Cultural appropriation; cultural literacy
Oh, it’s so hard to keep the dictates of diversity straight! A person can be trying to do the right thing, and yet fail.
For example, yoga:
Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of “cultural appropriation.”
And then there are minority students (or the new catchword, “marginalized” students) who feel traumatized by being forced to listen to the bleatings of a white culture and tradition that disempowers them. One of them is Nissy Aya, a panelist participating in a “teach-in and speak-out” called “Race, Ethnicity and University Life”:
“I was accepted as the class of 2014,” Nissy Aya, CC ’16, said. “I will not receive a degree until 2016, if that is any marker of how hard it has been for me to get through this institution.”…
In addition to a lack of substantive support beyond “quick fixes” from the administration, Aya said that the the Core Curriculum further silences students of color by requiring students to read texts that ignore the existence of marginalized people and their histories.
“It’s traumatizing to sit in Core classes,” Aya said. “We are looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men. I have no power or agency as a black woman, so where do I fit in?”
A significant portion of Aya’s generation seems to be moving in the direction of supporting the practice of limiting speech that offends minorities: they support such efforts 40% to 58%, which while not a majority is still a much greater incidence of those wanting to limit such speech that any previous generation has demonstrated:
We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK.
Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech.
I wonder how the polls would have gone if they had asked whether citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to majority groups; I doubt the response would have been anywhere near as high. My guess is that it’s only certain designated minority groups who have the right to be offended. My next question would be: what about when whites become a minority group, which is supposedly due to happen in a few years? Will they then be able to achieve minority group status (a different thing from merely being in the minority)? I think I know the answer: of course not.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a book by E. D. Hirsch entitled Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Written in 1987 (the same year as Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind), it warns that, in the name of multiculturalism, American education had already failed to teach students the heritage and culture basic to Western civilization and being Americans. Here, Hirsch is quoting a passage written by Benjamin J. Stein, who describes his experience with teenage students in a series of Los Angeles focus groups that he ran in the high schools there. It’s from an essay entitled “The Cheerful Ignorance of the Young in LA” that appeared in the WaPo in 1983 [emphasis mine]:
I have no yet found one single student in Los Angeles, in either college or high school, who could tell me the years when World War II was fought [same for WWI and the Civil War]…
A few have known how many senators California has, but none have known how many Nevada or Oregon has…
Only two could even approximately identify Thomas Jefferson…None could name even one of the first ten amendments to the Constitution or connect them to the Bill of Rights…
On and on it went. On and on it goes…The kids I saw (and there may be lots of others who are different) are not mentally prepared to continue the society because they basically do not understand the society well enough to value it.
Let me repeat: that was written in 1983. The rot was already well established. By my calculations, these high school students are the parents of today’s students, or in some cases even the grandparents of today’s younger students. Not only are way too many of today’s students not getting a basic grounding in these things from their schools, but they’re probably not getting it from way too many of their parents, either. No wonder so many of them are willing to throw away freedom of speech in the name of protecting minorities’ feelings—they don’t een know what freedom of speech is or what it means, or why we have it in the first place.
The same problems are evident in UK universities:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12011143/Student-driven-from-campus-after-speaking-out-against-rape-seminar.html
1983? I remember news stories in 1968 that neither children nor adults questioned outside a supermarket could name more than two of the Bill of Rights, and those were usually only when they overheard someone else say “First Amendment” or “Fifth Amendment.”
This is not new. It wasn’t better in the good old days. Those who read and comment on political/social blogs are not remotely a representative sample of humanity, nor were the friends we remember from then, nor are our memories as good as we think they are.
Assistant Village Idiot:
I can assure you that in the NY public high school I attended, we weren’t going to be graduating without knowing those basics.
We couldn’t have passed the Regents without them.
We here are well aware of the many decades long leftist indoctrination of the young in schools and ‘higher’ education.
Since western enlightenment precepts are anathema to leftist ideology and stand as cultural barriers to the creation of the Left’s “New Man”, degrading and eliminating those cultural barriers demands the utter destruction of western civilization’s traditional precepts.
This is intentional and highly successful because of our resistance to acting against what is, by any other name… subversive treason.
Our insistence on playing by civilized rules is leading to our destruction. It’s too late for anything less than the full truth, to save Rome we must destroy it and build anew.
The unpalatable truth is that there is no cohesive center left to save.
For whether we act now or not, the Left has already destroyed the culture once known as “America, land of the free and the brave”.
Too many of our young are mentally enslaved, thus unfree nor are they brave, for there is nothing beyond their own personal comfort in which they believe.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand” A. Lincoln
Even aside from the emphasis on multiculturalism, etc., the way history is taught has undergone a huge change starting around the time of John Dewey. History was once taught through survey courses, with a solid grounding in actual facts, followed at a later stage by discussion of themes, causes, etc., with not a great deal of attention paid to a student’s interpretation. But, especially since the late 1960s, the approach has been to start with a theme and look at it across cultures and periods, and to draw heavily on student interpretation, with slight attention paid to facts. It’s no wonder so many are clueless.
Why do these kids go to college? Have they ever thought about it? Obviously, some know exactly what kind of degree they want and what they want to do with it, but I suspect that most go because it’s expected of them or because they want credentials that will take them to a prosperous life. If they don’t want to learn, learn how to learn, and experience a bigger world, they are wasting both time and money. And they don’t know that it’s only by plowing through a wider world that they will come to know themselves.
I’m waiting for the college education bubble to burst. Do you know the student loans exceedr 1 trillion dollars now? The last time I looked about 20% were in default.
Many years ago, I worked in the internal audit department of a major corp. After year end, we had a themed party with the externals; one year it was Mexican. The head of the department came in a suit and tie and, when asked what he was dressing as, replied “a Gringo.” Who knew Stan was a social justice warrior before his time.
Incidentally, in the 8th grade, in 1964, our social studies class outlined and discussed each section of the Constitution.
If anybody wants to read the received PC wisdom from inside academia, you can take a quick look at the cover story from “The Chronicle of Higher Education” (the principal source of news and information for college and university faculty and administrators).
The article’s title is “When Free Speech Becomes a Political Weapon.” Here’s a typical bit:
“The Yale philosopher Christopher Lebron has theorized the ways that privileged whites often subscribe to legitimizing myths in order to maintain their self-conception as good people in a racist society. Presenting oneself as a martyr to the cause of a cherished ideal like freedom of speech is one way to do that. It simultaneously serves to discredit the people calling for change – ”
For more good stuff like that, here’s a link to the article:
http://chronicle.com/article/When-Free-Speech-Becomes-a/234207
I read Hirsch’s book years ago and thought it was wonderful. Therefore, I was paying attention on my way up through the general requirements classes (English I and II) at the local community college when that text was mentioned, and I assure you that the instructors there were aware of the book and disagreed with it.
In our junior high, two years of U.S. history was mandatory – and that was separate from our civics class. Drummed into all our heads was that an uninformed electorate was not worthy of our country. *sigh*
I graduated from an urban, public High School in 1981; our drop out rate was close to 50% and very few students went on to earn 4 year degrees. However, the state of Illinois required every student to pass a civics test in sixth or seventh grade (I forget which). One could not advance to the next year until one passed. We had to know all the things listed above (including all ten of the rights in the Bill of Rights), as well as the three branches of the federal government and how they checked and balanced each other. We knew (by number) what many (if not all) of the Articles and Sections of the Constitution focused on and most if not all of the Amendments to the Constitution and when they were adopted.
There was another, similar (and mandatory) course in American History in Sophomore or Junior year of High School.
I believe the State of Texas still does something similar, including a very healthy dose of Texas history. I’ve never met someone schooled in Texas who was ignorant of US and Texas History.
Cornflour, that excerpt is truly frightening!
expat,
Having gotten one through and in the process of paying for yet another now, it’s nearly impossible to get certain types of jobs without a College degree. It’s wrong, and I agree with your assessment of the real, intrinsic value, but it is a mandatory requirement to be considered for many, many positions in our country.
And it has paid off for our oldest so far. He landed a good job while still enrolled and is on his way in his career.
expat,
I should add that he added a second major to his “practical major” (the one he hoped would land him a job). For his second major he studied a classical, liberal path; lots of Latin and Ancient Greek, Philosophy (including Theology), English Lit, Music…
Rufus,
Your son apparently did figure out why he was in college. He went beyond necessary credentialling and skill acquisition to taking advantage of the mind-opening opportunities. I’m not sure that it’s even necessary to take more courses than your major. Just interactingwith people from different backgrounds can open eyes.
Although I didn’t come from a sophisticated or well-off family, I remember being shocked to learn that some of my college friends had never been to a funeral. I suddenly realized that my real-life experiences had taught me far more than my friends had learned, even though they knew more about where to get the best corned beef in NYC.
In other forums, my fellows are put off.
Since they know essentially NOTHING about history, and are anti-informed about politics and world affairs…
They are so put off by my posts that they’ve RUN AWAY.
Just too much ice water// reality.
70% of the most political posters have run off.
It used to be a reverb chamber of non-Americans bashing Americans.
I am fully aware that such keyboard battles are trivial.
But combat has to start with skirmishes.
Popping a few dozen balloons — it is necessary.
A niece of mine, an otherwise sensible young lady, informed me that discussing moslem atrocities was “offensive” and “racist.” And she’s a young Southerner, both of whose parents were liberal birdbrains, who nevertheless has a basic love of America. She marveled to me, after returning from her year abroad in France, “Aunt B., the French really like Americans!” “Of course they do,” I replied. “Most of the people around the world like us. It’s just the Chattering Classes who hate us.”
End affirmative action – end of problem. Admitting unqualified and woefully unprepared students into college does not end well.
In order to teach Americans the substance of their own intellectual heritage the teachers themselves would have to have knowledge of that. Generally speaking (because there are of course some more or less rare exceptions to the general case), this is not so today for the teachers in University today have been taught nothing like what is necessary. The difficulty we face is multi-generational, and can be solved — if it can be solved — only in generations. The choice must be made, however, some serious beginning must be made. If no solution is sought then there is little likelihood any solution to the problem will be found.
A niece of mine, an otherwise sensible young lady, informed me that discussing moslem atrocities was “offensive” and “racist.” And she’s a young Southerner, both of whose parents were liberal birdbrains, who nevertheless has a basic love of America.
That’s the same social totalitarian reaction people got when they tried to tell Southern Democrats that the “War of Northern Aggression” was started by Democrat slave owners and politicians. They got those serfs programmed real well over the centuries.
Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
My kids graduated from a mainstream public school knowing more about history that I learned in high school forty years ago. And a lot more correct information about the Civil War than I got growing up in Georgia in the 60s.
Our daughter recently graduated from a large state university. She and her friends are smart and level-headed. You’re projecting the behavior a handful of students who get picked up in the media onto an entire generation of kids who are just like we were at that age.
You’re being played and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
” Not only are way too many of today’s students not getting a basic grounding in these things from their schools, but they’re probably not getting it from way too many of their parents, either. No wonder so many of them are willing to throw away freedom of speech in the name of protecting minorities’ feelings–they don’t even know what freedom of speech is or what it means, or why we have it in the first place.”
Watter’s World, a segment on the O’Reilly show is veritable theater of political historical ignorance by young people. Jesse Watters goes to colleges and interviews the students, asking very basic questions about politics, current events, and history. It is discouraging to say the least.
In 1954, I was interviewed for Naval OCS to serve in an aviation intelligence specialty. I was asked many questions about current events, geography, politics, and history. The one question I didn’t know the answer to was, “Who is Ho Chi Minh?” Ten years later I was all too familiar with who Ho Chi Minh was. It taught me that even seemingly obscure figures in world affairs can have an affect on your life.
For graduation in my high school it was required to take American History, World History, and Civics. My university required both American History and World History to graduate. It astounds me that none of those are requirements today. Those subjects are the foundation of informed citizenship.
they don’t een know what freedom of speech is or what it means, or why we have it in the first place.
A freedom they did not deserve to inherit, and will not be capable of passing it on to the next generation.
America, the home of the free? Or just the slaves that think they are free?
You’re projecting the behavior a handful of students who get picked up in the media onto an entire generation of kids who are just like we were at that age.
You’re being played and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You’re in the situation when you think seeing a few white cats means every cat of every gen is white.
That’s not how it works, especially under the Left.
Carte Blanche:
You seem to be a bit reading-comprehension-challenged, so I’ll help you out. I have quoted a BOOK here, not the internet. In addition, if you do your homework, you’ll see that tons of surveys of what young people know back up the grim picture. The fact that some young people are well-informed tells you nothing about the general state of knowledge in the population.
The fact that some young people are well-informed tells you nothing about the general state of knowledge in the population.
Did you notice that he was projecting what he was doing unto you, Neo?
Ymarsakar:
Yes.
“Aya said that the the Core Curriculum further silences students of color by requiring students to read texts”
Since when do college students actually read stuff that is assigned to them? Has Cliffs Notes gone out of business? I thought Wikipedia made papers a slam dunk?
No professor at an Ivy League College is going to do anything about those time honored dodges coming from an obvious affirmative action case. Do you think they want to defend themselves against charges of racism? They will give her a B and never mention it.