Alternative Canons

I found an interesting article on canons in education:

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=6&sid=55bc6ac2-b036-4b8c-af0a-5562c3533111%40sessionmgr2

This article by Amin Alhassan questions how some questions are made central in education, particularly in field of communication studies, while others are placed in the margins. Though focusing on schools in Canada, I believe that the arguments still apply to U.S. education. Alhassan argues that though there has been an increase in alternative canons courses, they are always offered as electives, not as required courses: "The unstated assumption is that feminism, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory are optional to the field, rather than integral, or are offered only intermittently. This raises the question, then, of what gets valorized as part of the core curriculum of communication and culture studies, and what gets reduced to a niche option" (pg 104). Therefore, these classes are still seen as de-central, as less important than eurocentric ideologies, and thus the relations of power are sustained.