Sidney Hook
CURRICULAR POLITICS
Weare in a new phase of educational change inspired by
developments in minority and feminist militancy in the last few
years. As American higher education has progressively abandoned
institutional obstacles to universal access to higher education flowing
from racial, sexual, and national differences, demands have in–
creased that the nature of the educational experience itself reflect the
very differences that liberal education has sought to transcend. The
new movement has announced its opposition to the very concept of
Western Culture as inherently infected with racial, sexual, and im–
perialistic prejudice. At Stanford University under the leadership of
the Black Student Union and a few sympathetic faculty members, its
famous course in Western Culture-the only one required of all stu–
dents and heralded for a decade by the students themselves as a high
point in their educational experience - has been abolished, and a
new course in Ideas, Values, and Tradition has been substituted. In
many other universities curricular changes have been proposed,
some under the same slogans against racism, sexism, and im–
perialism, and others under the quest for a vague, ill-defined plural–
ism or diversity.
The reaction in the larger community to the changes at Stan–
ford and elsewhere was not long in coming. There was surprise,
outrage, ridicule, and incomprehension in many scholarly quarters,
and a spirited defense among the organized ethnic campus groups,
especially from university administrators who have the burden of ex–
plaining the changes to bewildered alumni, parents, and public.
Since the proposed new courses are not yet completely in place,
it is still too early to determine what is being proposed in lieu of the
courses in Western Culture. Are the new courses, for example, pro–
viding the unified (not uniform) common educational experience
that liberal arts colleges in the past have prided themselves on? One
definite advantage of the controversy, it is to be hoped, is to make
faculty members aware of their role and responsibility as educators
rather than as specialists of a narrow discipline unrelated to the goals
and meaning of a liberal education. Unfortunately, so far many
have taken the stance of risk-free observation, somewhat like civil–
ians fearful of getting too close to the battle lines. Others, who think
