Multicultural education: principles, practices, and outcomes

Education

Multiculturalism in Education: Creating a Brighter Tomorrow

Multiculturalism in education is an essential element in shaping America's increasingly diverse society. Different ethnic, linguistic, racial, and religious groups bring to the contemporary world a wide range of experiences and viewpoints. Many are the victims of years of prejudicial policies and degrading stereotypes. Others face these conditions as they arrive on our shores. Immigrants who do not speak English fluently, along with African-Americans and other oppressed groups, are often wrongly tracked toward special education programs, or even tagged as mentally disabled. They are denied even the opportunities for education and advancement. Multiculturalism seeks to expand the horizons of all Americans through a comprehensive program of showing off the histories and strengths of all the diverse people who comprise the American mosaic. Multiculturalism opens the eyes of students and teachers alike, and lets them know that there are other ways of looking at our society. Yet multiculturalism also has its shortcomings. Too often, proponents look only at the bare facts, and the training of teaches to impart those facts, without looking at how those facts are used, or even selected. More work needs to be done to realize the full potential of multicultural education in reaching the goals of a society in which opportunity and happiness are freely available to all regardless of ethnic, linguistic, religious, or racial heritage.

Introduction

America today is an increasingly multicultural society. Immigrants from many lands and backgrounds add daily to the ethnic and religious mix. Increasingly, children of new immigrants do not speak English as their native language. They follow customs and religions that "mainstream" Americans find exotic or even threatening. These new arrivals add to a population of native-born minorities, many of whom have long faced discrimination and second-class citizen status. African-Americans suffered for generations under the legacy of slavery. They faced prejudicial laws and exclusion from the American Dream. Denied access to basic opportunities in education, most found themselves condemned to a life of low-wage, dead end jobs. They and their children lacked many of the attributes of the "good life," sharing little in the newfound affluence and prosperity of a burgeoning suburbia. Poor and overcrowded, with substandard housing and paucity of facilities for education, healthcare, and recreation, the nation's inner cities became home to large numbers of African-American and newly arrived immigrants. The situation remains perilous today. Education offers a way out. Multicultural education, in particular, presents opportunities for those of different backgrounds and national, ethnic, and origin. Multicultural education offers hope to those who speak other languages, and follow other traditions and religions. But multiculturalism also presents problems, not least among which is the chance for friction between minority groups and the majority population. As well, there are the potential difficulties in perpetuating a situation in which ethnic, religious, and racial minorities remain as distinct groups outside the American mainstream. Each of these areas must be examined in any consideration of the possible benefits of a multicultural educational system.

What We Know

Multicultural education is based on the premise that individuals of different backgrounds possess different attitudes and assumptions in regard to learning and to the social and cultural constructs that going into the learning process. Teachers too often teach those things that they consider important to themselves. An educator who comes from a white middle class background will almost inevitably approach the classroom from that perspective, thereby ignoring what might be the special needs and perceptions of minority students. As stated in Allen and Hillman-Wilmarth,

To implicate oneself in one's own narratives of learning and teaching means turning habituated knowledge back on itself, and examining its most unflattering - for many, its most devastating - features. It also means exploring how even this most unflattering moment may offer insight into making significance. (Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004)

In order to help their students learn, teachers must be able to reach out to those students, to peak in terms that they understand. Doing this requires expanding the educator's horizons, undertaking a study of other cultures and religions, learning other languages, and in general, immersing oneself in another tradition. Burch and Higbee make reference to several goals of multicultural education as they relate to the developmental process. Among these are the inculcation of respect for members of one group for those who are members of another, together with the exposure of students to numerous varied cultural possibilities and permutations. Young people learn to communicate better with those of other backgrounds, in the process breaking down inherently self-centered notions of identity. Stereotypes are worn away as pupils become more aware of the true personalities of their peers. The approach encourages a dialogue between teachers and students of all backgrounds, leading directly to an expansion of possibilities and a greater opportunity for learning as students and teachers learn to help one another and to assist in building up strengths and eliminating weaknesses. (Bruch & Higbee, 2002) lack of tolerance and respect for diversity frequently results in stigmatization and permanent problems down the road. Members of minority groups with limited proficiency in the English language are commonly single out as learning disabled. Though these individual's limited success in traditional course of English literature, and reading writing, may largely be ascribed to their never having attend full fluency in the English language, or to their community's use of English on a level that in to consonant with school standards, these considerations are nevertheless ignored, and the person is labeled learning disabled. Caroline T. Clark cites one case of a young Latina in Los Angeles who, in college, was declared to possess a learning disability in reading. The parameters used to make this determination ignored other possible factors, but even worse, they ignored the objective criteria that should be used in the making of such a determination. Clark calls this kind of objective judgment, "authoritative discourse":

Authoritative discourse] demands our unconditional allegiance.... [it] permits no play with the context framing it, no play with its borders, no gradual and flexible transitions, no creative stylizing variants on it. It enters our verbal consciousness as a compact and indivisible mass.... It is indissolubly fused with its authority. (Clark, 2003)

Yet, Clark underscores the even greater danger of allowing this authoritative discourse to get in the way of the real facts of the case. In the instance of this particular individual, the "facts" were clear, and the evaluations all added up to one thing - that this young women, like so many other Latinas, was learning disabled. The tests never considered any other culpable factors. Under these circumstances, the judgment was absolute and objective... But wrong. Authoritative discourse is not always the best, or sole, course to be followed.

From the over-inclusion of minorities among the ranks of the learning disabled to their designation as mentally retarded is not that great a step. More even than Hispanics, African-Americans are labeled as emotionally or mentally handicapped. In the 1990s, African-Americans accounted for fully thirty-five percent of those labeled as trainable mentally retarded. (Paul, French & Cranston-Gingras, 2002, p. 35) Pamela Block, Fabricio Balcazar, Christopher Keys underscore the dangers of this kind of racially and ethnically-based designation process, linking the overwhelming labeling of African-Americans, and members of certain other minority groups, as mentally retarded with the concept of eugenics that was popular in the first half of the Twentieth Century. (Block, Balcazar & Keys, 2001, p. 18) in this most dangerous of situation, concern is not with the care of the supposedly mentally retarded, but with their isolation from the mainstream of society. If one race or ethnic group can be deemed naturally inclined toward mental deficiency, it can then be reckoned an inherently inferior group. Care, whether in the home, or in school, or as an inmate of some institution, is essentially beyond the point. Racially inferior groups simply do not deserve the same considerations. As described by Block, Balcazar and Keys,

The concept of "disability," when applied as a medical or psychological diagnosis, can subsume the culturally, socially, and historically derived identity of an individual beneath a label of pathology. When individuals enter the service system, other personal characteristics become secondary, and people become defined by their disabilities. Whether the disability is physical or mental, labeling a person as disabled attaches stigma and results in social exclusion.

(Block, Balcazar & Keys, 2001, p. 18)

The notion that single group is more inclined to be mentally disabled becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The group itself, much as with the English as Second Language Students who saw themselves as less intelligent than Native speakers of English, begins to view its own behaviors, customs, and traditions as inherently inferior, or even pathological. Being Black becomes as good as being labeled "mentally deficient." A group that comes to identify itself with mental deficient will only move further outside the mainstream. It will be seen by its own members, as well as by those outside, as deviant; potentially criminal, or in other ways injurious to the rest of society. A group that is, by its very nature, mentally defective, will also easily be viewed as incapable of supporting itself without help - a strain on the larger society. In terms of modern day American society, this could be seen as declaring that African-Americans, and other similarly impoverished and marginalized groups, are likely to remain forever within the care of the social welfare system. Believers in such ideas might easily raise the question - why bother with caring for these people at all? More to the point; however, is the question of whether there is really anything wrong with most of these individuals at all? Clearly, a large part of their "mental disabilities" derive from internal and external assumptions about what it means to be African-American, or a member of some similarly tagged minority group. A multicultural approach to the educational process helps to guarantee that all individuals are ranked according to their own merits without regard to preconceptions about the supposed abilities, or "disabilities" of their race, ethnic, linguistic, or religious group. A child whether white and English-speaking, African-American and English-speaking, or the child of Arabic-speaking Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, or a Spanish-speaking youth in an inner city, are all Americans with the same opportunities and potential strengths and weaknesses. Ability is a matter of personal skills and predilections.

What We Don't Know

There are however, various limitations to the multicultural approach, among which are the fact that certain achievements of the systems employed are more theoretical than factual in foundation. While the tracking of minority youths into programs for the disabled and mentally deficient are verifiable truths, certain other claims made by proponents of multicultural education cannot so easily be substantiated. As pointed out by Sleeter, any teaching method is limited by the assumptions made by those designing the course of instruction. What is emphasized in a textbook represents the choices made by the dominant group - "By claiming to tell a multicultural story, the Framework masks the ideology of its own story." (Sleeter, 2002) Proponents of multiculturalism believe they are building a bias-free society that works toward the inclusion of all, but in teaching - history for example - educators are inevitably making choices that either ignore the contributions of one group or emphasize the ideologies of another. An America that is built on principals of democracy and consumerist capitalism will necessarily be inclined to educate its youth in ways of thinking and seeing that ignore the, say, more community-oriented outlooks of many Asian or Hispanic immigrants. (Sleeter, 2002) as such a realization reveals, it is exceedingly difficult to remove any and all bias from a curriculum. The supposed multicultural goal is in reality an attempt to use multicultural approaches to achieve the goals of one particular culture and tradition.

Furthermore, the very approaches of multiculturalism in education do not, in and of themselves, guarantee a greater ability to learn, or a greater opportunity for success in school, or in future life. A study by Lawrence found that multicultural programs too often focused on the needs of individual teacher development than on any systematic changes that might be necessary. (Lawrence, 2005) it is as if the belief were that by merely changing the perceptions of the instructor the entire outlook of a society could be transformed. Central to multicultural ideas is the belief that we are all members of varied groups, and come from different backgrounds. The larger, majority society perceives us in varied ways, and with varying degrees of prejudice. To focus on teacher training ignores the student component of the equation. Center notes that approaches to multicultural education typically focus on the expansion of curricula to the exclusion of other important considerations such as an improvement of teaching techniques. (Center, 2005) the belief appears to be that the mere elimination of prejudice and expansion of group and cultural horizons will automatically inspire students to greater levels of achievement. "An inadequate pedagogy results in disengaged or unproductive student responses to multiethnic texts." (Center, 2005) Young people are being exposed to a greater diversity of opinion but they are not being taught to analyze this wealth of opinion in a sufficiently productive fashion. The guidance that is necessary for true growth and understanding is often absent.

On another level, Platt underscores the shortcomings that arise from much of the current emphasis in multicultural programs. Rather than point out the causes of racism and religious and ethnic prejudice, contemporary textbooks tend to highlight the positive contributions of members of oppressed groups. (Platt, 2002) the essential aim of multicultural education - that of eliminating prejudice - is, in effect, being ignored in favor of a moral and confidence boosting approach. Young women and men must be able to understand how the attitudes developed that created the situation in the first place if they are to comprehend how to avoid duplicating these same conditions. Yet Platt's critique of current approaches to multicultural education is essential the same as those of others. Substantially, they revolve around the lack of provision of the necessary cognitive tools for the students concerned. Thinking about different cultures and peoples is not the same as simply reading about them. The large amounts of re-written and re-packaged material must be interpreted in a logical and coherent manner. Exposure is not the same as understanding. Indeed, encouraging students to look at the triumphs of oppressed individuals might help some young people to achieve success, but too many it could serve only as another example of how only some people can make it in an essentially hostile world.

So What? Recommendations for a Way Forward

Multiculturalism in education offers much promise. For too long, large numbers of Americans have been excluded from the most basic benefits of our society. Their fate, in fact, has not been considered ours at all, but theirs. Multicultural education helps to expand the horizons and opportunities of all Americans. Ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority groups have frequently been subjected to dangerous stereotyping that pigeonholes members of these groups in out of the way corners of society. Research has shown that African-Americans, Latinos, and others, are relegated to special education programs in far greater numbers than majority whites, and often without just cause. Multicultural curricula help to open up minorities and whites to different views of the world. Students and teachers participating in these programs begin to see things from other perspectives and to understand many of the roadblocks facing those who are different from themselves. Multiculturalism teaches us that others possess varied values and goals and that these variations in the human condition do not represent aberrant behaviors, nor are they symptomatic of mental disorder. Nevertheless, multiculturalism tends to ignore the deeper thought processes that lie behind these attitudes. While teachers and their students may become more open to other ideas, and more knowledgeable about the experiences of others, they do not necessarily look any more deeply into the underlying causes of these differences in perception and experience.