包摂と分裂のカリキュラム――ニューヨーク州教育改革と多文化主義論争――

抄録

The launch of multicultural education in public schools led to a stormy dispute during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. In particular, the social studies curriculum reform in New York State is one of the touchstone events in the multiculturalism controversy. In 1989, the State Task Force submitted a report entitled A Curriculum of Inclusion that sought to institutionalize multiculturalism in the public education systems. The report stirred up a dispute about the curriculum in relation to rethinking American cultural diversity from the perspective of minorities. The debate about the New York State curriculum has been described as located in a dichotomy between multiculturalists and the uncompromising opponents which ultimately escalated to the “culture wars.” Through the fierce arguments, the anti-multiculturalist political culture spread over the discourses on history, social studies, and diversity in the United States. This paper focuses on the State curriculum reform’s idea of “inclusion” and questions why the reform describing the new vision of “inclusion” was interpreted as a catalyst to “division” in America’s multicultural society. It examines the official and personal documents pertaining to officers, scholars, and educators involved in the curriculum reform to trace the rise of anti-multiculturalism and the dominance of a dichotomic interpretative frame. The dichotomy made multiculturalism seem too controversial to be accepted by a broader civil society.

The task force report, A Curriculum of Inclusion, proposed a concept of “inclusion” that reflected multiple perspectives with the aim to respect histories and cultures of minorities. It described it using a metaphor of “Round Table” on which every group shared respect for and understandings of other cultures. However, the critics, from the conservatives to the “liberals” including Diane Ravitch and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., problematized its preference for “identity politics” over professionalism of historians. The opponents also blamed its “Europhobia” that denied “European origin” of American civilization. To respond to the criticism, Thomas Sobol, the State Education Commissioner, adopted an “inclusive” strategy that organized a committee involving the critics for reviewing the report and making a revised proposal for education reform. Against Sobol’s expectation, the involvements of Ravitch and Schlesinger in the reform reinforced their refusal of Afrocentrism and their question of its influence on multiculturalism. Even though State Education Department accommodated the criticism in adopting a new compact of State’s education policy, Schlesinger’s book, The Disuniting of America (1991), spread the attitudes of anti-multiculturalism in the national controversy on education in the 21st century. The dichotomy has prescribed the political narratives on multiculturalism since the early 1990s. However, this paper also noted that in a public survey in 1991, New York State residents avoided choosing between the two sides and expressed their hope for a more inclusive vision in the curriculum reform controversv.