Ms. Manderino correctly points out (letter to the editor, March 28) that the attitudes of most professors of history, literature, science, etc., have not changed in their blind reverence toward the "canon" of DWEMs (dead white European males) that is still given full credit for the advancement of modern society.

However, I disagree with Ms. Manderino. The whole idea of a diversity course -- three credits -- piled on top of everything else that a student has to take -- typifies the "curricular band-aid approach" of modern education.

Add more credentials to that little slip of paper that certifies us as functioning members of society, and we're ready to go out and vanquish all the social evils of the modern world.

Thus can we lump all the contributions of women and non-Europeans into a single GER requirement and get away with minimal effort. There. The students at Penn State have achieved broad-mindedness.

The educational reforms of the 60s and 70s have shown that the "band-aid" approach is incredibly ineffective and has only provided more aimlessness and disorganization in the students' curriculum. The addition of the diversity course only projects the message that once we're done with it, we can get on with the rest of our "real" education.

The mandatory diversity course is a University cop-out. What we need instead is a complete and radical restructuring of the entire curriculum. We need to place Willa Cather, Alice Walker, and Gabriela Mistral alongside the canon of DWEMs

We need to put the Harlem Renaissance where it belongs -- not shunted into a diversity course, but in its real context -- a 20th-century American literature survey.

While the methodology one encounters in a women's or black studies course is necessary and useful, it cannot take the place of a more objective and sympathetic viewpoint in a broader course on human civilization. We need a more globalistic, less Western approach to the humanities and the sciences.

What Ms. Manderino wants to see a diversity course cannot provide. The knowledge must be directly implemented into the contexts in which it belongs. This is what is necessary to ending the inexcusable bias we have all experienced.

A band-aid does not heal deep wounds, but only allows infection to spread. Keep the male WASPs who control our academia at your mercy. Don't settle for a diversity course.