Education against identity and community

In American Indian Education, Szasz and Ryan give a brief encyclopedic overview of the influences, changes, and policies of the Formal Education of Native Americans. This short 15 page report covers almost 200 years of the educational experience of Native Americans since colonization, and thus, leaves out much more than important nuances that a close evaluation requires to analyze the events, peoples, and interactions of the times. The most relevant of issues are glossed over in a single sentence and there is an apparent emotional separation and lack of depth.

“to demolish the indian’s communal life, to wreck tribal identity and values, and to implant a different individualist ideology.” (293)

Here I can see that the word “Individualist” can be translated into what Foucault saw as compartmentalization and serialization, that disempowers the individual who participates within the system.