Teaching Assimilation through Drama: Arts-Based ESL Instruction for Vietnamese Immigrant Youth in 1980s Westminster, California

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Historical Inquiry

Abstract

Westminster School District (WSD) in Southern California is perhaps best known for Mendez v. Westminster, the historic 1946 court case that challenged the segregation of Mexican American students in public schools. Today, however, more than half of Westminster’s population identifies as Asian, and Westminster is home to the largest Little Saigon in the United States. Still, little has been written about the schooling of Westminster’s Vietnamese youth. In this paper, I analyze Project V.I.E.T., a WSD arts program established in the 1980s to teach English to newcomer Vietnamese youth. Using archival and secondary sources, I uncover WSD’s explicit and implicit attempts to ‘Americanize’ Vietnamese youth through Project V.I.E.T.’s assimilationist practices, rhetoric, and objectives.

Author

• Gloria Choi