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<div style=“text-align: center;”><b>Abstract</b></div>           In the United States, after the era of Jim Crow, Stonewall, and Feminism, educational and pedagogical theory with respect to the four content areas (English, Math, History, and Science) has been inundated with multiculturalism, which has in turn been conflated with teaching for social justice. Furthermore, multicultural pedagogy has exerted its questioned yet authoritative position in education for nearly fifty years, including majority support from the academic elite. This educational shift represents a fundamental change in pedagogical theory, from that of teaching content as such, to teaching content by accident, i.e., by virtue of its multicultural value, not its cognitive value. Multiculturalism began as a necessary and overdue grassroots movement within the United States to make a concerted effort to provide non-prejudiced education. Nevertheless, it has evolved from its humble roots into a mechanism whereby the prevailing dominant paradigm regarding diversity, race, gender, religion, etc., oppress instruction in educational environments. Since the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees fair and equal protection to all, it is imperative that public schools avoid the consequences of this well-intentioned movement. The ill intended consequences are that more emphasis is placed on how teachers instruct instead of on what they instruct. This study seeks to highlight oppositional paradigms regarding race and culture, gender, and religion or creed from competing authors within identical families, in order to highlight the need to subvert the dominant paradigm of multiculturalist education by demonstrating irreconcilable inconsistencies within each family. This paper defines multicultural education as a movement to provide non-prejudiced professional and legal conduct, likewise removing it from its false overextension as an educational model. In so doing, teaching for social justice becomes the quest to provide a just and unbiased curriculum, not a culturally relativistic, and potentially offensive or dogmatic, experience.

<div style=“text-align: center;”><b>The Fourteenth Amendment</b></div>           <b>Equal Protection. </b>The U.S. Const., amend. XIV, states that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This law, largely composed and designed by Congressman John Bingham of Ohio was designed to provide overarching protection to all citizens, including the recently emancipated body of African slaves and their descendants, who until then were not receiving the said protection. It was designed as a follow up to and reinforcement of the U.S. Const., amend. XIII, which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It was against the backdrop of both of these Amendments that the systems referred to as Jim Crow (or de jure segregation) and de facto segregation developed. Confederate descendants, resentful that their efforts to secede from the nation had failed, developed a system whereby facilities, including education facilities, were segregated by local law and statute, and this became referred to by the academic community as de jure segregation, or colloquially as Jim Crow, derived from the controversial caricature and vaudeville routine bearing the same name. Segregation, moreover, was not exclusive to the Southern states, and many other communities contained segregation not enforced by law, but by community convention, or what is referred to as de facto segregation. Segregated schools, and segregation in general, eventually found themselves out of vogue and inconsistent with the fundamental rights of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Paragraph 1 (1776), which states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thus, in the late nineteenth century, what became known as the Civil Rights movement was born out of the post-Civil War environment, and ultimately derived its energy and momentum from its ancestor, the anti-slavery movement. The Civil Rights movement eventually succeeded with a series of Supreme Court victories and legislative acts, most notable but by no means exclusive, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Civil Rights Act of 1964 Pulp. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, (1964), and Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971). In order, this desegregated schools, then desegregated society, and lastly upheld the rights of women as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. <div> <a href=“http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/oemb1905/19468200/257945/257945_original.jpg” target=“_blank”><img alt=“Flaubert” src=“http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/oemb1905/19468200/257945/257945_original.jpg” title=“Flaubert” width=“550” /></a> </div><div style=“text-align: center;”><b>Multicultural Education Emerges</b></div>           <b>Multicultural Education emerges</b>. This brief history is only meant to provide the backdrop for the rise of multicultural education, and to highlight the context within which it arose, so that the misuse and over-application of its paradigm can be fully understood. Nevertheless, as Ravitch (2010) mentions, by the 1980s educators were responding in concerted national efforts to “the radical school reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s.” Ravitch (2010) explains in detail that “The reforms of the era were proffered with the best of intentions; some stemmed from a desire to advance racial equity in the classroom and to broaden the curriculum to respect the cultural diversity of the population.” In this fashion, and with the sincerest of intentions, the multicultural education movement began. Authority, of any sort, and regardless of its justice, began to be questioned. Students began to develop curriculums that usurped the traditional curriculums that had been handed down since the beginning of civilization. The idea was that educators should “Get rid of graduation requirements, college entrance requirements, grades, tests, and textbooks” (Ravitch 2010). In short, the whole movement’s slogan was essentially “Down with the canon [of Western thought]” (Ravitch 2010). But no sooner than the movement began, the nation soon found itself with a staggering reality, namely, that the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores had steadily fallen for a decade, from 1965-1975. Ravitch (2010) notes that “students were taking fewer basic academic courses and more fluffy electives; there was less assignment of homework, more absenteeism, and less thoughtful and critical reading.” What started as a quest for racial equity in the classroom, including broadening the curriculum to include Eastern, African, and non-European contributions to academia, found itself promoting an unjust curriculum. It seemed that educational theorists forgot that part of the reason European and male dominated learning succeeded was not mere historical accident, but was due in part to the validity of the teachings within the canon itself.

<div style=“text-align: center;”><b>Part I: African or Conservative or Both</b></div>        <b>   Bretton Woods or Socialism.</b> Tupac Shakur, in The Rose That Grew From Concrete, crafts the following lines, “Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned 2 walk without having feet. Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams it learned 2 breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared” (Shakur 1999). Regardless of educational tensions on either side of the movement that Tupac has inspired, the simple beauty of this piece should be immediately recognized, reminiscent of the primordial beauty in Un Coeur Simple, by Gustavo Flaubert. Flaubert (1877) writes, “But in spite of all this, she was happy. The comfort of her new surroundings had obliterated her sadness.” Similarly, Mr. Shakur, or Tupac, in his self-described autobiographical piece claims that the rose should live long without feet, despite its unappealing circumstances. Tupac, although having ignited an enormous assurgency in hip-hop education after his death, was essentially a volatile character. Regularly engaging in artistic attacks on his peers in his music, through the art form of battle rap, Tupac continually found himself in the midst of gang rivalries and racial tensions. Furthermore, although he claims the piece is autobiographical, his own mother was critical of her son’s reference to and adoration of the gang culture prevalent in hip-hop music. The most striking element about the Tupac phenomenon is how Tupac evolved from an extremely divisive and often hated rapper into a figurehead of the hip-hop movement. His transformation from an arguably insincere rapper who was previously criticized in the 1990s into a hip-hop icon was preceded by his tragic death, the result of a ‘beef’ or gunfight that found Tupac dead in 1996. Nevertheless, there are those now who regularly use Tupac’s teachings to inspire historical and multicultural teaching, such as Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade. Duncan-Andrade, in Note to Educators: Hope Required when Growing Roses in Concrete, artfully weaves together a message for “audacious hope” in public education, vehemently arguing for shared learning and teachers who understand the community that they teach in (Duncan-Andrade 2009). Thus, at this time, Tupac’s writings have become identified with relevant multicultural teaching.

          On the other hand, Tupac’s story, and the story that Dr. Duncan-Andrade tells, that so-called minority students are in a state of perpetual trauma, or post dramatic stress disorder due to life in communities that mirror war-zones, is in striking contrast to a recent publication by Dr. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race. Dr. Thomas Sowell stands in noted counter-distinction to his African-American counterparts, stating that this mentality that Duncan-Andrade is promoting is false, and that “All the blacks lynched in the entire history of the United States do not add up to as many people as the number of Chinese slaughtered by mobs near Saigon in 1782 …” (Sowell 2006). Here, his point is that there is a sense among African Americans, that forces in the community are “projecting a vision of a world in which the problems of blacks are consequences of the actions of whites, either immediately or in times past” is a vision that, ironically, has been promoted largely by white liberal intellectuals. Thus, the entire theory of posttraumatic stress disorder, and its prolonged counterpart that Duncan-Andrade espouses, is according to Sowell, a liberal fallacy. Sowell is not arguing that the African Americans and other minority groups Duncan-Andrade describes do not experience the post traumatic stress disorder, to the contrary, he is arguing that they experience it no differently than the Jewish, Armenian, and Chinese counterparts despite multiculturalists objections that it is fundamentally a different experience. That is, he is claiming the difference is not in what they are experiencing, but how they react to it. Sowell is attempting to identify the difference in reaction in order to promote positive change for his family however his approach is usually met with internal criticism and allegations to the contrary. Steele (1998) describes it as follows, “black leadership actually argues against the viability of black agency in order to engage white agency.” Both are arguing that despite the horrors taking place in the ghetto, that black intellectuals have fundamentally accepted being victims. Sowell (2006) further argues that blacks have failed, unlike other so-called middlemen like the Jews, Chinese, West Indians, etc., because “Today, the culture that is celebrated in much of the media and in the schools is not the culture that succeeded, but the culture that has failed – the black redneck culture.” Sowell is here going so far as to argue that the whole disparity itself is due to liberal white immigrants. Thus, the so-called black redneck phenomenon (or, the victim identity complex) is itself misidentified according to Sowell (2006) who states, “What is painfully ironic is that such attitudes and behavior are projected today as aspects of a distinctive ‘black identity,’ when in fact they are part of a centuries-old pattern among the whites in whose midst generations of blacks lived in the South.” Thus, Sowell is essentially recognizing the same phenomenon that Duncan-Andrade writes about, but is claiming that educators are not only not in touch with the source of the condition, but are in fact, the very cause of the condition. Duncan-Andrade, on the other hand, claims it is the educators themselves that in not having been born in the community do not understand the community, and that “if we are serious about giving our children hope, we must reflect on how to connect our pedagogy to the harsh realities of the poor, urban communities” (Andrade-Duncan 2010). Is what Duncan-Andrade arguing for excluded from a classical education? Sowell’s main point, in his new work Intellectuals and Society, is that “disparities in opportunities and achievements, for reasons that range across a wide spectrum and cannot be reduced to genes or injustices” (Sowell 2013). In short, he argues that multiculturalism proponents “have sealed themselves within a bubble of peer-consensus dogma” (Sowell 2013).

          The foundational work of Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III, in SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind, presents a distinct viewpoint. Dr. Hilliard finds himself unabashedly in support of multiculturalism. Hilliard (1997) states that the “Africans are at the bottom of the political economy. Most of us [Africans] are oblivious to the evolution and construction of the world order. Further, we are oblivious to the negative way that we are regarded by designers of the new order.” Strikingly, Dr. Hilliard and Dr. Sowell each speak of an intellectual elite damaging their causes and in control of the current status quo, but they seem to wholly disagree on who qualifies as an intellectual, since one claims they are proponents of multiculturalism while the other argues they fight against it. Perhaps both are guilty of a little ambiguity here, however, Dr. Hilliard goes on to argue that, “This not only sets us [Africans] up to be victims, it removes us from that most human of tasks, the design and maintenance of a way of life, an ethnic culture. We become cultural, political and economic dependents. In short, we [Africans] are institutionalized followers” (Hilliard 1997). What is most profound in comparing Sowell to Hilliard is that both essentially have the same thesis, namely, that there are forces causing blacks or Africans, to underachieve and identify as victims. Duncan-Andrade, it should be noted, similarly identifies blacks responding this way and notices that this is not a condition exclusive to blacks, but is found among most members of urban and low economic communities. Each of them describes the phenomenon as a type of victimization, but they all differ on how to fix the problem and about what caused the problem. Hilliard shares the notion that Africans or blacks, have become “preoccupied with ‘racial’ identity” and similarly argues that “This way of thinking about identity is an abortive and manufactured product … [and that] cultural identity overrides and is the highest order of identity” (Hilliard 1997). Ironically, Dr. Hilliard, the liberal, is arguing that black identity is a manufactured product. He also recognizes this cultural struggle within the context of education and multiculturalism, and reminds readers of the equal protection struggle when he says, “the solution of integration was offered. That is when desegregation became assimilation. Clearly, one does not require the other. Conservatives have sought segregated schools to prepare students for a separate and unequal society. Liberals have sought integrated schools for an integrated and unequal society. Africans have always wanted a ‘legitimate’ education” (Hilliard 1997). Again, Hilliard speaks of intellectuals as inherently divisive and counterproductive to reclassifying the paradigm of meaningful education, which is again ironically similar to Sowell’s surface argument.

          Sowell and Hilliard disagree, however, in the end product or bottom line. Sowell argues that the European model is superior and “atypical institutions” such as the “Dunbar school” contain the story and history of that success (Sowell 2013). Sowell also argues that the idea that schools desegregate was not an issue of equal protection, but cultural affinity and that intellectuals “overlooked cultural explanations” (2013). Hilliard, it should be noted agrees that Africans should be educated “with their ethnic family” but argues in distinction that teachers who do not teach multicultural education will “see history of students in mere episodic terms” will be unable to “place students in context.” Sowell, in marked distinction, argues that it is the very same intellectual which causes Hilliard to have his “redneck” viewpoint and that “Much of the advancement of the human race has occurred because people made the judgment that some things were not simply different from others, but better” (Sowell 2012). What is most striking is where this places The Freedom Writers Diary author Erin Gruwell (1999) who mentions that her opponents once argued that her students were “too stupid to read advanced placement books.” Thus, in one of the most widely lauded cases of multicultural education, the distinguishing feature was a commitment to reading advanced literature and classics, such as The Diary of Anne Frank, which Gruwell (1999) argues will “bring World Literature to life.”

          Once again, the need to create a meaningful new paradigm based on a just and equally protected curriculum that embraces the learning of the male dominated and European past, while not excluding the beauty of the roses that emerge in the modern day presents itself as something highly complex, and not based on multiculturalism, but on the need for advanced education itself. Equal protection was meant and intended only to defend against prejudice and racism, and not to replace a prevailing dogma with another. As Steele (1999) mentions, “Amorphous and empty ideas like multiculturalism and diversity do not exist to be defined or debated so much as affirmed as received expressions of virtue.” Although Steele and these widely disparate thinkers may perhaps agree on the thesis, that liberals shouldn’t hoodwink their culture, they wholly disagree on how to obtain it, and what factors are contributing to it not being achieved. Duncan-Andrade seeks hope, Hilliard seeks to create a new dogma based on what he sincerely considers historical fact, while Sowell and Steele seek to affirm what they believe are the inherent causes of European hegemony in the first place, its natural and rightful superiority in its teachings. Ironically, Gonzales’ (2011) description about African American editors seems to embody a larger fight that breaches context, for he states that the “national movement they [the African American editors] helped initiate shaped the seminal differences in outlook and strategy that still exist today in African-American society – between assimilation and separation, between moral reform and militant rebellion.” Here again, is the case of a so-called liberal thinker noticing this bizarre internal clash within the context of journalism.

<div style=“text-align: center;”><b>An Equally Protected Curriculum</b></div>           <b>Protecting the curriculum without a new oppression. </b>Teaching for social justice, when focused on multiculturalism, functions as a form of oppression because it naively assumes that a multiplicity of cultures can be reconciled. The reason this happens is because cultures are inherently biased towards themselves and even more strikingly against other cultures. It seems that learning and scholarship may inherently be oppressive. Although the good and virtue may be sought after by the educator, and may likewise be unattainable, if educators seek to develop a unified body of multicultural teaching they will inherently stigmatize cultures that do not admit of that blending. It is within this delicate context, that educators should consider focusing on knowledge that has withstood the test of time. The question, however, is under what criteria material passes this test? If this question is ignored entirely, then education will resemble the prevailing multicultural trend instead of timeless content that has built civilizations. In the first part of this case study, namely with regards to inner conflicts within race families, an inherent conflict has been identified, and this conflict would seem to be exacerbated by multicultural education. If different races cannot even harmonize within their own families, how can they possibly harmonize in pedagogical theory? This begs the question can a meaningful and equally protected curriculum be created without creating another form of oppression? Despite the highlighted concerns, the study suggests that more empirical research is needed.

(This is an abridged piece.  The original was five pages longer, but needs editing.)

<div style=“text-align: center;”><b>References</b></div> • Au, W. (2009). Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for racial and cultural justice. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd. • Bergmann, J., Sams, A. (2012). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Alexandria, VA: International Society for Technology in Education. • Brodkin, K. (1998) How Jews Became White Folks. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) • Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, (1964), • Cole, S., Barber, E. (2003). Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. • Duncan-Andrade, J. (2009). Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete. Retrieved from http://cci.sfsu.edu/files/Note%20to%20Educators_%20Hope%20Required%20When%20Growing%20Roses%20in%20Concrete.pdf • Farrington, E. (2008). Strategies for Increasing Faculty Diversity. Retrieved from http://www.lmu.edu/Assets/Academic+Affairs+Division/Intercultural+Affairs/Strategies+for+Increasing+Faculty+Diversity.pdf • Fishkoff, S. (2005). The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch. New York, NY: Schocken Books. • Flaubert, Gustave (1877). Trois Contes. Retrieved from http://wolfpupbooks.com/default.asp • Gonzalez, J., Torres, J. (2011). The Epic Story of race and the American Media. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books. • Gruwell, E. (1999). The Freedom Writers Diary. New York, NY: Broadway Books • Hilliard, A. G. (1997) SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind. Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing. • Khan, S. (2012). The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group. • Morgan, R (2003). Sisterhood is Forever: The Women’s Anthology For a New Millenium. New York, NY: Washington Square Press. • Paglia, C. (1990). Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. • Paglia, C. (1994). New Essays: Vamps and Tramps. New York, NY: Vintage Books. • Ravitch, D. (2010). The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Philadelphia, PA: Basic Books. • Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971) • Schneerson, Rabbi M.M. (1998). Led by G-d’s Hand. Brooklyn, NY: Sichos in English. • Shakur, T. (1999). The Rose That Grew From Concrete. London, UK: Simon & Schuster. • Sowell, T. (2006). Black Rednecks and White Liberals. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books. • Sowell, T. (2013). Intellectuals and Race. New York, NY: Basic Books. • Sowell, T. (2013). Multiculrual Education. Retrieved from http://www.tsowell.com/spmultic.html • Steele, S. (1998). A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc. • Steele, S. (2007). White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc. • Steele, S. (2008). A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win. New York, NY: Free Press. • Steinem, G. (1995). Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender. New York, NY: Integrated Media. • U.S. Const. amend. XIV. • U.S. Const. amend. XIII. • U.S. Declaration of Independence, Paragraph 1 (1776) • Venker, S. (2013). The War On Men. Washington, D.C.: WorldNetDaily Books. • Venker, S. (2010). The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know … And Men Can’t Say, Washington, D.C.: WorldNetDaily Books.

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