Cultural diversity in contemporary society

Cultural Diversity

Multicultural Education was developed in the 1960's as a movement whose main purpose was to oppose the past orientation of education towards an assimilation of the ethnic or racial minorities in the mainstream, dominating American culture, and emphasize cultural awareness. It was felt that the tendency towards cultural uniformity does not comply with the essential requirements of democracy, whose main end is to achieve balance in diversity. Therefore, the principal goals of multicultural education are obviously to offer equal opportunities for all the students integrated in the educational process, and also, in its larger scope, to mediate the better functioning of the culturally diverse society, by eradicating stereotypes and promoting a positive attitude towards difference in terms of race or ethnic background. Cortes (1978) evinces a number of goals to be achieved by multicultural education: the ability to understand multiple, diverging, cultural perspectives on values or attitudes, the ability to keep an open mind when confronted with difference, and the ability to take pride in oneself and respect all peoples the other people.

The ways in which these basic goals could be achieved usually form a subject of debate among the specialists. As Burnett (1998) shows, the types of multicultural programs vary: there are content oriented programs, namely those that focus on revising the curriculum so as to include as much information as possible about minority cultures, there are student oriented programs that attempt to increase academic success of some minority groups by paying attention to their special needs but without changing the basic curriculum, and there are, finally, social oriented programs that have a larger compass and usually focus on social activism and the implication of the whole community in the educational process. It is also generally agreed among the specialists that a change is needed not only in the ways of educating, but in the general "school climate and pedagogy," as Ronald C. Tharp suggests. The crucial thing that needs to be considered when attempting the implementation of multicultural education are first of all, the focus on eradicating the stereotypes and myths that are circulated with regard to different racial or ethnic groups. Thus, the first step is to dispel of few of the common myths about cultural diversity, such as the myth that a minority culture should be characterized as a phenomenon that diverges from the mainstream culture, the myth that bilingualism should be considered as a disability rather than an asset, or the myth that multicultural education is only relevant in those classes where there are members of the minority groups (Sanchez, 1995). Thus, the main ways in which the aims of multicultural education can be achieved are to make the students or else other members of the community aware of the process of stereotyping and of what it implies, to expand the students' knowledge about other cultures with an emphasis on the basic equality of every civilization, to stress the value of diversity, to use comparisons between different cultures when trying to teach about similarities and dissimilarities. All this can help mediate the relation between students or people of different cultures in a positive way, and can prevent the probable conflicts that could appear because of some differences of custom or perception, as it could happen for example when people first meet in society, and are confronted with different perspectives on salutations or other forms of verbal and non-verbal communication. Surely, multicultural education is not a closed field, and it can be permanently enriched and contributed to through various new approaches. The basis thing to consider is, nevertheless, to try to encourage positive social attitudes that will lead to better human relations and the progress towards globalization.