Deculturalization and the claim of racial and cultural superiority by Anglo-Americans

Teaching Students about Diverse Culture

Education can have a significant impact upon the perspective of children which lasts well into adulthood: according to Joel Spring, the ways in which the Native Americans were painted as primitive and savage by many American textbooks was not simply unjust and misleading but had a real, material impact upon the ways in which the community was treated in the U.S. Education is also often a battleground of ideology, whereby the racial assumptions of a nation are written. Education can also be an instrument of control. Fears of racial mixing in education were present prior to the Civil War even amongst Americans who ostensibly were opposed to slavery. African-Americans were actively punished for learning to read in the south (Spring 3).

The history of America in regards to historically-marginalized groups has affected their education: enslavement in the case of African-Americans and colonization in the case of Hispanic-Americans. In the case of segregated schools in the South, the conflict between supporters of integration and proponents of segregation became so violent federal intervention was necessary (Spring 3). However, assimilation has also proven to be a powerful, negative tool in the wars that have ensued in America over race. Minority groups have been taught that their culture is something that is not compatible with American citizenship and must be overcome, as was the case with Native American children, for example. There is an agenda of decultralization, or denial of pluralism within the U.S. in terms of its cultural landscape, even while the U.S. is ostensibly a democratic nation.

Although the U.S. no longer has segregated schools or tries to 'reeducate' Native American children about the superiority of white culture, there are still more subtle examples of oppression within the educational system, including, according to Spring, the tendency to overlook the influence of racism in the shaping of the American worldview, laws, and government (Spring 5). America is a nation modeled upon creating consumers that adhere to a particularly type of lifestyle-Thomas Jefferson admitted as much when he called for the Native Americans to be weaned off of viewing the land as collectively owed and by forcing them to abandon hunting for agriculture.

America, after all, was not begun as an experiment in democracy but by European colonists who had a firm belief in their own cultural superiority and a past history of exercising that influence over other, often nonwhite peoples. (The Irish, incidentally, were not regarded as white but as savages in the 19th century) (Spring 6). The anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, slaveholding status of our Founding Fathers makes many teachers uncomfortable, even though it is the true history of America.

In my own classes, my education has not been so 'whitewashed' that I was unaware of the history described by Spring. I think the ideology of 'America first' is not only advanced in school but also in the wider media and culture. Schools can take a more proactive role in encouraging students to think critically about their race and culture and to at least grow more self-reflective about the losses which other peoples have incurred to support American expansion.

As an educator, I believe I must make a commitment to truly teaching a diverse range of cultural views. It is not enough, for example, to note that Native Americans and Africans were oppressed or colonized, but to give adequate attention to their competing worldviews and viewpoints and to treat their cultures as valuable and worthy of respect.