Inside American Education (12 page)

Despite the affectations of a detached, objective, or “scientific” attitude in many programs, reckless experiments are not science. Chemists do not take chemicals at random and pour them into a test tube to see what happens. Few chemists would survive if they did.

Far from being in any way scientific, psychological-conditioning programs are often fundamentally anti-intellectual. They enshrine “feelings,” not analysis; the opinions of inexerpienced peers, not facts; they induce psychological acceptance of fashionable attitudes rather than teach logical procedures for analyzing assertions, or canons of evidence for scrutinizing claims. In addition to displacing intellectual courses from the curriculum, brainwashing programs actively promote anti-intellectual ways of dealing with the realities of life. Unfortunately, non-intellectual and anti-intellectual approaches
are all too congenial to too many people in the educational establishment.

It may seem strange, or at least ironic, that people of such marginal intellectual competence as many public school teachers and administrators should take on the God-like role of reshaping the psyches and values of children. Yet this is perfectly consistent with the centuries-old observation that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

CHAPTER 4
Assorted Dogmas

A
MONG THE MANY
dogmas prevailing in American education, most can be divided into two broad categories—dogmas about society and dogmas about education. The most widespread of the social dogmas revolve around “multicultural diversity” and the educational dogmas include “relevance,” educating “the whole person,” and a general de-emphasis of authority. Not all these dogmas are exclusively American. Some have gotten a foothold in the educational systems of some other countries, usually with the same disastrous consequences as in the United States.

“MULTICULTURAL DIVERSITY”

Few catch-phrases have been so uncritically accepted, or so variously defined, as “multicultural diversity.” Sometimes it refers to the simple fact that peoples from many racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds make up the American population. At other times, it refers to an agenda of separatism in language and culture, a revisionist view of history as a collection of grievances
to be kept alive, and a program of both historical and contemporary condemnation of American society and Western civilization.

Despite frequent, chameleon-like changes in the meanings of multiculturalism, its basic components are three: (1) a set of ideological beliefs about society and the world, (2) a political agenda to make these beliefs the basis for the curriculum of the whole educational system, and (3) a set of beliefs about the most effective way to conduct an educational system.

Many critics of multiculturalism, such as former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, have done battle over the ideological beliefs of the multiculturalists.
¹
What is most salient
educationally
, however, is the attempt of multiculturalists to make these beliefs a new orthodoxy, to be imposed institutionally by the political authorities. What is also salient are the multiculturalists’ educational methods, geared toward leading students to a set of pre-selected beliefs, rather than toward developing their own ability to analyze for themselves, or to provide them with adequate factual knowledge to make their own independent assessments.

The ideological component of multiculturalism can be summarized as a cultural relativism which finds the prominence of Western civilization in the world or in the schools intolerable. Behind this attitude is often a seething hostility to the West, barely concealed even in public statements designed to attract wider political support for the multicultural agenda. That such attitudes or opinions exist, and are expressed by some people, is to be expected in a free society. It is not these beliefs, as such, which are the real problem. The real
educational
problem is the attempt to impose such views as a new orthodoxy throughout the educational system, not only by classroom brainwashing but also by institutional power—expressed in such things as compulsory indoctrination programs for teachers, making adherence to multiculturalism a condition of employment, and buying only those textbooks which reflect multiculturalism in some way, even if these are textbooks in mathematics or science.

Some or all of these patterns can be found in public schools across the United States, in leading American colleges, and in educational institutions as far away as Britain and Australia. In all these settings, what the general public sees are not the
ideological foundations or the institutional mechanisms of multiculturalism, but only their educational arguments. These arguments fall into a few standard categories:

1. Multiculturalism is necessary to enable our students to participate in the emerging global economy.
   
2. Multiculturalism is necessary because an increasingly diverse population within the United States requires and demands education in a variety of cultures.
   
3. Intergroup relations are better when people are introduced to each other’s cultures in school.
   
4. Education itself is better when presented from various perspectives, derived from culturally different social groups.
   

Whatever the plausibility of any of these beliefs, supporting evidence has seldom been asked or given. On the contrary, evidence contradicting each of these claims has been ignored.

When a 1991 commission report, prepared for the New York state Commissioner of Education, referred to “the need for preparing young people to participate in the world community,”
²
it was echoing a familiar theme in the multicultural literature. Yet neither argument nor evidence was offered to show how the particular things being done as part of the multicultural agenda would accomplish that purpose, which was itself left vague. It would be hard to think of a more monocultural, insular and self-complacent nation than Japan—and vet the Japanese are among the leading participants in the international economy, in international scientific and technological developments, as well as in international travel and tourism. This is not a defense of insularity or of the Japanese, It is simply a piece of empirical evidence to highlight the
non sequitur
of the claim that international participation requires the multicultural ideology or agenda.

Another equally reckless claim is that the ethnic diversity of the American population requires multicultural education. The United States has been ethnically diverse for more than a century. Yet successive massive waves of immigrants have arrived on these shores and become Americans without any such programs as have been proposed by the multiculturalists. Nor is there the slightest evidence, whether from the United States or from other countries where similar programs have been
tried, that the transition has gone better as a result of multi-culturalism.

Perhaps the most tendentious aspect of the claim that ethnic diversity requires multicultural education programs is the assertion that this demand comes from the various ethnic groups themselves—as distinguished from vocal activitists. Non-English-speaking parents, for example, generally seek to get their children to be taught in English, rather than in the foreign-language programs promoted by activists under the label of “bilingualism.”
³
Asian Americans, as well as Hispanics, have been found in polls to prefer to have their children educated in English,
⁴
and bilingual activists have had to resort to pressure and deception to maintain enrolments in bilingual programs.
⁵

The claim that groups will get along better when they are given multicultural education is a straightforward claim which might be straightforwardly tested against the facts—but it almost never is. Wherever group separatism appears or group animosity erupts in the wake of multicultural education, these are automatically attributed to the influence of the larger society. The educational benefits of multiculturalism are likewise often proclaimed but seldom documented. There is no
a priori
reason to believe such claims, especially in the face of multiple evidences of declining educational quality during the period when multiculturalism and other non-academic preoccupations have taken up more and more of the curriculum.

Multiculturalists themselves are quite clear that they do not see their philosophy as just one of many philosophies that different people may entertain, or as something to be optional in some parts of the school curriculum. “Multicultural perspectives should
infuse the entire curriculum, prekindergarten through grade 12
” (emphasis in the original), according to the official report to the New York state Commissioner of Education.
⁶
Because this report considered “
commitment
to multicultural social studies education” to be crucial, it called for “
extensive staff development
” which would “address attitudes”—i.e., indoctrination—and which would extend even to the schools’ clerical staffs and bus drivers.
⁷
In short, the call for cultural “diversity” is a call for ideological conformity.

This pattern is not peculiar to New York state or even to the United States. A study of a multiculturally oriented
school in Manchester, England, found the very same buzzwords—“sensitive,” “child centred,”
⁸
—as well as a determination not to “bend to parents’ prejudices,”
⁹
a similar disregard of teachers who criticized what was being done in the name of “multiculturalism,” and a hiring and promotion of new teachers more in tune with the multicultural dogma.
¹⁰
In Australia as well, there is the same dogmatic sense of exclusive rectitude in a multicultural educator’s dismissal of “assimilationist and melting pot thinking from some reactionaries.”
¹¹

There are many variations on the theme of multiculturalism, but their basic ideological premises, political modes of implementation, and educational practices show a recurrent pattern, whether at the school level or the college level, and whether in the United States or abroad. In all these settings, a major ingredient in the political success of promoters of multiculturalism has been a concealment of both their ideological agendas and their educational results. One of the most politically successful of these “multicultural diversity” programs in the United States, so-called “bilingual education,” has owed much of its political success to concealment of its educational reality.

“Bilingual Education”

The theory behind bilingual education is that youngsters who do not understand English can best be taught school subjects in their native language, taking English classes as a separate subject, rather than be subjected to an all-English education from the first day. The children of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries have been the principal focus of bilingualism, but once the idea caught on in the political arena and in the courtrooms, it expanded to include school children of Asian, Middle Eastern, and other backgrounds, and ultimately drew into its orbit even native-born American children whose only language was English. While most of the bilingual programs have featured the Spanish language, some have been in Chinese, Armenian, Navajo, and more than a hundred other languages.
¹²

A landmark on the road to bilingualism was the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in
Lau v. Nichols
that it was an unconstitutional
denial of equal protection to provide only an English-language education to non-English-speaking school children. While the Supreme Court did not specify what alternative education must be provided, organized ethnic activists now had leverage to push for bilingualism, using the threat of lawsuits and political charges of discrimination and racism against school systems which resisted the activists’ agenda.

Both legally and educationally, there were many possible ways of dealing with the language difficulties of foreign school children, and both school officials and parents might have been given discretion to choose among various options. For example, the foreign students might have been given a course on English as a second language, while taking their other school subjects in English as well, either immediately or alter a transition period. At the other end of the range of possibilities, the children might be taught in a foreign language for years, perhaps with only token gestures toward making them English speakers. The relentless political pressures of ethnic activists have been directed toward the latter system—that is, establishing whole programs taught in a foreign language.

The political clout of these ethnic activists was reflected in Congress’ restrictions on what percentage of federal spending in this area could be on programs teaching English as a second language, rather than on programs taught in foreign languages and given the label “bilingual.” During the Carter administration, only 4 percent of the money could be spent on programs featuring English as a second language. Even under the Reagan administration (which was more critical of bilingualism) this rose only to 25 percent. In short, parents and school officials alike have been restricted in their ability to choose how to deal with foreign students’ language problems, if their choice did not coincide with that of ethnic activists.

These ethnic activists—the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza, and others—have developed a whole agenda, going well beyond the language problems of school children. They argue that the “societal power structure” of white, Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking Americans handicaps non-English-speaking children, not only by presenting education in a language with which these children will have difficulty, but also by making these children ashamed of their own language and culture, and by
making the abandonment of their ancestral culture the price of acceptance in the educational system and in American society. Consistent with this general vision, the educational deficiencies and high drop-out rates of Hispanic students, for example, are blamed on such assaults on their culture and self-esteem.