Teachers are urged to practice "multicultural education." They're told their classroom should be a rainbow where kids from multiple cultures each add a complimentary color. Advocates of this popular approach, such as Professor Sonia Nieto, author of the popular Affirming Diversity, claim that "cultural, ... differences can and should be honored, respected, and used as a basis for learning and teaching." That's humbug. Why? Because this prescription is based on two false assumptions. First, that all cultures are compatible one with the other. They aren't. Second, that all cultures incorporate the tolerance this rainbow requires. They don't. For instance, members of cultures little influenced by the enlightenment are likely to view the very concept of multiculturalism as totally unacceptable. Indeed, as damnable heresy.
Consider the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam. (The retrograde dogmatic religious sect dominating Saudi Arabia and promoting their intolerance by investing vast amounts of oil money on religious education throughout the Muslim world.) Wahhabi true believers divide the world between the good guys who subscribe to their version of Islam, and Godless heretics or worse. And how do the Wahhabi deal with those who differ? They silence them. And if they must be flogged, jailed, even liquidated, to achieve that silence, so be it. Such intolerance makes it impossible to include their brand of Islam in the process of multicultural education.
Is the Wahhabi brand really that intolerant? In 2004 a Saudi royal study group found that the kingdom's religious studies curriculum "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the 'other.' Embarrassed by such a finding, high ranking Saudi officials promised to eliminate the cited intolerant dogmatism from their curriculum. Years later, however, when the Washington Post analyzed "reformed" Saudi religion texts they found the self-same, intolerant preachments.
Let's imagine Professor Nieto teaching in Saudi Arabia and following her own multicultural prescription. Imagine, for instance, that she openly affirms the value of all religious view points. What do you think her fate would be? And before deciding, consider that in 2005, a Saudi teacher who cautiously suggested that Jews and the New Testament could be viewed positively, was not only fired, but sentenced to 750 lashes and sent to prison. (He was eventually pardoned, but only following intense international protests.) If Professor Nieto actually "affirmed diversity" in a Saudi classroom she would doubtless suffer for it. And since this cultural backwater is extraordinarily misogynistic and Professor Nieto is a woman, a severe outcome would be especially likely.
Let's imagine Professor Nieto teaching in Saudi Arabia and following her own multicultural prescription. Imagine, for instance, that she openly affirms the value of all religious view points. What do you think her fate would be? And before deciding, consider that in 2005, a Saudi teacher who cautiously suggested that Jews and the New Testament could be viewed positively, was not only fired, but sentenced to 750 lashes and sent to prison. (He was eventually pardoned, but only following intense international protests.) If Professor Nieto actually "affirmed diversity" in a Saudi classroom she would doubtless suffer for it. And since this cultural backwater is extraordinarily misogynistic and Professor Nieto is a woman, a severe outcome would be especially likely.
Is Saudi Arabia unique? Is it an island of intolerance in a tolerant world? Of course not. Religious and related cultural intolerance is so common in our world that tolerance is often a novelty. And this is especially true when believers subscribe to any religion that asserts that it, and only it, commands THE truth.
And let'keep in mind that cultures often define themselves, at least in part, by their rejection of, hatred for, and possibly aggression toward, at least some other cultures. Palestinians rarely love the Jews. Armenians usually have serious reservations about the Turks. The Irish routinely have a less than cordial attitudes toward the English. And let's not expect Native Americans to be grateful to the "white man" for ethnically cleansing them from most of the continent. Cultures often clash as they compete for limited resources. As Simon and Garfunkel sang years ago: "The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch. And I don't like anybody very much!"
And let'keep in mind that cultures often define themselves, at least in part, by their rejection of, hatred for, and possibly aggression toward, at least some other cultures. Palestinians rarely love the Jews. Armenians usually have serious reservations about the Turks. The Irish routinely have a less than cordial attitudes toward the English. And let's not expect Native Americans to be grateful to the "white man" for ethnically cleansing them from most of the continent. Cultures often clash as they compete for limited resources. As Simon and Garfunkel sang years ago: "The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch. And I don't like anybody very much!"
How about another example of the foolishness of multicultural education, at least as Nieto describes it. Should a teacher actually set out to affirm diversity when confronting another culture's practice of, say, hating and persecuting homosexuals? (Some cultures even put them to death!) Such murderous intolerance doesn't blend well in any cultural rainbow. What about pre-marital sex. That's pretty common. But an Iranian couple accused of enjoying each other were sentenced to be buried up to their necks in sand, and stoned to death. Should any American teacher affirm that kind of diversity?
There are cultures, as well as subcultures, that condone selling one's own daughter into prostitution, throwing battery acid in the face of girls who merely want to go to school, killing one's sister for "dishonoring" the family, hiring amateurs to carve out the clitoris of little girls with razor blades, forbidding female inclusion in a last will and testament, assigning women second rate legal standing, ad naseum. Should such differences be accepted, respected, and used as a basis for learning and teaching? Of course not.
Yes, America already is something of a cultural rainbow. And that is often an American strength. But that doesn't change the fact that some ingredients will turn this rainbow into mud. For example, the primitive intolerance, coercion and religious support for violence that characterizes some cultures. ISIS is an extreme example. There's a culture we tolerate at our peril. Yet advocates of multiculturalism either pretend such cultures don't exist, or embrace suicidal tolerance.
At bottom, Nieto style multiculturalism is just more of the simple-minded happy talk that plagues educational discourse. Enough of this nonsense! Teaching the nation's children is a far too serious business to treat such ill-considered drivel as anything other than thoughtless nonsense.
