We are in the midst of a revolution in the teaching of American history. Most people would agree it's long overdue. In the past, our history has been taught as a drama in which white men had all the good roles. It was a spectacular, flag-waving saga designed to create loyalty, patriotism and a sense of the rightness of everything the US. did -- and it worked. But the picture was incomplete, and it was not honest. It ignored the contributions of women, of African Americans, of immigrants, of the labor movement and others; it ignored important occasions on which we betrayed our ideals. I don't know anyone today who would defend that kind of patriotic saga of progress or deny that an honest treatment of our history would naturally be multicultural.
But this isn't what some people mean by multiculturalism, and certain popular ideas about the subject are very troublesome. For example, the proposal that the New York State Board of Regents recently accepted, "One Nation, Many Peoples: A Declaration of Cultural Interdependence," sounds reasonable-and certainly the racist language that characterized the "Curriculum of Inclusion," an earlier report to the Regents, has disappeared. But even the latest proposal will encourage intellectual dishonesty and promote divisiveness instead of healing it.
The main point of the report is that history and social studies should be taught from the point of view of "multiple perspectives," and that this should start in the earliest grades. Now, "multiple perspectives" is an excellent phrase. It sounds open-minded, which is what the pursuit of knowledge should be. But when you put the concept into the classroom, what does it mean?
For a teacher presenting a historical event to elementary school children, using multiple perspectives probably means that the teacher turns to each child and asks the child's point of view about the event. To an African-American child this would mean, "What is the African-American point of view?" To a Jewish child, "What is the Jewish point of view?" And to an Irish child, "What is the Irish point of view?"
This is racist because it assumes that a child's point of view is determined by the group he comes from. But is there a single African-American or Jewish or Irish point of view? A child may have a point of view based on the fact that he is rich or poor or that he has read extensively or that he comes from a family of conservative Republicans or Marxists. In a society like ours, we are often, and delightfully, surprised that people do not carry with them the views that stereotypes call for. Is it a teacher's job to tell children that they are entitled to only one point of view because of the racial, religious or ethnic group they come from? Should schools be in the business of promoting racial stereotypes and fostering differences where they may not exist?
There is another equally serious problem with the idea of "multiple perspectives" as it appears in the report to the New York State Regents. It means that the teaching of history should no longer be dominated by ideas that historians widely accept on the basis of available evidence. It urges, instead, that we open up the curriculum to diverse theories, to "noncanonical knowledge and techniques" and "nondominant knowledge sources." Again, this sounds very open-minded. But what using "noncanonical knowledge" means is that it's O.K. to teach theories rejected by an overwhelming majority -- and perhaps all - experts in a field because there is little or no evidence for them. It makes ethnic diversity in ideas more important than evidence of their validity.
People who worry about education standards get up in arms when some group tries to get Creationism into the biology curriculum. And they call it an act of educational courage when a school board refuses to purchase textbooks that treat Creationism as a scientific theory Why? Because the scientific community does not accept the validity of Creationism. Scientists say it's an attempt to pass off a religious view as science. Yet, the Regents' history report assumes that one theory is as good as another as long as the materials are "culturally inclusive." And there seems to be very little resistance on the part of people who would raise a stink if kids were being taught the phlogiston theory in chemistry or the flat-earth theory in geography.
The notion of multiple perspectives that is presented by the Regents' report sounds sensible, but it is dangerous. Schools are supposed to educate our future citizens, scholars and scientists. They should be places where youngsters learn to think and weigh evidence. But there's little chance kids will learn these basic lessons if the curriculum teaches them that the evidence for an idea is less important than the ethnic perspective of the person presenting the idea.
Schools have also, historically, been places where children of varying backgrounds learned to live together. Assigning kids different points of view based on their ethnic, racial or religious background will exacerbate conflict or even create it when none exists. Kids who are now happy to think of themselves primarily as Americans may learn to think of themselves primarily as Hispanics or African-Americans or Jews.
Throughout the world, countries made up of different peoples are coming apart. It would be tragic if here in the US., where almost all feel that they are first and foremost Americans, we adopted a curriculum that would pull us apart.