United States education is arguably one of the strongest tools that the United States uses to flex its hegemony on its people. Thing is, I did not realize this until I finished my first year of college. I grew up blindly accepting everything I was taught; I was a machine for processing and memorizing information. However, the more and more time I spend at University, the more I realize that I am part of a system that attempts to manipulate and control me. The system may not be trying to specifically control me, but they are trying to control a population, a control that trickles down to the individual. Two things made me start to think about this. The first was my Chemistry Professor, Andreas Toupadakis. He commonly would stop in the middle of lecture to give us life advice. One of his common themes was to not allow any higher powers to have control over us; we are the keys to our own happiness. When I had him for class, he was going through a process where some people in the department were trying to get rid of him because he gives us advice about life and happiness, things that are not related to Chemistry. Despite this, Toupadakis was willing to get fired for the well being of the students. Rather than accepting what the institution was telling him, he persisted and would not accept the circumstances given to him. I always thought of teachers and part of the institution, but they are in the same boats as us. If we are lacking a good education, it shouldn’t be on the students or teachers; it should be on the institution. The second event that made me more critical of my education was taking ASA 4 with Professor Maira. There, I learned about hegemony, power, and was truths mean. Armed with a general understanding of cultural studies terms, I began to critique school and society in general (as weak and underdeveloped as they are, it's better than what I had before: no stance). I was amazed to see how these two classes taught me to go against what the education as an institution is trying to make me into. And now with ASA 2, this trend has continued.
I realize I have not even mentioned the reading at all, but the themes I have talked about are central to Mouavangsou’s piece. All the problems that are outlined in the piece can be traced back to how we learned about the Hmong people in school. It is saddening to see how the author went through so many years as a Hmong American thinking that she failed her culture when in reality, it was the institution that was at fault. The US wants to create an image of the Hmong that only applies to White America. Presented with this, I began to think about how US education shapes our perception of other cultures. Black people are mostly mentioned when talking about slavery. Japanese people are for the most part brought up during World War II, explaining the atomic bomb and Japanese internment. India is taught with respect to how Britain had influence of the nation. The Middle East was fabricated via an orientalist scope. Perhaps Hmong people have it the worst because looking back on my own education, Hmong people were only brought up during the Vietnam war. Even worse, I did not even know who the Hmong were; native in the Vietnam war were only referred to as “the Vietnamese.” Orientalism refers to the outrageous depiction of Arabic countries by Western countries. I do not understand why this is limited to only Arabic countries; America seem to build it own fabricated scope of this entire world.
Question: How do we reform the institution? Is it even possible?
While this is mainly for laughs, it holds some truth. Most student college pages are filled with memes that share a similar message: "Is my education worth it?" While some are just tired, others are tired of the University as an institution in society.
Unknown author (memer). Unknown publication date. Snoop Dogg meme. (digital meme) Retrieved from https://me.me/t/alarm
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