We're seeing increased pressure these days to teach more history, but whose history? Just how difficult it can be to deal with that issue becomes obvious when you take a look at the report on multicultural education produced for New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol by his Task Force on Minorities: Equity and Excellence.
The name of the report, "A Curriculum of Inclusion," sounds promising, and so does its contention that school curriculum must "adequately and accurately reflect the pluralistic nature of our society." Clearly, the more people know about each other, the better able they will be to live together in harmony. Unfortunately, what the Sobol reports considers adequate and accurate is more likely to encourage divisions between the various groups in our society than help bring them together. And following its recommendations would lead to a badly fragmented curriculum; not an inclusive one.
The authors of the Sobol report blame poor achievement among minority students on the "Eurocentric" culture that, they say, dominates our curriculum. These students see individuals of their own race or ethnic background mostly playing bit parts in the drama of U.S. history, and they find few if any role models from their own group among the politicians or physicists in their textbooks. As a result of being squelched and ignored in this way, the authors assert, minority students turn off to school.
The report finds a "lack of any serious inclusion of pluralism" in many areas of the curriculum (including Studio in Art Foundations, Developing Keyboarding Skills, The Humane Treatment of Animals and Operating with Fractions). But they spend most of their time discussing social science and especially history. They admit that much has already been done to revise the curriculum - but not enough.
What do they want? Well, they're not primarily interested in contributions that various groups have made to our history. They want to make sure minority students get told nice stories about themselves: Talking about K-6 social studies, the authors observe that minority children "(because of ego starvation and negative socialization) have special needs that can be more meaningfully met by positive images and cultural experiences." And the authors also want to make sure everybody gets equal time.
Just how difficult this aim will be to achieve -- and how counterproductive it will be once achieved - quickly appears from the report itself The authors are, properly, critical of stereotyped presentations of various groups ( except for the "European American monoculture," a stereotype that they use very liberally). So, of course, a curriculum with a Puerto Rican research guide "creates a distortion for other Latinos," and we presumably need a guide for Cubans. And Mexicans? And Salvadorans? You get the idea. The ramifications are clear, too, when you think about the number of minority groups that will be competing to get their share of the curricular pie. If Chinese and Japanese, why not Thai? Why not Koreans? Why not Vietnamese? Why not any group that can put enough pressure on a school system -- and the school system had better get the time allotments right.
All this might or might not lead to improved self-images among minority students. But cultural sound bites, multiplied as many times as a district has vocal minorities, will obviously lead to a badly fragmented curriculum. And it's doubtful that it will lead to a better understanding of the other guy. In fact, kids are more likely to lose heroes than to gain them - "Abraham Lincoln is my hero, not yours." "That's all right, I have Martin Luther King - but how come the teacher spent more time talking about Lincoln?"
As for the efforts of an improved self-image, there's no evidence that having a good opinion of yourself causes you to be successful in school; it could just as well be that doing well in school causes a good self- image. (The results of a recent international math and science examination tell us that South Korean students, who ranked close to the top, spoke less well of their math abilities than American students -- who were at the bottom -- did of theirs.)
Of course, it would be dishonest to maintain that minority students -- and especially black students -- have no reason to feel that their part in American history has often been slighted. How many white Americans -- or black Americans, for that matter -- knew the important role black soldiers played in the Civil War before the recent release of the film "Glory?" How many white kids - or black ones -- really thought about the fact that the Father of Our Country was a slaveowner until some people who knew we should all think about it caused the slaves' burying ground at Mt. Vernon to be marked?
It would also be foolish to pretend that our history curriculums have always presented the times we fell short of our ideals with the same care they've used in presenting our triumphs.
But American history, the story of how many different kinds of people have lived together and shaped a nation, changes from generation to generation as we discover new facts and documents and recognize and discard old biases. There is room for constant refinement. But we must strongly oppose any rewriting of history that tries to divide our past up like a pie among competing groups and any curriculum that is dependent on political pressure.