Week 2 - Joanne Agus

Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans by Kaozong N. Mouavangsou is an article that ties together the Hmong culture and American education. Mouavangsou first introduced the Hmong culture to her readers, and explained that the culture gives higher privileges towards men than daughter. Due to that fact, Mouavangsou was motivated to excel academically so that she can be seen as equals with her brothers. She explained that her source of motivation became one of the examples of why the Hmong women are stereotyped as academically inclined and men are not. Her findings showed that Hmong men who take AP classes felt isolated from the rest of the Hmong population because AP classes are usually only taken by Hmong women. From that, Mouavangsou made an interesting point, that through the mix of culture and separation of AP and non-AP classes, “academic success equates to emasculation” (Mouavangsou, 2016). I find that this finding is such a strong statement that reflects how miseducation of culture can create a significant impact. In the same article, she also mentioned about how the American education overlooked at the contribution of Asian American in the US history. Due to that fact, Asian Americans have low visibility within the US community, which became one of the reasons why the Asian American community is continuously being marginalized.

Though this article provide an interesting insight towards the topic of miseducated and marginalized, I think that the biggest player that causes these issues is the different perception of culture and how it relates to academic. For instance there is another way that we can interpret the outcome to this situation, and it’s one that still happens in Indonesia. With the similar background – more privileges given to son than daughter, and the discrimination in the academic community between expensive private schools and cheaper public schools with less qualified teachers – in Indonesia, parents have higher expectations of their sons and put them in environment that help them thrive better academically. Although this does not prove that men have a better success rate than women, this still proves to be another perspective that culture ties to education. Because of that, I have had female friends in Indonesia who are denied of pursuing education abroad simply because her parents think that there is no use for women to get better education and study abroad. Although this example does not shed light positively, this proves that there are other ways that culture can affect academia, which hopefully is a positive one.

The illustration above is also another example on how culture affects students both academically and athletically in Indonesia. This is because, culturally, women are also expected to be physically unbuilt and not active outdoor to prevent being tan and having scars (Parker, 2003).

References:

Parker, J. (2003). [Digital image]. Retrieved 9 April, 2016, from: http://www.tolerance.org/lesson/editorial-cartoons-gender-discrimination

Mouavangsou, K. N. (2016). The Mis-Education of the Hmong in America (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Davis).