It's that time of year again. Pretty soon, ASU students will be getting out their General College Catalogs to see what classes they need to take next semester in order to fulfill graduation requirements.
They'll be poring over the intricacies of their DARS reports and writing down more line numbers than they see in their math classes.
Many students will look in the catalog and discover that they need to take a class designated as a "Cultural Awareness" course in order to graduate from ASU. According to the catalog, such courses will "promote awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity within the contemporary United States."
Now what could possibly be wrong with that? I am entirely for the existence of such a requirement, except for one not-so-insignificant issue.
Apparently, the only people with actual culture in the United States are women, Blacks, Latin and Native Americans, and homosexuals. At least, that is what the University seems to believe.
That's right. Looking through the catalog, one will find that the only courses that give Cultural Awareness credit are classes covering one of those five groups. ASU seems to think that the only way a person can develop a sense of cultural diversity is by studying the so-called "popularized" minorities of the United States.
For example, a person can take a course entitled "Korean Culture and Society" and learn about Korean history, religious traditions and contemporary issues, and yet he or she will receive no cultural awareness credit.
I can go and learn about the use of calligraphy in Japan. I can study major trends in German cinema over the past century. I can discuss Italian-American culture. But according to ASU, I am no more culturally aware after doing so than a rock buried six feet underground.
ASU just seems to have a very narrow-minded view of what exactly constitutes culture. The university neglects to give any credit for studying the cultures of people from Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe, and yet people from these areas make up an integral part of the United States.
Some people might argue that such cultures are not as represented in the United States, and because of that we should only study those cultures that are predominant. But to me, that argument just doesn't make any sense.
Go to pretty much any major city in the United States and you will find a Chinatown. Even Tempe has a Chinese Cultural Center. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were over two million Chinese people in the United States in 2000.
Yet a person can study Chinese American culture and receive no cultural awareness credit whatsoever from ASU. And that is just one example of a significant culture within the United States that ASU neglects to give credit for studying.
I don't even understand why ASU restricts its cultural awareness credit to courses that study cultures only in the United States. Such a restriction is completely absurd, because a person can most certainly become culturally aware by studying the cultures of other countries.
The United States has often been compared to a giant melting pot — a conglomeration of people of different races, ethnicities, nationalities and sexual orientations. Each of the constituents of this melting pot is an integral part of American culture as a whole. Unfortunately, ASU seems to be sending the message that only a few ingredients in this national soup are important and worth studying. As a result of this misguided notion we students suffer.
We suffer because we receive no credit for taking courses that certainly expand our knowledge of other cultures. We also suffer because the University's policy towards "cultural awareness" is tantamount to ethnocentrism, one of the worst elements an educational institution could have.
Ethnocentrism is responsible for a great deal of ignorance in this country, and unfortunately, the result of large-scale ignorance is often violence. The only way to combat such a problem is by stimulating cultural awareness within people, which is what ASU has tried to do, but so far it has only succeeded halfway.
Students at ASU deserve cultural awareness credit for taking courses such as "Contemporary Culture of Israel" and "Survey of Russian Literature." Such courses most certainly contribute to the students' understanding of different cultures and their impacts on the world.
The University needs to rid itself of all of its ethnocentric shackles and recognize every ingredient that makes up this wonderful melting pot of a country.
Jonathan Winkler is a mathematics sophomore. Reach him at jonathan.winkler@asu.edu
