Culturist Policy Article # 6 - Culturist Education Policy

Culturism (cǔl-chər-ǐz-əm) n. The philosophy, art, and science that values, promotes and protects majority cultures.

Culturist (cǔl-chər-ǐst) n. 1. An advocate of culturism. 2. One who engages in the arts or sciences of managing and protecting majority cultures. 3. Adj. Of or pertaining to culturism, culturists or culturist policy.

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Culturist Education Defined

Culturist education is traditional education.  It tells students that the West is the best.  As such, it aims to unify the West via instilling pride.  

Multicultural education teaches an anti-western narrative. As such it seeks to instill anger at the West and foments division.

Multiculturalism and ‘Social Justice’

Multiculturalism is worse than it sounds.  It does not only seek to celebrate cultures.  It includes a nefarious Marxist ‘social justice’ agenda. 

The term “social justice” implies that an injustice has occurred against social groups.  In short, multiculturalism promotes the idea that whites and the West been unjust to ‘people of color.’

Multiculturalism thereby pushes an entire anti-Western narrative wherein it is noble to resent and struggle against western nations.    

Culturist Achievement Gaps

When multiculturalists see educational and economic achievement gaps, they immediately announce that it proves western nations are racist.  They use it to further their anti-western narrative.

Culturists take cultural diversity seriously.  Culturists know that achievement gaps show that some cultures value education more than others.  Rather than showing that the West is racist, achievement gaps show that cultural diversity is real.

Culturist educators would ask ethnic groups to use their shortcomings to reflect on the cost of their values and behaviors.

Multiculturalism and Cultural Relativity

Multiculturalism is subtly destructive by announcing that all cultures are equally worthy of praise. Its celebrating all cultures implies that western culture has no particular merit. 

Via Socrates and Jesus, the West invented valuing the individual.  This history allowed the West to invent democracy and free inquiry.  Western culture’s resulting social structures and technology have built the entire modern world.

Mexico has invented nothing. Islam suppresses free speech.  Multiculturalisms’ refusal to make cultural judgment undermines pride in the West.

Culturism and History
Shakespeare is a British historical hero.  Christianity is the West’s traditional majority religion. Opera is a traditional western art form.  We have our own legal tradition based on western values.  Islam is the West’s traditional enemy. 

History upholds the culturist supposition that the West and its constituent nations have traditional majority cultures.  Multiculturalists assertion that the West has always been made up of random international cultures can only be upheld by falsifying history.

Culturism, Education and Morals

Culturist education provides students the goal of perpetuating the western world and western nations.  As such, culturist education provides a moral system.  If you fail in school, you are letting down our heroic western ancestors as well as future generations.

When educators stress education’s impact on individual students’ employment future, they imply that studying only impacts their lives.  This leaves students disconnected and with scant moral guidance.  Perpetuating the nation our heroes bequeathed to us is a duty.

Culturist Education and Assimilation

When multiculturalists have us celebrate ‘Filipino Pride’ week (and such), they permanently divide us.  Thus they deny the possibility of assimilation. As such, multiculturalists are racists. 

The inherent dangers of racist division are the reason that no non-western region of the world works towards diversity or has adopted multicultural education.

Public Culturist Education

Education does not stop at the schoolhouse gate. Culturist education includes public events wherein the west and its holidays are celebrated.  It includes having national flags flown high and anthems sung at public events. 

For the reasons mentioned above, our governments should neither recognize Muslim holidays nor fund festivals celebrating non-western cultures.

Stopping Islamic immigration will also teach the public that the West has a culture, it is endangered, and that we have a duty to act in ways that support its survival.

Culturist Education and Psychology

Humans are social animals; It feels good to belong. When we teach that the West is great, students will feel group pride. When we fail to provide group pride, gangs and foreign religions fill the void.

Multiculturalists seek to instill pride by having students strike a blow against the West in the name of ‘social justice.’  This multicultural narrative, when combined with the natural need for group pride, facilitates ISIS’s recruitment in the West. 

Group pride happens naturally; Public schools are modern societies’ way of guiding this process.  Like all other civilizations, if the West is to survive, we need our schools to be culturist.

Culturism Helps, Multiculturalism Hurts Minorities

Universities Gone Wild!!!

Approximately one hundred presidents of America's best-known universities signed a petition to have the drinking age lowered!!! Read all about it by clicking the post title. The West has lost its mind. And the saddest part of our cultural mental meltdown is that it is happening at universities.

The university presidents think this will actually help stem the college binge drinking epidemic. A movement leader said, "college students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it's illegal." Not being culturists, perhaps they have not recognized cultural diversity. In many cultures college students are not heavy drinkers. If they had any education they would realize binge drinking in universities is recent, American and not something we must accept as inevitable.

Education is supposed to change people. University, once upon a time, had the mission of making people more civilized and refined. If we accept the fact that elite universities cannot even stop youth from binge drinking, then what exactly is its function? If education is so ineffective, why waste money on it?

Well, we do not (I can hear some say) go to university to get refined, its for a job. The degree and maybe some acquired skills will translate into money. Unfortunately, we live in a culture. Having no moral standards whatsoever is NOT conducive to a thriving economy. Note that the paper diplomas no longer guarentee you a job as industry has fled. And, part of the reason industry has fled is that the universities have stopped inculcating values and a sense of loyalty to the Western tradition.

At some level, the universities are right. Education does not translate immediately into behavior. We absorb the cultural assumptions of our surroundings via adoption of what is expected and given status. If universities want to regain any sense of esteem, lectures about drinking will not do it. Rather, universities must use culturist methods to regain their value, values and traditional role in society.

The presidents of America's top 100 universities should sign a pledge that any student caught too drunk to drive during the school year will be automatically expelled from the university. That will stop the problem dead in its tracks. Students will quickly learn that universities are places that value sobriety. That done, universities can once again symbolically teach America that we value the life of the mind and self-control.

Culturist Black History Lesson

After Basketball, Barton and I were having an intense debate about culturism and censorship when he cut in with what seemed to be a total non sequitur, "That means that I and all black people's culture should not be allowed?"

Since he is black and I'm white and we never really discuss race, I felt I needed to tread delicately. "What does that mean? I'm not sure how you got there."

"Well black culture says that studying in school is acting white, that’s a big part of black culture, does that mean that black people are bad?" My reply got nodding and an acceptance of my side in a way that usually only happens in fantasy conversations.

"That is a very new kind of thinking."

"What?"

“For most of history black people in this country have greatly esteemed education. The Little Rock Nine were those kids that got into the white school by the National Guard.”

“Yeah I know about them, fighting segregation.” “

“You think they didn’t want education? Slaves like Frederick Douglas especially prized education. Emancipation through education has traditionally been a black value. The whites in the South didn’t want them to have education, but they overcame and got access.”

“Yeah,” he said obviously thinking to himself. Then he asked the money question, “What happened to make the ideas change?”

It changes with leftist 1960s education historians like Michael Katz and David Tyack. These guys painted educational systems as rigged. They wrote books saying that mobility did not come from schools. Saying, it was all one big scam set up by rich people to make poor people think they had a chance and that their poverty was their own fault.”

“It all starts with them?” Barton was a little incredulous.

“Well the whole society was in turmoil then. But that was when they wrote and that’s when black people got attitude towards school. But a lot of that generation went from being on the left to being leftist.”

“What is the difference?”

“A person on the left still has hope that the system is benevolent overall and notices the improvement over time. They see things like ending slavery and integration as good proof of our nation getting better. Leftists think the system is rotten and oppressive and needs to be overthrown. They preach despair and revolution. And a lot of these people teach in education schools. That message gets passed along to students, sometimes subtlety, sometimes not.”

“You’re right, I was confused.” Then Barton laid out a beautiful conclusion, “We’ve got to teach that basic idea that black people have traditionally struggled for and wanted education again.”

“Damn straight. Got to get people into their greatest hope around.”

“America?”

“That’s what I was trying to say. That’s culturism.”

Our nation is under attack!!!

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. I'm transitioning back into school and work.

You may not be aware of it, but "the nation" is under attack. It is under attack intellectually in academia. I do not mean policies are under attack or that people are being anti-American. I mean the very concept of "nation" has for some time been denigrated as an "imagined community" with no basis in reality. This common perspective has some validity, but it can be questioned on numerous grounds. Furthermore, reinterpreting the facts can teach valuable culturist lessons.

Nations, it is true, are not as old as we often imagine them to be. Followers of this line of thinking particularly like to point out the not-too-distant disconnect between royalty, the people, and the nation. Under monarchy, the king was deserving of veneration, not a nation. The people spoke many different languages and thought of themselves as subjects, not citizens. The King himself often spoke a different language than those in administrative posts. It was only with the rise of republics that the people became attached as a community to a nation. "Nations" did not really exist until popular revolutions identified the people with the state and national destiny.

The newer nations of South America and Africa present even more stark cases of creation. The boundaries of these newer nations represent adminstrative divisions and not indigenous cultural of geographic features. Early maps did not even have nations. When Bolivar told people to think of themselves as Peruvians, he was creating a new category of peoples. Westerners discovered Cambodia's Angor Watt and Mexico's Chichen Itza. Before they were exploited by new nationalists, they meant nothing to the locals. History creates artificial ties to the past in the name of reifying unnatural categories of persons.

This position, first championed by Benedict Anderson, has some validity. It helps understand that nations are not eternal forms of political and identity organization. That said, we must, as Anderson does, make sure that we differentiate degrees of this reality. Some nations have virtually historical precedence. But some, as in England, have real and cultural ties to the past. English may have been standardized recently, but it was not invented out of whole cloth. It's selection by England as their language, was not totally arbitrary. The person who best represents this view (in the sense of being a great scholar and a great read) is Anthony D. Smith of Oxford. He has pointed out that Western connection to Greece, for example, while it has ebbed and flowed, is not arbitrary. No Western nation ties its existence to something that did not occur on its soil.

What if, though, nations are "imagined communities?" First of all, they are not so imagined anymore. After 230 years, the American nation has a history. We have a political founding, a Civil War, national politics, and collectively fought international wars that prove our national "narrative" is not totally fictive. Our nation has an undeniable basis in reality. Beyond this, though, why would nations being invented be a bad thing? In the West we celebrate invention. Is the lightbulb less valuable or more valuable for havinng been an invention? Our constitution is ingenious. We do not deride it because it was just "imagined." We should be even more proud of our nation for its being imagined and subsequently implemented.

The real issue herein, however, are the motives of those who started the debate being described. While the search for objective understanding might have merit, the need to "problematize" the idea of the nation is not a motive that can be said to be neutral. Many of these people are the same ones that championed social history in the 1970s. They said we should focus on ordinary people and not just politicians. If that is neutral it is fair enough. But when they are then hostile to including any great men, presidents or other political leaders in history, they distort more than rectify history. There was a backlash against not having governments in history. Now "Atlantic history" seeks to show that all governmental histories are intertwined. So when we cannot focus on happenings below national sovereignty, we transcend it internationally. The idea that nations are imagined falls suspiciously within the post-1970s pattern of nation depricating by historians.

Nations are good things! One definition of nation is an area within which there is peace. Rather than having warlords and tribes fighting eachother every two miles, you now have large regions in which there is no war. Historians seem to have not heard that modern anthropologists have established that life was previously very bloody. Since nations have risen, war has declined. Furthermore, communities, real or imagined, bring good feelings. Nature, anthropology and common feeling show that people like to belong. On some level it is ridiculous for me to identify with my sports team (GO LAKERS!), but I love it. Beyond this, common languages and trust, a sense of shared history and destiny, facilitates economics and democratic politics. We can trust eachother in business and in politics to not be ruthless. We agree that, when all is said and done, Democrats and Republicans are Americans and want what is best for it. Without this shared narrative, we can break into hostile groups and violence can errupt.

This brings us to the role of historians in the world. Everyone who writes on this topic notes the centrality of historians to the process of nation creation. Historians have to find old heroes and literature and bundle them to concoct a national heritage to celebrate. One can look at this and see it as an artificial manipulation of the identities of generic people. But, first of all, this overlooks the fact that before nations people still had imagined communities and shared cultures; the world before historians was not peopled with unattached individualists. Secondly, we can celebrate this as an act of valuable conscious creation of community. Like the story tellers of old, historians have fostered unity. To the extent that they have used Western sources, they have done so on a moral basis we should celebrate. Historians used to glory in telling of the deeds and values of our past, they should again.

As a history teacher my goal is to reify and glorify our great community. This noble role goes back to the days of the shamans. It is fact-based story telling. I kept this definition of my purpose especially close to my heart as I taught high school history. Teachers and culturists both know very well what people without larger role models can degenerate into. Teachers and culturists both know that without identification with a larger, imagined community, people naturally break off into sophmores and seniors, or races and conflict erupts. For our historians to spend their time deconstructing the nation is pathological. It undermines their profession's great contributions to the world. It, ironically, shows little appreciation for the historic role of historians. It is an abrogation of duty. Worst of all, belittling our nation as "imagined" can destabilize the Western world. And, if we forget to remember the values and examples of our forefathers, I don't want to imagine the very real horrors that might take its place.

The perils of multiculturalism in schools

The National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth concluded that not even one study showed that culture-based education improved achievement in reading and writing. Some, in an article about this in the January 8th issue of Education Week, say the lack of evidence is due to the inherent difficulty of measuring when the student’s culture has been properly integrated and the limits of standardized tests. Only one study has ever shown math increases. It was performed on Yup’ik second graders in consultation with the tribal elders. But this study’s uncorroborated results are strange in light of the lack of evidence that language achievement is enhanced; you would think language would be more sensitive to culture-based education than math. Furthermore one would have to ask if isolated Alaskan communities have the same dynamics of urban youth. Even without any evidence, California and Florida mandate teachers training in multicultural understanding. One researcher said nonchalantly, “If . . . there’s no evidence it does harm, then let them do it.”

The problem is that cultural-based multicultural education is not only about achievement. It is political. Much of the reasoning (the word “research” does not apply) in this area goes as follows: The theorists note that there is an achievement gap. As groups, Asians and whites do better than Hispanics and blacks in all areas of academics. They then correctly note that this cannot be due to racial differences. The significant fraction of Hispanic and black students who do excel disproves that race is important. But whereas culturists would now suggest that culture is important, these researchers do not take culture seriously. Culturists note that some cultures do more homework and are more gung ho about education. Culture-based education proponents hold to the multicultural view that all cultures are to be celebrated and do not account for much more than food, fiestas and fashion. And once they exclude racial ability and cultural diversity as explanations, they assert that the achievement gap results from systematic institutional racism.

We then go off the deep end of education theory. We look for obvious signs of racism in the system and do not find them; laws specifically prohibit this. We then have to look for subtle racism to find the source of the achievement gap. Ultimately, these multicultural educators conclude, it is not individual acts, but the fact that the entire system uses “white” culture to teach that alienates the youth of color. For example, if “white” English is the standard by which proficiency is to be judged minority students are viewed as deficient. Their self-esteem goes down. This is the basis of “whiteness” studies. Being aware about how Standard English "privileges" "white culture" is said to be crucial to equalizing power relations. Books such as the widely popular, “the Skin That We Speak” do correct our tendency to only see non-standard cultural styles in terms of deficits. But the assumption that white culture equals racist oppression that social justice requires challenging, teaches a dangerous lesson.

If culture-based education is measured by its ability to help children learn, the evidence is inconclusive to negative. But when cultural-based education is promoted as a way to challenge "privilege" and bring "social justice" it becomes destructive. It teaches children that society is unfair. It undermines individual responsibility. When it teaches minority victimization it primes entire groups of people to be angry and that their cultural habits should have no impact. It calls failure noble as it is justifiable "resistance." It contributes to the commonly noted complaint from black students that doing homework is “acting white.” To the extent that it labels confrontation a cultural mode of expression it undermines addressing discipline problems for fear of being called racist. When it emphasizes Ebonics, culture-based education causes the school to fail to teach the skills needed to get ahead. Whether right or wrong, American – not to mention Chinese and European – businessmen do not respect reports written in Ebonics. It is certainly not the case that no negative consequences can come from culture-based education.

The worst result of multicultural, culture-based education is that when we teach all cultures are inherently equal – sans the oppressive “whiteness” – we cut youth off from inspiration. This multicultural notion fails to distinguish the unique moral contributions of the West. For studying the Aztecs to give you pride, you would have to embrace human sacrifice and endless war for victims. Contrary to popular belief,in terms of percent dead, the prior century was the most peaceful in the history of the world. We are the culture that came up with freedom of speech, separation of church and state, democracy, due process and the idea of fighting irrational discrimination. Non-Western nations do not embrace these concepts. Western culture has invented nearly every modern convenience the students enjoy. When we fail to teach the inspirational achievements of Western culture, contributing to society loses its nobility. No one wants to contribute to an oppressive racist white society. All of our students, regardless of background, should be proud to contribute, know they have a duty to contribute, to the Western project of rational self-governance.

Ultimately, however, student achievement is not the only issue at stake. If our students fail to achieve, our economy can flounder. If our schools fail to create a connection between our students, balkanization can emerge. Poverty, balkanization and a culture of blame are dangerous for society. No cultures are more concerned with fairness and equal opportunity than Western ones. If the West falls behind or falls completely, we may be forced to find out just how culturally barbaric and insensitive life can be in the school of hard knocks.

Culturist School Lessons

Yesterday I had a long talk with Jimmy. Jimmy's name has been changed for this article. But, Jimmy is a real American of African descent, teacher and basketball coach in Harlem. He runs a program that is making a difference in young black men's lives. He said he had four students go to four year universities last year. When I asked, "On basketball scholarships?" Jimmy replied, "No, on academic scholarships." His program is working and he is a great man.

Jimmy was alarmed, as all culturists should be, about the state of young black American males. He threw out the familiar statistics about more black men being in prison than college. Woefully, he chalked this up to single motherhood. The mothers make them the center of attention and the difference between home life and school life sets them up for failure.

My culturist contribution was to note that groups have philosophies. The idea that society is unfair, you have no hope and to do schoolwork is acting white are common thoughts in the black community that must be overtly confronted. Jimmy told me about his elderly mother who would walk great distances to a segregated school in the South to get to school. Once there, she did not complain, she did not resist and rail; she did what her teachers said and got an education. That, I replied, around the time of Little Rock Arkansas battle for integration was, by-and-large, the default attitude towards education among both races.

The lesson here is not that one should accept segregation, but one might. That is because our attitudes are not pre-set by nature. Youth come into this world keyed to absorb the cultural milieu in which they find themselves. This is a culturist fact. In tribal times 25 % of men died violent deaths. If you expect to give no guidance and expect respectful, peaceful males who respect women, you need to study more. Western norms, all norms, are absorbed, not consciously thought out generation after generation.

If we do not provide covert guidance as to what we expect, esteem and don't tolerate, we should not expect great behavior to emerge spontaneously. The assumptions that inform the anger of young men need to be confronted overtly. We need to teach that our level of social mobility, while not perfect, is better than any other country you can name. Furthermore, the lack of mobility that exists is not all society's fault. It is in your interest and, due to our forefather's sacrifice, a duty to strive to be productive; youth need positively contribute to the society that positively contributes to them. Different values emerge from this teaching than the ones that are currently fostering anger and defiance.

Furthermore, the attitudinal and behavioral norms and guidance Jimmy and I discussed must be established early. Males confront for status. Being told that the school is the top dog gives it authority. The school's having pretentions to this without it being backed up invites challenge and disrespect. From an early age, the school must be strict and announce what it will and will not esteem. When we give pregnant teens jobs in the front office, when we allow boys to dress in a way that disrespects the institution they are in, we set a tone that informs attitudes. We need to differentiate good and bad behavior from an early age without regard to Freudian self-esteem issues. We are doing culturist psychology, not individualist psychology.

Jimmy applauded these ideas. He had been taught by educationists to think that more student relevant thinking was needed. But he was convinced during our hour-long conversation, that institution relevant - culturist - thinking was needed. He recognized the disconnect between his fabulous program's constantly telling the kids what to do and the education school's abandonment philosophy. This philosophy says the kid fails to do their work due to a lack of interest. It then advocates letting them guide the curriculum or not participate. This model puts too much pressure on the child to reinvent culture, gives them an excuse to fail, and does not adequately give them the cultural guidance they seek by nature. When the streets take up the slack we should not be surprised. We need more program's like Jimmy's that guide youth from an early age; these need positive messages and strong values delineation; they need to be behaviorally prescriptive; they need to go until 6 pm. We need to, like Jimmy, be fathers to these kids.