As a child, Booker T. Washington carried the books for his owner's daughter and caught glimpses of her schoolroom abuzz with learning. "The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression," wrote Washington, who believed going to school would be like "getting into paradise." Who was entitled to the privileges of "paradise?" Would it provide all children with suitable preparations for future endeavors? ¹

Over the years discussions about access to education focus on issues of a bifurcated nature. In doing so, it pushes the educational experiences of other American children to the margins without determining if the hopes and dreams of red and brown children are similar to or different from those of black and white boys and girls. This essay looks at the impact of class, ethnicity, court decisions, and national policy upon access to a basic education while raising questions about the influence of the curriculum and racial stereotypes upon the children's intellectual growth and progress.

A high regard for education existed in colonial Massachusetts where the Puritans believed it was necessary for everyone to read and understand the Bible. As a result, the General Court adopted a fundamental public education law in 1647. Not only did females gain knowledge and skills, but by the mid-nineteenth century approximately 20 percent of the white women between fifteen and sixty years of age taught others at some stage of their lives.

In other regions of the country, poor white children and those in isolated areas had fewer opportunities to gain literacy. By contrast, persons of means hired tutors or sent their children away to schools. Beyond the rudimentary education, girls studied a different curriculum, and equal access to training in higher education or the professions remained closed to them until the twentieth century.

Society limited educational access for African and Native Americans based upon color and legal status rather than gender and class. Ronald Takaki, the foremost scholar in multicultural studies, notes that "the status of racial inferiority assigned to the Chinese, had been prefigured in the black and Indian past." This ethnocentric bias is more encompassing; it relegates other non-whites to a similar condition.²

Since the majority of blacks in America before 1865 were enslaved, they had few occasions to disprove illusions about their aptitude or to go to school. Many owners objected to slaves gaining literacy because they feared it would make them more dissatisfied with their status. Other slaveholding whites were indifferent or taught their slaves themselves. Bondservants also devised methods of teaching themselves. As a result, an estimated 5 percent of the slaves were literate in 1860.

Ordinarily, the manner in which free blacks gained literacy receives little attention when compared to the extraordinary efforts of slaves. Segregation and limited access to schools across geographical regions made it especially difficult to succeed. Travails aside, many free persons were adamant about breaking the chains of ignorance which shackled the mind in ways that were analogous to the fetters used to restrain chattel.

If free blacks ridded themselves of physical segregation in schools on one hand, they were affected by racist ideology rooted in myths on the other. When Fanny M. Jackson (Coppin) entered college in 1860 she said, "I never rose to recite in my classes at Oberlin" without feeling "that I had the honor of the whole African race upon my shoulders." In explaining the standards she set for herself, Jackson wrote, "I felt that, should I fail, it would be ascribed to the fact that I was colored."³

Jackson and other blacks sought to eradicate the "inferiority" label while believing it was their duty to acquire an education as the means of bringing their contemporaries out of bondage. Free women and men saw education was a way of improving their personal lives and that of their people. "Knowledge," they said, "is power."

Similarly Chinese immigrants, the first of Asians in significant numbers to arrive in the United States believed education was the path to upward mobility and self-improvement. The majority of these unaccompanied men settled in California and never formed families. Besides, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) circumscribed their choices among Chinese women. Consequently, there was a relatively small number of Chinese children in the United States. Nevertheless, they faced racial barriers when attempting to enroll in local schools even when their parents paid school taxes.

In 1857, the San Francisco school board refused to admit them into the public schools. The following year, the board reconsidered and allowed Chinese to enroll in the school for African Americans. The Chinese refused saying they would attend public schools only if they were open to all or open only to Chinese students.

The denial of equal access to education remained the order of the day for Chinese in America. The Naturalization Act of 1870, which was effective until 1943, made them ineligible for citizenship. As a result, they and their children were seen as "sojourners" and not entitled to the "right" to education as citizens. Even Article 7 of the Burlingame Treaty (1868) which called for mutual educational rights for citizens of the United States and China while residing abroad was ineffectual. Finally, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Tape v. Hurley (1885) to end the exclusion of Chinese children from the public schools, but the San Francisco school board ignored the ruling and established the segregated "Oriental School" for Asian children.

Although the tendency is to meld all Asians into an amorphous mass, distinctions existed in the treatment of Japanese who immigrated into the United States between 1890 and 1925. Mutual respect of nations and interests in world politics cast the two powers into mutually accommodating roles regarding territorial expansion at that time. This set the Japanese in America apart from the Chinese.

This is not to suggest that Japanese did not face discrimination. To be sure, anti-Japanese sentiments existed. In fact, the most vitriolic discrimination against them before World War II was associated with land ownership rather than prosperity based upon education.

Ironically, more has been written about education being the avenue to social progress and upward mobility for Native Americans by whites than by the American Indians themselves. A study of the process used in the education of Arizona's Hopi Indians between 1887-1917 is reflective of a larger picture. Administrators at boarding school, including Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and Carlisle Indian School, appeared more interested in "civilizing" and "Americanizing" the "oldest" Americans than in their academic instructions. The implied objective was to "kill the Indian and save the man."

Beyond the apparent cultural transformation, abandonment of traditional names, clothes, and religions, within a highly-regimented environment, the children were to learn to speak and write English, acquire knowledge of American history, and gain a basic understanding of science, mathematics, and geography. "But if instruction in academic subjects was an important aspect of the Indian's education," writes David Wallace Adams, "it was clearly secondary to instruction in manual and vocational trades." Native Americans were thought to be more suited for practical education than theoretical training. ⁴

The decisions to "educate" Native American children in this manner was not entirely successful. Many resumed the traditional way of life once reunited with their own people again. Don Talayesva claimed that after studying in government schools he "could talk like a gentleman, read, write, and cipher" besides naming "all the states in the Unions with their capitals, repeat the names of all the books in the Bible" and tell "dirty" stories. Nevertheless, he "wanted to become a real Hopi again."

The clash between the Native American students' ideas and that of their white educators is obvious. Moreover, pressures to resume the former way of life for Native Americans were often as strong as the tug upon them to abandon their cultural heritage to "walk the white man's road." In that same vein, conflicts over curricular offerings and educational needs raised questions about the usefulness of their education when the skills and training gained in the government schools did not match those required for success on western reservations.

Based upon the foregoing, it is clear that no national policy existed to guarantee that all of America's children would receive a basic education in a favorable environment. To further exacerbate the situation, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Its "separate but equal" decision was not enforced. Instead, separate but unequal schools prevailed. African Americans attended poorly financed schools where curricular offerings favored manual education over the sciences and liberal arts. Facilities for white children contrasted sharply.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese/Japanese-American children experienced a kind of racial segregation and discrimination unknown to other American school children. Over 30,000 young Issai and Nisei attended "interment" camps schools with "barbed wire fences, guard towers, search lights, and machine guns." Only the American Federation of Teachers said this action was "contrary to American principles and beliefs." One "interment" coed observed, "This action will cause the history of the United States to have another black mark: first the Indians, next the Negroes, and now the Japanese . . ." Her lament ignored the Chinese whose treatment improved based upon their anti-Japanese stance during WWII.⁵

After the war, the Supreme Court began removing "black marks" when it declared Plessy v. Ferguson unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and said separate schools were "inherently unequal." The following year, the Court ordered school districts to desegregate with all "deliberate speed."

The Court removed another "black mark" in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado (1973) when it recognized the rights of Latinos and others to equal education. The eradication of still another "black mark" came in Plyler v. Doe (1982) when the Court said children were not to be denied enrollment in public schools based solely on their immigration status or that of their parents. On the surface, these decisions were progress toward "simple justice" for school children in America.

By 1990 that progress toward equal education was in flux. Within the last decade, the Supreme Court has rendered decisions permitting the dismantling of desegregation orders, and the process continues apace. Furthermore, segregation based upon economic rather than racial differences is commonplace in many urban areas and especially obvious among Latino students. This trend is likely to continue as minority populations increase, and the white population declines.

This newest "black mark," or resegregation, is often obscured by the beliefs that desegregation is no longer necessary, that it will be achieved without deliberate plans, or that equal educational opportunities for all of America's children have been achieved. This is far from true. Resegregated schools are profoundly unequal, and the linkages between poverty and that inequality are clear.

In the meantime a popular stereotype blends Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and others into a single group of "Asians" and depicts them as "whiz kids" or model students. The myth suggests that they have achieved academically despite enduring race and class discrimination. The often repeated cultural explanation for the myth, which recognizes the value of education, hard work, delayed gratification, and the avoidance of shame associated with failure, does not acknowledge differences within the immigrant and refugee population. Neither does it explain poor achievement among some students in Asia and America.

The "model-student" myth does more to disguise the benign neglect of many Asian-Americans in schools than to illuminate their academic accomplishments. Rather than address specific academic deficiencies or poor language skills, many teachers reward compliance, good behavior, perseverance, and docility. This behavior masks inadequate preparation, and permits children to hide behind the stereotype.

While Asian Americans are seen as model students African American children are often marginalized as "disadvantaged" or "problem" students. "As a hegemonic device," writes Stacey Lee, "the model minority stereotype maintains the dominance of whites in the racial hierarchy by diverting attention away from racial inequality and by setting standards for how minorities should behave." The stereotype touts the accomplishments of Asians, without distinction, while silencing "the charges of racial injustice being made by African Americans and other minorities."

Without a careful examination of all facets of their educational process, along with the accompanying stereotypes, under which whites, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos have studied one could easily misinterpret reasons for variations in their educational achievements. The current trend toward resegregation sullies dreams of "paradise" for the masses of American children, especially those from low-income families of color. With the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is obvious that without sincere efforts to provide equal access to basic learning for all of America's children their education will remain "inherently unequal."

Dr. Wilma King is Professor of History at Columbia University in St. Louis, Missouri. She is author of several books, including Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth Century America, and co-editor of We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: A Reader in Black Women's History with Darlene Clark Hine and Linda Reed.

Notes

Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, An Autobiography (New York: Bantam, 1967),
1. Ronald Takake, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1993), 204, 206.
2. Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 89.
3. David Wallace Adams, "Schooling the Hopi: Federal Indian Policy Writ Small, 1887-1917" in Leonard Dinnerstein and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds., American Vistas, 1877 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
4. Meyer Weinberg, Asian-American Education: Historical Background and Current Realities (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997), 60.
5. See Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (New York: Bantam Book, 1974).