Deculturalization of Education

Deculturalization of Education

Methods of Deculturalization

• Segregation/Isolation
• Forced Change of Language
• Denial of culture/religious expression
• Focusing education on material that reflects dominant culture
• Use of teachers from dominant group

Methods of Deculturalization

Our Spirits Don't Speak English Video

• First Chinese migrants arrived in California in the 1850s

• Asian Americans represented a small percentage of the foreign born population in 1930
• 82.9% foreign born from Europe
• 1.9% foreign born from Asia

• Mexican-American War

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
• Significant territorial expansion for United States
• Mexico lost nearly one-half of its territory

Deculturalization of Asian Americans

Deculturalization of Hispanic/Latino Americans

• Issues regarding Mexican American citizenship and education

• Issues regarding Puerto Rican citizenship and education

• Chinese are not “white”
• Chan Yong case

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

• Takao Ozawa v. United States

• Effect of Immigration Act of 1965 on Asian immigration.
• In 1990:
• 22.9% foreign born from Europe
• 26.3% foreign born from Asia

Definition of Deculturalization

Deculturalization is the educational process of destroying a people’s culture (cultural genocide) and replacing it with a new culture.

Resegregation in America

• Native American beliefs about family, school, property, work and means for subsistence

• ”Civilizing” (Deculturalizing) Native Americans (late 18th & early 19th centuries):
• Protestant missionaries
• Tribal schools
• Reservations and boarding schools

• No Child Left Behind Act
• Standardized Testing
• Low income focus on test preparation
• Scripted instruction
• Low Income
• Percentage in high poverty school

Deculturalization of Native Americans

• Issues regarding Native American citizenship
• Native Americans not “free and white” but instead “domestic foreigners”
• Religion

• The Meriam Report in 1928
• Began process of restoring Native American language and culture
• Reversal in educational philosophy of Native Americans

Thomas Jefferson believed it was important to teach Native Americans ______________________ and to _________________________.

a) ways to retain the cultural identity of their tribes; resist cultural conversion

b) the European methods of hunting and fishing; abandon the practices of agriculture and husbandry

c) a desire for the accumulation of property; extinguish the cultural practice of sharing

d) how to oppose selling their land; embark on a military campaign against the U.S. government, if necessary.

"Turned Away from School,” Anti-Slavery Almanac, Boston, 1839

Progression of Equality

Equality of Opportunity

Civil Rights Movement

Separate but equal

"All men are created equal"

Deculturalization of African Americans

Where Are We Today?

• Plantation Society

• Issues regarding African American citizenship and education
• Dred Scott decision
• 14th Amendment
• Plessy vs. Ferguson

• The Great Crusade for Literacy and resisting segregation
• W.E.B Du Bois
• Booker T. Washington

• The Second Crusade for Black Education

• First enslaved Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1618

• Atlantic Creoles v. slaves from interior of Africa - characteristically different

• Difference between freedom and equality

• Educational segregation

Are We in a Post-Racial Society?