Entry #3 Multiculturalism

My initial thought and my post-research thought are the same. I believe that multiculturalism should be taught and practiced in schools.

The fact of the matter is that the population in schools are growing in diversity. I believe that affirming this diversity is above all, about social justice. Given the vastly unequal educational outcomes among students of different backgrounds, equalizing conditions for student learning needs to be at the core of a concern for diversity. Also, in concern for social justice, we need to look critically at why and how our schools are unjust for some students.

As Taylor states, there are always two sides a winner and a loser. However, children from both sides are now in our classrooms. How do we as educators model empathy for both sides? By teaching the truth with out any sugar coating the views or actions of either side.
The truth is that History did happen and we need to teach it, all of it, to our students. As Famularo (1996) states, “The old curriculum is essentially based on the premise that America has one cultural heritage augmented by minor contributions from other peoples who by and large have presented ‘problems’ to the primary culture.”

Growing up in a small, all-white farm town in Illinois, I didn’t see much (if any) of cultural difference in my community. There were two kids that I saw at the local Chinese restaurant, but they were home schooled so I never thought of them as a part of our ‘community’ (which is sad, but true). All students in my elementary school were middle-class and white. I didn’t even hear about black history month until I was in middle school. My educators did a poor job of helping my classmates and I to understand equality.

As an educator today, I work at a fairly diverse school in Nashville. In my class last year there were 4 African American, 1 Indian, 1 German and 1 South African. I remember the week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we had several lessons about equality and fairness which brought up in-depth conversations about diversity in which every student at some point, made a contribution to the conversations (it was truly a sight to see!). I do feel like the minority students in the class would not have been as active in the discussions if they felt like a minority. Instead, my co-teacher and I made a point to create an atmosphere of the classroom to celebrate equality and diversity. As everyone had a special part in the classroom community, and without that student, our classroom wouldn’t be the same.

One way we were able to do this, to LEARN about their cultural differences and building relationships with their families. Two of the principles of Responsive Classroom Approach (the approach we use to teach) are: (1) Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach. (2) Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education. As Nieto states, “All students of all backgrounds bring talents and strengths to their learning and as educators, we need to find ways to build on these.”

Finally, acknowledging and affirming diversity is to everyone’s interest, including middle-class white students. Understanding people of other backgrounds, speaking languages other than English and learning to respect and appreciate difference are skills the benefit all students and our nation as a whole. It is a disservice to all when we prepare students to live in a society that no longer exists. Instead we should accept diversity and help educate students to be comfortable with differences. Pertaining outside of the classroom as well, we all bring to the community something unique, and without diversity, I feel, we’d live in a pretty boring place.

On the other hand, Famularo states that “Multicultural education is undermined by two fatal flaws. The first is that the more the curriculum represents a multicultural text based upon ‘exposure to diversity,’ the more shallow and superficial learning becomes” (1996). He argues that multiculturalism ultimately reduces education to its shallowest possibilities by glossing over diverse subject matter. I don’t agree with this one bit. Let’s look at the definition of multiculturalism: Banks & Banks (1995) states, "Multicultural education not only draws content, concepts, paradigms, and theories from specialized interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies and women studies (and from history and the social and behavioral sciences), it also interrogates, challenges, and reinterprets content, concepts, and paradigms from the established disciplines. Therefore, Multicultural education applies content from these fields and disciplines to pedagogy and curriculum development in educational settings. This doesn’t sound like shallow and superficial learning to me.



References:

Banks, J.A., & Banks, C.A.M. (Eds). (1995). Handbook of research on multicultural education. New York: Macmillan.

Nieto, S. (1999) “What Does It Mean to Affirm Diversity? The School Administrator. The American Association of School Administrators.

Noll, J. (2004). Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues. Guilford, CT: McGraw Hill.

Taylor, S. (n.d.). Institute for Historical Review. The Challenge of 'Multiculturalism' In How Americans View the Past and the Future. Retrieved June 18, 2010, from https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=1439730&tId=14284090