Deculturalization and the Struggle for
Equality
A Brief History of the Education of
Dominated Cultures in the United States
By: Joel Spring
Presented by: Heather Nast, Lauren Finelli
and Andrew Reder
Racial Violence

Throughout history...

In Education

US Civil War
Trail of Death
19th century Chinese
Enslaved Africans
Race riots in 19th and 20th centuries
Zoot Suit riots
Civil Rights Movement

Protestants and Catholics in
1840’s
Punishment of enslaved
Africans
Racial clashes
School integration riots
Current debates










Globalization

Globalization- begins when Columbus
arrives in the Americas in 1492 and links
the world trade routes

Civilized v. uncivilized- Christian v. Pagan
Religious Superiority

Catholics


Religious heretics
Catholics schools
developed the private
school sect


Protestant
The superior belief
 Referred to as “public”
schools
 Mostly anti-Catholic
(obvious in government life)
*** Lead to the Catholic/Protestant school riots over religious doctrines
Race, Racism and Citizenship
Race- primarily a social construction
 Racism- prejudice plus power

Educational Methods for Global
Cultural Encounters
Cultural Genocide
 Deculturalization
 Assimilation
 Cultural Pluralism
 Denial of Education
 Hybridity

Educational and Cultural Differences

Colonists

Native Americans

Child-rearing- discipline,
authority and
memorization (break the
will of the child)
School- formal setting
Work- activity provided
protection against sin
Political power- only
men

Child-rearing- quite
dismissive
School- informal,
educated by stories told
by the elders
Work- only for what
they needed
Political power- held by
some women






Early Native American
Educational Programs
Failed establishment of Henrico College
 Praying towns
 Dartmouth College
 Moor’s Charity School

5 Civilized Tribes
Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek
and Seminole tribes
 Government wanted their land
 Felt like the nuclear family and the
establishment of a formal government
was leaked to the need for a nuclear
family
 Hoped for a cash economy to develop

Native Americans: Deculturalization,
Schooling, and Globalization
Native Americans as Indigenous people
 The Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded
them from citizenship of the U.S.

Schooling

Thomas McKenney thought schooling
would socially control Native Americans
and improve their society

He introduced schools to Indian tribes as
“experiments”
◦ White Missionary teachers- American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
(ABCFM)
◦ 1819 Civilization Fund Act
Native American language and
culture

Sequoyah created a written language to
preserve their history, religions, and
culture
◦ Elias Boudinot created Cherokee Phoenix in
1828
Indian Removal
Andrew Jackson worried that education was
giving Indians the power to resist the U.S.
government
 Indian Removal Act of 1830

◦ Trail of Tears

Once settled they began setting up
schools and governments
◦ The Spencer, Armstrong, & New Hope
Academies

Cherokees were almost 100% literate!
Reservations and Boarding Schools
Charles E. Mix said that the U.S. had made
great errors when dealing with the tribes
 1867 Indian Peace Commission


Boarding schools take children to strip
away their native culture
◦ Carlisle Indian School &Hampton- Richard
Pratt

Poor conditions- how are they to learn?

Meriam Report in 1928
African Americans: Deculturalization,
Transformation, and Segregation
“Diaspora”
 British, Spanish, and Portuguese
imperialists moved enslaved Africans to
North American and other locations

North- societies with the slaves
 South- slave societies (plantation life)
 Two ways denial of education laws can be
used


“Creole”

Increase demand of slaves
◦ Devastating tolls on newly arrived slaves
◦ Free slaves still had restrictions

Petitions to gradually abolish slavery in
the North
Educational Segregation

Freedom vs. Equality

Segregated schools
◦ Reading and writing in English
◦ Unequal funding

Discrimination
Boston Fights for Equal Education

Massachusetts Education Act of 1789
◦ Funding
Benjamin Robert’s daughter- First
separate-but-equal ruling in judicial
history
 1855 Massachusetts governor signed a
law that said no child can be denied
admission based on race/religion

Slaves were not allowed to read
 Although many of them learned

◦ Helped the slaves learn about what was
happening in the Civil War

“Darky act” or “trickers”

African Americans had to obey the
government, but was not allowed to have
a say in it

The Fourteenth Amendment Section 1
◦ Homer Plessy
First Crusade

First: literacy
◦ Former slaves established schools
◦ Trying to improve political and economic
standings
◦ Booker T. Washington
 “cast down its buckets and use black workers”
◦ W.E.B. Du Bois
 NAACP
◦ General Samuel Armstrong
 Hampton and segregated industrial education
Second Crusade

1910- 1930s, Expansion of segregated
schools paid by individual supporters and
government

The Anna T. Jeanes Fund & The Julius
Rosenwald Fund
Asians: Shifting Views
Generally speaking, White efforts at
deculturization focused on the denial of
education and separation of Asian
populations from White populations
 The nature of Asian immigration caused
treatment to shift much faster than any
other group

Coming to America

Chinese: Moving around since 15th century
◦ First major wave was Gold Rush
 1850s in California
◦ Paid their own way, not enough money to get back
◦ Ended up working on railroads or in agriculture

Japanese: Late start
◦ 1639 law forbade foreign travel
◦ Immigration started in 1868 to Hawaii and
California
Other Asian Populations
Small amounts (<10,000) from Korea and
India
 In 1907 a large Filipino migration began
 Other Asians not significant until
Immigration Act of 1965

White Views

Until 1960s, major views were:
◦ “Coolie”
 low cost, servile labor
 Born from railroad workers/farmhands
◦ “Deviant”
 Immoral, sexually permissive
 Born from opium dens and prostitution
◦ Combined as “Yellow Peril”
Push and Pull
Asian immigration started relatively late,
when big pushes for more equal rights
were starting
 “Coolie” legislation often clashed with
“Deviant” legislation
 Many of most repressive laws were
reversed soon after being enacted

Example: San Fransisco
1872: All White students to be educated
 1884: Imperial Chinese Consulate
complains

◦ SF School board specifically bars “Mongolians”
1885: Superior Court overrules SF
 1885: Segregated schools implemented
 1906: Forced integration to avoid
international incident

A New Image

WWII
◦ Japanese Internment
◦ Asians differentiated

1950s, the Model Minority
Latinos: Location, Location

Biggest Latino influxes came from
conquest
◦ 1848: End of Mexican-American War
 US gained California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas
◦ 1898: End of Spanish-American War
 US gained Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and
naval base in Cuba
Similar View, Different Treatment

Latinos: mix of Indian (not white) and
Spanish (white on a technicality)
◦ Generally regarded as Indians or worse

Mexicans valued as cheap labor
◦ Education was denied/neglected/segregated

Puerto Ricans feared as too independent
◦ Education was forced in order to
“Americanize”
Puerto Rico: A dream snatched away
Strong independence movement since
1860s
 Made “autonomous state” in 1897

◦ Constitutional Republic with Spanish
Governor

Conquered in 1898
Puerto Rico: Winning Hearts and
Minds
“Put an American schoolhouse in every
valley and upon every hilltop”
 Education used as a weapon to inspire
loyalty

◦ English-only past first grade
◦ American History over Puerto Rican History
◦ Celebration of American holidays

Biggest tension was over English Language
 Starting in 1912, calls for Bilingual education
Mexicans: Kept poor and dumb
Similar Policies to Puerto Rico to inspire
patriotism
 Almost never enforced

◦ “Educating the Mexican is educating them
away from the job, away from the dirt”

Those that did go to school were
segregated
Globalization: The Great Civil Rights
Movement and Wars of Liberation
Internationally
 Declaration on the
Granting of
Independence to
Colonial Countries and
Peoples

Domestically
 Discrimination
everywhere
 Deculturalization and
school segregation was
part of a general global
movement

School Desegregation
NAACP- desegregation and opportunity to
participate in economic system
 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Topeka
 Public demonstrations to take action
 Lack of supervision to make sure segregation
ended
 CORE, SNCC, SCLC

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was born in 1929 into a family of
Baptist Ministers
 Introduction of nonviolent confrontation
 1957 Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Continued…
Rosa Parks
 1957 “Give us the Ballot…” speech to
Washington, DC
 Civil Rights Act of 1964

◦ Titles 4 & 6
Contrast: Asian Experience
During this time, “Model Minority” view
became popular
 Contrasted to Black experience
 Obscured reality of Asian Experience


In 1961, 450 Indians attended the
American Indian Chicago Conference
◦ End to termination policies

John F. Kennedy
◦ More Indian participation in decisions
involving federal policies

Struggle for self-determination
◦ Pan-Indian Movement
Indian Education: A National Tragedy
Bilingual Education Act of 1968
 Indian Self-Determination and Education
Assistance Act of 1975
 Tribally Controlled Schools Act
 Native American Languages Act of 1990

Bilingual Education

1951: Puerto Rico becomes
commonwealth
 Spanish restored
1968 Boycotts in LA
 Bilingual Education Act of 1968
 Official language disputes

Multicultural Education, Immigration
and the Cultural Wars
1965 Immigration Act that abolished
the 1924 Immigration Act (and the
quota system)
 Multicultural education rose
 Ethnocentric schools (go back to
segregation)

Cultural Wars cont. and NCLB
Mandatory standardized tests only
measure one culture
 Bilingual education be used as a
vehicle for learning English

21ST Century: Post- Racial Society

Post-racial- a society where race is no
longer important in determining social
status and income
◦ However, government agencies state that the
concept of race has no scientific or
anthropological meaning but persist in using
racial categories in their reports
◦ Socially constructed in contrast to legal or
administrative definitions of race
In Comparison

Race and income
◦ 1- all white
◦ 2- white (Hispanic or
Latino)
◦ Least- Black or African
American

Drop out rates
(1972-2006)
◦ 1- Hispanic
◦ 2- Black
◦ 3- Whites
Is the US a Post-Racial Society

YES
◦ Racial categories are no
longer recognized, by
government agencies, as
having scientific or
anthropological meaning
◦ Because race is a
confusing term taking on
many different meanings
among post-1965
immigrants
◦ Since post-1965
immigrants are not facing
any overt attempts as
Deculturalization and
Americanization

NO
◦ Many native-born whites and blacks
still think in the racial categories
created by law and judicial decisions
from the 18th century to the Civil
Rights Movements
◦ Since government agencies require
the use of racial categories
◦ The legacy of race-based laws and
Deculturalization still contribute to
educational and economic inequality
◦ Since many immigrants from Mexico
and Central America as assimilation
into native-born Hispanic
communities suffering from the
legacy of the past