Published In
Professing Education
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Subjects
Social justice, Educational change, Indigenous and decolonizing studies in education, Indians of North America, Settler colonialism, Indigenous children -- Education, Globalization
Abstract
In 1928, the Institute for Government Research released the Meriam Report, a massive study of the nation’s Native Americans. Unflinchingly rational, the report criticized federal policy, but it also set a high-minded vision for Native American progress. Celebrated by the press at the time, hailed by historians in the following decades (Bertolet, 2007; Kelly, 1983, Philp, 1977, Szasz, 1974; Downs, 1945), the report became perceived as a turning point in the treatment of Native Americans and signaled a renewed faith in government. A century later, these reforms appear as mirages. In this paper, I show how the Meriam Report cloaks the brutal assimilative mission of schooling in the rhetoric of technical progress and humanitarian ideals. There is no doubt of its influence. However, I argue that the Meriam Report is important as an early statement of educational reform grounded in modern administrative rationality. This now-familiar discourse has been exported globally in the bad faith narratives of the educational reform movement.
This is not a study of the impact of US education policy on Indigenous people - native voices, stories, and perspectives are absent. Rather, it is an examination of the soothing myths a conquering society tells itself through the institutions of education. Still, Native scholars have led the way in foregrounding the ideological bedrock of settler colonialism (Brown, 2017, Deloria, 2004; Lomawaima, 2000). Analyzing the discursive practices from such a perspective can help reinterpret the metanarratives of progress, benevolence, and modernity, as cultural fictions supporting narratives of assimilation (Bird, 2018; Clifton, 2017).
The discursive work of official education reports promised to make Natives almost, but never quite the same, as the dominant society (Bhabha, 1994). This pattern has continued through new sites of reform such as the Education for All initiative (World Education Forum, 2000) or UNESCO’s (2022) “new social contract for education” demonstrate how American narratives of progress are also globalized narratives. By analyzing such documents from a critical perspective, I peel back these narratives to reveal the common thread of colonial myths from the 1920s to the present day.
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42515
Citation Details
Narayanan, M. (2024). “Indigenous Assimilation and Progressive Mirages: The Globalization of American Narratives of Educational Reform.” Professing Education, 22(2), 169-178.