Core’s embattled history has weathered numerous criticisms. The most frequent and vocal of these criticisms is that teaching only the canon of Western tradition enforces and legitimizes the dominant powers that suppress and oppress other world-views. These critics propose that Whitman restructure Core curriculum to incorporate competing, non-Western views.
In my opinion, this suggestion is quite problematic, since it doesn’t acknowledge that in order to criticize the Western tradition legitimately, one must first understand its canon, giving it a generous reading. One year to study the millennia of thought incorporated into Western tradition is already egregiously insufficient; to suggest that in that one year, the curriculum should expand to include non-Western texts which challenge the Western tradition risks spreading the curriculum too thin: it risks teaching neither tradition well, and instead, not teaching anything!
Let’s delve into the matter and examine some flawed assumptions in Core’s criticisms. Foremost is the mistaken assumption that the Western “tradition” is a unified stream of thought when in fact, Core texts are rent with discord about the most profound ideas. Anyone who wishes to see the fundamental disunity of the Western “tradition” need look no further that the Core curriculum itself: there is not one thing that the Ancient and Modern agree on either internally or with each other. If Core includes texts irreconcilable with each other, it is hard to conclude that it indoctrinates the student to a given world-view; if anything, this discord teaches us to regard the all views as mere opinions.
Looking outside of the Core curriculum to examine the Western tradition as a whole, we will undoubtedly notice that its biggest critics are thinkers working within it. Consider the most recent criticism of Core, in which Janyk holds that the texts of the Western canon are tools through which the West broadcasts it values: values of domination and suppression of non-whites, non-westerners and non-men. Interestingly, much of this criticism derives from Post-modern thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida; they were some of the harshest critics of the Western tradition, were they not also writers within this tradition?
Furthermore, Janyk refers to the author Paolo Friere to claim that Core represents an oppressive model of teaching. In the “banking” model, the teacher owns knowledge and the student is an empty receptacle to be filled. This relationship assumes that the student is neither a conscious being nor an active creator of reality. The result is the dehumanization of the student; the student is alienated from her humanity: from her reality, creativity, and autonomy. Friere was a Marxist educational theorist, and it’s not hard to detect Marx’s theory of the estrangement of labor in Friere’s work. From which tradition of thought did Marx write? Is Marx not included in Core? One cannot dismiss Core as the legitimizer of Western dominance and oppressioN when it includes both the West’s greatest admirers as well as some of its most vehement detractors.
I do not wish to give the impression that the criticism of Core is unfounded; students and professors agree that it is profoundly flawed. So, what can we do to address it? In my opinion, Core should be even more daring, but also self-conscious. It should admit that the “canon” of the “Western Tradition” is, love it or hate it, extremely important: it courses through the veins of much of the culture of much of the world. Therefore, it should aim to teach it well, which means (gasp) actually teaching it as the canon of the dominant Western Tradition.
However, in doing so, it should also aim to question the idea of a “canon”, and the notion of the “Western Tradition”. In the words of Drury, it should consciously profess that it is neither a sacred “fount of wisdom to be disseminated with uncritical reverence… [nor] a pernicious quest for domination.” It should admit that everything included in the canon, including the notion of a canon, is loaded with historical baggage that often engenders oppression, dominance and inequality. Perhaps it should reserve time to discuss these Marxist and Postmodern critiques, asking how these texts create a specific worldview and who that leaves out.
Core should know very well what it aims to teach, and it should not aim to teach everything. If core were completely restructured to include The Western canon, the baggage it carries, all its critics, Western and non-Western, as well as all its socio-political implications, it will end up teaching nothing! Janyk is correct that Core has a responsibility to admit the politicization of its text, and the questions of justice it provokes. But we cannot forget that Core is most importantly about exposing students to some of the most interesting and influential political, philosophical, historical, and literary ideas, dilemmas and innovations in history: to demand that Core focus only on social justice and the global power structure is to ask for an ice cube from an iceberg.
Spencer • Nov 16, 2008 at 11:39 pm
It is a customary, perhaps problematic academic tradition that, when citing an author, their first name be given.
These two authors have decided to forgo this tradition, but I’m sure we can assume that no disrespect was meant in the oversight. Similarly, I will graciously overlook other obvious and significant errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Parkin and Maizel first argue that there is no unified Western tradition, and in their next paragraph go on to say that we can examine the “Western tradition as a whole.”
In this examination, they propose we will find that the greatest “critics” of “the West” are those working “within it.” This claim leaves one to wonder what criteria are used to determine the “size” of these theorists (or, presumably, their impact on their relative field).
I never claimed that all work done by whites, or men, or those who live outside of Europe or the United States is “Western.”
In my work, the “West” can be broadly assumed to refer to texts make claims in support of, or that are reliant on Platonic ethical systems or Enlightenment-era conceptions of the political.
Marx’s understanding of the way in which knowledge exists in relation would identify his work as rooted in Enlightenment ideology. Freire’s use of his work (especially in his later writings) are better read as poststructuralist given his arguments about the relationship between power and knowledge.
The very notion of an “ancient” or “modern” world existing needs itself to be problematized and deconstructed, but here these terms are invoked without so much as a nod to their constructed nature.
I have never claimed that “Western” texts shouldn’t be read, or that their study isn’t important. My argument was that the way Core presents them as canonical texts, and the way in which it seems to suggest they inform our worldview is violent and dangerous.
Ultimately, it seems that Parkin and Maizel would very much like to disagree with me, but somehow fail to do so.
Their critical invective fails to take issue with my thesis, and concedes my argument which is that Core needs to be problematized.
The argument that Core doesn’t have enough “time” to cover critical texts isn’t so much esoteric and silly as it is total bullshit. It’s the same weak excuse that has been used to exclude minority voices from education and the professional world for years.
If there isn’t enough “time” in Core to talk about why the central texts are violent, misogynist, imperial and heteronormative, then Core needs to go bye-bye. I don’t think that’s the case, however. I think Core CAN (gasp!) include texts outside of its traditional purview.
Parkin and Maizel are comfortable ensconcing themselves in the privileged sphere of Whitman College and saying they don’t have the “time” to be attentive to the voices that are obliterated by Imperial knowledge production.
I think that we can do more, and I think we have an obligation of the highest order to engage in dialogue with the Other whose borders constitute those of our selves. I think Core is one of the first places we should initiate that dialogue. I’m sad that “some” would disagree.