Multicultural Education By Jimmy Aquino

Multicultural Education "Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good." (p. xi) * * Banks and Banks (1995) define multicultural education

"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. Multicultural education applies content from these fields and disciplines to pedagogy and curriculum development in educational settings. Consequently, we may define multicultural education as a field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates, for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic studies and women studies." (p. xii)*

History Multicultural education first emerge during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Multicultural education movement is directly linked to the early ethnic studies movement initiated by scholars such as – Williams ( ) – DuBois (1935) – Woodson (1919/1968) – Bond (1939) – Wesley (1935) Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and exceptionality- and their interaction- are each important factors in multicultural education.

Other scholars who fashion multicultural education since its inception and influence by African-American ethnic studies movement: – James B. Boyer (1974) – Asa Hilliard III (1974) – Barbara A. Sizemore (1972) Scholars who are specialist in other ethnic groups: – Carlos E. Cortes (1973, Mexican Americans) – Jack D. Forbes (1973, Native- Americans) – Sonia Nieto (1986, Puerto Ricans) – Derald W. Sue (1981, Asian-Americans)

The Evolution of Multicultural Education First Phase: – Educators who had interest and specialization in the history and culture of ethnic minority groups initiated individual and institutional actions to incorporate the concepts, information, and theories from ethnic studies into the school and teacher education curricula. (P.19)* *James A. Banks: Multicultural Education (Cont.)

Second Phase: – School and teacher education curricula was necessary but not sufficient to bring school reform. – This would respond to the unique needs of ethnic minority students and help all students to develop more democratic racial and ethnic attitudes.

Third Phase: – Other groups who viewed themselves as victims of the society and the schools, such as women and people of disabilities, demanded the incorporation of their histories, cultures, and voices into the curricula. (P.20) Final and Current Phase: – Consists of the development of theory, research, and practice, that interrelate variables connected to race, class, and gender (Banks & Banks, 1993; Grant & Sleeter, 1986).

Professional Organizations that encourage schools to integrate Multicultural Education in the 1970’s: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (ACCTE) – 1973 they stated: “No One Model American” – 1977: Pluralism and the American Teacher: Issues and Case Studies National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) & NCSS – NCSS 43 rd yearbook titled: Teaching Ethnic Studies: Concepts and Strategies (Banks, 1973) – NCTE (1974): Students Rights to Their Own Language – 1976 Published: Curriculum Guidelines for Multiethnic Education (Banks, Cortes, Gay, Garcia, & Ochoa, 1976)

Kincheloe and Steinberg in Changing Multiculturalism (1997) described the confusion about the use of the terms multiculturalism and multicultural education. Kincheloe and Steinberg's taxonomy of Multiculturalism and multicultural education: Conservative multiculturalism Liberal multiculturalism Pluralist multiculturalism Left-essentialist multiculturalism Critical multiculturalism