Through These Eyes #2(d): On the Multicultural Class Proposal

     I had reservations when I first sat down to write this column, fearing that speaking out against the proposed multicultural credit requirement for the incoming freshmen would lead to my being labeled as a racist pig. It probably will, but my conscience would be harder to live with.

     I don't disagree with the fact that an understanding of all cultures is an important goal of a well-rounded individual, whether university-spawn or not. A course in it will probably help some of those willing and wanting to learn, but a making it a requirement would probably be counter-productive.

     Take for instance, literature classes. There is already a requirement for that, and look at all the good it does the general student body. Students who don't want to be in the class but are compelled to can get pass by reading Cliff Notes and buying used papers or commissioning someone to write one for them. Even the students who work hard and do all the work and take the exams and ace the course because it was required are not necessarily going to read the classics after they get out of the course. A required multicultural class would probably just be a passing exposure to the general student body.

     Too easily, I fear, such a course could fall into an indoctrination that could be entitled Political Correctness 001. Perhaps I've just read too much Charles Sykes, but given a zealous radical professor, the required paper would have to be a reiteration of the professor's views of the Real Story, with dissension resulting in failure. It's happened before, and I'd hate to see it happen here at Marquette.

     It seems to me that the efforts of the proponents of this class would be better suited to altering our current history classes to emphasize our current culture as one made of many. The contributions of each culture could then be seen in their historical context and not studied from a point of view that they are separate ideas to be studied in a different class.

     If the current stirrings of the campus activists must be appeased, then create a class fitting their needs, but make it available as a history elective. That way those who were really interested in learning multiculturalism in a classroom could take the class, and the rest of the student population could learn it from experience, or not at all if that's what they want.