400
PARTISAN REVIEW
tolerance and resentment.) Sometimes particularistic educational multi–
culturalism is defended by appeal to the argument that it will raise stu–
dents' self-esteem. But this is wrong-headed not only in its presupposi–
tion that raising students' self-esteem is a proximal goal of education but,
more fundamentally, in its failure to acknowledge that a sense of self–
worth is likely to be better founded on mastery of some difficult disci–
pline than on ethnic boosterism, and that students can be inspired to
achievement by the example of people of very different backgrounds
from their own - as, for example, W. E. B. Dubois testifies that he was
by his education in the classics of European literature.
Sometimes, again, particularistic educational multiculturalism is de–
fended by appeal to the idea that students are unfairly disadvantaged un–
less they are educated in "their" cultural traditions. At the purely prag–
matic level, this calls for a candid acknowledgment that children of im–
migrant parents are, on the contrary, likely to find themselves disadvan–
taged if their education does not make them familiar with the customs
and practices of their new country. It also calls for a plain statement that
it is surely untrue that only persons of Chinese descent can really master
Confucius, or only persons of Greek descent, Homer, or only persons of
French descent, Balzac, and so forth. I don't understand or appreciate
Peirce any the less, for instance, because, unlike myself, he was American;
nor Bacon any the more because, like myself, he was English.
Turning, now, to philosophical multiculturalism, I note that part of
what is at stake may be the thought that when, as pluralistic educational
multiculturalism reasonably urges, students are taught something of cul–
tures other than their own, it should be
with respect .
It can be granted
without further ado that all persons should be treated with respect; and
that it is undesirable to encourage an attitude of suspicion or disrespect
for what is unfamiliar merely because it is unfamiliar. But it doesn't fol–
low, and neither is it true, that all opinions, practices, institutions, tradi–
tions, are equally deserving of respect. One of the benefits of knowing
that others take for granted quite different opinions and practices than
oneself is that it enables one to understand more of what is conventional
and what is not in one's own practice and belief: a benefit that would
be sacrificed by an uncritical relativism that found
all
comparisons to be
odious.
Let me try to find an example that will not touch on any local sen–
sibilities. I find much to admire in the life of the Kalahari bushmen: their
closeness to the natural world, the vigor of their cave paintings, their
delight in music and dancing, their taking for granted, in the extraordi–
nary harshness of their conditions of life, that "if one eats, all eat." And
