ABSTRACT
The schooling process perpetuates the economic and institutional control of the power elite from generation to generation. As such, the dominant culture labors to control the structure of schooling and to ensure that its children are securely placed in positions of power, in order to enter controlling roles in American society. In GÇ£Poetics of Anticolonialism, GÇ ¥ the introduction to Discourse on Colonialism, author Robin D. G. Kelley describes how colonialism works to de-civilize both the colonizer and colonized, a process that succeeds in pulling the master class deeper and deeper into the abyss of barbarism. The self-esteem discourse makes a number of assumptions that are, under close scrutiny, not tenable cross-culturally. The first is that self-esteem is based on a person's awareness of themselves as a unique individual with a particular sequence of abilities, potentials, and so forth. The second, related assumption behind the American understanding of self-esteem is that it is directly dependent upon so-called individual abilities, qualities, and performances.
