Constructing Citizenship in Puerto Rico’s Education From 1900 to 1903

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 12:40 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: International Education Policy, Citizenship, and Equity (Table 7)

Abstract

In my paper, I examine student lessons written by Puerto Rican elementary school students the turn of the twentieth century. My objective is to understand how Puerto Rican citizenship was conceptualized through a fabrication of a dual exceptionalism and a shared historical memory that relied upon the process of creating and effacing difference. I analyze how discourses of difference embodied in the student lessons written by Puerto Rican students in Puerto Rico between 1900 and 1903 exemplify both an idea(l) of civic progress and a fear of a barren cosmopolitanism. Specifically, I consider how the assemblage of discourses on race, intelligence, morality, and hygiene within the student lessons created rules of representation and observation for seeing the “Self” and “Other.”

Author

• Bethsaida Nieves, University of Connecticut