Multiculturalism & the Loss of Americanism

Exploring the Homeschooling Arguments of the 80’s & 90’s –

Reviewing old Editorials in the Light of our Present Day

The Blumenfeld Education Letter Revisited

Vol 1, No 1 (pt. 1) – Sept. 1986

(NOTE: The following editorial has been quoted verbatim from the original. This is intended to be treated as an historical document without opinion or comment.)

MULTICULTURALISM: A Prescription for Moral Anarchy

Samuel Blumenfeld
author of “Is Public Education Necessary”
“N.E.A. Trojan Horse of American Education”
“Alpha-Phonics”

by Samuel L. Blumenfeld, author and critic of the American education system

Professional educators write a great deal these days about multicultural education but few among the lay public actually know what it is. Despite this widespread public ignorance, multicultural education is now an integral part of the American government school curriculum. In fact, our humanist educators now consider multicultural education to be so important that the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has given it a very prominent place in teacher education programs.

What is Multicultural Education?

The NCATE’s publication, Standards for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (July 1982), states:

“Multicultural education is preparation for the social, political, and economic realities that individuals experience in culturally diverse and complex human encounters… this preparation provides a process by which an individual develops competencies for perceiving, believing, evaluating and behaving in differential cultural settings.

“Provision should be made for instruction in multicultural education in teacher education programs. Multicultural education should receive attention in courses, seminars, directed readings, laboratory and clinical experiences, practicum, and other types of field exercises.

“Multicultural education should include, but would not be limited to experiences which: (1) promote analytical and evaluative abilities to confront issues such as participatory democracy, racism and sexism, and the parity of power; (2) develop skills for values clarification including the study of the manifest and latent transmission of values; (3) examine the dynamics of diverse cultures and the implications for developing teaching strategies; and (4) examine linguistic variations and diverse learning styles as a basis for the development of appropriate teaching strategies.”

Although NCATE’s requirements for teacher training, which became effective in January 1979, are quite explicit, nowhere in the NCATE’s publication is there a definition or description of what multicultural education really is.

We get hints in the requirements. We are told of “culturally diverse and complex human encounters” and “differential cultural settings.” We are also told that multicultural education has something to do with racism, sexism, parity of power, values clarification, the transmission of values both manifest and latent, the dynamics of diverse cultures, linguistic variations., etc.

(See also, by Sam Blumenfeld: ORDER HERE: N.E.A. Trojan Horse in American Education

How is it Defined?

But what does it all mean in language that you and I can understand? What does it mean to parents whose children will be subjected to multicultural education? What does it mean to the local school board which will be required to implement a state-mandated multicultural education program in the local school?

A rather comprehensive treatment of the subject can be found in the Spring 1984 issue of Theory Into Practice, the journal of the College of Education at Ohio State University. That issue contains 13 articles on multicultural education covering many aspects of the subject.

Multiculturalism is based on the notion that the traditional Judeo-Christian model of American values is no longer valid as the model to be held up to children in the public schools. These values are generally associated with white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, usually referred to as WASP culture by its critics. The educators believe that WASP culture is in decline and is not being replaced by another dominant model. In fact, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) statement on multicultural education is entitled “No One Model American”. Ergo, many models will take its place.

A multicultural society is one made up of many equally valid ideals that can serve as equally valid models for young Americans. No one is required any longer to conform to the once dominant Judeo-Christian ideal, and the public schools are not required to convey this message to the students.

For decades the compelling rationale for public education was that it provided the means of Americanizing the millions of different immigrants who came to these shores. It provided a common body of values for all Americans. But apparently that rationale no longer holds. According to Charles A. Tesconi, dean of the College of Education at the University of Vermont:

“We all know by now that homogeneity has not and does not characterize American society. We know how great a myth the ‘melting pot’ turned out to be … American society, then is best characterized as a mosaic of an extensive, highly diverse array of cultural elements.

“As a descriptor, multiculturalism points to a condition of numerous life-styles, values, and belief systems.”

How is it Taught?

And how is multiculturalism, therefore, to be taught, and what will be its desired results?

“By treating diverse cultural groups and ways of life as equally legitimate, and by teaching about them in positive ways, legitimizing differences through various education policies and practices, self-understanding, self-esteem, intergroup understanding and harmony, and equal opportunity are promoted.”

Thus, multicultural education embraces much more than mere cultural pluralism or ethnic diversity. It legitimizes different lifestyles and values systems, thereby legitimizing moral diversity. The concept of moral diversity directly contradicts the Biblical concept of moral absolutes on which this nation was founded.

Yet, our public schools, in order to be accredited, are now required to teach that there are no moral absolutes, that every individual has the right to freely choose his or her morals, and that ethics are situational. The result has been moral anarchy.

Thus, American public schools are no longer to be used to inculcate a common set of moral and spiritual values based on our Judeo-Christian heritage but are to be used to promote a plethora of competing values systems, with Christian fundamentalist values cleverly excluded from competition. In other words, the public school is now a market place of competing pagan and anti-Christian belief systems. The students have a choice, but the market is rigged. That, in a nutshell, is multicultural education.

How is multicultural education taught? It is not a course which is taught separately from the rest of the subject matter. It is, in reality, a world view which, in the words of Theresa E. McCormick, specialist in multicultural education at Emporia State University, “must permeate the total educational environment.”

Moral Anarchy Starts Early

That means that multicultural education, in the words of Sandra B. DeCosta, associate professor at West Virginia University, “must be carefully planned, organized, and integrated into all the subject areas. But most emphatically it must begin when children first enter school.”

Thus it is now official policy in the government schools to inculcate moral anarchy in American children beginning with grade one. It is now official policy of the government schools to deny that there exists a common value system known as Americanism – unless by Americanism you mean moral anarchy.

Yet we know that Americanism does exist and does constitutes the basis of American consciousness: the conviction that this nation was created with God’s help and blessings to demonstrate to the world that with the true God all good things are possible, and that without Him we will be consigned to the same tyranny and misery that now afflicts the millions who live under paganism or atheistic communism.

During the recent celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty that concept of Americanism was expressed over and over again in song and speech in three simple words: God Bless America. Those three words acknowledge the existence, efficacy, and sovereignty of the God of the Bible. They express the essence of Americanism, the peculiar consciousness that makes us different from other peoples.

America’s Way is for Everyone

While that consciousness was given to us by our founding fathers who for the most part, were indeed white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, one does not have to be white, Anglo-Saxon, or even Protestant to accept it. There are many blacks, Hispanics, Latins, Slavs, Catholics, Jews, etc., who accept it.

Becoming an American does not mean aping WASPS. It never did, and it never will. It means accepting the essence of what the founding fathers stood for and died for. That essence is founded on Biblical principles which include the concept of moral absolutes. The public schools now presume that blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Asians and other immigrant children are incapable of understanding or unwilling to accept the philosophy of the founding fathers. Therefore they won’t even teach it to them.

The Results of Multiculturalism

What kind of Americans will the public schools turn out? Americans ignorant of their nation’s founding principles, incapable of defending their country against foreign ideologies, adrift in a sea of moral and cultural anarchy, at the mercy of fears, slogans, and nuclear blackmail.

Multiculturalism is also an important stepping stone to globalism, that concept of a future world government which the public schools are now promoting more aggressively than ever. In an article entitled “Multicultural Education and Global Education: A Possible Merger”, Donna J. Cole of Wittenberg University writes:

“A multiculturalized global education would address the basic concern of where the individual fits into the mosaic of humanity and where others fit in the same mosaic… [It] would aid students in understanding that our membership in groups affects our values and attitudes… [It] would assist students in recognizing the need to be flexible and adjustable citizens in a rapidly changing world.”

The National Education Association (NEA) of course endorses multicultural-global education. Its resolutions of 1986 state:

“The National Education Association believes that multicultural-global education is a way of helping every student perceive the cultural diversity of the US citizenry so that children of many races may develop pride in their own cultural legacy, awaken to the ideals embodied in the cultures of their neighbors, and develop an appreciation of the common humanity shared by all peoples of the earth.”

Notice that the NEA recognizes no American culture that the student may take pride in. He is to take pride in his own racial “cultural legacy” and learn to appreciate the cultures of others, but nowhere in sight is there an indigenous American culture based on peculiarly American values to appreciate, take pride in, or identify with.

The purpose of globalism is to prepare young Americans to accept as inevitable and desirable a world, socialist government in which American national sovereignty will be surrendered for the greater good of “world peace and brotherhood”. In any case, multicultural global education is another good reason why parents must remove their children from the public schools. Social studies professors have rewritten American history to play down patriotism and national pride, and multiculturalism even denies the existence of such a thing as Americanism. Is this what American parents want their children to be taught in public schools? Probably not. But the sad truth is that they don’t even know it’s going on.

reprinted by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene University)

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