The college-aged population
stopped growing. The baby boom period had ended and there were less college-aged
students entering the colleges. LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
fall 2001
Student Research Project
Donnette Arnold
December 7, 2001
Final Research Journal
Dr. Craig White
The
Changing Literary Canon: University Education and Politics
As a participant in a Minority Literature
Class, I wonder how we moved into an education system that focuses on such
topics as "minority" literature. In fact, in my educational career, I
have had numerous literature-based classes. In listing them, I believe that I
would find that 50 percent of the courses I have taken were either minority,
"contemporary" or ethnic studies in literature. This figure strikes me
as a large percentage since this body of literature makes up such a small
percentage of the literature in existence. I have never even picked up Milton or
Homer! Seems quite a sacrifice to "broaden" my educational base
through the study of diversity. Does that mean that my universities failed me?
Thirty years ago, I would have gotten a definite yes to that question. Something
has changed in the last 30 years to allow such a redirected focus of our U.S.
education system. I wanted to discover the cause.
My desire to discover this cause is also
prompted by my current preparation of a statement of intent submission for a
doctoral program in Leadership Education. I wanted to research the field to
provide an informed statement, and in the process, I found that the research
often correlated with the existence of my current Minority Literature course. I
looked at five sources, two books and three articles. The themes that I
encountered within these sources consisted of the change that has occurred over
the last thirty years, a "changing of the guard" during that time, and
the heralding of diversity to create citizens willing to accept all ethnicities.
Baby boomers saw the need for diversity in the 1960s, and when they moved into
administrative roles, they instituted a change in curriculum. A change in
demographics and politics occurred, concurrently.
Louis Menand’s article, "College:
The End of the Golden Age." This
article attempts to address the history of the education system, while lightly
peppering the article with politics. Menand explains that we have entered a new
age in education not yet named. The period prior to this one is called the
Golden Age, which spanned from 1945 to 1975 (Menand 44). The Golden Age has
three qualifiers: the baby boom, the sustained high domestic economic growth
rate and the cold war. The cold war greatly contributed to the education of the
Golden Age through government contracts with universities. The federal
government contracted scientific research to universities and as a result the
universities billed government agencies for protection of expenses and
materials. This led to a co-dependence between universities and the U.S.
government. During the Golden Age, our government instituted the National
Defense Education Act, in which the government subsidized higher education
directly through specific contracts in science and foreign languages. The Cold
War became a driving force in the way education developed in the United States
during this period.
The Cold War also greatly influenced the
theories of the Golden Age. Education’s response to the Cold War was a
homogenization of teaching and thinking. The buzzwords were
"disinterestedness," "reason," "the scientific
method," and "fact-value distinction." Meritocracy also became a
driving force in this period. Meritocracy means allowing maximization of the
social talent pool by providing equal opportunity. If the government wanted to
have the best and brightest to choose from, it would benefit more if the
selection pool was widened to include a broader part of the population. Thus,
importance was placed on general education. This neutral education was
considered non-culturally biased, and the Classics were given great emphasis.
The fall of the Golden Age was a result of
three major occurrences:
The college-aged population
stopped growing. The baby boom period had ended and there were less college-aged
students entering the colleges.
Our country had entered a
recession also. During this recession the value of education degrees fell. High
school graduates were able to make just as much money as the college graduate.
It became pointless for many to attend college under these circumstances.
And finally, as a result of the
end of the baby boom, the social population became more diverse (44).
There were fewer white males of college age
and an increase of women of college age. As more women began to attend college,
there was also an influx of non whites into the universities (45). In fact, when
enrollment dropped due to fewer white males attending, many colleges found
themselves reaching out to other parts of society to fill up enrollment slots.
During the Golden Age the surge in desire for education led to a huge upshot of
community colleges throughout the country. Now the education system was finding
that it was now overgrown. The response was to look for the non-typical student.
This demographic change on the campuses resulted in a demand for new curriculum
– a non-white, non-male curriculum.
The end of the Vietnam War heralded the end
of the Golden Age. The Vietnam War helped to expose the various weaknesses of
the theories and contracts that ruled the Golden Age. Menand states, "The
Vietnam War exposed almost every weakness…from the dangers inherent in the
university’s financial dependence on the state, to the way its social role was
linked to national security policy, to the degree of factitiousness in the
value-neutral standard of research in fields outside the natural sciences"
(46). With the Vietnam War exposing the system and the influx of non white males
to the universities during this time, cultural differences could no longer be
ignored. The buzzword vocabulary began to change from "disinterested"
to "diverse," from "objectivity" to "perspective"
and "understanding," and as vocabulary changed, so too, the curriculum
(46).
Menand closes his article by stating that the
passing from the Golden Age to the current period cannot be solely attributed to
demographic diversification, because the theorists at the forefront of this
change, Paul de Mann, Stanley Fish, Thomas Kuhn, and Clifford Geertz, are white
men who were working within traditional 1950s and 1960s training (47). They were
simply demonstrating the limits in the humanities of "disinterested"
inquiry through such concepts as deconstruction, poststructuralism and
postmodernism.
Today young people seek higher education for
various reasons. They have different needs and the universities are required to
meet those needs to maintain demand and enrollment (47). The universities do
attempt to meet those needs through curriculum diversity and preaching the
necessity for student body diversity.
Menand provides a clear and valuable
explanation of where we are and how we arrived. He keeps the topic simple, which
makes this article good as a primer on the topic. (Thanks goes out to Dr. White
for passing this article on to me!) In my further studies no one explained as
clearly the change of the guard in relation to the Vietnam War. Menand provides
a fair argument and helped me to historically place the remainder of my
research.
Dinesh D’Souza’s text, Illiberal
Education. D’Souza’s book was
published in 1991, but he provides great insight into the last 20-30 years, with
his main focus being the 1980s. As Menand explained how we reached this point of
diversity, D’Souza explains the causal effects. As the Golden Age ended, baby
boomers moved into administrative positions in the universities. This was
considered a "changing of the guard." As the baby boomers were moving
into these positions, many of the "old school theory" administrators
were retiring. Baby boomers brought the ideal of college diversity to the
campuses as minorities (including women) began enrolling. With this change in
student demographics, so too a change in teacher/professor demographics. A
demand for minority professors was felt. This demand was observed in the form of
organized sit-ins, campus newspaper articles, and protests.
In response to this demand, administration
often found themselves forced to institute quotas. Duke University responded to
student requests in 1988 by announcing a new affirmative action policy. This
policy requires every department and program to hire at least one African
American by 1993 or face administrative penalties (D’Souza 158). Duke called
this an affirmative action policy, but the requirements transformed this policy
into a quota. The departments were required to hire a minority, but maintaining
quality and integrity became a question. The supply of Ph.D. minorities was
scarce and recruitment was difficult. Other universities followed Duke’s
example, which turned Ph.D. minorities into a valuable U.S. commodity in the
1980s.
Duke also instituted another diversity-driven
program in the mid 80s, which greatly affected scholarship; Duke decided to
recruit a new group of scholars to make Duke a frontier for "new
scholarship in the humanities" (157). They began hiring deconstructionists,
postmodernists, and reader-response theorists. These scholars claimed to expose
"the façade of objectivity and critical detachment in such fields as law,
history, and literature." Old authoritative structures within education
were now being dismantled and subverted, which changed the structure of the
classroom and its content. Again, other universities, Harvard, Columbia, and
Williams College, followed suit. The hiring of these new scholars was changing
the face of education.
As the new scholars were changing educational
content, so too were the minority professors. In response to minority students,
the university administrations began providing new programs such as
African-American and Latin-American studies. Minority professors were sought to
teach these classes, due to students’ demands that they experience these
classes as taught by their fellow ethnic counterpart. These minority professors
provide "minority perspectives" that could not be supplied by whites
(185). D’Souza argues that the idea of ethnically determined perspectives
condemns us to an intellectual and moral universe in which people of different
backgrounds can never really hope to understand each other (186). But
universities began instituting this practice as a means to provide a more
diverse campus.
The hiring of minorities and inconsistencies
in admissions, admitting lesser qualifying students to fill quotas, sparked
racism across campuses with the majority of racial incidents occurring in the
northeast. Based on studies in the ‘80s, whether they hold true today is
undetermined, racial conflict was greatest at the institutions in which racial
attitudes were most liberal (126). D’Souza interviewed students at the
University of Michigan in an attempt to understand the cause of racial conflict
at the university. One student answers D’Souza’s questioning by explaining,
"People talk about minorities, but everybody knows that the term minorities
means blacks…in admissions blacks are anything but disadvantaged. They are
advantaged" (128).
As blacks are given preferential treatment,
the white students become more hostile. A 1980 study at Ball State University
white students participated in an experiment where a black student was rewarded
after a test, even when it was clear that she had not scored as high as white
competitors. The white students responded to this with a sharp increase in
racial hostility toward the black student and blacks in general. The behavioral
response was independent of individual opinions about desirability of
affirmative action (131). It was the white students on campus that felt like
victims. The students did not blame the minorities, but blamed the programs and
university policies that encouraged inequality and distrust. The University of
Michigan policies, although instituted to promote racial tolerance and harmony,
may actually be generating hostility (132).
D’Souza calls this race-driven hostility
"New Racism" (236). As this has occurred more often on campuses, more
student-based organizations have popped up to promote further diversity, such as
the Afro-American society, Hispanic Students Association and African American
Association of Engineers. In these organizations the minority students are able
to share their frustrations and hopes in a candid atmosphere, and group
consciousness and collective orientation develops (234). In many instances these
organizations demand subsidy from the college as a separatist institution.
University administration is placed into a dilemma of pleasing the minority
organizations that feel displaced in the university atmosphere or integrating
the university as the administration has committed to doing through encouraging
diversity. D’Souza provides an extreme example of this at California State
University at Sacramento, which has announced its plan to establish an entirely
separate college within a college for blacks. To justify this separatism, they
have developed a model of pluralism that they insist is not the same as
integration (234). This form of pluralism is supposed to enhance the distinction
of ethnic subcultures. CSU hopes that these various cultures will interact in a
harmonious and "mutually enriching manner."
The separatist organizations are not
necessarily a negative force on the campuses, but they normally do not help to
prepare those students that may be inadequately prepared for the challenging
curriculum ahead of them. The organizations normally do not provide study
programs or tutorials. In fact, many of these organizations encourage
"anti-intellectualism," viewing it as an authentic black cultural
trait (234).
It seems that all the policies and structures
that have been put in place over the last 20 years have encouraged the
minorities to acquire more education, yet set them up for failure. Minorities
are often given preferential treatment in admissions, many times placing them to
enter into a university that is more challenging than expected. D’Souza
discusses Berkeley’s admissions policies in the 1980s, explaining that whites
and Asians were placed on different admission tracks than other minorities.
Whites and Asians were on one track, being given more stringent guidelines to
meet, Blacks and Hispanics on another more lenient track. Travers, an official
at Berkley that helped to structure this admissions policy, explained,
"We’ve got to have affirmative action. Otherwise, the whole freshman
class will be composed of Caucasians and Asians" (37). This policy has led
to a high drop out and failure rate among blacks and Hispanics. Caucasians and
Asians share similar graduating rates – 65 to 75 percent. Hispanics graduate
at under 50 percent – more than half drop out. Blacks graduate at under 40
percent – more than 60 percent drop out. By 1987 only 18 percent of blacks
admitted on affirmative action had graduated from Berkeley (39). Similarly, only
22 percent of Hispanics admitted on affirmative action policies finished in 5
years. These numbers suggest that affirmative action policies may not be as
successful as originally planned. Once in the universities, these students may
separate themselves as previously discussed, which may further impede their
success.
D’Souza was thorough in his examination of
the education system and provided excellent examples to make his points. At
times I was angered by what I was learning – indignant of the system I was
passing through. I related to the "New Racism," in that I have seen it
on the Louisiana State University and University of South Carolina campuses.
There is a distant separation that occurs, which is a topic the next text hits
upon, as well.
D’Souza provided me with valuable
information that I can use in preparing for my doctoral statement of intent. I
am able to see the importance of diversity and the importance of creating a
proper diverse environment. Whether it benefits our society for years to come or
not, it is an ideal worth working towards. D’Souza closes his text with a few
useful and insightful "pointers" for educators that may come in useful
for me later in life.
Allan Bloom’s text, The Closing of
the American Mind. His text was
published only four years previous to D’Souza’s text, but Bloom seems to
differ on many aspects and already seems dated. Bloom’s text is more of a
commentary on society than on education alone, but his comments on education are
of particular interest. He explains that students (of the ‘80s) seem to be
nice in general – not moral or noble, but more in the sense of possessing a
"niceness" that a democracy creates while times are good (82). They
have not been affected by tyranny, war or class distinction. Even women are
convinced that nothing stands in their way of a successful career. Students are
self sufficient, busy with their own careers and relationships (84). Bloom
explains, "There is a certain rhetoric of self-fulfillment that gives a
patina of glamour to this life, but they can see that there is nothing
particularly noble about it. Survivalism has taken the place of heroism as the
admired quality." This self-fulfillment and survival leads to isolation.
This isolation leads to a feeling of impotence, or a sense that they have little
or no influence over the collective life. Their future is open-ended and
indeterminate (87).
Regarding current students, I would have to
disagree with Bloom on many of these points. Women are still struggling to
establish successful careers in the business world and have concerns that they
are not being treated equally. Although students may feel isolated, quite often
they reach out and join in the many organizations that exist on campuses. As
will be seen in the later discussed Newsweek article, students today may feel
indeterminate about their futures, but they are still active in working to make
society better. The feeling of impotence is quickly dispelled in organization.
But to continue with Bloom’s commentary, he states, "This indeterminate
or open-ended future and the lack of a binding past means that the souls of
young people are in a condition like that of the first men in the state of
nature – spiritually unclad, unconnected, isolated, with no inherited or
unconditional connection with anything or anyone" (87). Bloom makes fairly
wide-sweeping comments such as this because his text is a commentary on society.
These generalizations are disturbing to me simply because it would be very
difficult to prove the statements true.
On the positive side to Bloom’s commentary,
he4believes that students lead an egalitarian lifestyle (88). Whatever their
politics, they believe that all are created equal and have equal rights – felt
instinctually. This means there is no cultural baggage and no solemnity of
interfaith and interethnic gatherings that may have occurred in the 1920s. These
students have no prejudices against anyone. Students talk of one another without
any categorization or divisions. There are no stereotypes. As I read each of his
statements on lack of categories, I mentally placed "Not true!" in
parenthesis after each sentence. Then I noted that this is Bloom’s preface to
the section he calls "Race" (91).
It seems that there are no divisions when it
comes to non-black groups. When blacks enter the mix, a sharp line is often
drawn on campuses. The gulf of difference becomes "unbridgeable." When
white students interact with blacks, there is an effort of right-thinking and
principle versus instinct, and camaraderie is absent. Many campus dining halls
exhibit this fact through the separation of whites and blacks at the tables.
Bloom removes the blame from the white students stating that the students have
adapted to the university environment seamlessly, accepting any religion or
nationality. He therefore states that it would be a huge leap to state that all
these white students are racist towards the black students. Blacks, in their
discomfort, seek others like themselves, and therefore unite (92).
But blacks are also not altogether to blame.
The university must bear the brunt of the blame in this issue (93). Bloom
explains that after World War II there was a major effort by most universities
to educate more blacks, believing that education is good and the inclusion of
blacks, at the highest levels of intellectual achievement, would be decisive in
resolving the "American Dilemma." Discussions occurred at the
university level regarding standards to be formally lowered for blacks to help
them catch up. The goal to educate blacks was in place, and they were held at
the same standard (94). Blacks began entering the universities unprepared and
unqualified in the 1960s. As time has progressed, affirmative action has been
set in place to help the blacks progress in our society educationally, but
affirmative action remains a major source of separatism (94). As a result of
affirmative action, black students’ achievements are often not equal to those
of white students’. The black person’s degree can seem tainted as a result,
therefore affecting his ability to acquire a position in the business world.
Those blacks that quite often support affirmative action also hate its
consequences (96). They are painfully conscious of the affects of affirmative
action. They enter into universities, whether of their own merit or not, and
they are commonly looked upon as not deserving by the rest of the university
community. In agreement with Bloom, D’Souza explains in his text, Illiberal
Education, that these undeserving students quite often take places from
students that meet and excel beyond the standard requirements (D’Souza 41).
Bloom goes on to finalize this topic by stating, "Affirmative action
(quotas), at least in universities, is the source of what I fear is a long-term
deterioration of the relations between the races in America" (Bloom 97).
Bloom agrees with D’Souza on affirmative
action and its effects, but he does not provide the support through actual
examples or interviews that D’Souza provided. I was hoping that Bloom’s text
would actually be more applicable to my topic and to my quest for knowledge, but
unfortunately, it was filled with many broad generalizations that almost gave
his text the "old school feeling." It was evident that he was a member
of the Golden Age and was nostalgic for that time.
Newsweek Article, "Generation
9-11." Moving into the present,
the college students on campus are called "Generation Y," or
"Generation 9-11," as Newsweek dubbed them as of November 12, 2001.
Newsweek has assessed that because of the diversity on the campuses today, the
current generation, more so than any other generation to date, is more capable
of dealing with the socially-raised issues as a result of the tragedy of
September 11, 2001 and the current war on terrorism. Author, Julie Halpert
explians, "Despite their perceived apathy and political inexperience, this
generation may be uniquely qualified to understand the current battle,"
because they realize more than the adults that this is a clash of cultures (49).
These students have been inundated with courses in Chinese dynasties, African
art, and Islam, while their parents primarily studied Western Civilization.
(This comment reminds me of Menand’s Golden Age compared to the current
period.) The campuses have also gone from an elite institution to a more
demographically diverse "microcosm of the population" of this country.
These students are taught how to "deconstruct and dissect" but not how
to "construct and decide," which is considered the one negative aspect
to being brought up in the diverse atmosphere.
Halpert explains that these students are our
positive future. She then explains that as diverse as these students are (or as
diverse as they are trained to be), that this has not stopped many of the
students from threatening Islamic students or Arab students. Many of the
minority students have been told to "go home" even if America was
their home. The threatening students simply told them that America was not their
home. The actions of the September 11th terrorists were
inappropriately displaced onto Arab students, which many Americans saw occurring
all across the country to Arabs of all ages.
I believe that Halpert sees this generation
as the great hope, not simply because of their diversity, but because in the
midst of adversity and threats, they were able to unite and gain strength in
numbers to achieve a greater understanding of what is occurring in our world.
Arab students, after fearing for their lives due to threats, decided to make a
difference through ministering to others in need and fear. She explains that
Michigan State University has more than 38,000 students and has campus groups
reflecting almost every corner of the globe and every world view. With many
being Arab and Muslim, they received threatening emails. When they would discuss
their fears in a group, they were comforted by Arab, Muslim, non-Arab or
non-Muslim students alike. They then began coordinating campus-wide teach-ins on
hate crimes. These "teach-ins" are occurring all across the country on
campuses; Michigan State is not special in this regard.
This article was fascinating to read. It
seemed to encompass many of the concepts discussed by Menand, D’Souza and
Bloom. I was surprised, to some extent, to see writers not necessarily emersed
in the education field recognize what is occurring on our campuses and the hopes
surrounding it. This article embodies the hopes of the university administrators
across the country.
Daily Aztec Article, "Student: Attack
Praised." On a different note
regarding the September 11th incident I found a different type of
article that reflected administrators’ partiality to certain minority groups
over others. After September 11th at San Diego State University, Love
Library, Reserve Room 3, students were conversing in Arabic allegedly praising
the acts of Osama bin Laden and his following terrorists. A fellow student
sitting nearby understood their language, being an Arabic speaker from Ethiopia
named Zewdalem Kebede. Failing to ignore the students after numerous attempts to
do so, he decided to approach these students and rebuke them for their
foolishness and callousness. He later explained to University Police when
interviewed about the incident, that he spoke to them in their native tongue so
that he would not disturb any other students and let on how shameful the three
students’ conversation was. In his words he said, "Guys, what you are
talking is unfair. How do you feel happy when those 5 to 6,000 people are buried
in two or three buildings?" Kebede said. "They are under the rubble or
they became ash. And you are talking about the action of bin Laden and his
group. You are proud of them. You should have to feel shame" (Daily Aztec
Oct. 17, 2001). Kebede returned to his table to continue his studies and the 3
students left the library. Upon exiting they called the University Police to
report Kebede as being verbally abusive.
After Kebede provided his story to the
police, it was he that was rebuked for this incident, not the three students.
The university administration chose to rebuke the one student that was
reprimanding the students praising the attacks on the United States. The
administration chose to take the word of the three that could corroborate their
own stories. It showed no comparable fairness to Kebede or and failed to
recognize his courage for taking a stand among his fellow students. He received
a letter from the university's Center for Student Rights, dated September 25,
requesting that he set up a meeting to discuss his conduct in the Reserve Book
Room. The letter stated that he had allegedly been "verbally abusive to
other students" and that he had three days to respond or else face possible
sanctions. The letter also stated that "any student of a campus may be
expelled, suspended, placed on probation or given a lesser sanction for: Abusive
behavior directed toward, or hazing of, a member of the campus community."
Kebede was not expelled or punished other than in receiving this warning, but
the administration was clear in its message, "We must maintain the
appearance of political correctness at all cost."
This story reported in the Daily Aztec, the
San Diego State University newspaper, exhibits a California university
administration working desperately to please the minority group in greatest
danger at the moment, that group that could receive the greatest backlash due to
societal circumstances. Rather than deal fairly with the situation at hand, it
(they) chose to protect the minority at risk, regardless of right or wrong. This
seems to maintain consistency with what I have witnessed in my research of the
education system and its treatment of minorities over the last two decades –
providing special treatment to the minority group that can cause the greatest
upheaval at the moment.
As a student in a course studying Minority
Literature, I am cognizant of the fact that we are studying a topic of great
sensitivity. Students of various backgrounds make up the attendance of my class,
and they all provide wonderful insight into the wide range of literature that we
examine. I am able to experience an honest and sincere "give and take"
between fellow classmates as we hash out meanings and move from one ethnic or
minority discourse to another. Thirty years ago this setting would not exist in
universities. I am appreciative of my opportunity to partake in the current
curriculum.
I am also appreciative of the insight provided to me through the texts
discussed here. I must now formulate a statement of intent after digesting the
information. Not an easy task. Diversity seems to be the buzzword today, and I
must find my own role in the administrative theories, keeping that in mind. Am I
free from all prejudice and categorizations as a result of my "diverse’
education? – probably not. But to my education’s credit, my love in life is
the literature of today, contemporary American literature – a literature
diverse and changing everyday. I am greatly fascinated by the American education
system and hope to become a significant player in the future.
D’Souza, Dinesh. Illiberal Education. New
York: The Free Press, 1991.
Menand, Louis.
"College: The end of the Golden Age." The New York Review.
October 18, 2001.
Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American
Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Halpert, Julie and Pat Wingert.
"Generation 9-11." Newsweek. November 12, 2001, pg 47-56.
Williams, Jason. "Student: Attack Praised." Daily Aztec. October 17, 2001 http://www.dailyaztec.com/archives.html