In “Indian Education,” Alexie presents the hypocrisy of education on reservations in the United States. The story is told through the eyes of Victor, a Native youth who attends school on the reservation but switches to a white school before high school. By contrasting Victor’s experiences at his new school with those at home, Alexie shows the stark reality of life on the reservation.

Therefore, the purpose of the text is to expose the reader to the enormous challenge that Native children face getting an education on reservations. Not only is their education hampered by people who dislike them, but the white, Christian teachers often want to destroy their Native heritage. Despite not being a native boarding school, the schools on the reservation that Alexie describes still seem to abide by the old Indian boarding school saying, “Kill the Indian, Save the child.”

One of Victor’s teachers tells him that “her God would never forgive [him] for that,” and later we're told, “She sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either cut my braids or keep me home from class.” Despite what she might have seen as an act of charity to teach the Native children, she acted like a colonizer with her religion and her culture. Not only that, but when Victor can do spelling at a junior high level in 2nd grade, she destroys the test because he needs to “learn respect.”

The image of these terrible classes in elementary school is contrasted with the education that Victor receives at the white high school. There are still issues at the “farm school,” but they are not the same—the girls there grow skinny because they make themselves throw up, while Victor is skinny because they only receive food from the government. Victor goes on to play basketball for the school he attends, and he becomes valedictorian—something that Alexie contrasts with his old classmates who can “barely read” or were given “attendance diplomas.”

Alexie uses the success of Victor to show the damage that reservation life has done to American Indians. While he succeeds because he escapes, many of his friends and family members are trapped and cope by drinking, huffing glue, or killing themselves. Victor’s success shows the reader just how unbearably tragic life on the reservation has become for Indians, and he links the poverty on the reservation with the sub-par education they receive.