Ethnic studies: concepts, history, and contemporary applications

Ethnic Studies

Diversity in the Classroom: Children's Diversity Experiences Could Be Harmed by School

Often described as a melting pot, America hosts children from all kinds of ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds. Because of these differences, each child benefits from different gifts and suffers from different challenges. In urban centers, students of such diverse backgrounds have an experience that allows them to familiarize themselves with all kinds of diversity. Because of this, they are often willing to see diversity as a positive feature that makes the United States unique and contributes greatly to its success as a nation. In rural areas and even in some suburbs, children who are from different backgrounds feel left out or ostracized by their non-minority peers. Whatever the case, it is clear that the experiences of children from all backgrounds are integral in their successful future. For this reason, it is important that all children, regardless of their backgrounds, have positive experiences and experiences that they can learn from. One area that impacts these children's lives more than any other area is school.

In schools across the nation, students of all different ethnicities, languages, and cultures are faced with the task of learning material that will get them successful futures through high school diplomas, good SAT or ACT scores, and completed college courses. Although these students are forced to travel similar life paths, at least through the completion of high school, their diverse backgrounds and experiences often make school a difficult task, especially since many espouse that education has been predominately geared toward the success of non-minority students. According to KewalRamani, Gilbertson, Fox, and Provasnik, the proportion of minority students in schools grew between 1993 and 2003 (iv). But minority students are not just accounting for a bigger proportion of these students. Instead, they are also those students who tend to be in poverty, performing poorly, or not enrolled in the courses that will set them up for a positive, high achieving, and successful future (KewalRamani, Gilbertson, Fox, and Provasnik). Through an exploration of classroom culture and teaching styles, an argument can be made that these gaps in achievement result from the classroom's non-minority-oriented stance.

As important as the curriculum studied or the standards applied, classroom culture is an integral part of the student's scholastic experience. Classroom culture, which is synonymous with classroom environment, can be defined as what characterizes a teacher's classroom -- the feelings students and teachers bring, the way activities are done, etc. Young calls the classroom "a home away from home" for the teacher and students (para. 1). How a teacher arranges a classroom spatially, lighting, and temperature all affect the environment (Young); but the teacher's tone of voice, who he or she calls on first, etc. affect the classroom culture. According to Garcia, establishing the right classroom culture can be crucial because while most teachers are white, middle-class, native English speakers, "the same profile does not hold true for [the] students" (para. 2). Students from different ethnicities may feel threatened faced with a teacher that does not look like they do. And students who come from non-American cultures could be threatened through a variety of teaching methods that are used in American schools because they are typical of American cultures. For instance, children from some cultures are not used to being spoken to directly by adults or competing, as many teachers use competitions to encourage student learning. It is of the utmost importance that teachers understand these cultural differences when creating their classroom culture or environment. According to Penny Oldfather's study regarding 5th and 6th graders in literacy learning, classroom culture has a meaningful impact on whether or not students are able to engage themselves in some literacy activities. Specifically, Oldfather found that teachers who were sympathetic to the students, honoring their voices when they expressed a dislike of literary material, were able to positively motivate these students.

Because students have had a variety of culturally diverse experiences throughout their lives, it is obvious that language and literacy is one area in which the teacher's understanding of culture and creating a positive classroom environment integral for the students' ability to make the strides needed for academic success. Heath, in her examination of linguistics and education, found that children develop not only the ability to speak a language and dialect as they grow, but also how to use that dialect and language. For instance, the author found that mainstream mothers tended to use "questions and imperatives" with their babies (254). Further, Heath writes that "tests used by pediatricians, day-care centers, kindergarten teachers, and all levels of public schooling came to reflect many of the general conclusions of the language research on children in mainstream middle-call households" (255). What this implies is that the culture of education has traditionally revolved around only one kind of cultural experience, while students with ethnicities, cultures, and language patterns not in the mainstream have suffered by being expected to perform in this manner.

With classroom cultures that do not take into account the vast cultural, ethnic, and linguistic experiences of children, it is clear that teaching methods are similarly troubled. Indeed, Heath writes that "school expected all children to follow a unilinear path of verbal and social development" (255). Although Heath goes on to say that this way of thinking was changed through further linguistic experimentation, it is still clear that teaching methods in the United States have a foundation in the educational roots of the United States, which certainly favored non-minority or diverse students. Teaching methods refer to the theoretical practices that teachers put into place when instructing students. McCarthy lists lecture, lecture with discussion, brainstorming, videos, a panel presentation, role-playing, small group discussions, class discussions, and having a guest speaker among other options in a list of common teaching methods. As of late, teachers everywhere have been encouraged to practice diversification, a process by which they bend their teaching methods to include students who have ethnic, cultural, or linguistic differences. Some popular methods of diversification include relying on the visual -- such as drawing -- for the English language learning, encouraging students to tell stories in their dialect, or incorporating multicultural history, social studies, literature, and music lessons. Indeed, Bodone writes that when it comes to teaching culture itself, teachers sometimes still find themselves feeling uncomfortable. In his review of Mary Dilg's book on the subject, Bodone writes that Dilg teaches adolescents who are in the midst of trying to define themselves within their cultures and classrooms. Clearly, this task would be difficult to any teacher, who must teach in such a way as to encourage students' academic development as well as cultural, ethnic, and linguistic development in the milieu that the student chooses. Sawicka et al. write,

"In a society charged with debate about ethnicity, ethnic identities jostle within and alongside one another in a competitive market. It is not always easy for young people to know who they are culturally, or even understand why they may have several ethnic identities depending on where they are and who they are with" (para. 4).

Thus, it is clear that forming a cultural identity is difficult for children and teenagers, as the American child has a variety of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic experiences. As teachers se methods that do not necessarily reflect the diversity of their classroom the chance of this precarious practice continuing is slim. Furthermore, many students are assessed using methods that relate to the teaching methods that do not encourage diversity -- standardized tests. As standardized tests often see a disproportionate amount of failures from English language learners and ethnic minorities, it can be called harmful to diversity ("What is Wrong"). Despite changes, then, it is clear that the public school still does not enourage diversity.