Abstract
Both the 1870s and the 1960s were times of innovation and change. The innovation of mass education beginning in the late nineteenth century during the Reconstruction Era was a direct response to the changes that our nation was experiencing at the time. During this era, slaves became free and, supposedly, “equal,” and educational institutions became more formalized as our nation was securing its position as an industrialized capitalist nation that required skilled workers, technological development, and professionalization.
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Notes
- 1.
“In 1896, the Supreme Court struck down the first set of federal civil rights laws enacted to protect blacks from exclusion and segregation in public facilities. Ignoring the systematic state-supported terror blacks were suffering at the hands of the whites in that post-reconstruction era, the Court said that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause did not apply to counter enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the State. This forced separation neither abridged the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprived him of his property without due process of law, nor denied him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment” (Bell Race 131).
- 2.
“There, a unanimous Supreme Court finally gave voice to Justice Harlan’s color-blind constitutionalism by holding that separate education facilities for blacks and whites were inherently unequal. In so holding, the court recognized that de jure race consciousness in education proceeded from the same assumption as de jure segregation in railway transportation: black inferiority. Doctrinally, of course, Brown’s significance is that it dismantled the separate-but-equal doctrine that had been used to maintain dual school systems throughout the South. The central tenet of Brown, however, is not merely that race is an irrelevant variable in government decision making; rather, it is that racial classifications, when used for the specific purpose or subordinating individual members of a particular racial category, run counter to the equal protection guarantee in the Constitution” (Bell Race 147).
- 3.
“This act expressly prohibits overt acts of racial discrimination. Now, as a century ago, the ideal of equality embodied in the Constitution is being effectively emasculated through the strict application of color-blind constitutionalism in a society where color continues to have primary relevance” (Bell Race 134).
- 4.
Consistent with the fear of a nonhumanitarian mission of the University characterized by Lester Faigley, critical educator Paulo Friere describes this type of nonhumanitarian education as “necrophilous”. He states that such an education is nourished by love of death, not life (Friere 58). Furthermore, he calls this type of education “the banking concept of education,” which is the exact opposite of the type of critical pedagogy referred to in this book. The banking concept of education is described as serving the interests of oppression. It is “[b]ased on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects” (58). In short, it inhibits both men’s and women’s creative power. Instead of a dehumanizing method of education, Freire advocates a “humanizing pedagogy in which the revolutionary leadership establishes a permanent relationship of dialogue with the oppressed…it expresses the consciousness of the students themselves” (51). Furthermore, students are seen as subjects who can not only attain knowledge but also discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. In short, they become agents of their own knowledge acquisition, knowledge-making and, hence, their own education. Process pedagogy, expressionist rhetoric, and epistemic rhetoric movements are characteristic outcomes of critical pedagogy.
- 5.
It was prodded by early Soviet success in the Space Race, notably the launch of Sputnik, the year before.
- 6.
See Compositionists James Britton, Janet Emig, Peter Elbow, Linda Flower, Ken Macrorie, and Sondra Perl for more on process pedagogy.
- 7.
To see a more detailed treatment of the creation of Chicano Studies programs and the connection to bilingual education, refer to Rodolfo Acuña’s Occupied America: A History of Chicanos.
- 8.
See Richard Delgado’s “Imperial Scholar.”
- 9.
See Gutiérrez v. Mun. Ct. of S.E. Judicial Dist.: cite as 861 F.2d 1187 (9th Cir. 1988) and Hector Garcia, etc., Plaintiff-Appellant v. Alton V. W. Gloor et al., Defendants-Appellees No. 77-2358, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, May 22, 1980. Both of these cases demonstrate workplace discrimination against the speaking of Spanish at the employment site. Both judgments were against the speaking of Spanish in the workplace other than out of absolute necessity such as the use of Spanish by court interpreters.
- 10.
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Ruiz, I.D. (2016). The Second Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Era and Composition’s Response to the New “Egalitarian” University. In: Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53673-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53673-0_6
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