Following my slight disappointment that Provenzo didn’t really mention how terrible it was for the United States to attempt to obliterate Native American culture, I was pleased to see he had held it aside for an entire chapter’s topic – the subject being deculturization. He traces the boarding school movement and its “harsh rules, strict discipline” and “compulsory attendance” and quotes some of the harsh racism. Take this, from Captain Richard H. Pratt, who was the first superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School:
All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man” (qtd. on p. 223).
This obviously bothers me, as I mention it again and again, and it should be a special issue to me, working in Rapid City, watching so many Native American students disappear by the time they should be seniors. It’s a moral obligation of our culture to commit our resources to fixing this – and though it can’t be fixed, reconciliation and relationship should be top priorities.
One can make the same compelling argument for blacks in our country, and Provenzo traces this side of deculturization as well. I have always been drawn to the issue, doing a number of my research projects growing up on these topics, and continuing to bring it to the forefront in my classes. In one, we discussed for a solid 30 minutes Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” using a segment from a podcast with John Perkins to point out the immediacy of the comparison between African Americans and the slaves who built the Egyptian pyramids. During that class, one of my colleagues visited us and spoke compellingly about the writing of W.E.B DuBois, and I am tempted to introduce him to my juniors. What a shame that they don’t know him at all, even in passing. Provenzo expresses disappointment with DuBois by quoting Cornel West’s criticism – that he was elitist in relying on the “talented tenth” of the black population to lead the race out of “the contamination and death of the Worst in their own and other races” (qtd. on p. 238).
Provenzo finishes his chapter with a plea for educators to recognize the role of privilage in education and as a social concept. It is invisible, Provenzo explains, and its “assumptions shape our society and our schools”:
Privilege associated with dominant groups is simply taken for granted. It is so much a part of the culture that it is not even noticed. (p. 253)
It’s hard to disagree with Provenzo here, and I’m not sure why one would want to disagree (or, in looking at history, how one could support much of another opinion), but I am curious how general shifts of privilege and power take place world wide. For example, as immigrants flooded and continue to flood into our country, they changed the going privileges, whether the dominant culture liked it or not. Now I realize they came to a generally receptive country and that led to much of their influence, but more what I wonder is how things can change. I have seen a number of articles recently marking the changing geography of religion in the world – how the secular West is growing out of touch with a religious and growingly relevant Global South. This world changes the shape of the map whether the map-making West acknowledges it or not. Thus, a change takes place and the privilege is different than some imagine it. I am convinced a shift will happen – I’m more curious how it will take place. That’s what I wonder.
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Images from The Library of Congress
Provenzo, E.F. (2002). Teaching, learning and schooling: A 21st century perspective. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
