EDUCATION BEYOND POLITICS
363
Lauter is a clever debater; he did not back down. He defended his posi–
tion right down the line, and he won a good section of that audience.
A
good percentage of that audience was black, made up of two-year
college and high school teachers from California, who are very involved
in the union. Quite a few of them condemned me from the floor as an
advocate of genocide, of racism, of everything you can imagine, because
I opposed Afrocentrism. One of them even said that everything Leonard
Jeffries said was true.
I argued that Leonard Jeffries is propounding racist theories and that
we can't tolerate black racism any more than white racism, that both are
illogical and wrong. And one audience member answered that there can
be no such thing as black racism because by definition blacks cannot be
racist. I know we're all familiar with this, but it is extremely upsetting. I
didn't know what to answer. The Teachers for a Democratic Culture
and Lauter seem to be pandering to this audience, saying "We are your
representatives." The National Association of Scholars, which I joined, is
condemned as right-wing, even though its members have a broad range
of opinion. But because the organization champions standards, attacks
political correctness and the extremism of multiculturalism, it is being
condemned as right-wing. We have to think of some way of countering
this.
Roger Kimball:
It's really a rhetorical battle.
Jean EIshtain:
I
agree with Fred that the intellectual argument on
multiculturalism eventually can be won, if you point Ollt not just in
theory but in practice that it leads to infighting, separatism and resegre–
gation. In listening
to
female students, I realized that feminism now
doesn't permit the mind to roam at will but confines it within certain
parameters. But I want to tie together what goes on from elementary
school all the way to college. I am referring to
AJ
Shanker's comment
about the quest for self-esteem. An article in
The Atlar/tic Monthly
last
November pointed out the extraordinary dearth of actual knowledge
students bring into college, and the fact that that dearth, rather than be–
ing compensated for, is played into by the creation of therapeutic en–
claves. Students come to us after sitting around for twelve years express–
ing attitudes, talking about how they feel, without having learned how
to construct a rational argument. Now, college teachers are put in the
position of being in danger of wounding students' feelings. The thera–
peutic mindset is creeping in; we are compelled to take account of sensi–
tivity and comfort levels - all the way from elementary school onward.
It
reminds me of the time I had a specific complaint against my son's el–
ementary school teacher, and she responded by telling me that I had a
