The transformation of Tom Torlino reflects the righteous assimilation with American culture. Carlisle Boarding School, where he was studying, was a place highlighting Protestantism and ensuring the development of traditional American values within the representatives of the indigenous culture. The person in the picture accepted the Christianity ideas, following the path of cultural assimilation, and their appearance is now closer to a civilized person rather than a savage from the first photo. Such a change in this student and others like him should promote the American cultural homogeneity and emphasize the role of traditional values.
As a Christian missionary, I consider such a change to have positive consequences. From the perspective of promoting the traditional institutions of family and education, such boarding schools have achieved significant improvements. It is also vital that boarding schools propose the Protestantism ideas within the other cultural identities. However, a few problems are to be discussed within the scope of such cultural transformation. The methods which the teachers used to achieve such a change can be described as cruel but necessary. The force and bullying which were used for the assimilation are challenging to be considered righteous from a Christian point of view (Locke & Wright, 2019). In ideal conditions, cultural assimilation should be a voluntary process, yet Native Americans were resistant to change.
The representatives of indigenous cultures had no other option but to accept the ideas of boarding schools to survive. As a result, the impact of such transformations is both positive and negative. The advantage is in the establishment of traditional American values. The negative aspect is that such change was achieved using force which contradicts the typical Christian values. Americans were expecting such a facility to turn local populations into citizens not unlike them through a change of beliefs, behavior, and faith, and Torlino’s transformation supported their views. By the design, this type of school should have been able to turn a Native American into a “civilized” person. If it was possible for people, who have been considered “savages,” Americans should expect this pattern to work in other environments where indigenous people were resistant to change. Despite the positive effects, Americans must understand that boarding schools might not genuinely convince people to embrace change due to apparent flaws in the utilized methods of convincing.
Reference
Locke, J., & Wright, B. (2019). The American yawp. Stanford University Press.