First of all, in the passage on “The Problem of Cultural Diversity,” I find it to not be a coincidence that the U.S. census is brought to attention. Through the evolution of the census I believe that we can also kind of see the change evolution of cultural diversity. In that time period, (presented by table 3.1) they showed only the different English-speaking groups, and the only ones really considered white were the of English ancestry. They also didn’t care about the diversity of different regions that their slaves came from they only wanted to know how many slaves were there. But we can see that in today’s U.S. census that in the survey, there is a broad range of questions to figure exactly everyone’s ancestry and cultural backgrounds.
Another passage I found interesting was that after the American Revolution, the idea of a “protected childhood” arose. This was the belief that “children were born innocent, these families considered childhood as something to be enjoyed and prolonged.. childhood was a stage of life where character could be shaped to make the virtuous adult.” And then because of this, schools were then seen as “logical institutions for the extension of childhood that would protect and mold children.” This was interesting to me because this belief is definitely still present in the U.S. today.
Questions:
1. Why did the census or survey’s back then considered a problem of cultural diversity?
2. Is there any cons to patriotism?
3. How has the belief of the protected childhood from back them evolved to this day?
