Recapitulating the Myth of "Development"

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Settler Colonial Amnesia and the Technologies of Erasure: Recapitulation, Chronicity, Recognition, and Reparations

Abstract

Schools are euphemistically referred to as the “great equalizer” but I argue that schools and other “public” institutions of education and development are a primary technology used by the state in a war on Indigenous and other marginalized youth. This occurs first and foremost through the injection of colonial myths of social and individual development found in 20th century theories of Recapitulation (Hall, 1911; Gould, 1977). Constructs of ‘youth’, ‘development’, ‘education’ and ‘citizenship’, which emerge from this theoretical position, assume the inferiority of non-Western, women and LGBTQ peoples (Lesko, 1999; Walkerdine, 1993). Despite declarations of equity and justice, these constructs riddle our institutions of “public” education.
The theory of recapitulation, an application of evolutionary biology to individual and social development, “pointed to the Western world as the culmination of all of human progress” (Fallace, 2001, 97). It was critiqued by its contemporaries (Boas) and widely dismissed by the 1920’s but deep-seeded remnants remain today. Assumptions of the theory (child-as-primitive, racial, cultural and scientific supremacy of Western Europe, parallel development) provide support for hallmarks of contemporary education such as: age-graded schools, cultural epochs curriculum and standardized content and trajectories (Fallace, 2001). For example, the study of history is preceded by that of primitive culture. The children are told of the savages who dwelt in cave, hut, or wigwam. … In natural sequence there follows the industrial life of primitive Greece (Hodgeman, 1900). The theory and its assumptions can also be found in everyday educational traditions such physical education, school sports, homecoming court and sexual health education (Gulick, 1899; Reiss, 2012; Bay-Cheng, 2003) and at the foundation of mainstream “youth” development approaches such as summer camping and nature study (Armitage, 2007; Wall, 2005) YMCA and Campfire Girls (Putney, 2011), scouting and other “character” building or “developmental” efforts (MacLeod, 2004; Johnston-Goodstar, 2017).
This hidden curriculum is omnipresent in American society. While there exist unique places of learning which counter it (Indigenous/ethnic studies, critical pedagogy, YPAR), these efforts, by and large, occur in “private” arenas. Thus, the public practice of education contributes to the collective erasure of an active, intentional and well-designed process of settler colonization. We further replace protective memory that exists within marginalized communities with notions of academic achievement in a system, which frankly, was never designed for their success. In a world where unspoken Western norms, values and worldviews reign supreme, the dreams, possibilities and necessity of public education must be critically reexamined.

Author

• Katie Johnston-Goodstar, University of Minnesota