Howard Adams (Métis)
1921-2001
Revolutionary Métis Marxist scholar and professor Howard Adams grew up in a Métis community in Saskatchewan. He was a leader in the struggle for Indigenous rights, self-determination, and socialism.
Excerpt from Prison of Grass – Chapter 12 “Schooling the Redman”
Today, schooling is an agency of dehumanization and oppression. Scholars have pointed out very clearly that one of society’s problems today is schooling and all the myths that surround it. Schooling leads to alienation, subordination, and conformity. Instead of providing social mobility and serving as an equalizer for its citizens, it rigidly maintains the class system. In addition, it serves to legitimize the capitalist myths and fails to provide any path to personal or political liberation. It is the dominant social institution in society today and unfortunately has become a serious impediment to personal fulfillment and liberation.
Schools engage in political socialization mostly in terms that are highly functional in the prevailing social and political order. In other words, educational institutions at all levels generally fulfill an important conservative role and act with considerable effectiveness to preserve the status quo in their societies. Today school deliberately seek to instill into their students conservative philosophy whose themes remain tradition, religion, nationalism, authority, hierarchy, and an exceedingly narrow view of the meaning of democracy.
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