive educationalprogram is provided designed to teach these children to speak,read, write, and think in English; to do simple arithmetic, to knowthe facts of American history, world geography, civics and health;and to provide the basic skills which will enable them to obtainand hold a permanent job away from the reservation. Thereservation resources will support only about half the presentpopulation.
We have learned how to teach these non-English-speakingNavajos to speak and read English very rapidly. However, thereisn’t much material for them to read. They are maturing adolescentswith adolescent interests. Primers and first readers preparedfor use by six-year-old public school children don’t have muchinterest for them. Because most non-Indians learn to read whenthey are young, very few books are published in which the ideasare mature, but the vocabularies simple enough for beginningreaders. The Indian Service, therefore, has undertaken thepreparation and printing of a series of readers, written by theleaders who are working directly with these children. Because thechildren are entering a new culture, and their success will dependupon the degree to which they make the basic ideas of this culturetheir own, these new books will rely on the material of this newculture for their content. They are therefore being grouped underthe general title “Navajo New World Readers,” for they willpresent to these young people a new and different world fromthat through which they have grown during their early years onthe reservation.
Willard W. Beatty
Chief, Branch of Education
I am a Navajo boy.