Multicultural Education: Support and Opposition

1. Multicultural EducationWho Supports It?Who Opposes It?BME 210: Week 4-1 Jon Reyhner Professor of Education

2. The Coddling of the American Mind “In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like, and seeking punishment of those who give even accidental offense.” The Atlantic, 9/2015

3. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a blistering attack on campus culture in front of a group of conservative high school students in July 2018, saying that colleges are creating a generation of “supercilious snowflakes.” “Rather than molding a generation of mature, well-informed adults, some schools are doing everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes,” Sessions said during a speech at Turning Point USA's High School Leadership Summit in Washington. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/24/sessions-rips-campus-culture-for-creating-generation-sanctimonious-snowflakes.html

5. University of Chicago’s Position 2016 “Once here you will discover that one of the University of Chicago’s defining characteristics is our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression. … Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship. Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others. You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

6. “Our [the University of Chicago’s] commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

7. NAU’s policy on sensitive course materials reads: University education aims to expand student understanding and awareness. Thus, it necessarily involves engagement with a wide range of information, ideas, and creative representations. In their college studies, students can expect to encounter and to critically appraise materials that may differ from and perhaps challenge familiar understandings, ideas, and beliefs. Students are encouraged to discuss these matters with faculty.

8. The Supporters “Multicultural education is a field of study…whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good” (Banks & Banks, 1995).

9. “Multicultural education helps students to understand and appreciate cultural differences and similarities and to recognize the accomplishments of diverse ethnic, racial, and socio- economic groups. Classroom materials portray these diverse groups realistically and from a variety of perspectives.” (ASCD Web Site, 2006)

10. “Multiculturalism is a system of beliefs and behaviors that recognizes and respects the presence of all diverse groups in an organization or society, acknowledges and values their socio-cultural differences, and encourages and enables their continued contribution within an inclusive cultural context which empowers all within the organization or society.” —Caleb Rosado

11. The Opponents Arthur Schlesinger quotes in The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1991) conservative educational historian Diane Ravitch that “one group after another insisted that its forebears had suffered more than anyone else in history.” He writes “American Indians, Hispanics, Chinese-Americans, homosexuals, born-again Christian fundamentalists, atheists—all protested that the schoolbooks had not gone far enough in celebrating their particular cultures or viewpoints.”

12. The single theme that persistently ran through the hearings in California on textbook content according to Ravitch “was that the critics did not want anything taught if it offended members of their group; whatever was taught, many claimed, must have a positive effect on the self-esteem or pride of their group…. The only villains in the history-for-self-esteem movement…are white males, who thus far have no spokesmen.” They certainly have one with President Trump today!

13. Neil Postman in his 1995 book,The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, is against multicultural education “that makes cultural diversity an exclusive preoccupation” and which “in its most frightening version, evil inheres in white people, especially those of European origin.” However, he thinks “English is the most multicultural language on Earth, and anyone who speaks it is indebted to people all over the world” and “it is necessary for our students to learn to speak at least one language other than English fluently.” He thinks textbooks are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning.”

14. More Opponents “Most of the arguments for so-called ‘multicultural’ educ- ation are so flimsy, inconsis- tent, and downright silly that it is hard to imagine that they would have been taken seriously if they were not backed up by shrill rhetoric, character assassination, and the implied or open threat of organized disruption and violence on campus”—Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

15. On the back cover of Rush Limbaugh's popular 1994 book See I Told You So he says, “Multicultural education is just an excuse for those who have not made it in the American way.” According to Limbaugh, “Multicultural curricula, multicultural training [is] understanding that you’re no better than anybody else and understanding the Indians got screwed, that it’s really their country. Understanding that white Europeans brought to this country syphilis and other disease, environmentalism, sexism, racism and homophobia. If it weren’t for all of that, this really would be a great country if white Europeans had just stayed where they were.”

16. Is cultural pluralism an impossible dream for some groups? Isn’t this what Hitler said about Jews?

17. Various Centrisms Egocentrism Family-/Clan-centrism Ethnocentrism/Tribalism Nationalism/Patriotism/Jingoism Eurocentrism Afrocentrism Anthropocentrism/Species-centrism Earth-centrism Heliocentrism

18. Two Extremes Blame the Victim It’s Your Fault if You’re Poor Just-World Thinking vs. Book of Job vs. Blame the Oppressor The “Man” Is Keeping You Down Hegemony Salad Bowl vs. Melting Pot Dichotamous/Dualistic Thinking It’s either Heaven or Hell

19. Which Side You Take Depends A Lot On Your Point of View President Trump in his 2018 State of the Union message has called for all Americans to support our soldiers and officers, but he has been attacking the FBI, especially in regard to the probe of possible Russian interference in the last election. 19

20. Which Side You Take Depends A Lot On Your Point of View 20

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22. Disuniting America? Lynn Cheney, wife of the former Vice President, writes, “In recent years, some activists have been remarkably frank about the political goals they have for education. Betty Jean Craige of the University of Georgia argues that ‘multiculturalism’ has the happy ‘potential for ideologically disuniting the nation.’”

23. My Country Right or Wrong? “As American students learn more about the faults of this country and about the virtues of other nations, she [Craige] writes, they will be less and less likely to think this country deserves their special support.” According to Craige, “Multicultural education may well be incompatible with patriotism, if patriotism means belief in the nation’s superiority over other nations.... The advantage to the nation of multicultural education thus may be increased reluctance to wage all-out war.”

24. Classicist Martha Nussbaum makes a case against patriotism, calling education that encourages it “morally dangerous” as patriotism gives “support to nationalist sentiments” that ultimately subvert “values that hold a nation together, because it substitutes a colorful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right.”

25. American Exceptionalism “A central confusion in Nussbaum’s argument, and in Craige’s, is that neither considers the ways in which the American system has uniquely nurtured justice and right. The idea enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal has, for example, been a driving force behind the changes we have made to achieve a greater degree of equality than exists anywhere in the world for women—and for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. The principles of freedom and liberty that have inspired our political system have also informed our economic arrangements and made the United States a beacon of opportunity to people everywhere.”

26. American ExceptionalismPresident Ronald Regan’s 1974 Speech: “Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, ‘We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.’ Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.”

27. Diana Sheets, English & History Dept.,University of Illinois, 2013 “Because we no longer have a shared cultural framework with which to forge a universal experience, American Exceptionalism has become synonymous with colonial tyranny. What has taken the place of Western Civilization? A sanctimonious belief on the part of students in the humanities that translates on the personal level to ‘I’m a good person’; ‘I have a low carbon footprint’; ‘I believe in social justice’, and ‘I embrace our global diversity’. The problem is, that ‘good’ person who graduated with a humanities degrees has no historical under-standing that would inform her or his concept of American identity.”

28. U.S. Declaration of Independence “He [King George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Theodore Roosevelt expressed similar thinking in his 1889 book The Winning of the West, writing,“The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as a game preserve for squalid savages”

32. Revised AP history standards will push ‘American Exceptionalism’Aug 4, 2015 by Guardian (UK) The College Board that oversees advanced placement courses for US high school students has revised its US history standards to include a section on ‘American Exceptionalism’ after a backlash from conservatives who said the exam wasn’t patriotic enough. The advanced placement (AP) history framework, revised in 2014, triggered a nationwide debate over how American high schoolers should learn about their nation’s history, pitting conservatives who found the curriculum “anti-American” against teachers and students who rejected the changes as “revisionism”. In response, the new framework explicitly introduces the concept of “American exceptionalism”, and highlights achievements of US history through this lens. It also includes direct references to the names and roles of the nation’s founding fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin – a flashpoint in the debate. It does, however, maintain roughly the same number of references to slavery as the 2014 exam.

33. AP U.S. History Significantly Changes for 2015 A New curriculum framework has been released by the College Board for their Advanced Placement U.S. history course after it earned criticism for 2014’s framework, particularly when it came to its handling of American identity. According to a statement released by the College Board in late July, the revisions are “clearer and more historically precise, and less open to misinterpretation or perceptions of imbalance.” The main complaints came from conservative party members who saw the course’s framework as biased and anti-American. In 2014, the Republican National Committee got involved. They passed resolution that claimed the framework was "radically revisionist." 

34. After facing the intense pressures of organized protest from various conservative angles, including many history teachers, the College Board took the advise, and announced the new less “biased” framework at the beginning of this month. Here are a couple of the changes:

35. On the idea of white superiority within the system of slavery… 2014 AP U.S. History Framework Standard: “Reinforced by a strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority, the British system enslaved black people in perpetuity, altered African gender and kinship relationships in the colonies and was one factor that led the British colonists into violent confrontations with native peoples.” 2015 AP U.S. History Framework Standard: “As chattel slavery became the dominant labor system in many southern colonies, new laws created a strict racial system that prohibited interracial relationships and defined the descendants of African American mothers as black and enslaved in perpetuity.”

36. On Native American degradation… 2014 AP U.S. History Framework Standard: “By supplying American Indian allies with deadlier weapons and alcohol, and by rewarding Indian military actions, Europeans helped increase the intensity and destructiveness of American Indian warfare.” 2015 AP U.S. History Framework Standard: “The introduction of guns, other weapons, and alcohol stimulated cultural and demographic changes in some Native American societies.” Interestingly, the history standards for Wyoming, the home of Shoshones and Northern Arapahos on the Wind River reservation, makes no mention of American Indians

37. Flagstaff Daily Sun Comics 8/16/15

38. According to Cheney,“If we do not teach our children these things [about how great our nation is], they may well conclude, as Craige wishes, that this nation deserves no special support. They might well become ‘cosmopolitan,’ as Nussbaum prefers. But we will have accomplished these ends at the cost of truth—a truth, moreover, that calls into question the wisdom of the political goals that Craige and Nussbaum advance. Why deny special support to a nation that has become a political and economic lodestar to people around the world?”

39. “One of Nussbaum’s concerns seems to be that our schools will foster arrogance and self-righteousness, that they will encourage the view that ‘Americans as such are worthy of special respect.’ And, adds Nussbaum, ‘that, I think, is a story that Americans have told for far too long.’ But no one is suggesting that we hide our flaws or neglect the achievements of others. The point is to give students as accurate an accounting of the past as we can; and when we neglect our accomplishments and emphasize our failings, while doing exactly the opposite for other cultures, it is not the cause of truth that is being advanced.”

40. Does Tucson’s Ethnic Studies Program teach students to hate America as former Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction and former AZ Attorney General Tom Horne insisted? Arizona’s 2010 House Bill 2281 banned schools from teaching classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that promote resentment, ethnic solidarity, or overthrow of the U.S. government. “Public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”

45. Equity vs. Equality • Is there a level playing field in the United States? • Are we a “meritocracy”? • Warren Buffett’s winning the “Ovarian Lottery” • Is this the land of opportunity? Horatio Alger’s Rags to Riches (Myth vs. Reality) • What is the role of affirmative action? What should be its role?

49. Even With Affirmative Action: Blacksand Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago New York Times 8/25/17

50. U.S.A. Today August 30, 2006