POSITION STATEMENT AND PLAN OF ACTION:

MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN THE CURRICULUM

ACADEMIC SENATE POLICY S92-179
Superseded by F10-255 (PDF)

At its meeting of May 19, 1992, the Academic Senate approved the following position statement and plan of action on multicultural perspectives in the curriculum:

In May 1991, the Academic Senate passed a resolution calling for the formation of a Working Group on Multicultural Perspectives in the Curriculum. The resolution specified that this committee formulate a University position statement on the infusion in the curriculum of multicultural perspectives; articulate the role of the School of Ethnic Studies in this enterprise; and develop a plan of action enabling the University community to move toward curricular change appropriate to a changing body of knowledge and a diverse population. The committee has now completed its work; what follows is the committee's response to the charge given to it by the Senate.

Like the writers of "California Faces California's Future" (the Joint Report on the Master Plan for Higher Education), the members of the Working Committee on Multicultural Perspectives in the Curriculum believe that the infusion of the curriculum with "multicultural" content is animated both by broad social goals and by intellectual integrity and a quest for accuracy in carrying out the historic tasks of education. The Working Group shares the views embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that

"Ignorance of each other's ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war ... that the great and terrible war which [had just] ended was a war made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races ... the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty...." (1945)

Thus the Working Committee concurs with the Preamble's advocacy of "educational methods best suited to prepare the children [and adults] of the world for the responsibilities of freedom."

For these reasons and others, the Committee most heartily concurs with the CSU statement entitled "Campus Climate in the CSU: Toward Appreciating Diversity," which reminds us that the University's mission includes "use [of] its intellectual and persuasive powers to discourage offensive and harassing speech ... and to encourage civil exchange." Along with many others, the Working Committee believes that the classroom, lecture hall, laboratory, and studio should provide an environment in which respect for diversity of worldviews -- not just of ideas -- is reflected in the words and actions of faculty and students. In this spirit, the Committee has endorsed the "Principles for a Multicultural University" articulated by the University Commission on Human Relations and approved unanimously by the Academic Senate on March 31, 1992. These principles embody far more than a plea for what might be viewed merely as campus or classroom decorum: they assert a direct relationship between preserving an unfettered exchange of ideas and nurturing an environment, context, or spirit which invites, respects, and discusses thoughtfully a variety of assumptions or worldviews. And in this spirit the Working Committee commends existing collaborations between the School of Ethnic Studies and various academic units on this campus (to be detailed below). These collaborations offer creative and intellectually-sound models for the infusion of traditional curricula with cross- and multicultural perspectives; they also suggest processes for dealing with the substantive and other issues arising whenever cross-disciplinary efforts are envisioned and attempted.

The principles embedded in these documents are reflected also in the newly-revised Statement of Academic Mission and Goals for SFSU (approved unanimously by the Academic Senate on April 21, 1992), whose first words are that "The mission of SFSU is to create and maintain an environment for learning that promotes respect for and appreciation of scholarship, freedom, human diversity, and the cultural mosaic of the San Francisco Bay Area ..." The Mission Statement goes on to identify as a significant objective "providing curricula that reflect all dimensions of human diversity, and that encourage critical thinking and social and cultural awareness." The Working Committee views these statements as entirely consistent with its own depiction of the twin missions of the University.

In these documents, as in our own thinking, the broad social and intellectual goals which underlie the impulse toward multicultural education converge. This convergence provides a significant justification for a more inclusionary curriculum, one that will address the needs of our students in a world changing with such speed, so deeply, and in so many ways that a narrow preparation will leave them poorly-equipped to engage with the challenges of the twenty-first century.

But there is a more specifically academic or intellectual rationale as well. The curricula of any discipline in effect paint a portrait of the world, physical and/or social, and of human experience. To the extent that that portrait omits detail or highlights some features such that others are minimized, the portrait presents an inaccurate image of reality. If education is driven by the pursuit of truth, and if the diversity of personal, community, and/or cultural experience is a part of that truth, it follows that narrowness in curricular offerings disadvantages the intellectual development of students -- presents a mere sketch. The portrait will be incomplete if it excludes the outlines and detail of the experiences, perspectives, and contributions of various cultures and ethnic groups, or of women, the gay/lesbian/bisexual community, the elderly, the disabled, various religious groups, and others who might more accurately be seen as members of distinct groups rather than cultures.

This part of the University's mission is therefore, the Working Group believes, most effectively carried out within the context of traditional classroom activities -- reading, writing, lectures, discussion, and student activities, whether small-group work in class or projects done out of class. These activities can and should include and explore the perspectives, contributions, and experience of the wide range of people and groups that have rarely in the past been seen as integral parts or appropriate foci of study in most disciplines. We believe that it is important that students understand clearly, for example, that an American literature survey course which presents the works only of men, or of members of only one of America's many cultures, presents an inadequate and quite possibly a dishonest portrait of what we mean when we talk about American literature. We further believe, with the Dean of the School of Science, that "people in all cultures carry out the intellectual steps which are fundamental to the scientific process: empiricism, model building, and the development of a coherent theory to explain the natural world," and that students need to know this, and to know some of the theory and practice of science other than that of the west -- just as they need to know the names, perspectives and accomplishments of the various individuals who have contributed to the development of scientific theory and practice. We believe as well that an American history course omitting serious consideration of Latinos, Chicanos and Native Americans, of African-Americans and Asian-Americans, is not a fully inclusive history of America; similarly, we believe that an American history course that excludes or minimizes the women's and disability rights movements is incomplete and inaccurate. And a gerontology or psychology program presenting only the framework of traditional western theory limits students when it should enlarge the basis of the policy or clinical decisions they may later participate in making. Whatever we or our students may choose to make of this information, however we or they interpret and apply it, must result from what we and they see in a broader canvas than the one typically shown.

Of greater importance is our shared conviction that it is the task of the faculty as a whole, in and across all disciplines, rather than the job of one unit alone, to devise curricula such that the intellectual portrait of the world which we present to our students is coherent, inclusive, polychromatic. In this sense, we draw on the concept of writing-across-the -curriculum programs; these programs presuppose both theoretical and methodological expertise of one academic department but enable faculty in the other disciplines to nurture or enhance the competencies students develop in composition courses. We thus envision what might be seen as multicultural education across the curriculum. For reasons that will be made clear below, this is by no means synonymous with, nor could it become, nor does it even imply, "ethnic studies across the curriculum." While we advocate inclusion of ethnic and other "group" or "community" content now missing in disciplines throughout the University, the methodology and process of this transfer or infusion must be carefully developed to avoid intrusion in the domain of the School of Ethnic Studies; the teaching of ethnic scholarship (discussed more fully in the section on the role of the School of Ethnic Studies) is not at all the same as multicultural education. By analogy, the Working Committee asks not that traditional curricula be abandoned but rather that they become more inclusive, identifying the perspectives, experience, and contributions of those who have suffered curricular neglect in the past and exploring their role in the human record -- their literature and art, philosophies of science, cosmologies, ethnical systems, and so on. Before we can pursue this quest, however, we must first clarify the thinking of the Working Committee about the term "multiculturalism."

In our discussions, it became very clear very early on that many of us had serious reservations about the word itself. At the forefront of the concerns was that it is a variant of the word "culture," which in its home discipline of anthropology denotes a range of specifiable characteristics that distinguish one human group from another, and whose denotation is often lost in such contemporary uses of the word as "academic culture" and "corporate culture." It also denotes the ethos of a group, a concept so elusive and so profound that ordinary uses of language cannot do it justice; its depth and breadth are best signified not by reference to any of the competing technical definitions but by metaphor. As one of us has said, culture is to humans as water is to fish, a variant of the comment by A.N. Whitehead that what he calls the "form of the forms of thought" is "like the air we breathe."

Of almost equally great concern are phrases like "dominant culture," "subculture," "microculture," and "minority groups" (now something of an anachronism, at least in California). Intended to be descriptive, these terms are often received as pejorative, themselves exemplifying a kind of linguistic bias or a linguistic representation of underlying values implying that a group is "less than" or "less important than" others -- a notion with serious cognitive, psychological, economic, and social outcomes in a pluralistic society that asserts the fundamental equality of all its members. A kind of academic shorthand, these phrases or labels may in fact contribute to rather than diminish ignorance, stereotypic thinking of various kinds, fear and suspicion of the "other" -- and hence confirm rather than put to rest the preconceptions leading to anger, intolerance, maladaptiveness. Viewed in this light, these phrases and labels are an intellectually unsound way of viewing human diversity, a disincentive to developing an understanding either of our profound similarities as human beings or of our equally profound differences as members of cultures, groups and communities.

Much as the root-word "culture" is used variously, imprecisely, and in something of a debased form, so is "multiculturalism." As example of this, we note that in speaking of multiculturalism one might plausibly be referring to any of the following: 1) the cultural/ethnic and general demographic mix of a given population or geographical area; 2) the linguistic choices made by and the linguistic competencies of members of that population; 3) the content and assumptions inherent in a curriculum; 4) the teaching methods by which that curriculum is delivered, and the learning environment produced by these methods; 5) variations in students' learning styles and classroom behavior or demeanor; 6) the experience, perspective, and role of women, the gay community, the disabled, the elderly, any of the groups that have not traditionally been included in the "mainstream" of scholarship as foci of curricula; 7) broad social policy issues; 8) political and religious issues arising in a pluralistic culture or society; 9) marketplace issues (applications in the private sector in general, the corporate world in particular) and broader economic or social class issues arising from them. And too often there is little within a given context enabling the listener or reader to know confidently in which sense(s) the word is being used -- confounding, inhibiting or undercutting the pursuit of knowledge and truth which has brought us to the academy.

While there are arguments for the positive uses of ambiguity, in a discourse that has become as intense and as strained as that over multiculturalism, we propose that the SFSU community opt for greater clarity and precision. Toward that end, we have framed our discussion in terms of multicultural education and education in a multicultural setting, believing that we can then work within a framework of questions which permit of answers and then of reasonable action to effect change. By taking this line, we hope to shift the focus from faculty concerns to those more directly affecting students. The questions, briefly, are: What kinds of outcomes do we wish to see for our students? What are the processes by which we can increase the likelihood that those outcomes will occur? What are the assumptions underlying those processes? The answers to these questions comprise the position of the San Francisco State University community about infusion of the curriculum with multicultural content and perspectives.

Our fundamental assumption is that there are both social and intellectual rationales for multicultural education: the demographic diversity of American culture, the assumptions or claims which it rests upon, and the inadequacy of traditional curricula in presenting a complete portrait of human experience and thought. To these assumptions we add below others integral to the kinds of student outcomes which the University can, and should, pursue.

The outcomes we envision and seek are in many ways those which the academy has always sought, and are detailed in "California Faces California's Future." Students completing a university education should be familiar with the comprehensive and inclusive record of the past and, in addition to specialized training, have a broad education familiarizing them with the broad spectrum of knowledge; the information, training, skills, and breadth of understanding that enable them to realize their aspirations and share with their culture and communities whatever they can in whatever way they can; the depth and breadth of knowledge to participate actively in shaping a more promising future.

More specifically, we have formulated goals of a multicultural education on the basis of the world into which these students will move when they leave the University. It will require of them a cosmopolitan outlook; substantial awareness of the shaping power of culture, and an understanding of cultural, group or community differences; personal competence in finding ways to live constructively in a diverse culture or on site in other cultures, including the resolution of interpersonal and inter- or cross- cultural problems; a global perspective.

First, in a world grown small because of modern technology, more and more of these students will need to be cosmopolitan in their outlook -- flexible enough intellectually and emotionally to adapt to working with and living alongside people whose cultures or basic orientations toward life, whose languages as well as their explicit beliefs, may be very different from the students' own, or to live within the bounds of other cultures should they find themselves working in countries other than the US. In fact, we hope that our students will actively seek out contact and involvement with diverse groups to deepen their appreciation of the range of human experience. They will need to unlearn local or national prejudices, to part from lingering beliefs in the supremacy of one worldview or another -- to "be" cosmopolitan in that they can respect, learn from, and appreciate the diversity of human groups and experience. Embedded in this capability, we believe, is not just appreciation but acquisition of other languages: monolingualism will disadvantage students at the very time when they can circle the earth in only a few hours, or find themselves working in a culture whose native language is not English. One implication of this is that as faculty we need to find ways of valuing or celebrating the multilingualism of many of our students even as we simultaneously encourage a greater fluency in English.

A second outcome toward which we aspire on behalf of our students is a quality and degree of cultural awareness surpassing that of their predecessors. Students graduating from SFSU should have an opportunity to develop the competencies that will enable them to understand, adapt to, and cope with the complexities inherent in the diversity of our population. That opportunity should enable them to shed their fears of or resistance to "cultural barriers" and inform them about the topical as well as the subtler ways in which a culture, group, community, or lifeway expresses itself in human behavior and interaction; it should provide knowledge about how gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and religion shape lives, thought, and action. It should as well prepare them with strategies for resolving the confusions, tensions or conflicts that so often arise when people from differing lifeways live and/or work together, whether by choice or by chance.

The third outcome, then, is personal deftness in interpreting situations, evaluating and responding appropriately to seemingly alien ideas or attitudes, communicating clearly. Few of us are born with these abilities -- most have to learn, whether in classes focusing on conflict-resolution or in group and interpersonal experiences of other kinds. We would expect this adroitness to come from instruction and practice in listening to and hearing others, and in accurately "translating" both verbal and non-verbal messages, as well as traditional instruction in both oral and written communication.

The fourth outcome we seek is a global perspective. The future of the planet itself is threatened by the very technologies upon which we are so dependent, by worldviews and assumptions which we have only recently begun to question, and by individual habits and behavior which have become commonplace in the developed world. A multicultural education, in which students discover alternative ways of looking at and being in the world, holds some promise of empowering them to reconsider some of their assumptions and actions and to encourage others to do the same.

With these outcomes in mind, and in the consciousness that the survival of the planet and its species may depend upon the adaptiveness of the cultures of the world, the Working Committee recommends that San Francisco State University adopt the following principles:

1. SFSU affirms that the curriculum of the University should draw upon and reflect the diversity in perspectives and ways of knowing inherent in the Bay Area's, and the modern world's, population.
2. SFSU affirms that for the purposes of addressing the demand for multicultural education, the University will define broadly those denoted, including cultures or ethnic, multi-ethnic, and bicultural groups as defined in the scholarly literature and groups of communities as defined both in scholarly literature and in daily experience: women, the gay/lesbian/bisexual community, the disabled, the elderly.

3. SFSU recognizes that no single approach to the inclusion of culturally sensitive and diverse perspectives can address all the issues raised by this range of groups, that the academy's curricular and pedagogical responses to issues arising from the traditional exclusion of these groups from the curriculum must itself by flexible and inclusionary.

4. SFSU affirms the importance of distinguishing which of a broad range or goals a specific course or courses may be addressing in responding to the mandate for multicultural education; these goals may vary according to discipline, the orientation of a discipline, the perceived capabilities and expertise of faculty within the discipline. In some cases, a focus on "teaching to diversity" may be more relevant than well-meant but inadequate attempts to "teach about diversity," and more appropriate to the discipline itself. In other cases, the focus will more naturally be upon contributions to the human record and/or to the discipline itself made by persons of diverse backgrounds, orientations, cultural/intellectual styles, or upon social action to remedy inequities, or upon economic issues. In yet others, the focus will most appropriately be upon the human relations aspects of living in a pluralistic society. And in some, the focus will be issues of biculturalism or bilingualism as the means by which a course can present students with greater knowledge of and exploration into the significance of value patterns, differing discourse models and logics, ways of processing "reality," modes of knowing and behaving.
5. SFSU recognizes that multicultural education is not a fixed fact but a comparatively new -- and evolving -- way of thinking about the task of the University, calling for a pedagogy which has yet to be fully explored and which will undoubtedly change over time. It recognizes as well that its faculty will continue to explore and develop discipline-specific approaches to inclusion within the curriculum of the perspectives, knowledge, and experience of diverse peoples. Thus SFSU affirms that multicultural education is itself multi-dimensional and multi-tiered.
6. SFSU affirms the collaborative nature of the scholarly enterprise and applauds existing collaborative efforts to infuse "multicultural content" in the curriculum in units outside Ethnic Studies. It believes that the absence of such collaboration can foredoom legitimate and valuable movement toward change. It also believes that policies and procedures are already in place for resolving the kinds of difficulties that may arise in the pursuit of more diverse curricula.
7. SFSU affirms the unique role of its School of Ethnic Studies as a standard-bearer in the creation and evolution of an academic discipline which focuses on ethnicity and whose methodology and paradigms of knowledge set it apart from other disciplines. The University distinguishes between the goals and tasks of the School and those of multicultural education, but cautions against the possibility that the latter might become a euphemism for academic "business as usual," or "integration" of "minority" perspectives into the "dominant" academic perspective.
8. SFSU acknowledges that the Women Studies Department also uses disciplinary methodology and paradigms parallel to those used in Ethnic Studies, only with gender being its major focus. In the interest of more inclusive campus curricula, the Women Studies Department is committed to the study of the experiences, perspectives, and contributions of all women. Women Studies was the first program on campus to fuse the study of race, gender and class, and continues to be committed to the study of women around the globe in all their specific cultural and cross-cultural contexts.

For nearly a quarter of a century, SFSU has been engaged in a historic struggle to modernize the educational experience of its students; to date, the modernization process has achieved a high level of academic diversity in some of its curriculum, but much remains to be done.

The most tangible example of this struggle was the creation and development of the School of Ethnic Studies, a change whose scope has not been equalled by any other institution and which projected SFSU into national leadership in the area of higher-education reform. The University community therefore recognizes and unconditionally affirms that

The disciplines of Ethnic Studies, as presently organized, are American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and La Raza Studies. Ethnic Studies as a whole is characterized by a unique and progressive paradigm whose elements are: 1) a critical perspective; 2) a holistic structure; 3) a reflexive viewpoint; 4) a community action outcome and praxis.

In all of its disciplines, a critical perspective, one predicated on the assumption that scholarship from traditional perspectives has proven insufficient to address the topic areas forming the field of Ethnic Studies, is adopted. This perspective is used to attack stereotypes, revise inadequate analysis, correct for lack of scope and depth, advance new theory, challenge existing conclusions, and guide the development of community action and social change. The holistic structure is integrative, drawing on the theory that a material object, especially a living organism -- and by extension, a community or culture -- has a reality other than and greater than the sum of its constituent parts. It provides a synthesis of unique methodologies which, when taken together, constitute a multidimensional approach to scholarship. This unique approach expands the traditional boundaries of research in an attempt to create data that are as close to the reality of the subject as possible. The holistic construct of the Ethnic Studies paradigm is global in scope and inclusive by design: it includes elements of traditional disciplines such as history, sociology, political science, economics, science, and others, not as separate foci but as integral parts of the whole. Further, the holistic structure of this unique paradigm is consciously trans-cultural. It recognizes the contributions of various cultural groups to the forward flow of civilization and to the development of various intercultural movements. It is this transcultural quality that makes the Ethnic Studies paradigm extraordinary and progressive.

The Ethnic Studies disciplines are also reflexive, in the root sense of the word: "having an object that is the same as the subject ... and of or pertaining to a reflex or reflection." Simply put, the researcher is placed in the "thick of the action." Instead of being a disinterested observer, because of the interaction of methodologies and academic focus the researcher must use "insider/outsider" techniques to sort out the significance of the experience being observed. All of the disciplines in Ethnic Studies use some form of this reflexive methodology which allows the disciplines constantly to expand their theoretical base and create new approaches to seemingly-intractable problems.

The driving force of the School of Ethnic Studies is community action and social change, programs and scholarship stemming from the needs of a community, responsive to those needs, and designed to serve the population which constitutes the field of study -- thus making the discipline responsible first to the community, then to the students, and finally to the University. Deriving from a larger struggle for justice and equality, the School of Ethnic Studies consciously constructs programs and praxis that address the pressing needs of the ethnic groups they represent. This unique quality is directly related to activities that have resulted in improvement of the conditions under which their communities suffer, and clearly makes the School of Ethnic Studies central to the overall task of educating students for the twenty-first century.

In 1968, the School undertook the task of correcting the inequities of the past; prior to that time, little effort had been made in academia to include ethnic scholarship developed by those who best understood the experience of the communities on which the School focuses. Today, because of increased interaction between people with very different worldviews and value-structures, and because of massive economic and political dislocation on a global scale, it is clear that the University must change as the twenty-first century approaches. In order to accomplish this goal, SFSU must maintain its role as national leader in this area of ethno-cultural curriculum development and scholarship.

The final task given to the Working Committee was that it develop a plan of action to implement multicultural education at SFSU. The Working Committee therefore recommends that the Senate and the President now act such that

1. the Executive Committee of the Academic Senate appoint an implementation committee composed of representatives from the following groups: three members of the Senate (including representation of women and the gay/lesbian/bisexual community); the Associate Vice President for Academic Programs and Planning; four representatives from the ad hoc Working Committee on Multicultural Perspectives in the Curriculum; the four department chairs from the School of Ethnic Studies; the department chair of Women Studies; the 503/504 coordinator; one representative from Associated Students. The implementation committee shall also include two faculty members elected from and by the faculty of each of the Schools and the Library.
2. appointed members of the implementation committee be appointed by the end of May 1992, elected members be chosen in September 1992, and report to the Academic Senate in February 1993 and again in May 1993, including in this report timelines for University-wide implementation of infusing the curriculum with the kind of content envisioned by this report.
3. the implementation committee as their first order of business to define Women Studies' role in and contribution to multicultural education across campus.
4. the implementation committee as their second task call an orientation meeting no later than October 20 for all academic units, after which School deans and department chairs, working with their faculty, develop a plan to infuse multi-cultural, multi-group, multi-"community," multi-ethnic perspectives into their curricula, and that these plans be given to the implementation committee by the School representatives to the committee by the end of the fall 1992 semester.
5. all plans be incorporated in the final report presented to the Senate by the implementation committee.
6. the responsibility for monitoring the implementation plan be assumed by the President of the University through the Vice President for Academic Affairs, who shall report on the progress of the Schools to the Academic Senate and to the faculty as a whole at its annual meeting.
7. to encourage other collaborative efforts, the implementation committee produce a handbook describing already-existing collaborations between the School of Ethnic Studies and other Schools or departments, at the present time including the departments of History, Humanities, Social Work Education, and Theatre Arts, and the School of Education; the manual shall detail the processes leading to all present collaborations and the agreements that have resulted, and shall be published and distributed by the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
8. to enhance communication and facilitate greater collaboration between the School of Ethnic Studies and other academic units, the School of Ethnic Studies be provided additional resources to prepare a formal codification of its disciplines and present to the entire academic community a detailed statement of its contents, methodologies, specialties, sub-specialties, and major program activities (along with which the University will be provided with a comprehensive index of publications and articles, and a detailed reference bibliography).
9. the procedure for infusing multi-cultural, group, multi-ethnic, multi-"community" perspectives in the curriculum shall conform to existing University policies, processes, and structures.
10. because we need to take the initiative in preparing our students to live peacefully within a diverse community and to find positive strategies for abatement of hate crimes and violence based on the differences between or among groups, the implementation committee develop methods by which all students graduating from SFSU receive training and develop skill in intercultural communication and conflict-resolution.
11. the implementation committee, working for the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and the Office of Faculty Professional Development, design and develop faculty development workshops in which SFSU faculty can acquire information about, and develop processes to effect curricular change and to enhance sensitivity to, and awareness of, multicultural education.
12. the University switch from the use of racial designations (e.g., "black" and "white") to those based on continental, ethnic, or cultural heritage ("African American," "American Indian/Native American," "Asian American," "European American," "Latino/Hispanic American"), and that all publications, media advertising, and reports reflect this sensitivity to terminology.