The Multicultural-Gender-Multigender general education requirement has been a hot topic on this page for the past several weeks. Today, two columnists add their two cents to the debate. Are MGM classes important to a balanced education? Should they be required for graduation?
MGMs are state indoctrination
by Scott Bushee
From ancient Sparta, to Plato's Republic, to Mussolini's Italy, down to modern times there have been people who have thought that their superiority allowed them to dictate how other people were to live.
Thomas Sowell called these people the Anointed. These people are "deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane." Anyone who disagrees with the anointed is not only wrong, but immoral. Therefore, they must be made "aware" and have their "conscience raised."
It is clear to any student who has taken an MGM class that this sort of thinking is the guiding light of that requirement here at SCSU.
We the students of St. Cloud State University seem to be looked upon as lowly things, who, without the guidance of our betters, would be out stringing up black people and raping women. We are little more than barbarians in their eyes.
For if that were not the case, why do we face forced enlightenment? If the rule makers do not think we are a bunch of racists and sexists, why do they mandate diversity training? If we were decent people, we wouldn't need it.
I personally don't prejudge you, the reader, to be a racist. I also don't think that St. Cloud, Minnesota, America, etc. are terribly racist places.
I realize that there are some individuals among us who are racists. But, not only are they a minority, they are also inevitable. Racism is a byproduct of sloppy thinking, and there will always be idiots among us.
But let's pretend I'm wrong. Let us hypothesize that, despite all of the racial intermingling I have seen and taken part in, most of you really do secretly attend KKK meetings when the Diversity Thought Police (not to be confused with the good people over at diversityofthought.com) are not looking.
Does this make the case for those who plead the forced indoctrination of MGMs?
I think not. The problem with forcing enlightenment on the students of SCSU is that we are in a public school. That's what the second 'S' in SCSU means. Since SCSU is a government institution, it cannot try to mold us into moral beings.
It is not a proper role for government to make citizens moral any more than it is to make us religious. Indeed, many of us do not draw a distinct line between the two. I personally would argue that it is metaphysically impossible to have morals without having God.
While it would certainly be permissible at a private school like St. John's or Concordia, SCSU is a government institution and thus it cannot force students to take moral orientation courses such as MGMs.
Scott Bushee can be reached at [email protected]
Whiners will not carry the day
by Mike Lauterbach
When I was in seventh grade, there was a whiner in the class. And whenever we got out our pre-algebra books, he's start sniffling and say, "when are we ever gonna neeeeed this stuff?"
Some things never change.
These days, if he were at SCSU, he'd probably be snuffling about the MGMs. He'd be complaining that they don't pay him back for all the money that he's putting in, that he'd rather hear about something else, and most importantly that he's never going to use this in real life.
But grade school has never been about teaching occupational skills--it's always been about teaching skills for life. Neither has middle school, high school (despite a few courses for those who plan on working after they graduate), or higher education.
The only school system that has ever taught a completely utilitarian curriculum is the technical college system.
There's a good reason for that. My seventh grade teacher understood that even though most of us would never use the quadratic formula in our jobs, it was useful for other reasons. College administrators understand that an essential ingredient of any education is a wide knowledge base, and so they assign general education requirements. Some majors even assign more gen-eds than SCSU requires.
But few people object to the general education requirements. So what gives?
The real reason for all the snuffling about the MGM requirement is not the classes' utility. Rather, it has to do with a typical human reaction to facts and theories that are seen as a threat to a person's worldview. It has to do with the intentional exclusion of information about other cultures because of apathy, indifference or downright antagonism.
Indeed, the real reason for the snuffling is political--a reaction to suppress information that supports an opposing political point of view.
But even assuming that the MGM opponents have sterling motives--that they want to streamline SCSU by cutting spending that won't pay tax dividends--the MGM requirement should still stand. It turns out we do, in fact, need this stuff.
The "Byma Plan" forgets that diversity pays dividends for business as well. When Bush filed his brief opposing affirmative action, dozens of Fortune 500 companies lined up to oppose him--not because they have to fill quotas, but because a diverse workforce helped their bottom line. My bet is that these same companies would line up to oppose cutting of programs aimed at educating their future employees about other cultures as well.
In the end, cutting MGMs would simply be turning the class over to the shortsighted, sniffling seventh graders. That was unacceptable in grade school, and it's unacceptable here.
Mike Lauterbach can be reached at [email protected]
