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What does it mean to be an American?
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LINK: Oklahoma education head discusses why he's mandating public schools teach the Bible - YouTube

The journalist interviews the superintendent of the Oklahoma schools and the opposer.

Personally, I see it as a culture war issue, and the issue deeply relates to the identity of the United States.

What does it mean to be an American? Does it mean to be a Westerner? Does it mean speaking English as a native language? Why English? Are Americans supposed to be connected to their former colonizer--Great Britain? What about Germany? There are a lot of German descendants here, and a lot of them have lost their own mother tongues, switching to English in one or another. People do adopt the common language because of practicality; however, declaring an official language for the US would definitely be tied to the national identity. Should the US identity be tied to its former colonizer? What about other European colonizers that have given up their territories or lost their territories to the USA? Does being an American mean being a person of European descent and affiliated with the churches descended from Europe?

Sure, the Founding Fathers are all Westerners, but as America becomes more and more diverse, with people coming from different civilizational backgrounds, should these immigrants' children become the new Westerners? What will become of their own ancestral backgrounds? Asian students, for example, usually learn about their own civilization through Hangeul Hakkyo (Korean school) or Chinese school, and these schools are usually confined to immigrant children. If the mainstream America aren't being taught of other civilizations, then there would be a real disconnect between mainstream Americans (white people, black people, anybody who is very assimilated) and these immigrant children, even the rest of the world. Then Americans will just live in their own bubble, viewing the entire world through a colonialist western view; and this may have great implications in America's foreign policy.

I think America is a relatively young country, and as a relatively young country, it has identity issues.

Anyway, I don't live in Oklahoma. But I do plan to go into Education. And my State is kind of a swing state; sometimes it leans Red and sometimes it leans Blue. The major cities tend to be Blue; the rural parts Red. Personally, I think schoolteachers should be given some autonomy. If I were the schoolteacher, then I would just have the kids do a Show-And-Tell and allow the kids to talk about their own family traditions and cultural backgrounds. Then, the kids will just learn from each other. This would create a more inclusive environment for new immigrant kids and US-born kids of immigrant parents and the more established US-born kids with generations of history. For some kids, they may come from Christian families, and yeah, their families will have deep respect for the Bible.

We can create an environment in which we all keep our private lives to ourselves... with Christian kids keeping Christianity out of the classroom and Muslim kids keeping Islam out of the classroom and Chinese kids keeping traditional Chinese religious-cultural stuff (Buddhist, Taoist, ancestral ceremonies) out of the classroom... or we can create an environment in which we share our cultural backgrounds and our viewpoints on the American identity.

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6 months ago