Running Head: DECULTURALIZATION
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Damaris Sargent
EDLD 509
Educational Leadership in a Pluralistic Society
Book Review
Inna Gorlova
November 08, 2011
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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
minority groups through deculturalization techniques, applied to erase their identities and
assimilate them into society at a level at which they can be exploited. 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, instances of racism, and patterns of oppression are explored in the paragraphs
below. A section will also compare my educational experiences to those presented by Spring.
In the years before and after the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Native Americans have
experienced cultural genocide, deculturalization, and denial of education (Spring, 2010). For
European American educators, the “civilizing” of Native Americans included the installation of a
work ethic; the creation of desire to accumulate property; the repression of pleasure, particularly
sexual pleasure; the establishment of a nuclear family structure with the father in control; the
implementation of authoritarian child-rearing practices; and conversion to Christianity (Spring,
2010, p. 14). Thomas Jefferson’s civilization program called for government agents to establish
schools to teach women to spin and sew and to teach men farming and husbandry (Spring, 2010).
Educational policies such as this set the stage for purchasing land and avoiding costly wars.
Replacing the use of native languages with English, destroying Indian customs, and teaching
allegiance to the U.S. government became major educational policies regarding Native
Americans in the latter part of the 19th century. An important part of these educational policies
was the boarding school, which was designed to remove children from their families at an early
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age and thereby isolate them from the language and customs of their parents and tribes (Spring,
2010). The Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, became the first boarding school
for Native American children in 1879, instilling individualism and self-responsibility in order to
break Native Americans from a socialist lifestyle. It was not until 1974 that Native American
students were granted freedom of religion and culture by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later, in
1978, Congress granted all Native Americans religious freedom. The Native American
Languages Act of 1990 committed the U.S. government to reversing its historic position, which
was to erase and replace Native American culture. However, the No Child Left Behind Act of
2001 reverses attempts to preserve usage of minority languages (Spring, 2010).
After the United States had taken Mexican and Porto Rican Territory, the U.S.
government instituted deculturalization programs to ensure that these new populations would not
rise up against their new government (Spring, 2010). The Naturalization Act of 1790 prevented
Hispanics from getting actual citizenship through limitations placed on voting rights and
segregation in public accommodations and schooling (Spring, 2010). Moreover, in many
instances, U.S. farmers would rather Mexican children work longer hours than go to school.
Mexican students were forced to speak English in schools. In the last half of the
nineteenth century, Mexican Americans tried to escape anti-Mexican attitudes by attending
Catholic schools, where linguistic diversity was respected. Puerto Rico was colonized in 1898,
and U.S. educational policy attempted to replace Spanish with English as the majority language
and to introduce children to the dominant culture (Spring, 2010). Examples of deculturalization
methods include U.S. flag ceremonies and studies focusing on American traditions.
In 1912, the Puerto Rican Teachers Association resisted the educational policies of the
U.S. and defended the use of Spanish in schools. In 1951, after 50 years of struggle, Puerto Rico
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became a commonwealth, and Spanish was once again used in the schools without the dogma of
English only laws. Additionally, in 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was passed. It was not
until 1974 that the Equal Educational Opportunities Act gave protection to the language rights of
students who do not speak English natively (Spring, 2010).
Presently, there are many voluntary immigrants from Latin America in the U.S. school
system. These students are often faced with an assimilation policy aimed at Americanizing
them. Historically, Africans have been involuntary immigrants who were brought to the U.S. to
be slaves. From 1800 to 1835, education of enslaved Africans was banned. Spring notes that
plantation owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and, because of the need for farm
laborers, planters resisted most attempts to educate black children (Spring, 2010). Segregation
resulted in racial divides, unequal school funding, and inferior facilities. Booker T. Washington
established the Tuskegee Institute and negotiated for segregated schools while W.E.B. Du Bois,
in 1909, formed the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), which worked for
desegregation (Spring, 2010). It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court ruled that segregated
schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Much credit is given to Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. for helping push for civil rights legislation of 1964, along with political
equality as well as the right to vote.
African Americans have made significant gains in the past 100 years; however, the pace
of change has been painfully slow. The election of a part African American President is a strong
indication that the U.S. has come a long way.
Asian Americans, many of whom have been voluntary immigrants, include individuals
from China, Philippines, Japan, Korea, and other counties. The combination of racism and
economic exploitation resulted in educational policies designed to deny Asians schooling or to
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provide segregated schools (Spring, 2010). In 1872 the California school code provided no
public education for Asian Americans. In 1906 the San Francisco School Board created
segregated schools for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students. Finally, in 1974, the Supreme
Court ruled in favor of Chinese American parents in Lau v. Nichols. The decision required
public schools to provide special assistance to non-English-speaking students, allowing them to
learn English so that they could equally participate in the educational process (Spring, 2010).
Each minority group worked for a more equitable educational system. There is still a dominant
European American paradigm in place, but the U.S. may see more multicultural paradigms
emerge as the percentage of minority Americans rises in the coming decades.
My early education took place in an environment of mostly white teachers and students.
The furthest my exposure to different cultures went was going to school and growing up with my
Catholic neighbors. My elementary school and middle school were 100 percent white and my
high school had few Hispanic students. For me, this was normal; I knew little of other cultures.
When I reflect on my American History and Social Studies classes, I recall a sanitized story
presented with many anecdotes about honorable white men. Although I finished my high school
education in 1996, I remember that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Civil Rights were hardly ever
mentioned. Moreover, a great deal of social upheaval was obviously occurring; however, the
only topic related to the turmoil of the era that made it to my awareness was the war in Viet
Nam.
After high school I attended a small private college in Muskegon, Michigan. I was
acquainted with very few people from different countries. All of my professors were apparently
European Americans and I continued to study mostly dominant culture stories. Now that I am a
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graduate student at EMU, I am able to meet a lot of different people from diverse countries and
converse with them to learn about their cultures.
From Spring’s book, I learned about the many minority groups that were mistreated and
intentionally harmed on both personal and cultural levels. Furthermore, I was ignorant about the
attempts at deculturalization of Puerto Ricans. Additionally, I knew little about the detailed
history of denying education to Asian and Mexican Americans. While I knew about reeducation
and denial of education of Native and African Americans, I did not know the extent to which
political, economic, and social forces combined to prevent these groups from experiencing their
historical culture or from participating in the dominant, European American culture.
In conclusion, European Americans have quashed cultures in the United States through
their control of education to support vested interests, suffocating Native American culture and
hollowing multiple other cultures through various injustices. Persistent attempts to correct the
status quo by the NAACP, Martin Luther King Jr., and several other organizations and
individuals have moved the U.S. government to redress some inequities in the educational
system. Mexican Americans were also placed in English-only schools or no school at all, and in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Puerto Rican and Asian American students both faced the
threats of deculturalization. Legislation, then, has also redressed some inequities in educational
opportunities for these groups, while the No Child Left Behind Act has reduced some of these
multicultural gains, which disappoints many in the teaching profession.
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References
Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education
of dominated cultures in the United States. (Sixth ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill
Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.