GS101 Lecture Notes - Sean Penn, Experiential Education, Ethnocentrism
Document Summary
The politics of going aboard to do good. Good intentions- good ideas thoughts and actions could lead to negative, unintended consequences. Congo (lord stanley) and residential school in canada (native kids who were taken away from their parents and families and brought to residential school were kids were forbidden to speak their language, cut their hair, change their name etc. ) Last residential schools didn"t shut down until 1980"s. Goal of the residential schools was to make them like us (christian etc. ). Some consider this as genocide, because the churches and the government knew what was going on (small pox). Some say the spread of civilization is another word for assimilation. Congo was known for its rubber plantations, lots of exploitation (king leopold). European thinkers thought that this was good development and in the 18th century some believed that history was linear, unending, and a road that is inevitable (and the europeans are always ahead).
