Question

What is the term for the model that fostered the view of american society as the proverbial melting pot, in which the goal of education was to assimilate individual cultural identities into a unique, unified american culture?

Answer 1

Cultural Assimilation Model. Cultural assimilation models describe changes that occur for immigrants as they encounter and interact with a host culture. In the 1920s, sociologist Robert Park was the first to describe cultural assimilation as a unidirectional process of adaptation whereby immigrants endorsed the values, behaviors, and ideals of the host culture, and simultaneously lost the values, behaviors and ideals characterized by the immigrant’s culture of origin. At that time, cultural assimilation and notions of “one people, one culture…one nation” were the prevailing view in American society, mostly comprised of White ethnic immigrants. Immigrants were expected to adapt, assimilate and eventually resemble members of the host culture: