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Multiculturalism
or Isolationism? By suggesting that literature must be culturally representative of its readers, members of the San Francisco Unified School Board have laid the foundations for race, gender, and ethnic discrimination. They have stated that the texts chosen for their schools should represent the racial and gender diversity of the students. “Put simply, the message
is that kids can only learn from people who look like them” (Post). This message carries with it some dangerous
implications: it tells students that literary, and personal, value extends
not from the individual merits and achievements of a text, or person, but
that it is “inextricably linked to race and sex” (Post). One of the Board members proposing this
bill comes very close to stating this directly when he says, “Black children
learn differently from other children. It’s an environmental impact. . . It’s
some type of handicap.” Of course,
this doesn’t address the nearly eighty percent Asian population of San
Francisco, but it does say something interesting: students must be taught not
as students, but as blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, men, women, etc. This culturally exclusive agenda does not support the development of a cross-cultural understanding. Instead it promotes the perpetuation of racial, gender, and ethnic stereotypes; blacks must be blacks, women must be women, etc. Literature is no longer a universal discussion of humanity, but an isolationist discussion of maleness or American-ness or blackness. This treatment removes from literature its value as art or language and reduces it “to sex or pigment tone” (Post.); “imagine a reading list where instead of a brief summary or a list of the author’s other works, the only information is the author’s ethnicity” (Post). The solution is not to return to an all white, male, Eurocentric canon, but to use a multicultural canon to encourage the understanding and appreciation of the diversity of literature’s and the world’s components, so that students can survive in a global civilization. A multicultural canon should represent not the diversity of the students reading it, but that of the society in which they will participate. Its aim should be to promote the idea of learning from and finding value in all cultures’ ideas, to encourage the discussion of cross-cultural values within literature. A learning environment such this creates a larger basis of cultural knowledge and understanding that will enable students to develop more mature social and networking skills. It also implies that literature has a cross-cultural value which provides the medium for the student to develop these skills. Though the San Francisco Unified School Board was correct in assuming that students need to read a more culturally diverse canon, their reasons for promoting it and their methods for teaching it were aimed in the wrong direction. Rather than developing a generation of culturally isolated youths, schools should encourage students to participate in the global and human discussion that is literature. Works Cited Post, Katherine. “The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Politics” The Contrarian. 2003. Pacific Research Institute. 15 March 2003 <http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/con/1998/98-03-19.html>. top – discuss – essays
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All original material © 2003 Erika Salomon.
