For my LC’s last learning experience, we were assigned to guide a discussion on the reading, Multiculturalism and the Failure of the Common School Ideal. This article examines how the bcommon school ideal failed due to the segregation and discrimination against Mexican, Asian, Native, African, and Puerto Rican Americans. In efforts to create a united American culture, a lot of schools were actually deculturalizing students of their true culture.
My LC agreed that this was a very loaded article, so we decided to meet up together to try and unpack it. After reviewing the article together, we thought it would be best if we started with a powerpoint since this article consisted of a lot of dates and statistics. We split the article up into 5 main sections, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans. This way, we would have shorter, information-packed slides. With the information we provided on the slides, we really wanted to show the significance of the discrimination and deculturalization that occured, especially in the school system. My job was to analyze Mexican Americans. I discussed how the discrimination among Mexicans began with Mexican-American War. The U.S. conquered ½ of Mexico’s land, and the individuals living in that conquered land struggled to achieve full citizenship. They were placed into segregated housing and schools, and had restricted voting rights. There were several laws passed that made it so public schools were only allowed to teach material in English. This made it difficult for Mexican American students to go to school because they could not speak or understand English. This kind of deculturalization did not just happen to Mexican American students. For example, in Puerto Rican schools it was a policy to replace the local textbooks with American book.
To ensure that the class was actually paying attention to our powerpoint, our activity began with the students writing down a few things that they found surprising or interesting from the powerpoint. Then we broke the class into small groups to discuss what they found shocking. Within my first small group discussion, the other students were saying how they never knew the discrimination in the school system was that extreme. Also, most of the students agreed that it was very shocking to find out that a law was passed in Texas to ensure the schools were only instructing in English. Thankfully, everyone I talked with thought that it was disturbing that the American school system replaced Puerto Rican books with American ones. Students need to be encouraged to embrace their heritage, rather than being ashamed of it. As future teachers of America, I believe that this is an incredibly important topic to discuss and figure out ways to bring culture into the school and allow students to fully express themselves.
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