Innocents Abroad American Teachers In The American Century [Paperback]

Protestant missionaries in Latin America. Colonial civilizers in the Pacific. Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa. Since the 1890s, thousands of American teachers--mostly young, white, middle-class, and inexperienced--have fanned out across the globe.Innocents Abroadtells the story of what they intended to teach and what lessons they learned.

Drawing on extensive archives of the teachers' letters and diaries, as well as more recent accounts, Jonathan Zimmerman argues that until the early twentieth century, the teachers assumed their own superiority; they sought to bring civilization, Protestantism, and soap to their host countries. But by the mid-twentieth century, as teachers borrowed the concept of culture from influential anthropologists, they became far more self-questioning about their ethical and social assumptions, their educational theories, and the complexity of their role in a foreign society.

Filled with anecdotes and dilemmas--often funny, always vivid--Zimmerman's narrative explores the teachers' shifting attitudes about their country and themselves, in a world that was more unexpected and unsettling than they could have imagined.

Teaching abroad, [Zimmerman's] book shows, often led Americans to a deeper understanding of cultural relativity and the imperfections of their own society.This charming history of the missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, and other idealists who taught in the four corners of the world over the past 100 years is billed by the author and publisher as an examination of our shifting understanding of culture ...For readers interested in education, though, it offers an even more delicious treat: countless scenes of progressive teachers thwarted in their efforts to export dubious ideas.InInnocents Abroad, Jonathan Zimmerman provides both an important contribution to historical scholarship and a fascinating glimpse at the lives of a unique group of Americans. This book examines Americans in the twentil©