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The American education system is socially engineering minorities into accepting the role and doctrine that America has deemed appropriate for them. BY ornate THESIS: The American education system Is socially engineering minorities Into accepting the role and doctrine that America has deemed appropriate for them. DEFENSE: The American school system plant seeds to patriotism in every school child. They teach history only from their own viewpoint, instead of teaching historical fact.
An example of this is the teaching that the European ancestors of this country ere heroic pioneers, but they are less likely to teach that these same heroic pioneers slaughtered massive numbers of Native Americans and stole their land (p. 329, 330). They use these kinds to tactics to “Americanize” minorities, trying to make them think of themselves as U. S. Citizens, support American democratic ideal, and become assimilated into the mainstream of U. S. Culture.
This “Americanization” looks more like cultural imperialism, the practice of making minorities accept the dominant group’s culture. It involves forcing the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture on U. S. Citizens of other backgrounds. The typical U. S. Textbook is written from the WASP point of view so that It presents mostly whites as heroes, and very few heroes trot minority groups. Americanization also forces minority children to give up their heritage, which encourages teachers to stereotype minority students as culturally deprived.
This causes low self-esteem in minority children at an early age being culturally raped, and being taught little or nothing about their heritage and history (p. 331 Teachers also do their part In making sure that the molesters know and fulfill their oleos in American society. We tend to behave the way we think others see us, thus in classroom interaction how the teacher defines a student can have powerful consequences for the student’s academic performance.
The power the teacher holds on the performance of a student reflects the Pygmalion effect, the impact of a teacher’s expectations on student performance. This does not affect the student’s performance directly, but they do Influence the teacher’s behavior toward the student. Teachers give praise and encouragement to students they consider bright ND work extra hard to help them live up to expectations. On the other hand to students they expect to fail they tend to be uninterested in, critical toward, impatient and tend to think they are a waste of time.
Thai states in earlier chapters that white, higher income children tend to do better in school and have more opportunities, so it’s easy to conclude that teachers have higher expectations for white, high-income children and the negative treatment would more likely happen to minority children Tracking students is also a way in which they make sure that minorities stay within he role that America has approved for them. Tracking is the system of sorting students into different groups according to past academic achievement.
In 1984 John Goodling did a study of nearly 900 high school classes throughout the United States found that higher-income students tend to be in higher-track classes and lower-class and minority tend to be in lower-track classes. He further discovered that higher- track students were taught “a more independent of thinking, self-direction, creativity, critical thinking, pursuing individual assignments, and active involvement in the recess of learning. While lower-track students were taught “a more conforming type of classroom behavior, working quietly, punctuality, cooperation, improving study habits, conforming to rules and expectations, and getting along with others. ” In a nutshell higher-income students are being taught to be high-paid professionals, while lower-class and minority students are taught to become low-paid manual workers (p. 331). As early as elementary and secondary schools, lower-class children and minorities are trained to respect authority and obey orders, characteristics that employers like n manual laborers.
In high school higher-income students are usually channeled into college preparatory courses and thus eventually into higher-status Jobs. While lower-income students are guided toward vocational courses, which leads to lower- status Jobs. In short education teaches youths to know their place and fill it. It Just so happens that whites and higher-income youths taught to be the “employers” and minority, low-income students are taught to be the “employees”. Minority and lower income children are at a disadvantage in American society from birth (p. 344).