Deculturalization Theory

Deculturalization Theory

Deculturalization

Deculturalization of African-Americans

• Deculturalization was considered key to making enslaved Africans dependent on their owners. Stripping away their names, culture, language
• Slaves were not allowed to read
• Plantation owners feared a slave revolt and denied their workers any form of education.
• Segregated schools (English Language)
• Unequal funding

Deculturalization programs have had limited success because of the resistance of dominated groups like Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans.

Deculturalization of Mexican-Americans

Deculturalization of Native Americans

Deculturalization: the educational process of destroying a people's culture and replacing it with a new culture.

Methods of Deculturalization:

• segregation and isolation
• forced change of language
• curriculum reflecting the culture of the dominant group
• textbook content reflecting the culture of the dominant group
• exclusion of the dominated groups language and culture from curriculum and textbooks
• a teaching force made up of members of the dominant group

The U.S. government used deculturalization policies against Native Americans in order to gain their land.

European Educators attempted to “civilize” Native Americans by instilling in them a sense of work ethic, the desire to own land, the establishment of a nuclear family structure with the father as the head of the household and Christian values.

Native American educational Programs were set up by Europeans despite the fact that Native Americans had little interest in being educated by the colonists.

Missionaries such as John Eliot learned Native American languages in order to attempt to convert them to Christianity, however Native Americans showed little interest in being converted. Those who did convert, Eliot argued, should be separated from the “uncivilized” Native Americans on separate reservations called “praying villages.”

• Segregated Schools
• Attempts were made to eradicate Spanish as a spoken language.
• In order to maintain cheap labor actions were taken to keep Mexicans uneducated.
• The curriculum used in segregated Mexican American schools was intended to strip students of their language and customs.

Deculturalization of Asian-Americans

Thomas Torlino (Navajo) Before and After entering Carlisle School 1886

We still suffer from deculturalization today through

re-segregation, segregation of low-income students, underfunded

No Child Left Behind- makes English the dominant language of schools and forces schools to teach common culture that is embedded in the common core standards. Low-income minority students are effectively segregated from high-income students, particularly Whites. Equality now means equal treatment where all students are taught the same curriculum and evaluated on the same tests. No Child Left Behind spawned a new era of separate but equal and inequality of cultures and languages.

Many Asian immigrants arrived in California in the time of the gold rush to fill low waged jobs

Denied rights to become naturalized citizens until 1943

Japanese Americans were denied not only citizenship rights, but during WWII they were denied all rights and placed in internment camps because they were believed to be enemies of the country.

Asian Americans also suffered from educational segregation. Many schools denied Asian Americans an education entirely. It was not until the early 1900’s when provisions were made to educate the Asian American student.