8/15/00 11:15 a.m.
Schizophrenia in Los Angeles
The Democratic platform foments division even while deploring it.

By Jim Boulet, Jr. Executive Director, English First

e cannot — we dare not — remain a nation divided," pronounces the Democratic Party's 2000 Platform. But on issues of language and culture, this platform encourages more division in our nation rather than less.

Remarkably, the official view of the Democratic Party is that English classes are good for adults but bad for children. On the one hand, the platform states that "Democrats also support increased resources for English language courses, which not only help newcomers learn our common language but also help us promote our common values."

Yet on the other hand, the English language and those common values are to find no place in a classroom full of immigrant children:

We must assure that schools have the resources to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse student population with programs for English language learners, including bilingual education, to close the achievement gap. We oppose language-based discrimination in all its forms, including in the provision of education services, and encourage so-called English-plus initiatives because multilingualism is increasingly valuable in the global economy.

But bilingual education remains a proven, documented failure at teaching children English. Many of its "graduates" will be in desperate need of adult-education English classes. Of course, given the influence of the National Education Association on the Democratic Party's politics, the party platform's support for a failed public-education program is not unexpected.

However, Democrats and Republicans alike should be concerned about what these "bilingual" classes are successfully teaching. The multicultural component of bilingual education, like multicultural education generally, does little to "promote our common values."

Multicultural education turns out to be far more than a few pictures on the wall and some special holiday programs. The Rosetta stone of the multicultural-education movement, the 1989 Report to the New York State Education Department, A Curriculum of Inclusion, Report of the Commissioner's Task Force on Minorities: Equity and Excellence, argued that cultural differences must be part of every subject and every class:

[N]o topic is truly culture-free … by ostensibly omitting cultural references from science and mathematics materials, a subtle message is given to all children that all science and mathematics originated within the European culture. Thus, there is a clear need to include in the science and mathematical curricular materials references to the many contributions made by people from a variety of cultures.

Given that public schools have trouble enough teaching children to read, add, and subtract, the chances of successfully teaching children about all cultures are not good. Mistakes happen. For example, Education Week reported that a five-page essay on Puerto Rico distributed by a Philadelphia school district listed "a wide assortment of dances, foods, celebrities, and customs as Puerto Rican when, in fact, they belong to Mexico and other countries."

And multicultural education provokes arguments of its own. CUNY Professor Leonard Jeffries, best known for his theories of the superiority of the "sun people" of Africa over the "ice people" of Europe, wrote a section of the Curriculum of Inclusion that argued that New York's social-studies textbooks were simply not critical enough of the Catholic Church:

Section IV: European Conceptions of the World in 1500 is not satisfactory. It fails to reflect the conflict, chaos, and war which characterized Europe after the Crusades and the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. This situation in Europe contributed directly to the development of negative values and policies that produced aggressive individuals and nations that were ready to "discover, invade and conquer" foreign land because of greed, racism and national egotism.

Meanwhile, some religions are to be treated with far more respect in a properly multicultural classroom. For example, some (one hopes) well-intentioned people actually say that American Indian children should not be required to pay attention in class for religious reasons:

(M)any tribal customs revolve around the belief that the body and spirit need not be in the same place at all times. "Spirit traveling" refers to the spirit traveling to another location . . . This ability of bilocation may create frustration for teachers, whose Indian students may leave the physical body sitting at a desk in the classroom while their consciousness and spirit bodies go elsewhere.

Other advocates of American Indian culture in the classroom have criticized public schools for disrespecting Indian culture by encouraging competitions to answer questions quickly or even by serving milk to these children.

Children who are both denied a chance to learn America's language, English, and indoctrinated in the offenses of this nation against their ancestors will grow up to be both underemployed and bitter. That's not the future we want for any of America's kids.

The 2000 Democratic Party Platform believes policies of bilingual and multicultural education will produce a more united America. Perhaps. But history has shown that language divisions and cultural quarrels tend to divide nations, not unify them. That is the real threat of this platform.