The desire to boost the self-esteem of students, even at the expense of academic standards or of recognizing excellence, extends beyond the grading system. Stanford's Freshman English classes, once designed to develop reading and writing skills, have been reorganized to fit the new therapeutic agenda. Over half of Freshman English classes, which (like CIV) all 1,500 freshmen must take, require participation in the “Community Service Writing” project (CSW).20 Instead of focusing on the basics, these classes assign freshmen to various “public service” projects—ranging from answering telephones at Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service to visiting East Palo Alto elementary schools.21 Students also write grant proposals for their professors’ favorite community service agencies, including homeless advocacy projects, AIDS support groups, and environmental action leagues.22 According to a CSW informational flier, “Students report that the project fosters a ‘can do’ attitude. They see the inside of community service agencies, see what a difference one committed person can make, and make a real contribution to the community in their role as volunteer writers.” This “can do” attitude, however, has been achieved only by sacrificing the original purpose of the Freshman English requirement—reading great literature and writing about it. One student reported that his final exam in Freshman English consisted of writing an elementary school physics test. “I certainly don't think it helped my writing in any way,” he said.23 According to Ken Fields, the Director of Freshman English, only one-third of Freshman English classes still involve writing essays on classical literature.24
A more literal example of the feel-good curriculum is Psychology 174, “The American Drinking and Drug Culture.” More than 200 students packed the first day of class in Spring 1994, and Professor Elise Lennox's introductory comments hinted at the reason for the large turnout: “I don't think I ever have given anyone a C, if that helps with your course selection.” Required work included a “multiple guess” final examination; a “written observation” of a “self help/support group meeting,” such as Alcoholics Anonymous; and a group or individual project. Professor Lennox singled out an exemplary project from the previous year: “One woman copied some literature on alcohol and date rape, painted it on a sign, and hung it in White Plaza.” The first class activity was not much more demanding: Students played “Spring Break Bingo,” which required finding a different classmate to answer “yes” to each situation described in the squares of a “bingo” card. Squares (or situations) included: “Went to Mexico for spring break,” “Did something really stupid over spring break,” “Threw-up more than once over spring break,” and so on.
According to the class syllabus, Psych 174 was to “explore the complex love-hate relationship that America has with alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs,” and the course's own schedule provided perhaps the best indication of what this “love-hate relationship” might entail. While guest lecturer and drug expert Dale Gieringer spoke competently regarding the case for marijuana legalization, Professor Lennox claimed that “his position is that if we tax each joint two bucks we could pay off the national debt,” and the course then concluded with a rambunctious “Class Party.” Apparently, the 1993 class party had gotten a bit out of hand, and so, Professor Lennox announced, the 1994 party would have to be “substance-free.” No event could better capture the essence of the feel-good curriculum than the spectacle she had intimated: students getting drunk studying “The American Drinking and Drug Culture.”
The cause of group therapy explicitly takes center stage in Drama 113, “Group Communications,” whose instructor Helen Schrader (“Helen” to the students) frequently begins class by announcing that “I'm not interested in facts—I care about how you feel.”25 According to the university's Courses and Degrees handbook, the purpose of Group Communications is to focus “on inter-personal processes of communication as they relate to inter-group experience.”26 Despite this rather formidable-sounding description, “Group Comm” (as it is known for short) is not a difficult class. The course has no books and no homework, and grading is attendance-based. Most students get an A simply for showing up (twice a week, for two hours at a time) and participating in discussions. The teaching assistants, upperclassmen who lead the discussions, also receive four units of academic credit, recorded as “Special Research” on their transcripts.27
On the first day of class, sign-up lists are passed around, with a different list for each multicultural group. To ensure the racial diversity that is deemed a necessary prerequisite for “group communication,” the sign-up lists are apportioned by race: Once all the slots for white students have been filled, for example, no more white students may register for the class—even if there are still open African American or Hispanic slots.28 In addition to the lists for whites, African Americans, and Hispanics, the class also has separate lists for Asian American, Native American, and “international” students. About 100 students enroll in Group Comm each Winter and Spring quarter; many more are turned away.
Group Comm does not meet in a classroom, but in Casa Zapata, Stanford's Chicano/Latino theme dorm. “The location is key,” announced Helen on the first day of class in Winter 1993; Casa Zapata provided some sorely needed “cultural intervention.”29 A look around the dorm indicates what Helen means: Casa Zapata is organized around an explicit anti-Western theme, in the form of murals decorating the lounges and hallways. One depicts skeletons from the Third World pulling down Hoover Tower (of the Hoover Institution think tank, which symbolizes the “oppressive” forces of free-market capitalism); another resembles da Vinci's Last Supper, with revolutionaries substituting for the apostles (Che Guevera sits in Christ's place).30
With the proper setting established, the multicultural theater of Drama 113 could begin. The course is organized around a series of successive intra- and intergroup discussions. The group distinctions considered important are the usual ones: racial groups, genders, and economic classes (upper, upper middle, lower middle, and “working”—note the absence of the unmodified middle class). During the intragroup discussions, the various groups list adjectives describing themselves and the other groups, and formulate questions for the other groups. Then, in a highly stylized series of interactions, representatives from the various groups speak to one another, report their respective adjectives and questions, and pretend to be engaged in a normal conversation—although it is not, because everybody knows that everybody else in class is (“secretly”) watching. The in-class antics, designed to promote trust, often bordered on the absurd: On the 1993 anniversary of Martin Luther King's death, Helen had the class stand up, hold hands, and sing “We Shall Overcome.” Most students did not know the words, and just mouthed along: The appearance of conformity was enough.31 In Winter 1994, Helen added a new feature: Each class ended with a 15-minute “affirmation” session, during which members of the class would thank each other for “affecting” them.32 If one did not know better, one could easily mistake the class for a skit on Saturday Night Live.
The adjective most commonly used during class discussions, according to senior Nate Linn, who took the class in Winter 1993, is “oppressed.” Nate described to us the overall tenor: “The adjectives people came up with to describe themselves were repetitive. There was little real communication—people did not dare ask one another hard questions, since you could never predict when there might be an incredible emotional outburst.”33 In one small group discussion in which Nate participated, students were told to reveal a significant maturation experience in their lives. One woman divulged that she had had an abortion, and, suddenly realizing that she had revealed this intimate detail to a room full of strangers, broke down crying. Such incidents apparently are not uncommon in the emotionally charged atmosphere of Group Comm.34
The discussions about economics represent perhaps the most revealing of the dramas staged in Group Comm. The big division occurs between the “lower-middle” and “working” classes on the one hand, and the “upper” and “upper-middle” classes on the other
. Very few students identify themselves as upper class, and the two lower classes invariably accuse the upper-middle class students of attempting to hide the fact that they are really members of the upper class.35 The truth of this accusation is a telling indicator of the dynamics of Group Comm: Students in the upper classes are described as “greedy,” “self-centered,” “spoiled,” and “shiftless,” whereas those in the lower classes are “oppressed,” “hardworking,” “community-centered,” “family-centered,” “sharing,” and “co-operative.”36 The lower-class people want to go back and work in their communities, while upper-class individuals are depicted as selfish and rootless. At times, the lives of lower-class people appear so superior to those of the upper-class that it is unclear how the latter actually are oppressing the former. Simultaneously, however, the claims of economic exploitation are a significant component of the critique of the upper classes—their selfishness is making others’ lives miserable.
This internal contradiction became explicit in a dramatic showdown during Winter 1993. A self-described working class student, junior Tamara Alvarado, spent five minutes discussing her economic deprivation as a child—how her family had not been able to afford any of the nice things wealthier people enjoyed, and how unhappy much of her youth had been as a result. Tamara was reduced to tears in retelling the story of her oppression. Trying to be helpful, an upper-middle-class person asked whether Tamara wanted her children to be members of the upper-middle class. Without a moment's hesitation, Tamara replied: “Absolutely not”; her children would grow up in a lower economic class as well. Several students responded: Then how could she be sorry for her own childhood? No one received an answer to that question, because the distraught young woman promptly ran out of class. The next day, Tamara read a prepared statement, in which all of her original claims were repeated. Nothing had changed; the poor community was still awful, but she still wanted to go back. This time around, though, the rest of the class did not ask any hard questions; instead, perhaps remembering Helen's aphorism “I'm not interested in facts—I care about how you feel,” people just took turns affirming what she had said, and telling her how much better they now understood.37
For the patrons of Stanford's therapeutic curriculum, a concern for facts, logic, and important topics ranks below the desire to promote self-esteem, even if this spire of “self-esteem” is sloppily built atop a sand foundation of indefensible feelings and inflated grades. In this respect, classes like Group Comm and Black Hair provide precisely the wrong training for preparing minority students to redress the financial and power imbalances they perceive in society at large. Those who are taught to run away from hard questions will not even make it past their first job interview.
The Trendy Curriculum
Stanford's multiculturalists are not equal-opportunity esteem builders. As with the upper-class actors condemned in Group Comm, not everybody is allowed to feel good. Rather, plaudits are given only to those students and faculty who fit and accept multicultural values. New freshmen quickly learn which kinds of attitudes are likely to earn them obloquy and which their professors’ approval, and adjust their behavior and classwork accordingly.
A good example is provided by “Peace Studies,” an interdisciplinary class taught by faculty from the departments of Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, History, Education, and VTSS (Values, Technology, Science, and Society). As grades are based only on a take-home midterm and an open-book final, the 100-plus students who enroll each year count on an easy A. According to the course syllabus, Peace Studies, only half-jokingly called “PC Studies” by some students, defines “peace” as “(1) not war” and “(2) collaborative well-being.”38 The first definition is correct, and the second one is what the course spends all but two class sessions discussing.
In practice, the vague concept of “collaborative well-being” serves as a euphemism for a smorgasbord of the lecturers’ pet policy choices—nationalized health care, government-guaranteed employment, transfer payments to inner cities, and so forth—all taught under the rubric of “peace.”39 On April 9, 1992, for instance, Peace Studies celebrated feminist values as a panacea for the world's problems. Professor Byron Bland explained that feminists “expose some fundamental attitudes and behaviors that cause war and violence and identify significant ways of promoting a more peaceful world.” An assigned article maintained that men were to blame for conflict: “If we keep working with feminist peace policies, do not join the military, develop our ‘women's logic,’ continue to care for others, feel compassion, share power, and become more assertive,” women might be able to change the world, “provided we do not copy men.”40 Added another class reading, “The feminist assumption is that gender division of work, pleasure, power, and sensibility are socially created, detrimental to women, and, to a lesser degree, to men, and therefore can and should be changed.”41
While Peace Studies devoted much effort to theories only tangentially connected to the study of peace, far more conventional topics received only cursory attention. The curriculum largely neglected how and why real wars start and end, completely omitting World War I, World War II, the War for Independence, and other significant historical conflagrations. The Vietnam War and Gulf War were reviewed briefly, but only as they related to the “peace movement” and the (often unpacifistic) protests it staged. In the class's final lecture, entitled “Peace and You,” the course's lecturers fondly recounted their own 1960s activism and exhorted students to join the “peace movement” and “to act responsibly and effectively on behalf of peace.”42
Another trendy example is History 267, misleadingly named “The History of Rights in the United States.” Forsaking a legal or even particularly historical approach, the Winter 1993 class never studied the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, the original sources of rights in the United States. Instead, without considering any opposing views, the entire schedule extolled rights movements originating in the 1960s, with class readings centering on Professor Stewart Burns's own book, A People's Charter, a vigorous argument in favor of special group rights for racial minorities; the dust jacket identifies Professor Burns as “a political activist for many years.”43 According to an enrolled student, the teacher's “activist” views became well known within a few weeks, and none of the enrolled students continued to challenge the prevailing wisdom.
If professors have filled their classes with the trendiest political theories, students have mastered the game of telling the professors what they want to hear. As another example, consider the widely subscribed Anthro 1 class, “Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology.”44 This five-unit course provides the foundations for those students who choose to begin a major in anthropology. As it also fulfills the DR in the social and behavioral sciences and can simultaneously be used to meet the non-Western culture studies requirement, the course regularly enrolls upwards of 400 students. In Fall 1991, Anthro 1 centered on case studies of !Kung Bushmen, Canadian Indians, and Algerian peasants. The preferred mode of analysis followed the views of Professor Cheleen Mahar and her like-minded teaching assistants (TAs): !Kung culture had been destroyed by the pernicious influences of the West, Canadian Indians were oppressed and exploited by their government, and Algerian peasant culture could most usefully be analyzed in terms of the Marxist “subproletariat.”
For the students of Anthro 1, it soon became clear that a good grade depended on a close adherence to the party line. Senior Mike Newman explained to us how the “go along to get along” mentality worked: “I didn't bother attending class or reading any of the books. It was enough for me to flip through the lecture notes, so long as I'd tell the TAs what they wanted to hear.” Mike took the class on a pass/no credit basis, the option under which students who receive a passing grade simply receive a “+” on their transcript and no record is kept of those who fail. Indeed, he did not even think it necessary to be sober: “I completed the [take-home] midterm after returning drunk from a Halloween party. I found myself t
o be even more creative than usual.”
Mike was not in much better condition for the final, he told us. His exam essay on !Kung culture merits some study, though not for its intellectual content:
Three hundred years ago, the San, or Bushmen, occupied all of southern Africa along with the Nama. However, incessant conquests by Bantu and Dutch imperialists have pushed the San further and further into the Kalahari desert, leaving them only the land which the imperialists consider uninhabitable or unexploitable [grader's check mark]….
As these resources were quickly depleted, more and more !Kung found themselves working for European farmers rather than attempting to maintain farms themselves. Of course, Europeans did not pay generously for this labor [check mark], providing a pittance that was hardly enough for a man to support himself, much less a family unit that was growing increasingly burdensome as the women no longer had anything to gather and the elderly no longer could pass on information that was rapidly becoming irrelevant [check mark]. Alienated from their traditional roles, many in the community began to lose the self-esteem that originated from the performance of these functions, a contributing factor to the alcoholism that ultimately gripped the community [check mark]….
Obviously, the !Kung and other San peoples have not benefited from their exposure to Western “progress” [check mark]. To return to their former culture is at this point a geographical impossibility, but the modern world has brought them only starvation and despair. That white people actually expected the San to drop overnight a way of life stretching back numerous melennia [sic] in return for Western agriculture and the Judeo-Christian ethic demonstrates the cultural arrogance behind their oppressive practices, but the sad reality is that the San have accepted Western notions of their own inferiority [check mark]….
The Diversity Myth Page 11
