Native Americans in the United States and African Americans
Essay on Joel Spring’s Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality
Introduction
Joel Spring’s Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality examines the educational policies in the United States that have resulted in intentional patterns of oppression by Protestant, European Americans against racial and ethnic groups. The historical context of the European American oppressor is helpful in understanding how the dominant group has manipulated the minority groups. These minority groups include Americans who are Native, African, Latin/Hispanic, and Asian. Techniques for deculturalization were applied in attempts to erase the oppressed groups’ previous identities and to assimilate them into society at a level where they could be of use to the oppressors. Techniques include isolation from family, replacement of language, denial of education, inclusion of dominant group world view, and provision of inferior teachers and poor facilities. Relationships between educational policy and instances of racism and patterns of oppression are explored in the following. A section will also compare my prior education to the one presented in Spring’s book.
Formatting
Understanding how European Americans have been able to perceive themselves as superior in psychological, spiritual, racial, and cultural terms is integral to seeing how cultural genocide has occurred in the United States. The basic program is taken from the Roman Imperium which delegates the authority to civilize others by erasing their laws and culture and simultaneously or subsequently installing new laws and mores from the dominant group into the minority group. This plan has been applied by U.S. educators and politicians in an attempt to carry out a perceived upgrade from an inferior cultural program to the superior Anglo-Saxon mixed with Protestantism point of view. This civilized versus uncivilized and Christian versus Pagan viewpoints reveal themselves throughout the history of U.S. education.
Introduction
Joel Spring’s Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality examines the educational policies in the United States that have resulted in intentional patterns of oppression by Protestant, European Americans against racial and ethnic groups. The historical context of the European American oppressor is helpful in understanding how the dominant group has manipulated the minority groups. These minority groups include Americans who are Native, African, Latin/Hispanic, and Asian. Techniques for deculturalization were applied in attempts to erase the oppressed groups’ previous identities and to assimilate them into society at a level where they could be of use to the oppressors. Techniques include isolation from family, replacement of language, denial of education, inclusion of dominant group world view, and provision of inferior teachers and poor facilities. Relationships between educational policy and instances of racism and patterns of oppression are explored in the following. A section will also compare my prior education to the one presented in Spring’s book.
Formatting
Understanding how European Americans have been able to perceive themselves as superior in psychological, spiritual, racial, and cultural terms is integral to seeing how cultural genocide has occurred in the United States. The basic program is taken from the Roman Imperium which delegates the authority to civilize others by erasing their laws and culture and simultaneously or subsequently installing new laws and mores from the dominant group into the minority group. This plan has been applied by U.S. educators and politicians in an attempt to carry out a perceived upgrade from an inferior cultural program to the superior Anglo-Saxon mixed with Protestantism point of view. This civilized versus uncivilized and Christian versus Pagan viewpoints reveal themselves throughout the history of U.S. education.
References: Nieto, Sonia and Bode, Patty (2008). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. Boston. Pearson Education Inc. Spring, Joel (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality. New York. McGraw-Hill.