Human history has been the story of clashes of civilizations and that is the interesting part about it. It is absolutely true that our political structures, our civic structures, come more from Western history than from almost anything else. But I think it is important to teach about clashes of civilizations and how they infected and affected each other and how certain civilizations have won out at certain times. I never understood the critique that you should teach only Western civilization. On the other hand, I've never much liked the representational argument or the identity argument for the teaching of more than Western civilization the 'I need to know about my culture' argument.
Culture is something that many times can be adopted.
I'm probably as comfortable with Russian culture as I am with almost any other culture. I think that you need to be able to cross cultural lines. I think that it is great that black history is being brought more into American history because my view is that Africans and Europeans landed here together and built this country together, and the separation of African culture and African history from American culture and American history is just ahistorical. If you're going to read and understand Frederick Douglass, then you'd better understand Thomas Jefferson, because that is who he was referencing. I think that our students' basic knowledge of history names, facts, places, what came first is abysmal.