492
PARTISAN REVIEW
The public conflicts over the content of social studies and English
in
the elementary and high schools have mostly died down, but largely
because multiculturalism has solidly established itself in teaching in social
studies and English. There has been a recent flare-up in San Francisco
where black members of the board of education demanded more required
reading by minority writers. (What was most surprising to me was the
news that Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
was one of the very few books high–
school students were required to read, along with, more obviously,
Huckleberry Finn,
and a few others.)
The upshot of the conflicts over multiculturalism has been a marked
rise in the amount of material in social studies and English on minorities
and women. The effort to create National History Standards, which led to
a great deal of conflict widely reported in the media, also demonstrates the
hold of multiculturalism. Despite severe attacks, the National History
Standards ended up strongly multicultural, in the attention given to for–
merly neglected parts of the world, particularly
if
they were the original
homes of the leading American minorities, and
in
its emphasis on women
and minorities. The curriculum in social studies and literature has been
modified everywhere to give greater attention to the history and problems
and literature of American minorities,
in
particular American Indians and
African-Americans, and of women. Despite the broad reach of the term
"multiculturalism," one does not yet see much in the curriculum on
Hispanics and Asian-Americans; they playa much smaller role, whether
in
social studies or the literary side of the curriculum. Gay and lesbian stud–
ies are not yet in evidence at the elementary and high-school level. There
was fierce opposition to the effort in New York City to introduce a few
gay/lesbian pages
in
a lengthy multicultural guide for primary-school
teachers, and the chancellor at the time, for this and other reasons, resigned.
What are the implications of the term "historical cultures," as a contrast
to "multi-cultures." We are reminded that the cultures we are defending
when we oppose multiculturalism have emerged as the expression of mod–
ern national states. These states- France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, are
typical examples--all appear to us, and are presented
in
their national educa–
tional systems, as unified and homogeneous, as unarguable and
uncontroversial realities. New nations-far more numerous than these old
nations-aspire to such a condition, and that is why they are so busy "con–
structing" national identities and cultures. But as we know, the characteristic
successful nations of today--successful, that is,
in
being unarguably nations–
have been constructed from many elements. In some cases, the construction
goes back to the sixteenth century (England),
in
others only to the nineteenth
century (Germany, Italy), and in all cases, the fault lines show, and the appear–
ance of homogeneity is belied by a history of deep divisions among the
