Thandiwee Michael Kendall
Program Officer
Getty Education Institute for the Arts
Santa Monica, CA

Thandiwee Michael Kendall began her presentation by thanking the participants, the Getty Trust and its staff, Pacific Visions, and the other technical and support personnel who contributed to the Third Issues Seminar. She noted that her own decision to pursue a career in education was reinforced and encapsulated in the statement, "If you choose to be in education, you choose to serve." Kendall believed that service, in this context, meant service "to students, to communities, to parents, and most of all, to yourself, in making a better world."

Kendall came to Getty with "no expectations...that is, in part, what service means." This does not imply, however, that one is not disappointed at times; it implies that one is as attached to the process that contributes to the outcome as one is to the actual outcome. Like many of the participants, Kendall has lived and worked in a variety of communities, including some of the worst ghettos in the nation, "both the impoverished and the very affluent ones." She has also known and participated in strong feminist traditions, womanly traditions of the African-American community, as well as efforts for gay and lesbian rights. Her experience includes involvement with many people who have realized their own potential to affect change and who understand the power of solidarity.

To illustrate the true meaning of solidarity, Kendall cited a story related by Frank Judd, who left Oxfam to join the House of Lords. Judd recalled meeting the Bishop of San Cristobal who had worked extensively with Mexican Indians and Guatemalan refugees. The Bishop asked Judd if Oxfam really had a relationship of equality with the people it serves. Solidarity, the Bishop explained, is a process of identification at the level of the individual, group and community. Solidarity, he observed, is "the modern meaning of charity."

True solidarity is a process of enabling people to achieve their own goals and to discover and use their own talents, creativity, and powers of reason. As the movement for cultural diversity grows, it is important to keep this point in mind and to ask the question "Are we in solidarity with the communities we say we serve?" To be able to answer this question in the affirmative involves "experiencing life with the people, going into their schools, walking their streets and communities even where you may not be comfortable."

Cultural diversity is not a new issue, Kendall noted, but it has gained attention in recent years. This increased attention is due to changing patterns of international migration and recent political and social transformations, including those Kendall witnessed firsthand in South Africa on the eve of the March 1992 referendum vote. Cultural diversity is a matter of human rights. In fact, the 1978 International Covenant of Human Rights states explicitly that everyone has a right to participate in the cultural life of the community. Cultural diversity is also a question of gay rights and rights for racial groups: "Homophobia, sexism, ageism, ableism and disableism are all issues that must be more extensively addressed."

It is not the task of the Third Issues Seminar to cover all of these issues, Kendall continued, but to serve as a catalyst for the participants, so that they can better address these problems in their own classrooms and communities. This mission has led to the Getty Center to call attention to the need for new curricula, materials, and images in the classroom, and to question the entire notion of "values" and how they are articulated and communicated. Teachers, Kendall added, have too long wrestled along with all of these issues in very immediate ways.

While many of those present were in Arizona for the 1992 NAEA conference, Kendall recalled, riots erupted in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict. Ironically, Kendall found herself fleeing from her apartment on the edge of Koreatown with a greater fear than she had ever experienced in South Africa: "Here in a country where we say we are committed to the notions of equality and access...people are dying for change." Rodney King's plea "Can't we all get along?" went to the heart of the outcomes we seek from multicultural education. Kendall was convinced that a genuine commitment to social activism implies a matching commitment to social reconciliation.

In the aftermath of the riots, many people looked again at schools—their needs, their successes, and their failures. One of the most immediate ways of changing attitudes is to change the people who represent the attitudes. Unfortunately, the data suggest that the majority of new teachers are White females who want to teach in predominantly White suburban schools, while the majority of students are children of color from the inner city. To address this critical imbalance we need a comprehensive program of change, including an aggressive action to recruit new people into education at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

In essence, Kendall suggested, this entire conference is about wedding education programs to human rights. What teachers do in the classroom has a tremendous impact on the lives of their students; it is critical that each person confront her or his own biases, a process that can be the beginning of major changes. But as we "look into the mirror," she proposed, it should be with the true notion of solidarity in mind and with a willingness to explore what we all have in common.

Kendall concluded by noting that change takes place within, as well as outside of, institutions. Teachers and administrators have as much a role in changing art education as does the Getty Center. She urged all of those present to call any and all of the program officers at the Getty Center and keep them appraised of their needs and progresses: "We need you working on the outside, pushing to create change, as we push the walls from the inside."

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