Throw the Rascals Out!

Multiculturalism 102 - Throw the Rascals Out! 

The Three Village Central School District's Multicultural Task Group would have us believe that they have found another of those grand instruments to elevate our wisdom to some new level of awareness. That through it, students will become worldly, confident and sensitive to the many differences mankind has to offer. In October of 1995, a district administrator named Elizabeth Bauer announced what the introduction of multiculturalism to the Three Village Central School District will bring. The focus of her Multicultural Task Group (MTG) was defined as follows:

Multicultural education is an interdisciplinary educational process rather than a single program. The process is designed to ensure the development of human dignity and a respect for all people. An essential goal within this process is that differences be understood and accepted, not simply tolerated.

There are library shelves filled with tomes refuting multicultural curriculum effectiveness. These texts explain how multicultural offerings have created more tyrannical influences, disunion and dysfunctional educational environments on public school and university campuses across America than this article has room to mention. Check your own library and see for yourself. Multiculturlism was born first in the minds of the oppressed intellectual masses of the '60s and '70s, as a co-opting response to the screams of minorities for a voice in determining college and university curriculums. The beneficiaries of these programs, with doctorate degrees in "dream-weaving," now ask parents and taxpayers, more than two decades removed from the days of protest, to lend still greater credence to salving injured hubris.

The success of multicultural advocacy requires three elements:

1. An aroused sense of intellectual and emotional guilt - "It is my fault, isn't it?"
2. The perception that what is being advocated is in the best interests of and giving recognition to an allegedly unappreciated culture: "Yes, it's true, the Whatnots invented water."
3. A concomitant demeaning of western European influence on American culture: "Columbus was an Indian killer."

If the efforts of our district's multicultural task group are not thwarted, we will be living the frustrations so common to communities forced to endure their consistently ineffectual efforts to turn "isms" into "wasms."

But, for the moment, let us confine our condemnation to but the last sentence of the Three Village MTG's definition and multicultural focus: "An essential goal within this process is that differences be understood and accepted, not simply tolerated." Are there any of you reading this that can remember being told that toleration was good, that toleration was sufficient. That, "You don't have to like it, just learn to live with it." Are there any of you reading this that cannot think of at least a half dozen cultures - racial, religious and social groups having commonly held customary beliefs, social forms and material traits - that you neither respect or accept? If not, how about considering the Cambodian Khmer Rouge; Caribbean Rastifarianism; South American voodoo; the female genitalia mutilation practices of Africa; Middle Eastern religious fundamentalist use of terrorism as an insanely elixive response to government secularism, and the established provision of second class citizenship status for women; China's female infanticide; North America's Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Dare it be said, there's likely a few people in this country that still believe homosexuality is repugnant. Of course, their not being able to say so in the politically correct arenas of New York, without repercussion, is perhaps the very best example of the repressive effects of multiculturalism.

Who are these people amongst us that conspire to tell us what we should think, what is appropriate and what is not? Who are these people telling Three Village residents to assume the cost of faculty and staff sensitivity training, for an administrative director of the politically correct, for foreign language courses in both Mandarin and Cantonese, for textbooks minimizing the role of western European social and religious concepts that created a nation of people so clearly dedicated to human rights. We have already seen Barter & Company's successful efforts at passing variances to lower history, social studies and English requirements below that of Regents standards. We've seen how Barter and her 1995-1996 rubber-stamp-four Board of Education members approved the provision of a Regents certification in English for students taking a graphic arts curriculum. The only obvious logic for their decision being that "a picture is worth a thousand words." One can almost imagine graffiti vandals across America queuing up at the threshold of Ward Melville H.S. to get their certificates. Then on to Harvard.

Who are these people, indeed? And, why don't we just tell them to leave? Pronto!

Don't rely on friends and neighbors. Do your part to correct the inequities of past years. Prepare yourself with answers to the problems facing the community and then do something about it...besides complain to your spouse. This is your community. Tell the elitist prigs in command of "Sesame Street" that your taking it back.