The Giver

¶ … Giver & Calif. Schools California Classroom Assimilation: 'Giver' or 'Release'?

In order for any person to become truly and comfortably assimilated into a new and unfamiliar culture, that individual must, over time (and likely without thinking about or even knowing it) sacrifice much of his or her earlier identification with, affection for, and memory of his or her first culture, including positive associations with and relationships to early settings, influences, and circumstances. These are also what shape a person and determine who he or she is. To assimilate means to erase from one's mind (and heart) early influences and stimuli deeply associated with selfhood and identity. In Lois Lowry's novel The Giver, within Jonas's orderly but emotionally bereft community, only one person, the Receiver of Memories, may receive (and experience) memories at all, on behalf of all others. The rest shielded. "We really have to protect people from the wrong choices," Jonas says, before the personal epiphany that leads him, eventually, to wholly reject that idea.

The "newchild" Gabriel, who is staying with Jonas's family, experiences sleep disturbance (i.e., bad dreams: permutations of bad memories that somehow seep through into his unconscious). Jonas, with his new powers, comforts Gabriel nightly by instead filling Gabriel's mind with good and soothing memories.

Jonas's community, in pursuit of tranquility and homogeneity, has sacrificed all memories of wars, conflicts, or anything else bad. In an arguably similar way, California schoolchildren who assimilate into California schools from other cultures experience something like the rejection of memory elected by members of Jonas's fictional community. As a result, while assimilating into the new culture, they simultaneously, inevitably, grow alienated from their original cultures and selves, in terms of language; cultural values and practices; priorities; world view - and even food, clothing, music, art, sports, games, and social associations and preferences.

The goals and philosophy of diversity in California classrooms are, of course, to preserve, celebrate, and honor diversity as much as possible (i.e. To notice and positively appreciate Jonas's light-colored eyes, although they are different), which is all to the positive. Still, in honest reality, those goals and that philosophy do not (and cannot) take into full account the realities of actual, real-life, cultural assimilation.