Jiawen Shou A04 Week6

From the recent readings and lectures in class, I started to learn some aspects of the higher education and the education systems that I have never thought about before. In this week's reading, "Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of and by Hmong Americans", the author points out that Hmong culture and values are diminished in the American education system to help American culture to gain its priority and values. I think this doesn't only happen in Hmong culture. Many Asian cultures are diminished are twisted by how they are taught and delivered to students in the states. For example, one thing I learned after coming to the states is that sometimes, students have very out-dated impressions of a certain culture. When thinking about China, many students still have the impression of China back in the last century. Why some students cannot keep updated with global development and advancement is that the education system wants students to have certain negative impressions of other culture so that the American culture and value can stand out. When teaching about culture and history, schools might not tell about the truth or teach those knowledge in unbiased ways. Because institutions want students to have certain beliefs that help them to lover their own culture and country more. This isn't only in the U.S., many countries may have textbooks modified in some ways so that students gain negative expression of other cultures and gain positive loves toward the nation's culture. I guess this also explains why some people develop xenophobia because they don't have much good impressions of other countries during their journeys of education. A lot of the stereotypes and xenophobia all come from unknown.

There are ways to overcome this shortage of knowledge but education system has the strongest impact overall on students' beliefs. Long-term traveling, study abroad, learning different languages, read and compare history books are all ways to gain knowledge about other cultures. There is never one culture better than the other because all culture are valuable, different, unique and meaningful. Instead of telling students how bad other culture is and how terrible a nation is, let students to freely explore other cultures without biases. This is what education really meant to be.


Sources: 
Mouavangsou, K. “Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of and by Hmong Americans”. Fight the Tower. Rutgers University Press.
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