Western Civ In The 21st Century

The primary reason for the introduction of the Western Civ class in American colleges was the worry that students were not sufficiently prepared for more intensive college work, and needed some kind of foundation from which to build upon. Furthermore, faculty of these colleges believed that there was a particular set of knowledge, or system of 'general education,' that was integral in creating a well-prepared and educated citizenship. In a nut-shell, then, Western Civ was the ultimate liberal arts class; an entirely non-vocational set of curriculum that was geared towards instilling the values and aesthetic hierarchies of the American collegiate environment into the incoming student body. In a way, the early Western Civ classes were the original source of the idea of cultural capital, and one of the reasons that this kind of knowledge became 'important' in the first place. The Western Civ curriculum was geared entirely towards the presuppositions a particular group of people had about what kind of things were 'important' to teach a new generation.
This is more or less the goal of a humanities course at Geneseo; the elucidation of cannonical texts (mostly Western ones, almost all written by white males) to a new generation. However, the idea that Western Civ is exclusively something that needs to be taught to college students today is pretty absurd.
Here's an idea: I live in Brooklyn, a pretty well-populated place, and I went to a high-school that had 5000 students in it. I probably saw more people in one day in Brooklyn than anybody living at the time Western Civ was introduced saw in a month. I see more people in a week than someone living in 1500's Europe would have ever seen in their entire lives. And more importantly, all of these people that I see are from all over the globe, each with a different cultural perspective and background (a lot of times, a non-western one). So, if the goal of a Western Civ/Humn type class is to teach things that are of cultural significance/important/etc. then the idea that that class can be exclusively 'Western,' is just outdated. There is no use in only gleaning a western perspective anymore; in the 21st century we're living in a much more integrated and 'smaller' world, and it certainly isn't just 'western.'