| After reading this chapter, I definitely learned about the Common School Movement and the ways in which it promoted the values of Protestantism, republicanism and capitalism. This chapter also emphasized on attitudes about education for the Irish, slaves, African Americans and Native Americans. Common School Movement had the intention to protect the American Protestant culture by creating a school system that promoted the values of Protestantism, republicanism and capitalism. Irish Catholics challenged the prominence of Protestant ideology in the common schools, arguing that the schools should also reflect their religious beliefs. Many Irish refused to send their children to the common schools because of the schools’ Anti-Catholic sentiments. Slowly, Catholics set up private schools in order to preserve their culture. Slavery abolished the African’s traditional modes of social interaction. Some important relationships within this culture were the relationships between slaves and the relationship between the slave and the owner or master. Oral traditions, such as spirituals and stories, provided a psychological refuge from the inhuman conditions slaves experienced. It contained a message of hope and triumph over the master. In stories, slaves often played the role of the trickster. The culture of resistance created by freed African Americans focused on literacy, political actions and judicial solutions. In some communities, African Americans initially supported segregated education as a means of protecting their children from prejudice. However, when the inequities in funding and support became more evident, they espoused integrated education. In Boston, the African American community turned to the legal system in order to challenge segregated education and used the political system to create equal educational opportunities for their children. The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 authorized the funding and establishment of schools among Indian tribes. The prevailing ideology held that schooling would culturally transform Native Americans and civilize them in one generation. Since conversion to Christianity was also a part of the effort to civilize Native Americans, many Protestant missionary educators were subsidized by the Civilization Fund Act. Indian Removal Act authorized the forced removal of tribes from their lands to lands west of the Mississippi River. Choctaws and Cherokees set up highly successful bilingual schools and had high literacy rates. Anglo-Americans viewed cultural pluralism as a threat to their culture. After finishing reading this chapter some of the questions that I had were : a ) Are the same values that were promoted at that time still promoted today? b) Do Americans think multiculturalism is a threat to the core American values? Should they think of it as a threat since we are kind of like a melted pot? |
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