Asian Americans in the History of Education: An Historiographical Essay

Abstract

Asian Americans have lived in the United States for over one-and-a-half centuries: Chinese and Asian Indians since the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese since the late nineteenth century, and Koreans and Filipinos since the first decade of the twentieth century (an earlier group of Filipinos had settled near New Orleans in the late eighteenth century). Because of exclusion laws that culminated with the 1924 Immigration Act, however, the Asian American population was relatively miniscule before the mid-twentieth century. As late as 1940, for example, Asian immigrants and their descendants constituted considerably less than 1 percent (0.0019) of the United States population. In contrast, in Hawai'i, which was then a territory and therefore excluded from United States population figures, 58 percent of the people in 1940 were of Asian descent.

Asian Americans in Higher Education: Charting New Realities

“…Throughout every aspect of the educational pipeline from the student body through the highest levels of administration, a comprehensive history of education as it pertains to Asian American groups is sorely lacking (Tamura, , ). Where educational historiography exists, it is typically embedded within the histories of particular ethnic groups (Low, ; Tamura, ) or is connected to particular schooling experiences during World War II and beyond, with a primary focus on second‐generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei (Pak, ).…”

“…Of particular import at the collegiate level is the rise of student activism in the 1960s and 1970s efforts toward the development of ethnic studies programs and providing increased student services for underprivileged youth. In addition to providing a general overview of the aims and opportunities of a public education in the United States and higher education (Rudolph, ; Thelin, ), we review the role of colleges and universities in serving Asian American students’ needs, if at all (Austin, ; Daniels, ; Douglass, ; O'Brien, ; Okihiro, ; Posadas, ; Posadas & Guyotte, , ; Synnott, ; Tamura, ).…”

“Destiny Has Thrown the Negro and the Filipino Under the Tutelage of America”: Race and Curriculum in the Age of Empire

“…and lack of familiarity with other educational systems [beyond the United States]” (Mahoney, 2000, p. 18), U.S. historians of education are calling for more research on race and ethnicity outside of the conventional Black–White framework and toward more comparative inquiries on the conditions and experiences among peoples of color. Although more research is needed in the history of Asian American education (Tamura, 2001), there is a small yet critical mass of scholars who are undertaking pioneering work in Asian American educational history (Coloma, 2004; Lim de Sánchez, 2003; Ng, Lee, & Pak, 2007; Pak, 2002; Tamura, 1994). In “New Directions in American Educational History,”Rubén Donato and Marvin Lazerson (2000) pointed out that there is “almost no synthesis or intersection across the communities [of color]; much of the history has been written in isolation—with Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and others writing from or about only their particular communities” (p. 8).…”

Allan Austin. From Concentration Camp to Campus: Japanese American Students and World War II. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 256 pp. Cloth $40.00.

“…The history of Asian American access to higher education, particularly for pre-1965 Asian immigrants, is sparse. 2 In relation to Japanese American educational history, Austin builds on Okihiro's groundbreaking work 3 which examined Nikkei student relocation through a lens of antiracism. Austin also extends the themes related to what education meant for interned Japanese Americans as examined by Pak 4 who shows how Nikkei students struggled to reconcile their beliefs in American democracy and their incarceration.…”