Rationales and
Objectives for Multicultural Education
Multicultural education is
advocated as a corrective and necessary alternative to traditional
“monocultural” education in the U.S., the latter criticized for its
Eurocentric and “mainstream” U.S. biases; its “universalist” depiction
of Euro-U.S. culture; its unjust and undemocratic exclusion or marginalization
of the cultures and contributions particularly of peoples of color; its
incompleteness, inaccuracies, and distortions; and its woeful inadequacy in
addressing the social realities and intercultural problems of multiethnic
America, as well of the global community.
Multicultural education’s
advocates advance interrelated ethical, intellectual, social and pragmatic
rationales, values, and objectives. Among
them:
1.
Teaching the ideals of inclusiveness, pluralism, and mutual respect for
all peoples and cultures is a humanistic imperative requisite for ethical
living and full civic participation in a multicultural democracy and a diverse
human world;
2.
Integrating the study of the facts, histories, cultures, values,
structures, perspectives, and contributions of many peoples into the
curriculum builds a richer, more complex, more complete, and more accurate
knowledge of the human condition within and across particular contexts of
time, place, and culture;
3.
Multicultural education explores both the particular and the universal
in human cultural studies: it seeks to understand particular cultures and
peoples in their own contexts and from their own perspectives; it fosters
comparative analysis, ethnorelative understanding, and informed judgments of
the differences and similarities among diverse cultures and peoples; and it
seeks to identify common or “universal” ideals and practices that
transcend particular cultures and peoples, build bridges across cultural
differences, and provide sound bases for claiming human connection;
4.
Multicultural education redefines the truly educated person as one who
recognizes her own culture is one of many; who uses her knowledge of other
peoples and cultures to better understand her own; who learns to value
multiple cultural perspectives and to integrate them into her own; and who
comes not just to tolerate but to understand, respect, and appreciate
others’ cultures, as well as her own;
5.
The U.S. is now, and has always been, multicultural, a “mosaic”
rather than a “melting pot”; this fact should be acknowledged as a social
reality and acted upon as a defining strength, rather than a divisive
weakness;
6.
Recognition (however belated) that demographic patterns and shifts have
changed student populations demands the creation of an inclusive education
climate responsive and relevant to the needs of all students, building
self-esteem and supporting the identify formation of students of all ethnic
and cultural groups in our classrooms;
7.
Multicultural education challenges
unexamined, biased, and false assumptions about human difference and
commonality; it strives to reduce ethnocentrism, cultural stereotypes and
prejudices, and cross-cultural ignorance and misinformation; reflective
critical and connected inquiry into these issues begins to clear the path for
communicating across cultures and dealing more justly and constructively with
cultural differences;
8.
For practical, as well as ethical reasons, in today’s world students
and teachers need to learn to communicate, study, live, and work
cooperatively, effectively, and peacefully with those who are culturally
diverse; and
9.
Relying on the traditions and practices of a single cultural group is
increasingly inadequate to address social ills, avoid civil strife, solve
problems, improve the quality of social life, and effect social progress;
cultural diversity, viewed as “multiple forms of expertise” and experience
distributed across cultural, ethnic, and economic groups, can be effectively
tapped as a pluralistic “resource for solving problems” collaboratively
(Peck et al, 1995).
Developmental
Stages and Curricular Models for Multicultural Education
Some common and accumulative
teaching components in the multicultural curriculum characterize all its
developmental stages and models (Gay, 1995):
1.
Emphasis on teaching multicultural content within strong historical, as
well as regional, contexts;
2. Objectives aimed at students’ developmental growth in relation to
cultural diversity, usually with strong ethical and social dimensions;
3.
Faculty development of multicultural and interdisciplinary competence
across subject areas needed to analyze complex ethnic and cultural topics from
multiple perspectives; and
4. Strategies, at successive developmental levels of multicultural
education, moving toward increasing “referential and conceptual
complexity” (Gay, 1995).
Four major developmental stages
of multicultural education have been proposed and described over the past
25 years, as helpfully identified by Geneva Gay (1995); curricular models have
also been associated with particular stages.
1.
Inclusion Stage
a.
Emphasis on teaching factual content about the histories, heritages,
and contributions (e.g., heroes, holidays, and other discrete facts about
ethnic cultures) of groups traditionally excluded and underrepresented in the
educational curriculum, especially of peoples of color.
A second level or expansion of this content emphasis emphasizes
multicultural concepts, themes, and perspectives (Banks, 1993). A typical teaching unit at this stage might focus on the
concept of heroism, introducing students to a host of ethnic individuals who
made contributions to their own group as well as society as a whole, and
defining cultural heroism according to the standards of different ethnic
groups.
b. Associated curricular models include creation of a separate program of
studies, the “single group studies” approach (Sleeter & Grant, 1994);
of free standing units within existing single courses; and/or of new
all-purpose courses on multicultural issues.
c. Limits on the effectiveness of the content emphasis and curricular
models associated with the inclusion stage include: (1) the isolated,
fragmentary, rather haphazard and/or additive ways in which information is
frequently presented may diminish its impact, generate inaccuracies and
distortions, and reinforce stereotypes; (2) free standing units within
existing courses and/or separate courses/programs marginalized by educational
structures and degree requirements may, according to Ognibene (1989),
emphasize differences to the exclusion of commonalities across cultures,
further marginalize the underrepresented groups that inclusion
curriculum are intended to center, and reinforce the conclusion that the
dominant epistemology is best; (3)
further such courses may fail to reach the
students who need multicultural education the most, e.g., through
absenteeism or election not to take such courses.
2. Infusion Stage
a. Emphasis on systematically integrating multicultural content, contexts,
examples, and viewpoints from diverse groups to illustrate key concepts,
principles, theories, and methods of inquiry from multiple perspectives, into
the entire curriculum across core content areas, disciplines, programs, and
courses. Infusion necessitates
substantial changes in the educational process and curricular structure to
ensure that cultural pluralism is integral to the learning experiences of all
students--”majority” and “minority”--and not approached as contingent
on the presence of specific student ethnic and cultural groups.
Infused courses may take comparative-thematic and current issues
approaches to teaching cultural diversity, or target one broad dimension of
diversity and examine the impact of important variables related to
discipline-specific knowledge and processes.
Infusion pedagogy moves beyond “including” multicultural content to
“infusing” cultural diversity into the core contexts and structures of
teaching and learning, e.g., in curricular rationales, statements of goals and
objectives, design of learning activities, and students’ performance
assessments.
An important conceptual and structural shift from content-oriented and
piecemeal “inclusion” efforts, infusion signals “a particular
ideological and methodological approach to the entire educational enterprise
rather than a separate curriculum or program per se,” as
multicultural education theorists continue to analyze and reinterpret the
“relationships between [sic] culture, ethnicity and learning” (Gay, 1995).
b. The associated curricular model, as suggested above, is systematic
multicultural infusion (or mainstreaming) into core courses and required
sequences across the curriculum, encompassing the general education core,
major fields of concentration, and professional/technical programs. Typically, existing courses are substantially revised and/or
new courses are created, emphasizing multidisciplinary approaches and
interdisciplinary links. Ideally,
faculty efforts are supported by institutional sanction and resources,
coherent curricular planning and faculty development within and across
departments and programs.
c. At least two major problems intensify at the infusion stage: the
“full bucket dilemma” (MacPhee et al, 1994) posed by trying to squeeze new
material into tightly packed courses, and faculty difficulty in developing
multicultural, as well as multidisciplinary, competence across subject areas.
d. However, the infusion stage and curricular model is judged superior to
inclusion, and worth solving the above problems, according to MacPhee et al
(1994), because (1) it conveys to both “majority” and “minority”
students that diverse cultural perspectives are valued in society and
necessary for a more complete understanding of the human condition; (2)
retention of multicultural learning is improved when connected to integral
disciplinary course content in systematic fashion; (3) students are exposed to
more and different aspects of cultural diversity across the curriculum; (4)
repeated exposure to cultural diversity instruction sensitizes students to its
importance and gradually increases their comfort level in discussing such
issues; and (5) valuable support networks develop among faculty within and
across disciplines, and well as with community partners.
3. Deconstruction Stage
a. The deconstruction stage is “often referred to as critique,
interrogation, and knowledge reconstruction” by theorists, in Gay’s
formulation (1995); Banks (1993) posits a third level emphasizing
“enabl[ing] students to view concepts from diverse perspectives” as
essential to critical thinking about cultural diversity.
According to Gay (1995), the deconstruction stage directs teaching and
learning toward grooming students “to be healthy skeptics who are constantly
questioning existing claims to social and academic truths and accuracy in
search of new explanations, and to determine if the perspectives of difference
ethnic and cultural groups are represented”; and “culturally pluralistic
knowledge, perspectives, and experiences” are used “as criteria for
re-examining basic premises and assumptions on which the U.S. educational
system is grounded.” Deconstruction
stage learning activities, conducted “in relation to issues of cultural
diversity,” might include (1) discerning authors’ biases; (2) determining
“whose story is being told and validated from which vantage point”; (3)
engaging in “perspective taking”’; (4) being “self-monitoring,
self-reflective, and self-renewing” (Gay, 1995).
b. Deconstruction stage approaches to multicultural education are
generally assumed to take place most effectively within the curricular model
of infusion.
4. Transformation Stage
a. Transformation is “the action response” to the learning processes
of the deconstruction stage, according to Gay (1995):
while “deconstruction focuses on thinking and imagining new
explanations of culturally pluralistic social situations, transformation takes
the revisioning processes to its [sic] ultimate conclusion by acting upon the
mental constructions.” This
stage parallels Banks’ level four (1993) wherein students, as critical
thinkers, make decisions about important social issues and take action to help
solve them. Gay (1995) explains
that students at this stage may be engaged in model building, simulations,
actual creations of social and
political action, “both within and outside of schools, which symbolize their
moral and ethical commitments to freedom, equality, and justice for culturally
diverse peoples.”
b. Like deconstruction, the transformation stage of multicultural
education is located within the curricular model of infusion.
However, transformation’s emphasis on social and political action to
solve problems logically carries it beyond the traditional classroom context.
Peck et al (1995) describes “community literacy” projects directed
to “social change and action”--devised by the Community Literacy Center (CLC)
of Pittsburgh’s Community House--and suggesting a transitional-alternative
curricular model for enacting the transformation stage.
CLC’s “community literacy” projects center in viewing cultural
diversity as diverse forms of expertise, achieving genuine intercultural
communication, negotiating collaboration, engaging in shared inquiry directed
toward taking strategic action to solve specific community problems (Peck et
al, 1995).
Sources and
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