Liberating Filipino Americans through decolonizing curriculum

As Filipino Americans continue to struggle academically in our public schools, we must seek alternative frameworks to understand how their historical backgrounds and cultural identities have impacted their educational experience. Filipino Americans have a colonial history that has produced what scholars termed as ‘colonial mentality’, a denigration of self and aspiration to be like the colonizer. Given the historical legacy of colonialism, educators have begun to look at developing curriculums and pedagogy with decolonization framework with the aim to emancipate students from ignorance and ignite a commitment to social change. In 1996, the multicultural teacher education program, entitled Pinoy Teach, was launched to empower college students to teach Filipino American history and culture to middle school students. This article presents findings and implications from a survey research study that examined the long term impact on its college student teachers ten years later. Though the Pinoy Teach curriculum was not originally developed from a decolonization framework, the results showed that the program served as a tool to decolonize the college student teachers. The outcomes have implications for the conceptualization and implementation of decolonizing pedagogy and curriculum.