Week 3- Yuanxin Zhang

Yuanxin Zhang
Section A01
Week 03

I think Mouavangsou’s Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans is a very inspiring journal. The part that interested me the most was the omission of adequate Hmong history in the social science classes in the United State. As Mouavangsou mentions, American education system constructs a good image of American culture, at the expense of devaluing other cultures, so only American history is the superior and dominant one within the history classes in public schools. The problematic thing is that not everyone can realize the misconceptions exist in the American education system and they would not start digging their history and speak up for their culture. The solution Mouavangsou provides is that we need to wake up the “minors” and let them realize that it is the combination of different cultures makes America, America, and that their cultures matter. It is awful that people sometimes would neglect the inequality after the inequality has existed for a long time, and they just take the inequality as the usual thing that suppose to happen. In my modern dance class I took last year, we had an assignment about research on the curriculums in four different universities and found out the most popular techniques that most schools would teach and the unpopular one. I was ashamed for myself when I was doing that assignment- I had never thought about Asian dance being neglected in the classes I took in the university and I did not think about my culture could be included in the colleges in the U.S. After taking that modern dance class and this ASA class, I gain a new attitude toward the education system and I am awaking.

Question:

How can we, as the students, influence the decision of curriculum that we receive in the college?

References: 

1.     Mouavangsou, K. N. (2016). Hmong does not Mean Free: the Miseducation of Hmong Americans.

2.     [Digital Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/184999497169156741/