On Intercultural Education
Henry Perkinson, in his Teachers Without Goals/Students Without Purposes, agrees with Dewey that we overemphasize the idea that learning comes from without. Despite Rousseau's recognition that human beings grow and develop through stages at which they are ready for different learning at different times, we continue to use the method introduced by Bacon, one that takes children to be mere receptacles for knowledge, as a bucket or a blank sheet of paper to be filled with properly packaged portions of information.
"As Dewey saw it," says Perkinson, "students do not receive knowledge: they discover it."(Perkinson, p.4-5) And in recognizing this, Dewey conceived of education as problem solving – but \ still the goal was very much like the traditional method, Perkinson concludes, i.e. to get the students to discover what the teacher wanted them to learn.[1]
Perkinson's alternative method purports to goes back to Socrates, who taught that knowledge comes from within. He appears at odds with Dewey in his claim to be "against treating education as the promotion of learning,"(p.5) though he does go on to explain that he means by this to distinguish the outside-in approach to learning, from education as the growth or evolution of knowledge, which is the form of learning he would have us emphasize.(p.5) He intends this, not as a strict formulation, I think, but rather as a principle that knowledge evolves as does, apparently, everything, and it does this at least partly in response to forces which originate within us. He apparently thinks Dewey's theory paid only lip-service to evolutionary principles, but thought of it, as Lamarak, as acquiring characteristics through problem solving for adaptation, which are then transmitted biologically, or in the case of ideas, via instruction, to their young. Perkinson calls this a "replay of the conventional transmission theory of education,"(p.6) different only on its emphasis on allowing the child to "discover" what the teacher wanted the child to learn.
Perkinson proposes evolutionary epistemology, as developed by Karl Popper, to explain the growth of knowledge. According to this conception, we create our knowledge, rather than receive it, in such a way that the growth of knowledge is, like Dewey's, a process of adaptation, but now "the knowledge that survives is the knowledge that fits,"(p.8) and nature selects for and eliminates those which are unfit. In the same way, evolutionary epistemology views knowledge as evolving through the same selection process, whereby we create the ideas, and nature eliminates the errors. We speculate about what might be true, and then empirically discover where we were wrong in the process of getting our conjectures or hypothesis to fit the so-called facts. And according to Perkinson, this goes for skills and perceptions, and even our organs of perception themselves: "our eyes...are embodied theories" about what is out there.(p.9)
However, against the claim that all knowledge comes from within, I would point out that, as adaptation is constrained by the system which is environment to the organism which must adapt, the environment feeds-back much that the organism needs to learn to survive. And thus, knowledge is critically dependent upon these objective "contingencies of survival."(P.10) Because this is the way of interaction between organism and environment, it stands to reason that knowledge is in part a function of the objective world itself, as well as a function of the subjective mind. I think Perkinson would be wise not to overlook this interaction, which Dewey and Mead were careful to emphasize in their conception of emergent evolution. It is a consequent of this oversight, I think, that Perkinson tends toward a purely subjective appraisal of knowledge, which wrongly, I think, ignores the fact that, though we may very well "create" knowledge in just the way he describes, we do not simply "create" reality itself, which is to say, we do not simply make it up as we go along--except in as much as infinite diversity is possible within the constraints of our objective environment. The point here is that we are indeed within these constraints, and wise to attend to them if survival and well-being are the goal. The job of consciousness in adaptation is to read and interpret the world we inhabit in such a way as to intelligently decipher what is and is not a fit understanding of our well-being. And while we are certainly internally driven in this purpose, we are also externally constrained, which makes the function of consciousness to fit the subject to the object. In that Dewey seemed to understand this interaction well, I wonder if Perkinson hasn't cut him short, in favor of what seems to be a purely relativist approach to truth. Many interpret the deconstructionist, postmodern approach to hold this view necessarily, but many, including Foucault himself (one reputed originator of this strain of thought) would point out the role that the objective world plays in limiting and interconnecting what the subjective mind can know.
Perkinson does make one important point when he says, “The ineffectiveness of schools and the rising costs to maintain them have become a national crisis. Yet we cannot go back to the kind of undemocratic control of the schools that existed in the nineteenth century. Nor can we reform the schools through democratic control, since all such efforts lead to more expansion of the curriculum."(p.74) But in answer to his question, "How can we decide what the schools should teach?" I would have to strongly disagree with his proposal of parent choice and vouchers as a solution to this dilemma. Rather, I would suggest that we take his advice more seriously than he himself seems to take it, for "the only way to decide this question is to allow people themselves to choose what is worth knowing"(p.74)--people themselves, meaning, in my view, and I think Dewey and Mead as well, children in deliberative interaction with adults.
It is hard to see how a will to let individuals choose what they need to learn translates necessarily into either (1.) the right of parents to choose for their children, or (2.) the privatization of schools, or (3.) an elaborate expansion of the curriculum. Rather, these all seem good reasons to listen closer to children themselves, to personalize the curriculum such that ideas compete only on the level of individual understanding and interpersonal relationship. It seems to follow from this that we answer his question with the response that we should decide what the schools should teach by paying careful attention to the actual choices students make in learning. And this is best accomplished, I would argue, in dialogue toward the general will, as Rousseau would have advised, and by encouraging individuality and free dissent, as John Stuart Mill emphasized. And what's more, this approach has the advantage of being far more democratic than allowing such important decisions to be made strictly by the market. The danger is, in fact, that the way in which the market would "weed out that knowledge which is not worth knowing" would, in practice, translate directly into weeding out that knowledge which is not profitable. So that, just as a free-market post-office would eventually 'decide' that it is not worth delivering the mail to Nome, Alaska, so with a free-market educational system we run the danger that the market would eventually ‘decide’ that handicapped children and children with learning disabilities are not profitable to teach.
As with his claim that "teachers should create an educative environment that is free, responsive, and supportive, and that will facilitate the growth of student's knowledge," one cannot help but agree with much of what Perkinson says--but this in no way commits one to the extreme brand of subjectivism to which Perkinson subscribes.
Perkinson discusses the move in education from the agenda of 'dead white males' into the apparent awakening enlightenment of the postmoderns.(p.72) But one would wonder just how awake and enlightened this new agenda actually is, if indeed it has this tendency to take the opposite extreme of the position it criticizes in its defense of a multicultural approach to education, rather than to practice the respect and balance it demands. On the other hand, given some of what Taylor has to say, one might well wonder if the perception that this is the case, i.e. that multiculturalists do indeed take this extreme view of the subjective nature of knowledge, is not an illusion evident only to those with incentive, if not reason, to oppose the claims for recognition of dependent cultures. The kind of interaction which Dewey and Mead had in mind between teacher and student involved the search for a balance of subject and object, which Perkinson seems to either ignore, or to miss the point of, if not to outright deny.
Perkinson heeds Hirsch's argument, agreeing that, while "there must be a bond that holds people together in a society, I am not convinced that such a bond must consist of substantive knowledge taught by schools."(Perkinson, p.75) Sadly, he goes on to say that, "unlike a tribal society, we have little or no face-to-face contact with most of the members of our society. And even with those we do--say, fellow pedestrians on the street or fellow riders on the subway train--we have, as a rule, no personal relation with them. In such a society we do not share--or do not know...or care, if we do share--the same substantive beliefs, understandings, theories, and values. So I suspect that in this pluralistic society, we cannot agree on what's worth knowing. Nor should we agree if we want to preserve our free, pluralistic society."(p75-76)
While I don't agree with this conclusion, i.e. that we are and indeed should be quite so alienated, it is for exactly the reasons he cites that I also cannot agree with his approach to teaching, which involves maximum criticism of students to remedy their errors. For in a world where things--indeed the very same things--can look so different from so many different points of view, who can claim to have the frame of reference from which to properly judge the rest? Indeed, what two teachers have the same perspective from which to judge the same child consistently? Despite Perkinson's attempt to expunge education of the external imposition of knowledge, this teaching by criticism seems only one more form of such imposition--and perhaps the very worst kind. While he accuses Dewey of imposing knowledge, despite his own theory to the contrary, I think Perkinson here commits the same sin he condemns. He and I agree that we need a "common outlook toward all knowledge,"(p.76) one which "recognizes and accepts human fallibility and thereby realize that all knowledge is conjectural--never final, never complete--but continually improvable."(p.77) But we strongly disagree that it is through criticism--even positive criticism--that we can achieve this goal. The role of the teacher should not be one of critic, but one of fellow student. As Socrates would have us remember, dialogue is a delicate art, one in which progress requires teacher to be, not a judge, but a gentle guide, never simply telling the truth, but rather nudging others toward it by carefully asking questions, while allowing oneself to be likewise directed.
On the other hand, criticism, properly understood as self-criticism, does play an important and constructive role in dialogue, where listening for the sake of understanding, toward empathy, not judgment, can bring us to what Perkinson does not even hope for--i.e. agreement. Rousseau did hope for this kind of bond, which is much more than a unity of economic interests. Rather he aimed, like the Greeks, at a bond of shared understanding come of active intelligence in honest and deliberate dialogue. Again, this is an interactive end Dewey and Mead both held, and discussed in terms of emergent evolution. It is an ideal I myself would recommend we adhere to as we work toward resolving our educational dilemmas.
Charles Taylor might agree with out worry about the effect of teaching by criticism, arguing that this assumed right to judge runs the risk of misrecognizing the student, "which shows not just a lack of due respect. It can inflict a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need."(Taylor, p.26) While agreeing with Perkinson, Rousseau, and Socrates that the source of truth and morality is within, Taylor would, I suspect, challenge this method of retrieving such knowledge by criticism, perhaps pointing out that it is by just such arrogance that we got ourselves into the multicultural dilemmas which presently engage us.
In his book, Multiculturalism and 'The Politics of Recognition,’ Taylor shows how we, all of us, internalize a picture of ourselves as inferior anytime we are denied rather than affirmed by significant others. He invokes Mead himself to make the point that there is no such thing as purely intrinsic generation of knowledge.(p.32) "The generation of the human mind is in this sense not monological, not something each person accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical."(p.32) "We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us."(p.33) "The making and sustaining of our identity, in the absence of a heroic effort to break out of ordinary existence, remains dialogical throughout our lives."(p.34) "Thus," Taylor says, "my discovering my own identity doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others."(p.34) Thus, as Rousseau also noted, "society takes a turn toward corruption and injustice, when people begin to desire preferential esteem,"(p.35) and this is the point when recognition becomes a power we exercise over others, and incentive to misrecognize increases. This is, I would argue, the very force by which bigotry, in all its forms, originates.
From Taylor's point of view then, Perkinson, while speaking up for the rights of the learner to self-direction, actually manages to prescribe the very approach to education which multiculturalists--his allies in many regards--deplore: that of allowing the dominant culture to judge the value of the minority mind, and to impose the views of the past on the identity of the future. No wonder then when mulitcultural groups, made up of individuals who personally feel the consequences of just such systematic institutionalization of our easily-biased preferences, remind us that "Equal recognition is not just the appropriate mode for a healthy democratic society. Its refusal can inflict damage on those who are denied it...[such that] the withholding of recognition can be a form of oppression."(p.36)
Taylor examines the logic of this demand to alter, enlarge, or scrap the 'canon' in favor of something other than 'dead white males.' He notes that these claims seem to depend on a premise that we owe equal respect to all cultures, and maybe we do, he says. The problem which arises is an especially difficult one because two modes of politics, both based on equal respect, come into conflict here. One claim is difference-blind, focusing on what is the same in all, while the other request for equal respect focuses on what is different. Proponents of the former claim that the latter violates the principle of nondiscrimination, while proponents of the latter feel that the former conception negates identity and difference. But both deplore what they take to be the arrogance of assuming the superiority of works produced by the dominant culture. The suggestion is "that the judgments of worth on which these...were supposedly based were in fact corrupt, were marred by narrowness or insensitivity or, even worse, a desire to downgrade the excluded."(p.66) "The implication seems to be,” Taylor says, “that absent these distorting factors, true judgments of value of different works would place all cultures more or less on the same footing."(p.66)
Taylor admits that, "We might want to argue that we owe all cultures a presumption of this kind."(67) "But...the demand made seems to be much stronger...that a proper respect for equality requires more than a presumption that further study will make us see things this way, but actual judgments of equal worth applied to the customs and creations of these different cultures."(p.68) "The demand for inclusion is logically separable," Taylor notes, "from a claim of equal worth."(p.68) "There is something very wrong with the demand in this form," he says, for "It makes sense to demand as a matter of right that we approach the study of certain cultures with a presumption of their value...but it can't make sense to demand as a matter of right that we come up with a final concluding judgment that their value is great, or equal to others'." "On examination," he says, "either we will find something of great value in culture C, or we will not. But it makes no more sense to demand that we do so than it does to demand that we find the earth round or flat, the temperature of the air hot or cold."(p.69)
Taylor points out that there is a vigorous controversy, begun with Plato (in the dialogue Ion), over whether such judgments can ever be objective. But he admits he has little sympathy for these forms of subjectivism. I myself would respond that one has to be ignoring an important aspect of this problem if one holds this unempathic view; namely, the fact that the "either...or" involved in whether we find value in the works of other cultures, or not, is a matter of choice, not simply a matter of fact--like the shape of the earth or the temperature of the air. It is the choice about how we look that multiculturalists are asking us to be sensitive to, not about what we conclude; that is, to perceive them from their own point of view, rather than from our, perhaps slanted, and habitually judgmental one. I see their call for judgments of equal worth, not as a call for a foregone conclusion to a contest of quality, but as a request that we view them, to the best of our ability, as they view themselves. This does not call for a "favorable judgment on demand,"(p.70) as Taylor suggests it does, but instead, for us to pass no judgments at all. Call it unconditional positive regard. Rather than viewing them relative to our own environment--as if to be able to compare different cultures by the same standard, as if our opportunities were theirs and theirs were ours, as if we all started from the same place, the same resources, the same view of the world and of what is meaningful and beautiful--my sense is that they wish to be considered relative only to the environment which is home to their own culture; which is to say, without comparison at all, as if cultures were like apples and oranges. The presumption that we could ever come up with a proper judgment of superiority and inferiority, no matter how much study we undertake, is grounded in the mistaken belief that we have the right to judge from one context to another in the first place.
These multiple cultures of the world are not, I think, offering the great works of their ancestors up for our scrutiny, our criticism and our judgment, but rather, for our appreciation, to help us to understand...what?...how different we are...how much alike...how much we have to learn from one another...how we do the same things...differently. The proper assumption would seem to be that we all do the best we can in the environment we face with the resources that we have. This view would go a long way, I think, toward helping us, westerners, to recognize how unfair such comparisons as we are in the habit of making truly are. It is not about what we "come up with" in our comparisons; it's about what we have to learn in our study. As Taylor says, "it would take a supreme arrogance to discount the possibility a priori" that we have much to learn from such an exchange.(p73) We all have much to learn, but with our idiosyncratic experience, none of us has the right to judge what another has learned or not learned; at best, we can gather their perspectives into our own, and become more broadminded as we do. But we have no more right to judge, better or worse, here and now about their creative products, than we ever had to judge, better or worse, about their persons. Superiority and inferiority are a matter of the choice of perspective; to look down on...or to look up to... There remains the oft ignored option of equality; of looking them in the eye.
It would be difficult to argue convincingly that there is no incentive here for such judgments to become corrupted. There is simply too much to gain--i.e. assumed, if not actual, superiority--by seeing what we want to see in regard to others' worth. When in fact, we find it easy to ignore the reality which constrains and inspires works from other lands, other cultures, such that we can maintain our illusion that it is we alone, and not in large part the richness or poverty, the abundance or scarcity, of the environment in which we have developed, which is responsible for the magnificence of our works. In this, multicultural groups are only asking for the respect of no judgment--which is not to say we should not appreciate different works differentially...but this is not the same as assuming the right to compare and critically judge them. We need to learn to appreciate and to understand them relative to their own context--a task which is bound to be difficult, no matter how hard we try. Such an effort only becomes patronizing if false, that is, if made as an empty p c gesture toward toleration, rather than as a genuine effort to appreciate and understand. "The difference is only in the packaging," Taylor says.(p.69) Whereas I would say, the difference is in the point of view we choose to adopt.
And where Taylor would say that "the question is no more one of respect, but of taking sides, of solidarity,"(p.70) I would have to point out that it is only "taking sides" if one views the situation as a contest, which it clearly is not...until made so by our judgments of worth. The cultures of the world are not offering themselves up on the market of U.S. opinion; they are rather asking us, the opinion-setters, to refrain from, not merely prejudgment, but judgment altogether--and to simply take it in instead. One might rightly conclude, after a proper viewing, that one does not understand or even like a piece as well as one might or as well as another, but from where comes the right to judge that such a piece is thus, objectively, not as good as another? I am not denying that, like apples from the same tree, there might be proper scales for such measuring when comparing works from a single culture with others from the same origin--and even then there are countless complications involved--but I am denying that such things can be done stereotypically, rather than individually.
And to make matters worse, according to Taylor, "The enemies of multiculturalism in the American academy have perceived this weakness (the supposed nonsensicality of the demand for a foregone conclusion with regard to worth), and have used this as an excuse to turn their backs on the problem."(p.71) This reflects the attitude, he says, that "Civilization is not a gift, it is an achievement--a fragile achievement that needs constantly to be shored up and defended from besiegers inside and out."(p.72)
For myself, I am with Plato, who held that invulnerability to external influence is a function of health and strength within, as vulnerability is a sign of great internal weakness. I think the offenders of the constitution have little right to claim a harm from those who defend it. Whereas the sense that one must "shore up" civilization admits of a comfortable position atop a hierarchy, a structure which one is less likely to want to shake the foundations of the higher up on the hierarchy one sits. This is, apparently, a structure which does not serve all satisfactorily, or it wouldn’t come under attack "from besiegers inside and out" to begin with. I think Taylor does not give near enough consideration to the dynamics of this defensiveness in the dominant culture, certainly not as much as he pays to the so-called 'demands' of dependent cultures, and not even enough to recognize how offensive such an attitude becomes from the point of view of those who are considered "the enemy"--even as they actually constitute "the people."
*
In my own pursuit of an education, I have found the hardest part to be, in a sense, 'unlearning my culture.' Perhaps sorting the baby from the bathwater is a better metaphor. At any rate, I have unwittingly studied toward a conclusion that, as it turns out, the ancient Greeks knew better than we do today, despite the abundance of lip service we pay to their ideals. I think that what I have learned as a result of studying and teaching my own culture and the ideas from which it grows is that the most cherished ideals of our 'dialogue' (if I may use Spindler's conception of 'culture') would affirm the deepest sentiments that I think most advocates of multicultural expansion in academia would have us understand; i.e. justice, equality, freedom, love, individuality, and happiness, among others. These are conceptualized differently in different contexts, to be sure, but if we Americans understood them as well as we pretend to, the 'minorities' among us would not have to beg us for fair treatment, beg us to listen to their perspectives on our disrespects, or to see how unfair and unloving we prove ourselves to be through their eyes when we ignore even their shouts. What should we expect but anger in the streets if this is our institutional modus operandi.
As I understand it, all that is being asked for by multicultural voices is that we Americans live up to our own ideals, as least in our system of education, which has such strong effects on them and their children, not to mention our own. This is all Socrates asked of Athens too...and for her own good as well. And it was Plato who emphasized that education is political. Multiculturalists get about the same reception from the academy as Socrates did from the Athenians, who thought they could simply do away with these ideals as easily as they could do away with an old man. Defenders of the so-called 'cannon' respond to the reasonable request for inclusion as if 'knowledge' were a zero-sum commodity; as if deciding to study other cultures would mean we would have to throw out some of our own. It seems an inane response. Do we do this in others areas? Say, math? Do we throw out the old understandings as our knowledge grows, or do we incorporate it into the complex cumulative whole of our growing mathematical understanding? Can we not do this with cultural knowledge as well?
Perhaps, realistically, there would be some juggling of curriculum, but there may also be new potential for dialogue in this juggling--a multicultural dialogue--if we bring these voices into the conversation that is western culture. How better to learn about one another than from one another? Educating for tolerance has always fallen far short of educating for appreciation and understanding, and perhaps this is why past efforts have failed to bridge isms. The American academy has not even begun to take dialogue seriously enough to bridge the isms between disciplines/subject matters; so it comes as little surprise that it cannot yet help us connect cultures.
But it might. It requires exercising our voices, I think, bringing up the subjects that are being ignored, and emphasizing the points that aren't been gotten. Arrogance? Maybe. Self-respect, at least. If you see something broken, it is up to you to fix it. So my job, as I see it, is to bring it up for discussion...and not drop it until it is answered to. Easy enough to do in my classroom. Practically impossible to do in my department. Using concepts which are key to anthropological study, e.g. dynamic interaction, suspended judgment, emicism, seem to be cause for reprimand and ridicule in the discipline of 'philosophy', or at any rate, in certain departments which call themselves by that name. Is it any wonder then that the system which grows from the social science discipline of 'education' would use strictly outside-looking-in methods to educate the young, as the social sciences use to understand, or at least, predict and control everything? Every 'thing', by this method, becomes only a thing. So how can we see through the eyes of anything else, including our own young, let alone the young of different cultures, not to mention of other species. We've been taught that everything we can't kick or count isn't 'real'. Must we go around kicking everything and everybody until they complain before we can learn the fundamental natural law of justice and fair play? Socrates thought we could learn this in dialogue. What rationalization have we got for not listening when people are complaining? Our own 'golden rule', or maybe Aristotle's 'golden mean', or Kant's categorical imperative, or even Rawl's 'veil of ignorance', all would have us treat those over whom we have so much power with the same respect with which we would have them treat us in similar circumstances. I think the problem is, we cannot even imagine similar circumstances. We cannot seem to put ourselves in anyone else's place...and why should we be able to, when our entire system of education is geared toward ever narrow-mindedness.
Dialogue between cultures in our schools, be they racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, or what have you, could make all the difference toward bridging our larger scale social isms.
So why does the American educational community resist? Perhaps it is because we were ourselves raised by the very system we defend, and so do not ourselves have the empathy we might have, had we had the advantage of a dialectic education ourselves. Thus, assent to the legitimacy of others views and values would introduce cognitive dissonance into the sense of superiority and power that many Americans hold, recognize it or not. It apparently requires more empathy than some have been able to retain to see through the eyes of those we judge and condemn to failure in all our hierarchizing institutional habits.
Behind this attitude lies many unexamined beliefs, and a deep set arrogance. The admission that we may have something to learn from other cultures may be, some fear, a slippery slope all the way to understanding the true meaning of 'equality' and 'justice'--and then how could we defend the superiority we assume and the methods we use to enforce that hierarchy we have constructed by climbing over others to get to where we are. Do we encourage competition in our schools as the natural counterpart of the hierarchical constructs left unexamined in our minds?
So some Americans resist, perhaps in order to maintain that illusion of superiority. But what we don't realize, though the Greeks knew it full well, is that the true cost of our ignorance and arrogance is our own happiness. How so? We're very happy, many will protest. To which Socrates and Buddha among visionary leaders from many cultures would say, how would you know? Without the experience of truer happiness to compare it to, knowing only our own experience, how can we be sure we aren’t missing something better? Do we know the alternatives, i.e. what would otherwise be? Do we realize how good it would be for everyone, even for us, if the world, or at least that part of it we call 'western culture', were ever to begin to honor the ideals to which it pays so much homage. Should it come as any wonder that minority cultures would take offense at being taught Anglo history and ideals when we take so little stock in honoring them ourselves?
Martin Luther King once said in response to the charge of being an outside agitator, that nowhere within the constitutional boundaries of the United States can anyone who speaks up for equality, freedom, and justice be considered an outsider.[Letter from the Birmingham jail] In a network of mutuality, such as this country inevitably is, what affects one directly affects all indirectly--such that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In this light, there seems good reason for solidarity with marginalized peoples in defense of their, and our, basic constitutional rights. But taking sides in this debate, for or against the canon, seems quite counterproductive, a dubious necessity dependent upon the closed or open-mindedness of the dominant culture. It speaks only to those who nit-pick at the logic of the multicultural claim, and not to those who understand the canon well enough to understand that claim as fair. And one which is bound to become ever more emotional and less logical with every such offensive-defense that is leveled toward it.
It seems clear that only by the fair exercise of such power is the authority to make such power as we assume the right to justified at all. And, in turn, the voice of defense is somewhat more justified in turning to offense when their request for dialogue falls on deaf ears. There are other courses that action might take, King reminded us, if we refuse to participate constructively and fairly in dialogue while conscience still dictates our course. We can take this dialogue seriously while we have the chance, and listen with open hearts to the justified appeals of intelligent dissent, which seeks to remind us with gentle reason that, in a pluralistic democracy, we cannot reasonably expect to live in monologue.
There are questions to be answered. If justice is an American ideal, then why are we taught to treat others so unfairly? If love is an American value, then why are so many of us so hateful? If individuality is something we hold dear, then why can so few of us think for ourselves? Answer: because 'hate' is central to the forces of hierarchy; the good of hierarchy is one of our many unquestioned beliefs; and this belief is incompatible with the ideals of justice, equality, freedom, and the other of our cherished Greek ideals. We're not bad people, one might want to argue, but only ignorant of what is truly good for us, and most especially of what's good for others. Maybe this is not how most Americans think; maybe there are only a few evil people to whom all the rest of us react in self-defense? Or maybe we all have the potential, and exercise it just enough to go around putting others down, if only in our minds, in order to elevate ourselves...if only in our own minds. Or maybe we only do it because we believe everyone does it, and so we have no choice. But what if they don't? What if most people, given the chance, would exercise their higher potentials? What if we just want to believe they do it too in order to rationalize and excuse our own actions, as if to pretend they are reactions? But then doesn't this make us part of the evil few to which others have no choice but to react? It's a very hard thing for most of us to think about.
At any rate, it's because some of us are busy putting others down that race, class, and gender relations are what they are, and modern educators are caught up in the game. Plato would say that those who exercise power without justice ought to lose it, and most disenfranchised minorities will agree wholeheartedly. Today they are asking nicely. Now, we still have a chance to listen to reasonable, honorable voices asking for fair consideration in our system of education. A chance to enter into a dialogue that could be the best yet for western culture, and what do we do? Will we wait until it is too late to talk about it? Until tempers rise?[2] There seems certain to be a hump over which these relations, left unexamined, are bound to crumble, like marriage over the edge. So why are American educators resisting true integration of their schools?[3] Or even dialogue about it?
Whatever the reason, many who consider themselves the superior-therefore-dominant culture are threatened by domestic minority demands for recognition and entitlement in the educational system. One reason, for some, seems to be fear of relativism, or perhaps misunderstanding of relativism is more like it. Some appear to believe that somehow the reality of differing perspectives on any object of knowledge must entail a denial of absolute truth. Some worry that giving respect to the subjective aspects of reality will somehow involve giving up on understanding the objective reality. I think this is only a misunderstanding of complementary nature of reality, and instead of throwing doubt on the truth, it might throw light on it, as perceiving with two eyes adds perspective, thus depth, to our perception of reality with only one. Or it may simply be that we fear our own young will not follow our own traditions if they become too exposed to others. 'Corruption of the youth'--a classic crime...and one which betrays our uncertainty about our own good. At any rate, many Americans are defensive.
I don't know why exactly, perhaps because I have had to teach it and found that it teaches itself, but I do not share this insecurity about the worth of western cultural studies, and perhaps this accounts for my willingness (read; craving) to study cultures other than my own, and to see my own culture in dialogue with others. It would make for a glorious holism...the day we give up our competition to be masters of 'the truth'. When we begin to get the ecological point of 'diversity in unity', perhaps we will recognize that 'knowledge' is an infinite domain, and we only deprive ourselves of the whole of truth by clinging defensively to one perspective on it.[4] When we begin to understand the butterfly effect, we'd see the huge difference very small causes can make.[5] When we recognize these new perspectives for what they are, perhaps we will recognize our power for what it is, and thus understand (as Frederick Erikson would have us) that subtle respects build trust, and subtle abuses build resistance. We have all the power we need--and put much of it in the hands of teachers--to resolve longstanding conflicts and potential new ones simply by recognizing the opportunity for apology and forgiveness in every interaction. What does this tell us about how we might teach teachers?
Instead, we have been reduced to defending narrow-mindedness -- so why should our methods of education work? It shouldn't surprise us when our young and others who depend on us develop oppositional attitudes and behaviors. 'Natural law' (older, but not essentially different that the 'golden rule') would predict it. It is in the nature of every living thing to do what it 'thinks' is 'good' for it, that is, what is in its perceived best interest. We may think dominating others by using our power over them to our own personal advantage and the advantage of those we like best is 'good' for us. So did Gorgias. But then we have to realize that those we treat unfairly will find it 'good' for them to resist us, to oppose us, and even to get even with us. It is a chain reaction in which what goes around comes around (explained by Erikson's conception of "complementary schizmogenesis") and it is set into motion by our arrogant educational methods. As Erikson recognizes, small conflicts between teachers and students escalate, over the years and over the generations, into bitter social conflicts that are perhaps too deep to be healed. And the real shame of it is that one side--the dominant culture--is active, and the others are dependent, and so reactive, which means the latter can stop reacting only when the former stops acting as they do. Where is the responsibility for the consequences then? Here I think the distinction between primary and secondary defectors is critical, at least in assigning the proper locus of social change where this power struggle is concerned.[6]
Intelligence, by definition, solves problems; if it creates them, it simply is not 'intelligent'. Equality, and not superiority, being the truth of things, we could quell this escalating battle now, simply by opening our minds and hearts, and by using our voices toward resolving to do what's best for ourselves, our children, and all our so-called enemies. I say 'we' because few are immune to the forces of hierarchy, in one form or another, and we all are responsible for fostering trust where we can. So who are those who resist multicultural education? Answer: those who least understand 'western culture' -- those who do understand it embrace diversity and unity together. The ideals of justice, equality, freedom, and love demand it.
[1] To E. D. Hirsch's claim that "A people is best unified by being taught in childhood the best things in its intellectual and moral heritage," I wholeheartedly agree--if he means to qualify the scope of this heritage to include all those many from whom we honestly have learned and have yet to learn. However, Hirsch’s argument--that we need more nonfiction and traditional stories and myths in our curriculum because the "national vocabulary" should be passed on systematically--leaves a bit too much to the imagination and renders his point rather too ambiguous to support. Other references, such as those to "imaginative literature" and “educational formalism” are also too vague in the context of this short passage to give a comprehensive view of that to which Hirsch is referring. But we can discern, at least, that these stand distinct from the form of "cultural literacy" which he prescribes.
These new materials wouldn't be a novel conception, he says, since we have long taught the classics to children--"in the days before the dominance of educational formalism.” He illustrates that our own ancestors were fully aware of the need for teaching "shared content" (yet another vague reference), both "because it is good, and because other people know it." While Hirsch emphasizes the angle that it is because other people know it that we need this material, I myself think that one could actually put too much emphasis on this extrinsic reason, and come to see learning in a very utilitarian way as a consequent, i.e. as a means of assimilation into, rather than of culture. Learning is certainly a function of adaptation, but part of adaptation involves changing the world to fit one’s better self, not merely changing oneself to fit the world. Thus, rather than teach tradition-for-tradition’s-sake, I would emphasize in my endorsement of a cultural literacy program that classic works are classic works because they are good, a quality which speaks for itself, regardless of reputation. For while political motivation may account for a works popularity in certain times and places, the quality of intrinsic goodness is all that accounts for the survival of great works through time. This approach compels us to take each work from its own point of view, and is thus less vulnerable to corruption, which is to say, less likely to be taken or mistaken to mean "all things western"--as tradition-for-tradition’s-sake so easily can. After having just finished assistant-teaching a course in the great works of our culture, I personally feel quite certain that they are well up to the continual test of new generations of scrutiny. And I also think that Hirsch is right to claim that children, like all people, absorb without strain such material--if it is indeed good, as Plato would have hoped. Studying great works should be primarily an end in itself, and only secondarily a means to other ends.
Dewey and I would agree in this claim that tradition alone is not reason enough to call a work “great.” It is simply too likely, despite intentions to the contrary, for those who do this labeling to be unconsciously committed to a particular version of reality, and to pass this bias on unfairly in judgments made about the worth of work which springs from another version.
And yet Hirsch seems to disagree, or at any rate, to ignore this danger, claiming that "the need of socializing and unifying our people is reason enough for teaching "a common stock of knowledge, a common set of ideals." But again, I think we may be in accord, if by unifying he means bonding, for then it would be more likely to follow that he does indeed mean to include all those many from whom we have learned and have yet to learn into the composite of “our” cultural heritage, and to do so by encouraging a common mutual understanding of one another, in likeness and difference, rather than by imposing the tradition of the dominant culture on the dependent one.
[2] Already there seems the tendency to take the opposing view.[*Perkinson, p.8 in Hirsh paper]
[3] See Rousseau's 'general will', p.8 in Hirsh paper.
[4] See Murray Bookchin (and several of my papers concerning his work) on dialectical logic and some very interesting discussion of complementarity.
[5] See Chaos Theory, James Gleik, and any number of other new and fascinating books on the paradigm shift which is overwhelming science, admit it or not.
[6] See my senior thesis for a discussion of this distinction and its importance.
Henry Perkinson, in his Teachers Without Goals/Students Without Purposes, agrees with Dewey that we overemphasize the idea that learning comes from without. Despite Rousseau's recognition that human beings grow and develop through stages at which they are ready for different learning at different times, we continue to use the method introduced by Bacon, one that takes children to be mere receptacles for knowledge, as a bucket or a blank sheet of paper to be filled with properly packaged portions of information.
"As Dewey saw it," says Perkinson, "students do not receive knowledge: they discover it."(Perkinson, p.4-5) And in recognizing this, Dewey conceived of education as problem solving – but \ still the goal was very much like the traditional method, Perkinson concludes, i.e. to get the students to discover what the teacher wanted them to learn.[1]
Perkinson's alternative method purports to goes back to Socrates, who taught that knowledge comes from within. He appears at odds with Dewey in his claim to be "against treating education as the promotion of learning,"(p.5) though he does go on to explain that he means by this to distinguish the outside-in approach to learning, from education as the growth or evolution of knowledge, which is the form of learning he would have us emphasize.(p.5) He intends this, not as a strict formulation, I think, but rather as a principle that knowledge evolves as does, apparently, everything, and it does this at least partly in response to forces which originate within us. He apparently thinks Dewey's theory paid only lip-service to evolutionary principles, but thought of it, as Lamarak, as acquiring characteristics through problem solving for adaptation, which are then transmitted biologically, or in the case of ideas, via instruction, to their young. Perkinson calls this a "replay of the conventional transmission theory of education,"(p.6) different only on its emphasis on allowing the child to "discover" what the teacher wanted the child to learn.
Perkinson proposes evolutionary epistemology, as developed by Karl Popper, to explain the growth of knowledge. According to this conception, we create our knowledge, rather than receive it, in such a way that the growth of knowledge is, like Dewey's, a process of adaptation, but now "the knowledge that survives is the knowledge that fits,"(p.8) and nature selects for and eliminates those which are unfit. In the same way, evolutionary epistemology views knowledge as evolving through the same selection process, whereby we create the ideas, and nature eliminates the errors. We speculate about what might be true, and then empirically discover where we were wrong in the process of getting our conjectures or hypothesis to fit the so-called facts. And according to Perkinson, this goes for skills and perceptions, and even our organs of perception themselves: "our eyes...are embodied theories" about what is out there.(p.9)
However, against the claim that all knowledge comes from within, I would point out that, as adaptation is constrained by the system which is environment to the organism which must adapt, the environment feeds-back much that the organism needs to learn to survive. And thus, knowledge is critically dependent upon these objective "contingencies of survival."(P.10) Because this is the way of interaction between organism and environment, it stands to reason that knowledge is in part a function of the objective world itself, as well as a function of the subjective mind. I think Perkinson would be wise not to overlook this interaction, which Dewey and Mead were careful to emphasize in their conception of emergent evolution. It is a consequent of this oversight, I think, that Perkinson tends toward a purely subjective appraisal of knowledge, which wrongly, I think, ignores the fact that, though we may very well "create" knowledge in just the way he describes, we do not simply "create" reality itself, which is to say, we do not simply make it up as we go along--except in as much as infinite diversity is possible within the constraints of our objective environment. The point here is that we are indeed within these constraints, and wise to attend to them if survival and well-being are the goal. The job of consciousness in adaptation is to read and interpret the world we inhabit in such a way as to intelligently decipher what is and is not a fit understanding of our well-being. And while we are certainly internally driven in this purpose, we are also externally constrained, which makes the function of consciousness to fit the subject to the object. In that Dewey seemed to understand this interaction well, I wonder if Perkinson hasn't cut him short, in favor of what seems to be a purely relativist approach to truth. Many interpret the deconstructionist, postmodern approach to hold this view necessarily, but many, including Foucault himself (one reputed originator of this strain of thought) would point out the role that the objective world plays in limiting and interconnecting what the subjective mind can know.
Perkinson does make one important point when he says, “The ineffectiveness of schools and the rising costs to maintain them have become a national crisis. Yet we cannot go back to the kind of undemocratic control of the schools that existed in the nineteenth century. Nor can we reform the schools through democratic control, since all such efforts lead to more expansion of the curriculum."(p.74) But in answer to his question, "How can we decide what the schools should teach?" I would have to strongly disagree with his proposal of parent choice and vouchers as a solution to this dilemma. Rather, I would suggest that we take his advice more seriously than he himself seems to take it, for "the only way to decide this question is to allow people themselves to choose what is worth knowing"(p.74)--people themselves, meaning, in my view, and I think Dewey and Mead as well, children in deliberative interaction with adults.
It is hard to see how a will to let individuals choose what they need to learn translates necessarily into either (1.) the right of parents to choose for their children, or (2.) the privatization of schools, or (3.) an elaborate expansion of the curriculum. Rather, these all seem good reasons to listen closer to children themselves, to personalize the curriculum such that ideas compete only on the level of individual understanding and interpersonal relationship. It seems to follow from this that we answer his question with the response that we should decide what the schools should teach by paying careful attention to the actual choices students make in learning. And this is best accomplished, I would argue, in dialogue toward the general will, as Rousseau would have advised, and by encouraging individuality and free dissent, as John Stuart Mill emphasized. And what's more, this approach has the advantage of being far more democratic than allowing such important decisions to be made strictly by the market. The danger is, in fact, that the way in which the market would "weed out that knowledge which is not worth knowing" would, in practice, translate directly into weeding out that knowledge which is not profitable. So that, just as a free-market post-office would eventually 'decide' that it is not worth delivering the mail to Nome, Alaska, so with a free-market educational system we run the danger that the market would eventually ‘decide’ that handicapped children and children with learning disabilities are not profitable to teach.
As with his claim that "teachers should create an educative environment that is free, responsive, and supportive, and that will facilitate the growth of student's knowledge," one cannot help but agree with much of what Perkinson says--but this in no way commits one to the extreme brand of subjectivism to which Perkinson subscribes.
Perkinson discusses the move in education from the agenda of 'dead white males' into the apparent awakening enlightenment of the postmoderns.(p.72) But one would wonder just how awake and enlightened this new agenda actually is, if indeed it has this tendency to take the opposite extreme of the position it criticizes in its defense of a multicultural approach to education, rather than to practice the respect and balance it demands. On the other hand, given some of what Taylor has to say, one might well wonder if the perception that this is the case, i.e. that multiculturalists do indeed take this extreme view of the subjective nature of knowledge, is not an illusion evident only to those with incentive, if not reason, to oppose the claims for recognition of dependent cultures. The kind of interaction which Dewey and Mead had in mind between teacher and student involved the search for a balance of subject and object, which Perkinson seems to either ignore, or to miss the point of, if not to outright deny.
Perkinson heeds Hirsch's argument, agreeing that, while "there must be a bond that holds people together in a society, I am not convinced that such a bond must consist of substantive knowledge taught by schools."(Perkinson, p.75) Sadly, he goes on to say that, "unlike a tribal society, we have little or no face-to-face contact with most of the members of our society. And even with those we do--say, fellow pedestrians on the street or fellow riders on the subway train--we have, as a rule, no personal relation with them. In such a society we do not share--or do not know...or care, if we do share--the same substantive beliefs, understandings, theories, and values. So I suspect that in this pluralistic society, we cannot agree on what's worth knowing. Nor should we agree if we want to preserve our free, pluralistic society."(p75-76)
While I don't agree with this conclusion, i.e. that we are and indeed should be quite so alienated, it is for exactly the reasons he cites that I also cannot agree with his approach to teaching, which involves maximum criticism of students to remedy their errors. For in a world where things--indeed the very same things--can look so different from so many different points of view, who can claim to have the frame of reference from which to properly judge the rest? Indeed, what two teachers have the same perspective from which to judge the same child consistently? Despite Perkinson's attempt to expunge education of the external imposition of knowledge, this teaching by criticism seems only one more form of such imposition--and perhaps the very worst kind. While he accuses Dewey of imposing knowledge, despite his own theory to the contrary, I think Perkinson here commits the same sin he condemns. He and I agree that we need a "common outlook toward all knowledge,"(p.76) one which "recognizes and accepts human fallibility and thereby realize that all knowledge is conjectural--never final, never complete--but continually improvable."(p.77) But we strongly disagree that it is through criticism--even positive criticism--that we can achieve this goal. The role of the teacher should not be one of critic, but one of fellow student. As Socrates would have us remember, dialogue is a delicate art, one in which progress requires teacher to be, not a judge, but a gentle guide, never simply telling the truth, but rather nudging others toward it by carefully asking questions, while allowing oneself to be likewise directed.
On the other hand, criticism, properly understood as self-criticism, does play an important and constructive role in dialogue, where listening for the sake of understanding, toward empathy, not judgment, can bring us to what Perkinson does not even hope for--i.e. agreement. Rousseau did hope for this kind of bond, which is much more than a unity of economic interests. Rather he aimed, like the Greeks, at a bond of shared understanding come of active intelligence in honest and deliberate dialogue. Again, this is an interactive end Dewey and Mead both held, and discussed in terms of emergent evolution. It is an ideal I myself would recommend we adhere to as we work toward resolving our educational dilemmas.
Charles Taylor might agree with out worry about the effect of teaching by criticism, arguing that this assumed right to judge runs the risk of misrecognizing the student, "which shows not just a lack of due respect. It can inflict a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need."(Taylor, p.26) While agreeing with Perkinson, Rousseau, and Socrates that the source of truth and morality is within, Taylor would, I suspect, challenge this method of retrieving such knowledge by criticism, perhaps pointing out that it is by just such arrogance that we got ourselves into the multicultural dilemmas which presently engage us.
In his book, Multiculturalism and 'The Politics of Recognition,’ Taylor shows how we, all of us, internalize a picture of ourselves as inferior anytime we are denied rather than affirmed by significant others. He invokes Mead himself to make the point that there is no such thing as purely intrinsic generation of knowledge.(p.32) "The generation of the human mind is in this sense not monological, not something each person accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical."(p.32) "We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us."(p.33) "The making and sustaining of our identity, in the absence of a heroic effort to break out of ordinary existence, remains dialogical throughout our lives."(p.34) "Thus," Taylor says, "my discovering my own identity doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others."(p.34) Thus, as Rousseau also noted, "society takes a turn toward corruption and injustice, when people begin to desire preferential esteem,"(p.35) and this is the point when recognition becomes a power we exercise over others, and incentive to misrecognize increases. This is, I would argue, the very force by which bigotry, in all its forms, originates.
From Taylor's point of view then, Perkinson, while speaking up for the rights of the learner to self-direction, actually manages to prescribe the very approach to education which multiculturalists--his allies in many regards--deplore: that of allowing the dominant culture to judge the value of the minority mind, and to impose the views of the past on the identity of the future. No wonder then when mulitcultural groups, made up of individuals who personally feel the consequences of just such systematic institutionalization of our easily-biased preferences, remind us that "Equal recognition is not just the appropriate mode for a healthy democratic society. Its refusal can inflict damage on those who are denied it...[such that] the withholding of recognition can be a form of oppression."(p.36)
Taylor examines the logic of this demand to alter, enlarge, or scrap the 'canon' in favor of something other than 'dead white males.' He notes that these claims seem to depend on a premise that we owe equal respect to all cultures, and maybe we do, he says. The problem which arises is an especially difficult one because two modes of politics, both based on equal respect, come into conflict here. One claim is difference-blind, focusing on what is the same in all, while the other request for equal respect focuses on what is different. Proponents of the former claim that the latter violates the principle of nondiscrimination, while proponents of the latter feel that the former conception negates identity and difference. But both deplore what they take to be the arrogance of assuming the superiority of works produced by the dominant culture. The suggestion is "that the judgments of worth on which these...were supposedly based were in fact corrupt, were marred by narrowness or insensitivity or, even worse, a desire to downgrade the excluded."(p.66) "The implication seems to be,” Taylor says, “that absent these distorting factors, true judgments of value of different works would place all cultures more or less on the same footing."(p.66)
Taylor admits that, "We might want to argue that we owe all cultures a presumption of this kind."(67) "But...the demand made seems to be much stronger...that a proper respect for equality requires more than a presumption that further study will make us see things this way, but actual judgments of equal worth applied to the customs and creations of these different cultures."(p.68) "The demand for inclusion is logically separable," Taylor notes, "from a claim of equal worth."(p.68) "There is something very wrong with the demand in this form," he says, for "It makes sense to demand as a matter of right that we approach the study of certain cultures with a presumption of their value...but it can't make sense to demand as a matter of right that we come up with a final concluding judgment that their value is great, or equal to others'." "On examination," he says, "either we will find something of great value in culture C, or we will not. But it makes no more sense to demand that we do so than it does to demand that we find the earth round or flat, the temperature of the air hot or cold."(p.69)
Taylor points out that there is a vigorous controversy, begun with Plato (in the dialogue Ion), over whether such judgments can ever be objective. But he admits he has little sympathy for these forms of subjectivism. I myself would respond that one has to be ignoring an important aspect of this problem if one holds this unempathic view; namely, the fact that the "either...or" involved in whether we find value in the works of other cultures, or not, is a matter of choice, not simply a matter of fact--like the shape of the earth or the temperature of the air. It is the choice about how we look that multiculturalists are asking us to be sensitive to, not about what we conclude; that is, to perceive them from their own point of view, rather than from our, perhaps slanted, and habitually judgmental one. I see their call for judgments of equal worth, not as a call for a foregone conclusion to a contest of quality, but as a request that we view them, to the best of our ability, as they view themselves. This does not call for a "favorable judgment on demand,"(p.70) as Taylor suggests it does, but instead, for us to pass no judgments at all. Call it unconditional positive regard. Rather than viewing them relative to our own environment--as if to be able to compare different cultures by the same standard, as if our opportunities were theirs and theirs were ours, as if we all started from the same place, the same resources, the same view of the world and of what is meaningful and beautiful--my sense is that they wish to be considered relative only to the environment which is home to their own culture; which is to say, without comparison at all, as if cultures were like apples and oranges. The presumption that we could ever come up with a proper judgment of superiority and inferiority, no matter how much study we undertake, is grounded in the mistaken belief that we have the right to judge from one context to another in the first place.
These multiple cultures of the world are not, I think, offering the great works of their ancestors up for our scrutiny, our criticism and our judgment, but rather, for our appreciation, to help us to understand...what?...how different we are...how much alike...how much we have to learn from one another...how we do the same things...differently. The proper assumption would seem to be that we all do the best we can in the environment we face with the resources that we have. This view would go a long way, I think, toward helping us, westerners, to recognize how unfair such comparisons as we are in the habit of making truly are. It is not about what we "come up with" in our comparisons; it's about what we have to learn in our study. As Taylor says, "it would take a supreme arrogance to discount the possibility a priori" that we have much to learn from such an exchange.(p73) We all have much to learn, but with our idiosyncratic experience, none of us has the right to judge what another has learned or not learned; at best, we can gather their perspectives into our own, and become more broadminded as we do. But we have no more right to judge, better or worse, here and now about their creative products, than we ever had to judge, better or worse, about their persons. Superiority and inferiority are a matter of the choice of perspective; to look down on...or to look up to... There remains the oft ignored option of equality; of looking them in the eye.
It would be difficult to argue convincingly that there is no incentive here for such judgments to become corrupted. There is simply too much to gain--i.e. assumed, if not actual, superiority--by seeing what we want to see in regard to others' worth. When in fact, we find it easy to ignore the reality which constrains and inspires works from other lands, other cultures, such that we can maintain our illusion that it is we alone, and not in large part the richness or poverty, the abundance or scarcity, of the environment in which we have developed, which is responsible for the magnificence of our works. In this, multicultural groups are only asking for the respect of no judgment--which is not to say we should not appreciate different works differentially...but this is not the same as assuming the right to compare and critically judge them. We need to learn to appreciate and to understand them relative to their own context--a task which is bound to be difficult, no matter how hard we try. Such an effort only becomes patronizing if false, that is, if made as an empty p c gesture toward toleration, rather than as a genuine effort to appreciate and understand. "The difference is only in the packaging," Taylor says.(p.69) Whereas I would say, the difference is in the point of view we choose to adopt.
And where Taylor would say that "the question is no more one of respect, but of taking sides, of solidarity,"(p.70) I would have to point out that it is only "taking sides" if one views the situation as a contest, which it clearly is not...until made so by our judgments of worth. The cultures of the world are not offering themselves up on the market of U.S. opinion; they are rather asking us, the opinion-setters, to refrain from, not merely prejudgment, but judgment altogether--and to simply take it in instead. One might rightly conclude, after a proper viewing, that one does not understand or even like a piece as well as one might or as well as another, but from where comes the right to judge that such a piece is thus, objectively, not as good as another? I am not denying that, like apples from the same tree, there might be proper scales for such measuring when comparing works from a single culture with others from the same origin--and even then there are countless complications involved--but I am denying that such things can be done stereotypically, rather than individually.
And to make matters worse, according to Taylor, "The enemies of multiculturalism in the American academy have perceived this weakness (the supposed nonsensicality of the demand for a foregone conclusion with regard to worth), and have used this as an excuse to turn their backs on the problem."(p.71) This reflects the attitude, he says, that "Civilization is not a gift, it is an achievement--a fragile achievement that needs constantly to be shored up and defended from besiegers inside and out."(p.72)
For myself, I am with Plato, who held that invulnerability to external influence is a function of health and strength within, as vulnerability is a sign of great internal weakness. I think the offenders of the constitution have little right to claim a harm from those who defend it. Whereas the sense that one must "shore up" civilization admits of a comfortable position atop a hierarchy, a structure which one is less likely to want to shake the foundations of the higher up on the hierarchy one sits. This is, apparently, a structure which does not serve all satisfactorily, or it wouldn’t come under attack "from besiegers inside and out" to begin with. I think Taylor does not give near enough consideration to the dynamics of this defensiveness in the dominant culture, certainly not as much as he pays to the so-called 'demands' of dependent cultures, and not even enough to recognize how offensive such an attitude becomes from the point of view of those who are considered "the enemy"--even as they actually constitute "the people."
*
In my own pursuit of an education, I have found the hardest part to be, in a sense, 'unlearning my culture.' Perhaps sorting the baby from the bathwater is a better metaphor. At any rate, I have unwittingly studied toward a conclusion that, as it turns out, the ancient Greeks knew better than we do today, despite the abundance of lip service we pay to their ideals. I think that what I have learned as a result of studying and teaching my own culture and the ideas from which it grows is that the most cherished ideals of our 'dialogue' (if I may use Spindler's conception of 'culture') would affirm the deepest sentiments that I think most advocates of multicultural expansion in academia would have us understand; i.e. justice, equality, freedom, love, individuality, and happiness, among others. These are conceptualized differently in different contexts, to be sure, but if we Americans understood them as well as we pretend to, the 'minorities' among us would not have to beg us for fair treatment, beg us to listen to their perspectives on our disrespects, or to see how unfair and unloving we prove ourselves to be through their eyes when we ignore even their shouts. What should we expect but anger in the streets if this is our institutional modus operandi.
As I understand it, all that is being asked for by multicultural voices is that we Americans live up to our own ideals, as least in our system of education, which has such strong effects on them and their children, not to mention our own. This is all Socrates asked of Athens too...and for her own good as well. And it was Plato who emphasized that education is political. Multiculturalists get about the same reception from the academy as Socrates did from the Athenians, who thought they could simply do away with these ideals as easily as they could do away with an old man. Defenders of the so-called 'cannon' respond to the reasonable request for inclusion as if 'knowledge' were a zero-sum commodity; as if deciding to study other cultures would mean we would have to throw out some of our own. It seems an inane response. Do we do this in others areas? Say, math? Do we throw out the old understandings as our knowledge grows, or do we incorporate it into the complex cumulative whole of our growing mathematical understanding? Can we not do this with cultural knowledge as well?
Perhaps, realistically, there would be some juggling of curriculum, but there may also be new potential for dialogue in this juggling--a multicultural dialogue--if we bring these voices into the conversation that is western culture. How better to learn about one another than from one another? Educating for tolerance has always fallen far short of educating for appreciation and understanding, and perhaps this is why past efforts have failed to bridge isms. The American academy has not even begun to take dialogue seriously enough to bridge the isms between disciplines/subject matters; so it comes as little surprise that it cannot yet help us connect cultures.
But it might. It requires exercising our voices, I think, bringing up the subjects that are being ignored, and emphasizing the points that aren't been gotten. Arrogance? Maybe. Self-respect, at least. If you see something broken, it is up to you to fix it. So my job, as I see it, is to bring it up for discussion...and not drop it until it is answered to. Easy enough to do in my classroom. Practically impossible to do in my department. Using concepts which are key to anthropological study, e.g. dynamic interaction, suspended judgment, emicism, seem to be cause for reprimand and ridicule in the discipline of 'philosophy', or at any rate, in certain departments which call themselves by that name. Is it any wonder then that the system which grows from the social science discipline of 'education' would use strictly outside-looking-in methods to educate the young, as the social sciences use to understand, or at least, predict and control everything? Every 'thing', by this method, becomes only a thing. So how can we see through the eyes of anything else, including our own young, let alone the young of different cultures, not to mention of other species. We've been taught that everything we can't kick or count isn't 'real'. Must we go around kicking everything and everybody until they complain before we can learn the fundamental natural law of justice and fair play? Socrates thought we could learn this in dialogue. What rationalization have we got for not listening when people are complaining? Our own 'golden rule', or maybe Aristotle's 'golden mean', or Kant's categorical imperative, or even Rawl's 'veil of ignorance', all would have us treat those over whom we have so much power with the same respect with which we would have them treat us in similar circumstances. I think the problem is, we cannot even imagine similar circumstances. We cannot seem to put ourselves in anyone else's place...and why should we be able to, when our entire system of education is geared toward ever narrow-mindedness.
Dialogue between cultures in our schools, be they racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, or what have you, could make all the difference toward bridging our larger scale social isms.
So why does the American educational community resist? Perhaps it is because we were ourselves raised by the very system we defend, and so do not ourselves have the empathy we might have, had we had the advantage of a dialectic education ourselves. Thus, assent to the legitimacy of others views and values would introduce cognitive dissonance into the sense of superiority and power that many Americans hold, recognize it or not. It apparently requires more empathy than some have been able to retain to see through the eyes of those we judge and condemn to failure in all our hierarchizing institutional habits.
Behind this attitude lies many unexamined beliefs, and a deep set arrogance. The admission that we may have something to learn from other cultures may be, some fear, a slippery slope all the way to understanding the true meaning of 'equality' and 'justice'--and then how could we defend the superiority we assume and the methods we use to enforce that hierarchy we have constructed by climbing over others to get to where we are. Do we encourage competition in our schools as the natural counterpart of the hierarchical constructs left unexamined in our minds?
So some Americans resist, perhaps in order to maintain that illusion of superiority. But what we don't realize, though the Greeks knew it full well, is that the true cost of our ignorance and arrogance is our own happiness. How so? We're very happy, many will protest. To which Socrates and Buddha among visionary leaders from many cultures would say, how would you know? Without the experience of truer happiness to compare it to, knowing only our own experience, how can we be sure we aren’t missing something better? Do we know the alternatives, i.e. what would otherwise be? Do we realize how good it would be for everyone, even for us, if the world, or at least that part of it we call 'western culture', were ever to begin to honor the ideals to which it pays so much homage. Should it come as any wonder that minority cultures would take offense at being taught Anglo history and ideals when we take so little stock in honoring them ourselves?
Martin Luther King once said in response to the charge of being an outside agitator, that nowhere within the constitutional boundaries of the United States can anyone who speaks up for equality, freedom, and justice be considered an outsider.[Letter from the Birmingham jail] In a network of mutuality, such as this country inevitably is, what affects one directly affects all indirectly--such that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In this light, there seems good reason for solidarity with marginalized peoples in defense of their, and our, basic constitutional rights. But taking sides in this debate, for or against the canon, seems quite counterproductive, a dubious necessity dependent upon the closed or open-mindedness of the dominant culture. It speaks only to those who nit-pick at the logic of the multicultural claim, and not to those who understand the canon well enough to understand that claim as fair. And one which is bound to become ever more emotional and less logical with every such offensive-defense that is leveled toward it.
It seems clear that only by the fair exercise of such power is the authority to make such power as we assume the right to justified at all. And, in turn, the voice of defense is somewhat more justified in turning to offense when their request for dialogue falls on deaf ears. There are other courses that action might take, King reminded us, if we refuse to participate constructively and fairly in dialogue while conscience still dictates our course. We can take this dialogue seriously while we have the chance, and listen with open hearts to the justified appeals of intelligent dissent, which seeks to remind us with gentle reason that, in a pluralistic democracy, we cannot reasonably expect to live in monologue.
There are questions to be answered. If justice is an American ideal, then why are we taught to treat others so unfairly? If love is an American value, then why are so many of us so hateful? If individuality is something we hold dear, then why can so few of us think for ourselves? Answer: because 'hate' is central to the forces of hierarchy; the good of hierarchy is one of our many unquestioned beliefs; and this belief is incompatible with the ideals of justice, equality, freedom, and the other of our cherished Greek ideals. We're not bad people, one might want to argue, but only ignorant of what is truly good for us, and most especially of what's good for others. Maybe this is not how most Americans think; maybe there are only a few evil people to whom all the rest of us react in self-defense? Or maybe we all have the potential, and exercise it just enough to go around putting others down, if only in our minds, in order to elevate ourselves...if only in our own minds. Or maybe we only do it because we believe everyone does it, and so we have no choice. But what if they don't? What if most people, given the chance, would exercise their higher potentials? What if we just want to believe they do it too in order to rationalize and excuse our own actions, as if to pretend they are reactions? But then doesn't this make us part of the evil few to which others have no choice but to react? It's a very hard thing for most of us to think about.
At any rate, it's because some of us are busy putting others down that race, class, and gender relations are what they are, and modern educators are caught up in the game. Plato would say that those who exercise power without justice ought to lose it, and most disenfranchised minorities will agree wholeheartedly. Today they are asking nicely. Now, we still have a chance to listen to reasonable, honorable voices asking for fair consideration in our system of education. A chance to enter into a dialogue that could be the best yet for western culture, and what do we do? Will we wait until it is too late to talk about it? Until tempers rise?[2] There seems certain to be a hump over which these relations, left unexamined, are bound to crumble, like marriage over the edge. So why are American educators resisting true integration of their schools?[3] Or even dialogue about it?
Whatever the reason, many who consider themselves the superior-therefore-dominant culture are threatened by domestic minority demands for recognition and entitlement in the educational system. One reason, for some, seems to be fear of relativism, or perhaps misunderstanding of relativism is more like it. Some appear to believe that somehow the reality of differing perspectives on any object of knowledge must entail a denial of absolute truth. Some worry that giving respect to the subjective aspects of reality will somehow involve giving up on understanding the objective reality. I think this is only a misunderstanding of complementary nature of reality, and instead of throwing doubt on the truth, it might throw light on it, as perceiving with two eyes adds perspective, thus depth, to our perception of reality with only one. Or it may simply be that we fear our own young will not follow our own traditions if they become too exposed to others. 'Corruption of the youth'--a classic crime...and one which betrays our uncertainty about our own good. At any rate, many Americans are defensive.
I don't know why exactly, perhaps because I have had to teach it and found that it teaches itself, but I do not share this insecurity about the worth of western cultural studies, and perhaps this accounts for my willingness (read; craving) to study cultures other than my own, and to see my own culture in dialogue with others. It would make for a glorious holism...the day we give up our competition to be masters of 'the truth'. When we begin to get the ecological point of 'diversity in unity', perhaps we will recognize that 'knowledge' is an infinite domain, and we only deprive ourselves of the whole of truth by clinging defensively to one perspective on it.[4] When we begin to understand the butterfly effect, we'd see the huge difference very small causes can make.[5] When we recognize these new perspectives for what they are, perhaps we will recognize our power for what it is, and thus understand (as Frederick Erikson would have us) that subtle respects build trust, and subtle abuses build resistance. We have all the power we need--and put much of it in the hands of teachers--to resolve longstanding conflicts and potential new ones simply by recognizing the opportunity for apology and forgiveness in every interaction. What does this tell us about how we might teach teachers?
Instead, we have been reduced to defending narrow-mindedness -- so why should our methods of education work? It shouldn't surprise us when our young and others who depend on us develop oppositional attitudes and behaviors. 'Natural law' (older, but not essentially different that the 'golden rule') would predict it. It is in the nature of every living thing to do what it 'thinks' is 'good' for it, that is, what is in its perceived best interest. We may think dominating others by using our power over them to our own personal advantage and the advantage of those we like best is 'good' for us. So did Gorgias. But then we have to realize that those we treat unfairly will find it 'good' for them to resist us, to oppose us, and even to get even with us. It is a chain reaction in which what goes around comes around (explained by Erikson's conception of "complementary schizmogenesis") and it is set into motion by our arrogant educational methods. As Erikson recognizes, small conflicts between teachers and students escalate, over the years and over the generations, into bitter social conflicts that are perhaps too deep to be healed. And the real shame of it is that one side--the dominant culture--is active, and the others are dependent, and so reactive, which means the latter can stop reacting only when the former stops acting as they do. Where is the responsibility for the consequences then? Here I think the distinction between primary and secondary defectors is critical, at least in assigning the proper locus of social change where this power struggle is concerned.[6]
Intelligence, by definition, solves problems; if it creates them, it simply is not 'intelligent'. Equality, and not superiority, being the truth of things, we could quell this escalating battle now, simply by opening our minds and hearts, and by using our voices toward resolving to do what's best for ourselves, our children, and all our so-called enemies. I say 'we' because few are immune to the forces of hierarchy, in one form or another, and we all are responsible for fostering trust where we can. So who are those who resist multicultural education? Answer: those who least understand 'western culture' -- those who do understand it embrace diversity and unity together. The ideals of justice, equality, freedom, and love demand it.
[1] To E. D. Hirsch's claim that "A people is best unified by being taught in childhood the best things in its intellectual and moral heritage," I wholeheartedly agree--if he means to qualify the scope of this heritage to include all those many from whom we honestly have learned and have yet to learn. However, Hirsch’s argument--that we need more nonfiction and traditional stories and myths in our curriculum because the "national vocabulary" should be passed on systematically--leaves a bit too much to the imagination and renders his point rather too ambiguous to support. Other references, such as those to "imaginative literature" and “educational formalism” are also too vague in the context of this short passage to give a comprehensive view of that to which Hirsch is referring. But we can discern, at least, that these stand distinct from the form of "cultural literacy" which he prescribes.
These new materials wouldn't be a novel conception, he says, since we have long taught the classics to children--"in the days before the dominance of educational formalism.” He illustrates that our own ancestors were fully aware of the need for teaching "shared content" (yet another vague reference), both "because it is good, and because other people know it." While Hirsch emphasizes the angle that it is because other people know it that we need this material, I myself think that one could actually put too much emphasis on this extrinsic reason, and come to see learning in a very utilitarian way as a consequent, i.e. as a means of assimilation into, rather than of culture. Learning is certainly a function of adaptation, but part of adaptation involves changing the world to fit one’s better self, not merely changing oneself to fit the world. Thus, rather than teach tradition-for-tradition’s-sake, I would emphasize in my endorsement of a cultural literacy program that classic works are classic works because they are good, a quality which speaks for itself, regardless of reputation. For while political motivation may account for a works popularity in certain times and places, the quality of intrinsic goodness is all that accounts for the survival of great works through time. This approach compels us to take each work from its own point of view, and is thus less vulnerable to corruption, which is to say, less likely to be taken or mistaken to mean "all things western"--as tradition-for-tradition’s-sake so easily can. After having just finished assistant-teaching a course in the great works of our culture, I personally feel quite certain that they are well up to the continual test of new generations of scrutiny. And I also think that Hirsch is right to claim that children, like all people, absorb without strain such material--if it is indeed good, as Plato would have hoped. Studying great works should be primarily an end in itself, and only secondarily a means to other ends.
Dewey and I would agree in this claim that tradition alone is not reason enough to call a work “great.” It is simply too likely, despite intentions to the contrary, for those who do this labeling to be unconsciously committed to a particular version of reality, and to pass this bias on unfairly in judgments made about the worth of work which springs from another version.
And yet Hirsch seems to disagree, or at any rate, to ignore this danger, claiming that "the need of socializing and unifying our people is reason enough for teaching "a common stock of knowledge, a common set of ideals." But again, I think we may be in accord, if by unifying he means bonding, for then it would be more likely to follow that he does indeed mean to include all those many from whom we have learned and have yet to learn into the composite of “our” cultural heritage, and to do so by encouraging a common mutual understanding of one another, in likeness and difference, rather than by imposing the tradition of the dominant culture on the dependent one.
[2] Already there seems the tendency to take the opposing view.[*Perkinson, p.8 in Hirsh paper]
[3] See Rousseau's 'general will', p.8 in Hirsh paper.
[4] See Murray Bookchin (and several of my papers concerning his work) on dialectical logic and some very interesting discussion of complementarity.
[5] See Chaos Theory, James Gleik, and any number of other new and fascinating books on the paradigm shift which is overwhelming science, admit it or not.
[6] See my senior thesis for a discussion of this distinction and its importance.