At Stanford University, they still talk of the day nearly a year ago when some 500 students, on a march with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, came up with a slogan for the next generation.Most of us paying attention back then probably thought to ourselves "...this is a bunch of student liberal kooks like at Berkeley, this is a passing fad, they'll come to their senses and this will blow over." Little did we realize that thirty years later it would bring us to the serious possibility of civil war.The students were celebrating a new course at Stanford, one that would stress the contributions of minorities and women to Western culture, and, they chanted:
''Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture's got to go.''
Responding to charges that the core reading list reflects what some have referred to as a ''European-Western and male bias'' and what others call ''sexist and racist stereotypes,'' the Stanford University faculty seems likely to approve a measure that would eliminate the Western culture course that is required of all freshmen. The course, which has been offered since 1980, is based on a list of 15 acknowledged masterpieces of philosophy and literature.
In its place would be a new yearlong requirement called ''culture, ideas, and values'' that would include the study of at least one non-Western culture and ''works by women, minorities and persons of color.''
The turmoil over the curriculum, with its overtones of 1960's protest, promises to reawaken a longstanding debate in American education. Some argue that by ignoring classics of Western culture, universities risk leaving students ignorant of the works of genius that lie at the heart of their own civilization. Others have said that Western culture is too restrictive a concept to be adequate in an ever more diverse world, and that students should be grounded, not just in the West, but also in a global culture.
The anti-Western rhetoric at Stanford comes just as conservative voices - such as those of Prof. Allan Bloom in his best-selling ''The Closing of the American Mind'' and William J. Bennett, the Secretary of Education -have contended that the failure of students to know the great works of the West's past has left them impoverished.
Little did we know that "universities risk leaving students ignorant of the works of genius that lie at the heart of their own civilization" was the central core of their diabolical plan to bring down Western Civilization and replace it with...WHAT?
I think THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND addressed this thinking back then.