De-culturalization

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that Americanization and de-culturalization through the misuse of education was a form of control that the white European used over the Native American and the African people. It claims that they used a very aggressive and dominant form of mis-education to control the Native American and they used a lack of education to control the African. The paper examines the educational abuse of both groups.

From the Paper:

"Imagine the scene; it is 1846 and a Presbyterian Missionary, James Ramsey, is telling a room full of Choctaw Indians, in essence, that "they too" could be as civilized, knowledgeable, and powerful as the culturally and racially superior white man if they were to embrace a rudimentary education in basic grammar school curricula and christianity. Think of being a slave in pre-Civil War days and being kept intentionally uneducated simply so you would not be able to form a revolt. Then imagine the life and times of the African-American child in a segregated school system, post-Civil War, with not much of a chance to succeed given the child's background, the prejudice of the society in which the child lives, and the unequal opportunity that is segregation. In each of these scenes, there are the forces of Americanization and Deculturalization, like it or not. Education, miseducation, and the force of "no education" have all been used by whites to dominate the nonwhites, those who don't conform, and the dominated cultures, who, when analyzed, are oft one and the same. Is Americanization something to be proud of if it is just another word for the cloaked denuding of interesting and harmless cultural differences, or the creation of a person who will, at long last, "fit in"? Is the sterilizing nature of deculturalization acceptable?"

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