Multiculturalism: Cultural Insanity Run Amok
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

That is why everyone who wants to travel by air must be subjected to the same intensive security inspection as a would-be suicide bomber, because it would be unfair to single out Moslems as the only people capable of blowing themselves up in a plane. Under multiculturalism everyone is capable of doing just that.

And that’s why the United States government is willing to waste billions of dollars a year scrutinizing perfectly normal people so that it can maintain its adherence to a preposterous cultural philosophy that only a small academic elite believe in.

In July 1982, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) decided that multiculturalism had to become an integral part of teacher training. Its manual states:

“Multicultural education is preparation for the social, political, and economic realities that individuals experience in culturally diverse and complex human encounters…. 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 for the development of appropriate teaching strategies.”

But what all of that gobbledygook means is that the traditional Judeo-Christian model of American values is no longer valid as the model to be held up to children in the public schools. A multicultural society is made up of many equally valid ideals that could serve as equally valid models for young Americans. No one is required any longer to conform to the once dominant Judeo-Christian cultural ideal.

According to Charles A. Tesconi, dean of the College of Education at the University of Vermont:

“As a descriptor, multiculturalism points to a condition of numerous life-styles, values, and belief systems. 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 — which is simply moral anarchy. The concept of moral diversity directly contradicts the Biblical concept of moral absolutes based on the Ten Commandments, on which this nation was founded.

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 a multicultural specialist at Emporia State University, “must permeate the total educational environment.”

Indeed, according to an associate professor at West Virginia University, multicultural education “must be carefully planned, organized, and integrated into all the subject areas. But most emphatically it must begin when children first enter school.”

The idea that there exists a common value system known as Americanism no longer prevails in American public schools. Yet we know that Americanism does exist and does constitute 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 of people who live under paganism, atheism and communism.

During the celebration of the 100th 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, power, and sovereignty of the God of the Bible. They express the essence of Americanism, the peculiar consciousness that makes us different from other peoples. You never hear the President of France, or Germany, or Russia calling for God’s blessings.

While that American 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 African-Americans, Hispanics, Germans, Armenians, Russians, Catholics, and Jews who accept it.

Becoming an American does not mean aping WASPS. 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. To deprive school children of that knowledge is to rob them of their common American heritage.

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

“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 as “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 ideas embodied in the cultures of their neighbors, and develop an appreciation of the common humanity shared by all people of the earth.”

That was written in 1986 before Islamist jihadists, those fanatic followers of the god of the Koran, declared war on the United States. But apparently that hasn’t changed anything. Note that the NEA recognizes no American culture that the student may take pride in. He is to appreciate the cultures of others, learn about them, at the expense of learning about his own.

The ultimate purpose of multicultural-globalist education 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.” Social studies professors have rewritten American history to play down patriotism and national pride. Patriotism leads to an ethnocentric mindset, not conducive to world government.

The only way parents can safeguard their children from such socialist brainwashing is to educate them at home or place them in private schools where traditional subject matter is taught in the traditional way. Patriotism is alive and well in the home-school movement where Biblical principles prevail. And while we must all live in a society where multiculturalism has run amok, the greatest gift parents can give their children is the knowledge that moral sanity is far more important and necessary for our national survival than conforming to secular humanist cultural standards that reject God’s law.

 


Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld
is the author of nine books on education including NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud, and The Victims of Dick & Jane and Other Essays. Of NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, former U.S. Senator Steve Symms of Idaho said: “Every so often a book is written that can change the thinking of a nation. This book is one of them.” Mr. Blumenfeld’s columns have appeared in such diverse publications as Reason, The New American, The Chalcedon Report, Insight, Education Digest, Vital Speeches, WorldNetDaily, and others.