Transcript Northern Arizona University

Multicultural Education
Supporters & Opponents
BME 210: Powerpoint 2
Jon Reyhner
Professor of Education
1
2
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).
3
“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)
4
“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
5
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).
6
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.”
7
Is cultural
pluralism an
impossible
dream for
some groups?
Isn’t this what
Hitler said
about Jews?
8
Various Centrisms
Egocentrism
Family-/Clan-centrism
Ethnocentrism/Tribalism
Nationalism/Patriotism/Jingoism
Eurocentrism
Afrocentrism
Anthropocentrism/Species-centrism
Earth-centrism
Heliocentrism
9
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
10
Which Side You Take
Depends A Lot On Your Point of View
11
12
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.’”
13
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
14
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.”
15
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.”
16
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.” 17
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
18
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
19
preserve for squalid savages”
20
21
22
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?”
23
“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.”
24
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 bans
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
25
hate other races or classes of people.”
27
28
29
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
30
should be its role?
31
U.S.A.
Today
August
30,
2006
32
Percent of
students getting
college degrees
based on
parental
income.
33
Among highscoring
students,
family socioeconomic
status helps
determine
what type of
college
students
attend
34
Among lowscoring
students,
family socioeconomic
status helps
determine
what type of
college
students
attend
35
36
Thomas Nast
37
Irish and Catholic
38
Has the Native American No Rights
That the Naturalized American is Bound to Respect
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46