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The issues now being raised -- although they are presented under the bland guise of syllabus reform -- are thus too important to be left to teachers, school administrators and social commentators alone. Everyone deserves a say, for the customs, beliefs and principles that have unified the U.S., however imperfectly, for more than two centuries are being challenged with a ferocity not seen since the Civil War.
Put bluntly: Do Americans still have faith in the vision of their country as a cradle of individual rights and liberties, or must they relinquish the teaching of some of these freedoms to further the goals of the ethnic and social groups to which they belong? Is America's social contract -- a vision of self-determination that continues to reverberate around the world -- fatally tainted by its origins in Western European thought? What kind of people do Americans now think they are, and what will they tell their children about that?
The multicultural crusade has become part of a wider ferment on American campuses that includes the efforts to mandate a greater "diversity" within faculty and student bodies as well as the movement, derisively labeled "political correctness," that seeks to suppress thoughts or statements deemed offensive to women, blacks or other groups. Some of this has provoked flare-ups, notably at Stanford University, which in 1988 decided to revamp its first-year course, Western Culture, in response to critical pressure. Some students and faculty members at the elite, ethnically diverse institution had complained that the course syllabus offered only the writings of white males. The prospect of one or more of these -- Plato? Shakespeare? -- being kicked out to make room for women and minorities caught traditionalists' attention, as did a demonstration at which students chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture's got to go!" In the end, Stanford excised no one from the reading list; it added optional new assignments.
Now multiculturalism is again in the glare of public attention, thanks to the release of a report recommending changes in the way social studies are taught in New York State public schools. State Education Commissioner Thomas Sobol, responding to complaints from a number of minority groups, chose a panel of 24 educators to review the curriculums in history and related courses. One of their tasks was to suggest innovations that would improve students' understanding of "the cultures, identities, and histories of the diverse groups which comprise American society today." Some critics predicted that the report, a year in preparation, would be a hatchet job on existing academic standards.
They were right, although this report avoids the blistering tone of an earlier Task Force on Minorities, also commissioned by Sobol, that hit its controversial stride in the opening sentence: "African-Americans, Asian- Americans, Puerto Rican/Latinos and Native Americans have all been the victims of an intellectual and educational oppression that has characterized the culture and institutions of the United States and the European American world for centuries."