Multicultural Education
Supporters & Opponents
BME 210: Powerpoint 2
Jon Reyhner
Professor of Education
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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
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who give even accidental offense. The Atlantic 9/2015
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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).
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“Multicultural education helps
students to understand and appreciate
cultural differences and similarities and
to recognize the accomplishments of
diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. Classroom materials
portray these diverse groups
realistically and from a variety of
perspectives.” (ASCD Web Site, 2006)
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“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
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The Opponents
“Most of the arguments for
so-called ‘multicultural’ education are so flimsy, inconsistent, 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).
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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.”
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Is cultural
pluralism an
impossible
dream for
some groups?
Isn’t this what
Hitler said
about Jews?
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Various Centrisms
Egocentrism
Family-/Clan-centrism
Ethnocentrism/Tribalism
Nationalism/Patriotism/Jingoism
Eurocentrism
Afrocentrism
Anthropocentrism/Species-centrism
Earth-centrism
Heliocentrism
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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
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Which Side You Take
Depends A Lot On Your Point of View
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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.’”
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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
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reluctance to wage all-out war.”
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.”
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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.”
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American Exceptionalism
President 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.” 18
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 understanding that would inform her or his concept of
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American identity.”
Our 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
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preserve for squalid savages”
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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 llconservatives 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
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same number of references to slavery as the 2014 exam.
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 antiAmerican. In 2014, the Republican National Committee
got involved. They passed resolution that claimed the
framework was "radically revisionist."
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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
begging of this month. Here are a couple of the
changes:
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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.”
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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.”
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Flagstaff Daily Sun Comics 8/16/15
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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?”
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“One of Nussbaum’s concerns seems to be that
our schools will foster arrogance and selfrighteousness, 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.”
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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 insists?
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
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hate other races or classes of people.”
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Equity vs. Equality
• Is there a level playing field in the United
States?
• Warren Buffett’s winning the “Ovarian
Lottery”
• Horatio Alger’s Rags to Riches (Myth vs.
Reality)
• What is the role of affirmative action? What
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should be its role?
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U.S.A.
Today
August
30,
2006
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Percent of
students getting
college degrees
based on
parental
income.
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Among highscoring
students,
family socioeconomic
status helps
determine
what type of
college
students
attend
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Among lowscoring
students,
family socioeconomic
status helps
determine
what type of
college
students
attend
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Thomas Nast
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Irish and Catholic
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Has the Native American No Rights
That the Naturalized American is Bound to Respect
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