Multi-Culti Mumbo Jumbo In Education

Robert Holland comments on the agenda of the National Association of Multicultural Educators and its leftist agenda.

Surveys by the nonpartisan organization Public Agenda have shown that parents still believe in America as an overwhelmingly good country, and they want their children to believe that as well. A Public Agenda report a few years ago summarized parental attitudes this way:
"We found a clear-eyed patriotism among parents of all backgrounds; a deep belief that the United States is a unique nation, while acknowledging its faults. Parents want the schools to face those faults, but not to dwell on them — the parents we surveyed want history taught with fairness to all groups, but recoil from strategies that they feared might encourage divisiveness."
The multiculturalists, by stark contrast, do not see the United States at all as a good country with common values worth transmitting. They grossly divide Americans into "oppressors" (all whites of European descent) and the "oppressed" (all persons of color from minority cultures).

This is a surprise? I could have told you that 20 years ago, while being subjected to the state-mandated multicultural education class I took at Illinois State University. The one film that offered a "majority" perspective on society was a product of the John Birch Society advocating segregation -- the rest all celebrated ethnic minorities and their cultures, and condemned the oppressive white man. The irony of having the course taught by a white male professor who ruthlessly censored all opposing viewpoints wasn't lost on most of us.

Fortunately, more and more of my colleagues in the classroom are rejecting the approach described above. We love our minority students, but are more interested in educating them than promoting victim status.