I recently listened to a podcast that mentioned the effect of colonialism on African culture. Colonial Christian missionaries would arrive in an African village and immediately open a school. In the missionary school children would begin to learn about Christian European culture at a young age. The children lived in the midst of African village culture, but were taught the traditions and institutions of a very different foreign culture. Many students came to believe that the traditional culture of their people was flawed and inferior, and that they needed to adopt the superior European Christian culture. Because the young no longer respected and upheld the traditions and institutions of their villages, those institutions began to fail, but they did not have the European traditions and institutions to replace them. The people became stranded between two very-different cultures, without adequate institutional support for either.
According to the news, many schools in the United States have discontinued teaching the basis of our traditions and institutions, substituting a new curriculum in its place. The new curriculum teaches that our traditions and institutions are evil when viewed in the light of a new morality based around envy, greed, race, ethnicity, and “gender”. I don’t understand all the details of this new curriculum, but wish to address the likely result of this change. If our young lose respect for our traditions and institutions they will soon find themselves in a situation similar to that of those African villagers in colonial times.
The traditions and institutions of the United States include freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and private property. Since the Civil War ended slavery we have had employment at will, and since the 1960’s civil-rights movement we have had equal opportunity under the law regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity. These are good institutions that have served the American people well, and we need to defend them.
Posted 2021/11/16