Education has been publicly considered the key to unlocking potential success among generations of students.  While non-governmental organizations commonly address supporting education as part of their mission, what this education entails, across time and space, varies widely.  While the trope of the mission school being set up in a village and teaching in the language of the colonizers is a simplified story, it is still a reality for many across every continent.  Elders remark on how the students want their traditions less, the longer they stay in the school system: how the “clean, white socks” of the school uniform encourage students to lose the desire for the “dirty” work associated with a rural life (Baines 2012).  While desire for more traditional work versus the work associated with an urban market economy and the changing social construction of what constitutes success requires a nuanced measure to capture, scholars have sought to show a correlation between formal education and the loss of traditional knowledge (Zent 2009).  While these studies are compelling, there is some evidence to suggest that, in certain school systems, formal education over time does not always show a loss in traditional knowledge (Zarger and Stepp 2004) or, in some cases, traditional practice (Baines 2012).  Schools that incorporate elements of indigenous learning and/or indigenous knowledge, it seems, address the concern of the elders to a certain extent.  One critical element to the maintenance of cultural traditions is language.  School policies that have incorporated indigenous languages in the formal education system show an increased use of those languages.  While not a catch-all solution to the issues presented by the increased use of formal schooling, tempering the colonizing force of knowledge with indigenous languages is a positive contribution to the recognition of the value of indigenous knowledge by students, communities and school officials.  Concurrently, considering measures of success and how schools contribute to the changing benchmarks of what constitutes “opportunity” is a critical discussion to perpetuate.  With the funding for new schools increasingly being provided by Evangelical churches and foreign governments, education systems are poised to teach much more than math and reading, challenging existing religious and social norms with the provision of opportunity and the redefinition of what constitutes a successful life.