An Introduction to Multicultural Education – Chapter 1 Goals and Misconceptions An Introduction to Multicultural Education – Chapter 1 By: Ryan Killian

Is Multicultural Education Harmful to Students? Researchers and Theorists believe that many school, college, and university practices related to race, ethnicity, language, and religion are harmful to students Multicultural education assumes that race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and social class are prominent parts of the United States

The Goals of Multicultural Education Often individuals only know the world from their own cultural perspectives Goals To help individuals gain greater self-understanding by viewing themselves from the perspectives of other cultures. To provide students with cultural, ethnic, and language alternatives.

The Goals of Multicultural Education (continued) To provide all students with the skills, attitudes, and knowledge needed to function within their community cultures, within the mainstream culture, and within and across other ethnic cultures To reduce the pain and discrimination that members of some ethnic and racial groups experience because of their unique racial, physical, and cultural characteristics

The Goals of Multicultural Education (continued) To help students to acquire the reading, writing, and math skills needed to function effectively in a global and “flat” technological world Educators must realize that group membership is not an important part of personal identity for many individual members but more important identities are individual identities such as religion, social class, gender, or sexual orientation.

The Goals of Multicultural Education (continued) Education and Global Citizenship To help individuals from diverse, racial, cultural, language, and religion groups to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively within their cultural communities, the national civic culture, their regional culture, and the global community

No Child Left Behind and the Standardization Movement Enacted by US Congress in 2001 to address the academic achievement gap between white students and students of color Many of the standards-based school reforms were created to respond to the requirements of NCLB

NCLB: Has it been successful? Positives A study in 2002 indicates that performance improved in low-performing schools after the implementation of standards-based reform Negatives Researchers believe standards-based reform has had a negative impact on curriculum and school life In another 2002 study, 18 states were analyzed in which no improvement was seen

How can we improve achievement on standardized tests? The main way that is emphasized is by using multicultural content

Misconceptions Multicultural Education is for the Others Multicultural Education is Against the West Multicultural Education Will Divide the Nation

Multicultural Education is for the Others Multicultural Education is an entitlement program and curriculum movement for African Americans, Latinos, the poor, women, and other marginalized groups Multicultural Definition – is not an ethnic or gender specific movement, but a movement designed to empower all students to become knowledgeable, caring, and active citizens in a deeply troubled and ethnically polarized nation and world

Multicultural Education is for the Others (Continued) It is only for ethnic groups of color and the disenfranchised When multicultural education is viewed by educators as the study of the “other,” it is marginalized and prevented from becoming a part of mainstream educational reform

Multicultural Education is Against the West It is often viewed by its critics that it is a movement against the West and Western Civilization In reality, it is a thoroughly Western movement In Multicultural Education, it is important the truth about the West be told

Multicultural Education Will Divide the Nation While we are one nation politically, sociologically our nation is deeply divided along racial, gender, sexual orientation, and class lines already. Multicultural Education is designed to help unify a deeply divided nation rather than to divide a highly cohesive one. Multicultural Education supports the notion – one out of many.

Progress in Multicultural Education Multicultural Education is still not the center of curriculum in many schools, colleges, and universities but it has made great strides in its impact on curriculum over the last four decades. In elementary and high schools much more ethnic content appears in social studies and language arts textbooks today than 10 or 20 years ago. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) adopted the multicultural education standard in 1977

Progress in Multicultural Education (Continued) Major changes have been seen in textbooks at the university level, the high school level, and the elementary level The percentage of students of color enrolled in schools in the United States has increased a great deal since the mid 1980s Language diversity is also increasing, in 2000 18 percent of Americans spoke a language at home other than English

Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools by Race and Ethnicity

Languages Spoken at Home, Ages 5 and Over

Multicultural Education and the Future Multicultural education’s major goal is to restructure schools, colleges, and universities so that all students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function in an ethnically and racially diverse nation and world Multicultural Education is experiencing impressive success as its implementation in schools, colleges, and universities increases Still faces important opportunities and challenges Multicultural education programs will continue to emerge as the United States ethnic texture continues to deepen