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By contrast, there is no inflammatory rhetoric in the new report. In fact the document is filled with soporific educationese ("Foundational to this end is the commitment to the development of intellectual competence in our students"). Perhaps to assuage those potential critics not put to sleep by the prose, the report throws in periodic tributes to the concept of national . unity: "With efforts to respect and honor the diverse and pluralistic elements in our nation, special attention will need to be given to those values, characteristics, and traditions which we share in common."
But the document is curiously silent on what those shared values are. It even seems hesitant to acknowledge the fact of U.S. citizenship; wherever possible, it advocates an awareness of global "interdependence" as a fundamental educational concern. In its constant elevation of group and ethnic interests, it represents a radical departure from the way Americans have traditionally viewed the passing on of knowledge in the common school as a means of creating citizens out of a polyglot and diverse pool of young citizens-to-be.
This fact did not account for the report's initial notoriety. A few easily isolated examples of suggested reforms got most of the attention. Among them:
-- Students would be discouraged from calling Africans who were brought to the U.S. in bondage "slaves." Instead they would be referred to as "enslaved persons," which would "call forth the essential humanity of those enslaved, helping students to understand from the beginning the true meaning of slavery."
-- Thanksgiving would be discussed not only as a feast day for whites but as a less joyous occasion for Native Americans.
-- The habit of looking at geography from a European point of view would cease. "The Far East" and "the Middle East" would disappear, replaced by "East Asia" and "Southwest Asia and North Africa."
-- Describing certain Americans as "minorities" would also be phased out: "If social studies is to be taught from a global perspective, many of the so-called minorities in America are more accurately described as part of the world's majorities."
All these proposals have the merit of being specific and thus open to debate. The improvement wrought by "enslaved person" over "slave" may not strike everyone as immediately apparent; to Americans who know their own history, "slave" is a word heavily charged with the connotations of brutal, involuntary degradation. As to the matter of Thanksgiving, Edmund Ladd, 65, a Zuni Pueblo Indian and an anthropologist in New Mexico, says, "We celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and all the holidays that are Anglo-induced because that's the day we don't have to go to work. Thanksgiving is an excuse for us to get together." The adoption of "East Asia" raises the question "East of where?" It is difficult to imagine what a "global perspective" might be, given the report's vague prose.