# Dominant group/Education

“Education is the process by which a person, community, or society shares and passes knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to the next. Education literally means to "bring forth what is within yourself". In this course, you will learn the basic knowledge, skills, and values to educate yourself and others.” A dominant group in education may be a dominant group of educators or a dominant group in some way associated with education.

## Hypotheses

* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
* Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
* Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
* Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
* Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
* Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
* Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
* Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
* Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
* Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
* Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
* Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
* Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
* Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
* Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
* Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
* Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
* Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
* Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.
* It may be the case that only cultures in the northern hemisphere including those overlapping the equator into the northern hemisphere have synonyms for dominant group.
Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.

## Broader impacts

The broader impacts are "concerned with issues of education, infrastructure, diversity, and societal benefit."
Ideally, at least one advanced graduate student should be provided full support for several years to work on the project completing a doctoral dissertation using project data. Involve undergraduates and volunteers in field effort and subsequent analyses.
"Dominant group(s)", designated vaguely by the term, and the associated ideologies of exclusion, serve as apparent focused power structures that increase existing disparities in wealth and status, while marginalizing or disenfranchising "Others".

## Research questions

Are dominant group and possibly some or all of its synonyms artifacts?
Is education the field of the two-word term dominant group?
What ethnic group originated the first use of a term that has been translated into English as dominant group?
Is there some fundamental ethnographic concept associated with dominant group?
What is the origin and first use of the term or its primordial concept and usage?
Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
Def. "a social group that controls the value system and rewards in a particular society" is called a dominant group.
Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a relative synonym for dominant group.
Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.

## Experimentations

To gather data, use "dominant group" in quotes and education as an additional search term to explore the internet using search engines listed under External links.

## Educations

Def. "[t]he process or art of imparting knowledge, skill and judgment" is called education.
"A good teacher is essential for a good education".
Groups of educators can become a dominant group.
A dominant group in education may be a dominant group of resources, e.g., a particular grouping of music to which other music is compared.
A dominant group may be the object of education, either to be taught about or learned about.
Dominant groups associated with education usually seek to dominate education for their own ends rather than those of the students or educators.

## Schools

"Having established that cultural/language differences between the dominant group and the schools, on the one hand, and the minorities, on the other, existed, and that the difficulties in social adjustment and academic performance experienced by minority children might be due to such cultural/language differences, anthropological research developed into a second stage. ... [S]ome minority groups do well in school even though they do not share the language and cultural backgrounds of the dominant group that are reflected in school features and practices."
"Bi-racial schools are rather an index of a total situation or set of mind in the dominant group."
"The reason for this inevitable inferiority is that the separate school is an instrument of policy in the hands of the dominant group."
"Negro schools, even more than white schools, are controlled by the dominant group, and have never been characterized by their courage in Cf. "TriumphI Or Fiasco ?", op. cit."
"In the United States, European American males are the dominant group and thus derive a psychological benefit in mixed [race, single sex] groups."

## Botany

"In other words, those with significant cultural capital – intellectuals, artists, professors, etc. - were part of the field of power and exercised some level of domination within society (by controlling the processes of cultural reproduction and its contents), but they were, within the dominant group, dominated by those with more economic capital."

## Chemistry

"A major problem for the increasingly dominant group of university teachers was how to combine — or even merge — their professional duties with their self-image as scientists."

## Cultures

"In the social conflict theory, the struggle of dominated groups to change the conditions that oppress them and the attempts of the dominant groups to reproduce the conditions of their dominance are the key to understanding changes in the economy, in social relations, and in the culture."

## Geography

"As the views, interests and preferences of the dominant group go, so go the form and content of education that are put in place."

## Humanities

"The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life." --National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended.
The Division of Research Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities encourages research and writing in all areas of the humanities, including the study of history, literature, philosophy, religion, and foreign cultures. Through grants to individual scholars and institutions, the division fosters work that enables Americans to understand the world.
What aspects of education are considered to be part of the humanities?
"Consequently, an ordered list environment is imperative, because without it, members of the dominant group will begin to characterize the list as frivolous. These are the very people, however, whose presence in the discussion group draws new members."
"McLaren argued that study of the humanities harms the lower classes by negating the value of their experiences with works that affirm the viewpoints of the dominant group."

## Languages

The mainstream "[o]ften refers to schools designed for members of the dominant group that do not meet the needs of linguistic minorities".
"They also do it by forcibly moving children from one group (indigenous or minority) to another group (the dominant group) through linguistic and cultural forced assimilation in schools."
"Textbooks and lessons focus on the language and culture of the dominant group."
"Teachers who come from the dominant language society may consider the learners “slow”."
“However, skepticism about the educational value of the Internet and technology generally should not imply that language educators should abandon the playing field to corporate or any other dominant group interests.”

## Laws

"Unfortunately, performance [of law professors] is often hampered by negative feelings, which would be true for any group that had been saddled with centuries of oppression by the dominant group."
"Because the token is highly visible, she bears more performance pressure than members of the dominant group.8 The dynamics created by a skewed group context are exacerbated in the case of the African American female law professor."
"But, in Western societies, when litigation does take place, the plaintiff is unable to be heard because the regulation of the conflict takes place in the idiom of one party-the economically dominant group."

## Medicine

"Perhaps more revealing would be to ask this group of molecular geneticists to describe Lamarckism versus Mendelism. ... These examples characterize a lack of integrative capability that exists in the contemporary and dominant group of gene specialists."

## Music

"The word 'different' to refer to world music occurs 25 times within the 30 minute interview. The centre to which this 'difference' is compared however, is only implied. Moon (1992) notes that the dominant group, the seeming foundation to which all other styles are likened, is often a hidden and implicit construct, which functions to naturalise its position of power."
"Functionalism’s approach to the transmission of knowledge also supports the reproduction of the social status quo—in particular, of the knowledge, ideologies, and practices of dominant social groups that have a vested interest in preventing or minimizing change and, thus, of maintaining their advantages over other groups. ... These theories stress the problems (conflicts) associated with schools that serve mainly (or only) the purposes of dominant groups that have vested interests in maintaining social, economic, gender, and ethnic inequities. ... Viewed as a social practice, it is not a question of whose music, which musics (etc.) to teach, but of stressing the personal and social agency of music—in general and across various groups (dominant or not, in conflict or not). ... Teachers will not, as a result, presume to impose the music of a dominant group, nor will they seek to reproduce society (or music in society) in status quo terms. ... The question of “whose” music to teach recognizes music as social practice from the very first. It can refer to the musics of different ethnic groups in a multicultural community, or to the music imposed by dominant groups on the rest of society. Dominance (power) is not simply an economic or ‘class’ issue (although whose musics get government subsidy does highlight economic and class inequalities): it can involve the dominance of an ethnic majority, or the power (authority) granted to music teachers over their students and, thus, the power to impose one music or a narrow range of musics on students to the exclusion of others."
"Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (1977) have written extensively about how the relatively autonomous character of a school conceals its function as the most effective means for the cultural reproduction of the privileges of the dominant class. ... According to Young (1990) cultural imperialism involves the universalisation of a dominant group's experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm. Because the values and perspectives of dominant groups permeate cultural and institutional norms, members of oppressed groups have their lives interpreted through the lens of the dominant group, defined as ‘common sense’. Furthermore, oppressed groups often internalise the negative stereotypes to which their group is subjected (Baker, et al., 2004; Bell, 1997; Freire 1997a; 1997b). The focus of the music circles is on listening to what would be regarded by the dominant groups as the pinnacles of musical achievement, and to act as a culture study (Giroux, 1986). ... The procedure followed within these circles tries to change the meaning of those cultural products which express the dominant group's perspective on and interpretation of events and elements in society, including other groups in society, insofar as they attain cultural status at all (Young, 1990)."

## Philosophy

“The dominant group in educational philosophy, if one is to judge by the lists of set texts and required readings at English-speaking universities, is the School of Philosophical Analysis represented by Richard S. Peters, Paul H. Hirst, and Michael Oakeshott, with their American contemporaries Israel Scheffler, William R. Perry, and others who are cited in Chapter 7. Deconstruction, Critical Theory and Post-Modernism figure in Chapters 10 and 12, with Scandinavian thinkers from Kierkegaard to Bohr in Chapter 11.”

## Physics

"It seemed clear to me that academic physicists represented a 'dominant group'. Their values and interests shaped the traditional curriculum for school physics, and they had the power to control its content."
"Perhaps thirty years is not long enough for examiners to adapt their methods to the circumstance that professional physicists and not school teachers are now the dominant group in their classes."
"Professors of the MV Lomonosov Moscow State University make up the dominant group of authors."

## Politics

"Esman asserts that regimes committed to the dominance of one communal group at the expense of another (or others) will "always use three methods of conflict management": 1) proscribe or closely control the political expression of collective interest among dominated groups, 2) prohibit entry by members of dominated groups into the dominant community, and 3) provide monopoly or preferential access for members of the dominant group to political participation, advanced education, economic opportunities, and symbols of status such as official language, the flag, national heroes, and holidays, which reinforce the political, economic, and psychic control of the dominant group."
"As I have argued at length elsewhere, the political Right in the United States has been very successful in mobilizing support against the educational system and its employees, often placing responsibility for the crisis in the economy on the schools. Thus, one of its major achievements has been to shift the blame for unemployment and underemployment, for the loss of economic competitiveness, and for the supposed breakdown of traditional values and standards in the family, education, and paid and unpaid work places from the economic, cultural, and social policies and effects of dominant groups to the school and other public agencies."
"As the views, interests and preferences of the dominant group go, so go the form and content of education that are put in place."

## Theology

“Susanne Johnson has argued that theological education needs to embody an environment of hospitality which confronts the dominant group with the moral imperative to give hospitality to the stranger (1993, 343).”

## Religions

"Through such tactics they propose to wring economic and political justice from the dominant group by striking at its most sensitive spot, its markets, and by shaming its Christian conscience."

## Wikibooks

From Bilingual Education/Coercive Power and Language: "The civic perspective deals with the expansion of dynasties into new territories, hence, strengthening the boundaries of the states; the ethnic perspective refers to movement in which “leaders of a cultural and linguistic group aimed to provide the group with territory within which they would be the sole and dominant group” (p.46). It is not difficult to assume that in order to be the “sole and dominant group” these leaders would have to override other cultural and linguistic expressions if not by means of violence, then, by legal means, passing laws that could prohibit the practices of other languages."

## Wikipedia

"A sociological minority is not necessarily a numerical minority — it may include any group that is subnormal with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and political power."

## Wikiversity

In Feinburg, Walter (1998) Common schools uncummon identities. national unity and cultural difference.,
* "A second question is concerned with whether memories, interpretations and norms advanced through a common national identity can reflect the experiences of different groups rather than the dominant economic, racial, gender and social class groups.",
* "The multiculturalists disagree with the separation between cultural and public spheres and argues that the school culture tends to reflect that of the dominant group, while other cultures are marginalized into the private sphere – that, if the assymetry of power between different cultures are not taken into account and dealt with in school (21). ", and
* "This view is partly grounded on the belief that the nation-state, as the foundation of public education, is arbitrary and mainly a tool for dominant groups to remain in power (33)."
"Speaking in terms of dominance and subordination is another way of looking at the system of advantage in the society. According to Jean Baker Miller, dominant groups, holding authority and power, are the ones that set the parametres in which the subordinates operate, often leading to a situation where the subordinate group is labeled defective or substandard and the dominant group is seen as the norm of humanity (1997:23-24)."
"Connected with the dominant groups is the conception of power:
   "For example, Blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than Whites, and women have been viewed as less emotionally stable than men. The dominating group assign roles to the subordinates that reflect the latter’s devalued status, reserving the most highly valued roles int the society for themselves. Subordinates are usually said to be innately incapable of being able to perform the preferred roles. To the extent that the targeted group internalizes the images that the dominant group reflects back to them they may found it difficult to believe in their own ability."(p. 23)
For me this is an interesting issue to reflect upon in the educational system. Refusing school or refusing to learn can be about not belonging, not fitting in and eventually about giving up. “To agree to learn from a stranger who does not respect your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to not-learn and reject their world.” (Tatum citing Herbert Kohl, p. 26)."