ERIC Number: EJ1017172
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Sep
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1175-8708
EISSN: N/A
Constituting a Sense of "American" Identity and Place through Language and Literary Study: A Curriculum History, 1898-1912
Brass, Jory
English Teaching: Practice and Critique, v12 n2 p41-57 Sep 2013
This article examines constructions of "American" identity and place in the first influential guides for English teaching published in the United States at the cusp of the 20th Century. It recovers how English teaching was to weaken youths' ties to more immediate people and places and to reorient their sense of self, others and the world around imagined communities that differentiated America/Americans from uncivilised, irrational and illiterate "others". Language and literature were directed to reorder thought, inculcate the spirit of peoples and places, and locate individuals, races and nations temporally and spatially in sacred-secular redemption narratives. The study historicises practices of English teaching that have inscribed people and places within a religion-science-nation-West horizon, constituting distinctive experiences of sameness/difference, nationalism, and place that have spanned more than a century of English teaching.
Descriptors: Educational History, English Instruction, Nationalism, United States History, Elementary Secondary Education, Identification, Role of Education, Acculturation, Language, Literature
Wilf Malcolm Institute for Educational Research, University of Waikato. PB 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. Tel: +64-7-858-5171; Fax: +64-7-838-4712; e-mail: wmier@waikato.ac.nz; Web site: http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/index.php?id=1
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A