Fostering Intercultural Harmony in Public School Settings
This paper examines the challenges of fostering intercultural harmony in American public schools amid growing racial and ethnic tensions. It argues that existing multicultural education practices are inadequate to address the need for genuine cross-cultural understanding among students. The paper reviews the rationale for stronger intercultural curricula, critiques superficial cultural instruction, and proposes practical alternatives, including a detailed WebQuest-based lesson plan designed to engage students in collaborative, inquiry-driven research about diverse cultures. The WebQuest model is presented as a cost-effective, teacher-supervised approach that leverages internet resources to build intercultural knowledge and communication skills among public school students.
- Introduction: America's Multicultural Challenge: Racial divisions and multicultural tensions in U.S. society
- Rationale for Intercultural Education: Why current intercultural education efforts fall short
- Current Approaches and Their Limitations: Critique of superficial multicultural curriculum practices
- A WebQuest Lesson Plan to Promote Cultural Harmony: Five-stage WebQuest model for multicultural classrooms
- Summary and Conclusion: Call for urgent policy reform in multicultural education
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What makes this paper effective
- Opens with a vivid, culturally familiar metaphor ("melting pot" vs. "tossed salad") that immediately frames the central problem and engages the reader.
- Grounds its argument in concrete historical examples of racial strife (Crown Heights, 1992 Los Angeles riots) to establish urgency before turning to educational solutions.
- Moves logically from problem identification to critique of current practices to a specific, actionable lesson plan, giving the paper a clear problem-solution structure.
- Uses a mix of policy sources, educational research, and practitioner-oriented citations to support claims across multiple dimensions.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively employs the problem-solution essay framework: it establishes a social problem with empirical and anecdotal evidence, critiques existing responses as insufficient, and then proposes a concrete pedagogical alternative — the WebQuest — with enough operational detail to serve as an actual classroom guide. This technique gives the argument both analytical depth and practical applicability.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a cultural and historical framing of multicultural conflict in the United States, then provides a rationale for reform citing statistics and research. A critique of current educational approaches follows, leading into a detailed five-stage WebQuest lesson plan. The conclusion synthesizes findings and calls for urgent policy action. The structure moves from broad societal context down to specific classroom application.
Introduction: America's Multicultural Challenge
The United States was once known as the "melting pot" of the world, but this label is perhaps no longer as accurate as it once was. Indeed, the American social landscape has taken on the characteristics of a "tossed salad" — diverse ingredients held together by little more than a common dressing. In an increasingly multicultural society, it is not surprising, yet deeply alarming, that racial and ethnic divisions among various minority groups have been manifested in a wide variety of contexts, many of them inherently violent.
Clearly, ignorance and stereotypical views concerning other cultures extend across virtually every racial and ethnic group. As a result, intergroup violence has been a source of increasing concern for policymakers at all levels throughout the United States. The 1992 Los Angeles riots involved, at least in part, Black Americans fighting Korean Americans; the 1991 Crown Heights riots in New York involved African Americans and Jews; the July 4, 1993, violence in Washington, D.C. occurred between Black and Latino communities; and, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Arab Americans were added to this troubling pattern of intergroup conflict (Pattnaik, 2003).
Rationale for Intercultural Education
In response to these disturbing and often violent outbursts of racial and ethnic strife, initiatives designed to facilitate intergroup understanding and harmony among minority students from different groups have received an insufficient amount of support from teachers, administrators, and parents (Pattnaik, 2003). In fact, "The Condition of Education, 2002," published by the National Center for Education Statistics (2002), did not even include children's intercultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills as representing an important part of their "learner outcomes" (Pattnaik, 2003). In this regard, Brawarsky (1997) emphasizes that "in general, the number of research studies in the area of intergroup relations has declined considerably since the 1970s, yet the need for such study is probably greater than ever" (p. 7).
Given this dismal state of affairs in the nation's public schools, identifying effective alternatives has assumed even greater importance. Although multicultural curricula have evolved considerably over the past 25 years as educators have attempted to address the needs of their multicultural classrooms in an increasingly diverse and interconnected world, much remains to be done today (Merryfield, 2001).
According to Ihator (2000), the increasingly globalized nature of the business world has created the need to identify, study, and understand the worldviews, mindsets, and habits of global publics in order to communicate effectively. In this regard, "Communication styles and meaning, as well as realities, as perceived by individuals are culturally induced," he argues (p. 45). Students will require sufficient knowledge about the languages and cultures of other countries in order to communicate effectively with members of those societies. In fact, even in countries where English is spoken, the patterns and meaning of the language may differ due to cultural influence. As a result, fluency in language alone may be insufficient to communicate effectively with people in other countries; to accomplish effective communication, linguistic expertise must be combined with knowledge of the culture of native speakers (Ihator, 2000).
A WebQuest Lesson Plan to Promote Cultural Harmony
Perhaps one of the most effective methods of providing multicultural educational opportunities in public school classrooms today is through a WebQuest. A WebQuest is defined by Downey and Milson (2001) as "an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Internet" (p. 144). The WebQuest approach provides access to online primary sources, a structure for evaluating those sources, and teacher supervision in identifying appropriate and relevant content (Downey & Milson, 2000). In a WebQuest project, the teacher selects websites and then creates a Web page that serves as a guide for students to follow through five stages: 1) Introduction, 2) Task, 3) Process, 4) Evaluation, and 5) Conclusion (Downey & Milson, 2000). These steps are discussed further below.
Introduction: Provides key background information and should motivate students with an intriguing question or problem.
Task: Describes the final product expected of the students. The final product may be as elaborate as an oral presentation using PowerPoint, or as basic as a poster depicting the students' findings.
Process: Gives step-by-step instructions for completing the task, as well as the list of resources needed to complete each step. Students are provided with links to Internet resources selected by the teacher, as well as a list of additional offline sources needed to complete the task. WebQuest resources might include government or educational websites, online searchable databases, email addresses of experts, and sources physically available in the classroom.
Evaluation: Explains how learners will be assessed on their final product.
Conclusion: Summarizes the main goals of the activity and encourages additional investigations on related topics (Downey & Milson, 2000, p. 144).
For the purposes of a multicultural WebQuest exercise, the class would be divided into groups of approximately three to five students each, with each group assigned a particular country and given general instructions to develop a comprehensive analysis of that country's people, culture, and geography. The WebQuest guidance would be left intentionally open-ended at the outset to allow for flexibility and ingenuity on the part of the student groups, although an outline would be provided to help guide the research process. Each group would then present the results of their research in an oral presentation to the class, sharing their most salient findings. Teacher-designed certificates of accomplishment could be distributed to all participants, and the winning team would receive a token prize.
References
Brawarsky, S. (1997). Carnegie Corporation's Youth Intergroup Relations Initiative. Report of a meeting convened by Carnegie Corporation of New York. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 426-165).
Downey, P., & Milson, A. J. (2001). WebQuest: Using Internet resources for cooperative inquiry. Social Education, 65(3), 144.
Ihator, A. (2000). Understanding the cultural patterns of the world — an imperative in implementing strategic international PR programs. Public Relations Quarterly, 45(4), 38.
Merryfield, M. M. (2001). The paradoxes of teaching a multicultural education course online. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(4), 283.
Pattnaik, J. (2003). Learning about the 'Other': Building a case for intercultural understanding among minority children. Childhood Education, 79(4), 204.
Smith, G. P. (1999). Knowledge bases for diversity in teacher education. Multicultural Perspectives, 1(1), 50.
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