Early in her book, Losing Our Language, Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the Harvard Graduate School of Education sounds the alarm: "At their peril do parents and others underestimate the importance of the elementary school reader." She spends the rest of her book pointing out the dangers of the current trend to replace the classics of children's literature with "less literate" multicultural material in basal reading textbooks for grades 1-6.

Her subtitle summarizes her position: "How Multicultural Classroom Instruction Is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write and Reason." Dr. Stotsky asserts that social and political goals are supporting and driving the inclusion of many ethnically varied selections. She thinks that some of these selections "downgrade and degrade the English language."

Also, she fears that if pupils miss out on the children's classics (many of which were written by white male English and American authors), they will lack cultural literacy. Dr. Stotsky points out that they will also lack exposure to the vocabulary and style of authors whose works have remained popular for generations. She blames multiculturalism for much of what she calls the "dumbing down" of the textbooks from which reading is taught in elementary schools.

In opposing multiculturalism, however, Dr. Stotsky is swimming against the tide. Look at the inclusiveness that both political parties tried to show in their national conventions this year. Look at the state mandates, which have been in place for decades, specifying multicultural content as one of the criteria for textbook selection and purchase.

If an author-publisher team took to heart everything that Dr. Stotsky said, and created a basal reading series that excluded multicultural content, the series would be a flop. It would not sell. Today's market demands ethnic diversity, not only in the selections and authors featured in basal readers, but also in the contents and illustrations for texts in all academic fields.

The author's stand against multiculturalism will turn away many educators -- some because of philosophical disagreement, others because of lack of practicality. With our ever more diverse population, multiculturalism is here to stay.

Dr. Stotsky is an outstanding scholar who reports her extensive research well in her book. However, she bases her case against the contents of the basal texts primarily on data from 1989, 1993, and 1995 editions of readers for the upper elementary grades. Even in those basals, and certainly in today's basals, children in the lower elementary grades encounter fables and folktales which are part of our cultural heritage -- really our "multicultual heritage," since the roots of fables and folktales extend back to a great variety of ethnic groups. Basal content is not, and never has been, as bad as Dr. Stotsky claims.

Probably the best use we can make of Dr. Stotsky's material is to note the areas where multiculturalists have gone overboard in their efforts to include minority literature. Moderation is devoutly to be desired. Her book is worth reading simply to discover the extremes and abuses that have crept into a few basals.

Perhaps her criticisms will cause some judgments to be tempered, will prevent some mistakes from recurring, and will influence some future decisions about content to be more inclusive -- of traditional classics as well as ethnically diverse material.

Review by
LEE MOUNTAIN
University of Houston

Lee Mountain, Ed.D., is professor in the CUIN Department at the University of Houston. She is a leading author of children's learning materials. She is a former member of the TAA Council.