DAVID SIDORSKY
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ture is required. This includes the work of political and cultural dissidents
across the unconventional political spectrum such as anarchists or terror–
ists and,
a fortiori,
victimized groups within the society. This cultivation
of sensitivity also is another reason for the introduction of courses in
non-Western cultural traditions, both of large religious or national soci–
eties in Africa or Asia and of small ethnic groups. Just as Michael
Oakeshott had argued that education was learning how to participate in
a conversation with the cultural tradition, so multicultural education has
been justified as an initiation into sensitivity to the cultural traditions of
diverse communities, some of which have become or ought to become
participants in our own cultural space.
When the issue is set in terms of curricular expansion, without the
corollary implications of changes in methods of teaching, the decision
depends only on empirical and pragmatic considerations. It is primarily
an empirical question, for example, whether there are works of great
merit which have been overlooked because their authors were women or
members of racial minorities. If so, then their inclusion should be univer–
sally welcomed, particularly since rotation among works on the list is a
necessary aspect of course design.
Yet there is a pragm.atic difficulty related to the ability to teach
works of a different tradition within the time constraints. To be appre–
ciated, such works may require the knowledge of context or the initia–
tion into the genre which is not feasible within a prescribed curriculum.
The texts of Kabbalah and the Talmud are clear examples of major liter–
ary works in a different religious tradition, which would be opaque,
misunderstood, or negatively evaluated if taught in the framework of a
course in non-Western classics. The list of great works from other cul–
tures which require appropriate initiation for meaningful study is a long
one.
The exclusion of many works, particularly those that reflect contem–
porary cultural self-consciousness like movies or popular music, does not
raise a principled objection to their study as cultural products of the age.
Such exclusion can be based upon a higher priority to teach the students
the complex elements that are present in a masterpiece. The neglect of
this priority by a faculty member choosing, for example, popular novels
and movies as the texts of a course, whatever their multicultural breadth,
may demonstrate a pandering avoidance of the challenge of teaching the
masterworks of any cultural tradition, singular or plural.
In the multicultural controversy one major issue which Arthur
Schlesinger,
Jr.
has emphasized, the neglect of the values of cultural
commonality for the sake of cultural pluralism, involves both the empiri–
cal question of the nature of the American people as well as questions of
