ASU West goes full decolonization
what happened to multiculturalism?
Parents of potential students with an interest in the humanities will want to know what a “decolonized” education is all about. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies in ASU’s New College has adopted as its goal “decolonization.” But what is decolonization? Here is how this School presents it to the public:
"Decolonizing the curriculum means creating spaces and resources for a dialogue among all members of the university on how to imagine and envision all cultures and knowledge systems in the curriculum, and with respect to what is being taught and how it frames the world.”
But wait, isn’t that just multiculturalism? I have been teaching diverse ideas in all of my classes for over 20 years. I can guarantee I consider more non-Western philosophers than any other philosopher at ASU (at least top 3). What more is there than that to “decolonizing”? Well, as usual, common positive words are used on the front face to then bring in same old same old Marxist philosophy of history.
As I have detailed here, the Marxist religion teaches that history is to be divided into the oppressed and the oppressors. A superficial look at wealth distribution is evidence enough for those who cannot think critically. “There are rich people and there are poor people therefore Marxism.”
The School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies tell us that “there is a multiplicity of ways of knowing and being in the world and that being inclusive of a diversity of traditions and perspectives better prepares our students for the complex world in which we live.” According to this school, decolonizing and being inclusive. means affirming relativism; there is no knowledge only knowledges. This Schools goes on to say, “Culturally responsive education refers to the combination of teaching, pedagogy, curriculum, theories, attitudes, practices, and instructional materials that center students' culture, identities, and contexts in their education.” So, in other words, we are to simply accept that there are various traditions, and we cannot know which, if any, of them are correct. And more than that, we are to view these all through the lens of Marxism and the oppressive traditions vs. the oppressed traditions.
But how do the advocates of decolonizing philosophy define it? Anı ́bal Quijano, a leading figure in this religion, said:
“With the conquest of the societies and the cultures which inhabit what today is called Latin America, began the constitution of a new world order, culminating, five hundred years later, in a global power covering the whole planet. This process implied a violent concentration of the world’s resources under the control and for the benefit of a small European minority and above all, of its ruling classes.”
Having identified the oppressors and the oppressed, he then says, “it is very clear that the large majority of the exploited, the dominated, the discriminated against, are precisely the members of the ‘races’, ‘ethnies’, or ‘nations’ into which the colonized populations, were categorized in the formative process of that world power, from the conquest of America and onward.”
What this means is that decolonizing is not multiculturalism where all views are studied. Decolonizing means only studying those views that are deemed acceptable by the Marxist elite. The acceptable views are the non-Western views. Parents, is this what you want your students to study at the university? Is it what you want your k-12 students to be introduced to on field trips to the university?