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paying for what youngsters should have gotten earlier. Turning this into
an ideological education not only deprives them of what they would
normally have but that which they were supposed to be getting before,
which throws them into a totally different kind of world.
Abigail Thernstrom: I
think that there is a general link between mul–
ticulturalism and the question of standards. If you begin to call racist the
expectation that black students meet the standards AI Shanker was talk–
ing about, then you're arguing that you've got to have a racially sen–
sitive curriculum which meets the very distinctive needs of those students.
At that point, you're into multiculturalism, and your whole ability to
talk about universal standards collapses. I think that argument carries a
lot of weight in educational circles today.
Heather MacDonald:
That's why I think what's being discussed at
universities does matter, even if it's not affecting students' minds.
Abigail Thernstrom:
The belief that it is racist to ask black students to
know something about Thomas Jefferson is a problem.
Edith Kurzweil: I
think we all agree on these points, so we don't have
to belabor them any longer. But we want to discuss whether we can do
something. What are the possibilities? I don't think that we can do any–
thing very quickly. We must take into consideration the fact that we
now have a very expanded university, with an enormous number of pro–
fessors who have tenure and others who are up for tenure. We also have
a vast number of high school teachers and elementary school teachers
who need more education. I'm wondering if we could come up with
some kind of policy that could help re-educate elementary and high
school teachers. We need recognition by the public at large, and by the
people in various levels of schools, that some kind of change is called for.
If we could pressure faculty into realizing that drastic upward leveling is
needed, we might eventually turn things around. I know NEH has some
such programs in its summer institutes. Maybe such efforts could be ex–
panded. This could be done, if everyone on every level were to know
what's going on; if we were to face the fact that our schooling is infe–
rior; and that this connects, also,
to
the fact that we have become a
third-world country in terms of car production. I'm wondering whether
there's a way one could explain matters along these lines, in a way that
would not be threatening to educators, that would keep them from
balking at changes.
AI Shanker:
A few things are happening in this direction. Five years ago
