Competency Reflection

Throughout this semester I am amazed by the information I have gained from this class. Unfortunately, I was a bit oblivious and had no idea how the history of education was formed. What I am talking about is how slavery had a major impact on higher education. My K-12 education did not teach me anything about what really went on during that time period and I cannot believe how poorly people were treated. Even as history progressed, I was shocked that colleges tried to keep politics and other important issues at bay. Many of these issues revolve around race. In a chapter 5 of the Loewen reading he states that race is our obsession (Loewen, 1996). I agree with that statement. Americans have focused so much on race and treated those who were not white, really crappy. My professor for Student Development Theory is from Honduras and she stated that race is not something that is talked about in her home country, and it’s very unlikely that you will see race as a topic in many other countries. Other countries focus more on social class, and this makes me want to go to other countries just to see those dynamics talked about instead of race. Also in the Loewen chapters, he talks about how our textbooks have omitted really anything negative white people have done, and they really sugar coat things. Like I previously said above, I was not educated on how awful African Americans and Native Americans were treated throughout our history. As a professional working in the field, I am not aware of the generational trauma that these students today may have, because what most of their ancestors went through was horrific. Talking about this also makes me think about the secret army during the Vietnam War. America took advantage of a small group of people in Southeast Asia that fought in the frontlines of the Vietnam War. Once the US left we left them to fend for themselves and many of them died because of that. My artifact I am using is my class presentation on the Vietnam War. I have never been opposed to protests but never really understood what the point was, because why would a government or even a college change something when only a portion of the students want change. After going over the Vietnam War and learning about how all of the protests, demonstrations, and sit-ins really did make a different on campus, with the fight against Free Speech but also the Anti-War Movements influence on the Vietnam War. This really made me feel deeply about fighting for your right and what is right. What happened throughout the Vietnam War was not ok, so many people died when the US really did not need to be involved. Even in the 1960s African Americans were still treated so poorly and its crazy because it was not that long ago. While I researched something else stuck out to me that Martin Luther King Jr said during a one of the many protests. He went public with his opposition to the war on moral grounds, condemning the war’s diversion of federal funds from domestic programs as well as the disproportionate number of African American casualties in relation to the total number of soldiers killed in the war (History.com, 2012). It was refreshing for me to learn and understand that people do not always listen to authority, because that authority is not always right or making the right decisions. All in all, this class was honestly an eye opener for me because I really did not know that higher education was essentially founded on Slavery of African American people. Which leads me back to that generational trauma that these people may experience today. I will continue to do my own research on these topics and be an advocate for all students to try to help them navigate through their college career. I truly believe that most of the material we talked about and read about really should be taught at least in the high school level because I walked around for so many years not realizing how bad slavery and colonization really were. However, through this class I was definitely able to relate material I learned to other classes as well as educate the people around me, because a lot of the material I was surprised by.