This book traces the history of the Chinese experience in America, particularly in the San Francisco area, from the California Gold Rush era of the 1850s to the construction of a new all-Chinese school in San Francisco's Chinatown district in the 1950s. The first five chapters of the book detail the withholding of school privileges from both…

This book recounts the Phoenix Indian School's history from 1935 to its closing in 1990. In the 1930s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs' philosophy of assimilation declined in importance, as evidenced by termination of the boarding school's militaristic discipline, greater recognition of tribal traditions, and early experimentation in bilingual…

This book highlights episodes in the history of Hispano education in New Mexico, from early territorial days through the New Deal. The 90 years from 1850 to 1940 demonstrate the persistence of the notion that culture can be determined from above, and that schools are a viable tool for determining culture. The myth that Hispanos did not value…

This book examines the development, implementation, and aftermath of the U.S. government's language policy for indigenous people from 1860 to 1900. Analysis of archival documents, autobiographies, ethnography, and fiction examines why and how government-sponsored English-language classrooms for Native students came into being, how European…

Nortenos, or Hispanos, are Spanish-heritage residents of northern New Mexico whose ancestors settled in the region in the 17th and 18th centuries and were long isolated from the U.S. mainstream. The ebb and flow of cultural crosscurrents in northern New Mexico add richness and complexity to educational issues faced by the Norteno community. This…

In the 1930s Loyd Tireman organized two successful New Mexico experiments in progressive and bicultural education that anticipated contemporary trends. Resisting the nativist and assimilationist sentiments of the time, Tireman saw the necessity of tailoring education to the child rather than fitting the child into a standardized curriculum. His…

Challenging conventional wisdom that Mexican Americans were passive victims of their educational fates, this book examines the Mexican American struggle for equal education during the 1960s and 1970s in a California community "Brownfield." It looks at responses of a predominantly White school system and community to the growing number of…

Historical studies have tended to take a simplistic view of minority groups as passive victims of an oppressive and racist public school system. This book looks at Mexican Americans as active agents in history and documents their quest for educational equality in Texas--a state notorious for its record of inferior and separate schooling for…