Week 3: Angie Zhang

Angie Zhang

Section A01

Week 3

One important issue that Kaozong N. Mouavangsou’s article Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans touched on was how the educational system in the United States seem to miseducate and, by doing so, devalue the Hmong community. This article mentions that schools provide students with little to no, if not completely false, information regarding the history and culture of the Hmong. To be honest, I personally had never heard of the Hmong community up until reading this article because I was never taught about them in my high school as none of my teachers ever brought them up. Therefore, I found it appalling that U.S. schools would misinform students about the culture and history of the Hmong community, that is if they even teach it. For example, as stated in the article, westerners label the Hmong community as illiterate, even though they have their own language, and criticize their culture’s medicinal practices due to them being different from those of western norms. This made me feel as though the U.S. educational system is being completely unfair as they are promoting America’s norms by belittling how other cultures work and seemingly labeling them as insignificant. I also found it ridiculous that schools taught unsuspecting Hmong American students, such as the author herself, false information about their own cultures while focusing heavily on American history. Therefore, this article made me realize how important it is for the U.S. to provide proper education with accurate information about the history of other minority groups.

Question: Why hadn’t the Hmong community spoken up about their miseducation before? When will the U.S. educational system include minority groups such as the Hmong community in their history classes (of course, without providing the wrong information) ?

References:

Mouavangsou, K. N. 2016. Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans. Retrieved October 6, 2017.

[Digital Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2017, from https://hmonginfo.wikispaces.com/Adaptive+Strategies