Multicultural Education In America

13 Pages 3188 Words

t of the problem, it might be
appropriate to use an example in that context. Although the debate at
Stanford University ran much deeper than I can hope to touch in this
paper, the root of the problem was as follows: In 1980, Stanford
University came up with a program - later known as the "Stanford-style
multicultural curriculum" which aimed to familiarize students with
traditions, philosophy, literature, and history of the West. The
program consisted of 15 required books by writers such as Plato,
Aristotle, Homer, Aquinas, Marx, and Freud. By 1987, a group called
the Rainbow Coalition argued the fact that the books were all written
by DWEM's or Dead White European Males. They felt that this type of
teaching denied students the knowledge of contributions by people of
color, women, and other oppressed groups. In 1987, the faculty voted
39 to 4 to change the curriculum and do away with the fifteen book
requirement and the term "Western" for the study of at least one
non-European culture and proper attention to be given to the issues of
race and gender (Gould 199). This debate was very important because
its publicity provided the grounds for the argument that America is a
pluralistic society and to study only one people would not accurately
portray what really makes up this country.

Proponents of multicultural education argue that it offers
students a balanced appreciation and critique of other cultures as
well as our own (Stotsky 64). While it is common sense that one could
not have a true understanding of a subject by only possessing
knowledge of one side of it, this brings up the fact that there would
never be enough time in our current school year to equally cover the
contributions of each individual nationality. This leaves teachers
with two options. The first would be to lengthen the school year,
which is highly unlikely because of the political aspects o...