In Opposition to a Multicultural Curricular Proposal
The faculty of the University of Texas will soon consider a proposal
on multicultural education that would require the study of minority,
non-dominant, third-world, and non-Western cultures. The proposal
should be rejected because it may further reduce the access our
students have to a good education.
The fundamental questions and great ideas developed within Western
culture are transcultural. Everyone understands that there is nothing
Western about a mathematical proof or the inverse square law of
gravity. It is not so widely agreed, but it is nevertheless true,
that there is nothing Western about the categorical imperative, the
cardinal virtues, or constitutional democracy; these are great ideas
for all rational beings, not just Western humans. The fundamental
questions and great ideas, whose study is the only foundation of a
good university education, are well expressed in the classics of
Western art, history, literature, philosophy, and science. Many
university students have astonishingly limited opportunity to study
these classics because of onerous, specialized degree requirements.
Consequently, many students are graduated poorly educated, even if
professionally skilled. The multicultural proposal will further
reduce their scant opportunity to study these classics. In some
highly regimented degree programs, e.g., engineering, the proposal
will all but eliminate the opportunity. For every student, the
proposal will reduce the opportunity to take courses such as:
- Ancient Greek and Roman History. ``I think nothing more valuable than the
Records of Antiquity.'' --- Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. (Locke's writings created the intellectual setting for
the American revolution and our tri-partite, democratic government.)
- Platonic Philosophy. ``The safest general characterization of the
European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of
footnotes to Plato.'' --- Whitehead, Process and Reality.
(Whitehead is one of the founders of formal logic, which is the
mathematical basis of all computing machinery.)
- Shakespearean Drama. ``His characters are not modified by the
customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world; by
the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but
upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or
temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity,
such as the world will always supply, and observation will always
find.'' --- Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare.
The way to justify a curricular requirement is to defend the specific
questions, ideas, and works to be taught. Would the required
multicultural courses explore fundamental questions and great ideas
via classic works about minority, non-dominant, third-world, and
non-Western cultures? This is impossible to tell because the
multicultural proposal names no specific questions, ideas, or works to
be taught. None. Does this haunting omission, in both the proposal
and in its fifty pages of supporting material, indicate that the
multiculturalists are afraid to test what they would teach in the
refiner's fire of public debate? We should wait to see what the
multiculturalists propose to teach before we require the students to
learn it. As an example of the sort of concreteness we need, let me
nominate Martin Luther King's ``Letter from Birmingham Jail'' and its
idea of loving passive resistance, whose greatness was proved in the
American civil rights movement. I have taught this great work for
years, needing no multicultural requirement.
The proposal will be considered by the General Faculty of the
University of Texas at Austin on Friday, December 6, at 2 P.M. in the
auditorium of the LBJ Presidential Library.