Making America Great Again Should Begin with Decolonized & Bilingual Education
“The greatest barrier to the Mexican-American child’s scholastic achievement…is that the schools, reflecting the dominant culture, want the child to grow up as another Anglo. This he cannot do except by denying himself and his family and his forebears, a form of masochism which no society should demand of its children.” [1]
The journey to build a nation of immigrants has led to the strongest, most vibrant democracy in history. Although some people do not think of the United States as a colonial power, the framework of colonialism have long been foundin America.
Initially, America relied on the centuries-old Doctrine of Discoveryto control indigenous people, acquire lands, and expand from thirteen small colonies/states to over fifty states and a number of Pacific and the Caribbean island colonies. Today, we found American colonialism in a system of laws that serves the interests of the dominant population at the expense of minorities. This system imposes control on the very hearts, minds, and spirits of the colonized through education.
A few days ago, a New York City lawyer threatened to call U.S. immigration officials on Spanish speakers at a restaurant. Why? because he overheard them speak in Spanish and assumed they were in undocumented. Although for some this story is about civility, I believe the underlying issue is more about the remnant of colonialism (racism), and the anti-Latino sentiment.
The story of Latino-American discrimination largely begins in 1848,when the United States won the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgogranted 55 percent of Mexican territory to the United States. With that land, came a considerable Mexican-American population. However, the end of the U.S.-Mexico War gave rise to “anti-immigrant sentiments [that] resulted in increased measures to segregate Mexican-Americans from so-called ‘white’ public institutions.”Public schools were looked to as institutions that could contribute to produce skilled workers to support the industrialization of the economy and provide a common experience to counter the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of immigrant children.
One plan to Americanize Mexican-Americans in California called for segregated schools to educate Mexican American children by teaching English “to replace the Spanish language”.[2]
Another example is theSan Francisco school board commitment to exclude Japanese and Chinese studentsfrom school by signing a resolution that declared “the admission of children of Japanese or Mongolian descent as pupils […] contrary to the spirit and the letter of the law and that the co-mingling of such pupils with Caucasian children is baneful and demoralizing in the extreme.” A similar fate greeted Native American children when the federal government began to establish boarding schools for the education of Native American children.
Although some 30 years have passed since the Bilingual Education Actand the Lau v. Nichols decision, bilingual education still sparks controversy.
All students arrive in their schools with past experiences and sufferings that informs their worldviews. However, the U.S. education is based on the narrative of the dominant population’s assumptions regarding racial and civilizational hierarchy. The content of the curriculum, campaigners argue, continues to reflect and perpetuate a colonial legacy, through the presentation of a white, western intellectual tradition as not just superior to other forms of knowledge but as universal. Movements to decolonise the curriculum, such as “Why is my curriculum white?” which began at University College London, draw attention to the prevalence of white males especially on humanities programs such as philosophy. The privileging of Kant, Plato and Descartes, they suggest, normalizes a Euro-centric and Enlightenment-focused view of the world.
If America wants to be great again, schools must be decolonized and bilingualism implemented.
There should be much more emphasis placed on language other than English to facilitate communication in general and subject material in particular. Children should be encouraged to learn not only their native languages, but also to explore new ones. Bilingual education should be available and offered to bilingual students or those interested in expanding their means of communication in a global world.
With decolonization and bilingualism, will comes greater awareness, understanding, racial acceptance and empathy towards others. And there is no better place than American schools to begin teaching these values.
At the end, just as James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, if we “[…] conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks […] do not falter in our duty now, we may be able[…] to end the racial nightmare {…]and change the history”[3] of America.
[1] A. Bruce Gaarder, specialist in foreign languages with the U.S. Office of Education, El Paso, Texas, November 13, 1965 (Quoted in The Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish-Speaking(Washington, D.C.: The National Education Association, 1966)
[2] Saul Cohen, Education in the United States: A Documentary History, Vols. 4–5 (New York: Random House, 1974), 2,931.
[3]James Baldwin,The Fire Next Time(New York:Random House,1992),p. 105
