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What is a Multicultural Curriculum
- 1. Multicultural Curriculum By Marcelo Valdivia [email_address]
- 2. What is a Multicultural Curriculum A Multicultural curriculum is the integration of ideals into a schools courses of study that nurture the practice that hopes to transform the ways in which students are instructed by giving equal attention to the contributions of all the groups in a society. It must be well-conceived, sensitive, thorough, and include the histories, experiences, traditions, and cultures of students in the classroom. A multicultural curriculum recognizes language diversity and promotes the attitude that all languages and dialects are valid communicating systems for some groups.
- 3. Goals of a Multicultural Curriculum To help students from diverse cultures learn how to transcend their cultural borders and engage in dialogue and action essential for a balanced democratic political system and way of life. To prepare students for global citizenship. To help students understand and appreciate cultural differences and similarities and to recognize the accomplishments of diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. To help students understand the significant historical experiences and basic cultural patterns of ethnic groups, the critical contemporary issues and social problems confronting each of them, and the dynamic diversity of the experiences, cultures, and individuals within each ethnic group. To help individuals function easily and effectively with members of their own and other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups by providing opportunities for students to explore lines of cross-cultural communication and to experiment with cross-ethnic and cross-cultural functioning.
- 4. What do people think? Individuals acquire knowledge or beliefs, sometimes invalid, about ethnic and cultural groups; therefore, it is essential that all students and members of our society develop an understanding of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups and their significance in U.S. society and throughout the world. Much knowledge about ethnic groups is stereotyped, distorted, and based on distant observations, scattered and superficial contacts, inadequate or imbalanced media treatment, and incomplete factual information. What do the experts believe? Multiculturalists believe school curricula should embrace a whole host of voices that exist in multicultural U.S. society. Their belief is that this transformation in the methods of learning is a start in addressing inequities in U.S. society. They believe this is increasingly important because of the changing population mix in the United States.
- 5. The role of the school Schools must help socialize youth in ways that will foster basic democratic ideals. The schools' goal should be to help attain a balance of diversity and a nation that respects the cultural rights and freedoms of its many peoples. Students learn best from well-planned, comprehensive, continuous, and interrelated experiences. In a multicultural school, the study of ethnic and cultural content is integrated into the curriculum from preschool through 12th grade and beyond. This study should encourage the development of progressively more complex concepts and generalizations and should involve students in the study of a variety of ethnic and cultural groups. Help Students develop skills and concepts to overcome factors that prevent successful interactions such as identifying ethnic and cultural stereotypes, examining media treatment of ethnic groups, clarifying ethnic and cultural attitudes and values, and developing cross-cultural communication skills.
- 6. The role of the school Students must have readily available resource materials that provide accurate information. Learning centers, libraries, and resource centers should include a variety of resources on the history, literature, music, food, folklore, views of life, and art of different ethnic and cultural groups. Ethnic and cultural diversity in a school's informal programs should be reflected in assembly programs, classrooms, hallway and entrance decorations, cafeteria menus, counseling interactions, and extracurricular programs. School dances that consistently provide only one kind of ethnic music, for example, are contrary to the spirit and principles of multicultural education as are curricula that teach only about U.S. ideals, values, and contributions. Participation in activities-such as cheerleading, booster clubs, honor societies, and athletic teams-should be open to all students; in fact, the participation of students from various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds should be solicited. Such activities can provide invaluable opportunities not only for the development of self-esteem, but for students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to learn to work and play together.
- 7. The role of the school Students should be introduced to the experiences of persons from widely varying backgrounds. Although the study of ethnic and cultural success stories can help students of an ethnic group develop pride in their own group, the curriculum should include study of ethnic peoples in general so those outside of an ethnic group can develop greater respect for that group by learning about their heroes and successes. The study of ethnic and cultural group experiences must be interwoven into the total curriculum and should not be reserved for special occasions, units, or courses, nor should it be considered supplementary to the existing curriculum. Such observances as African-American History or Brotherhood Week, Hanukkah, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday are important and necessary. Ethnic music, art, architecture, and dance-past and contemporary-provide other avenues for experiential participation, interpreting the emotions and feelings of ethnic groups.
- 8. The role of the school Instructional material should include past and contemporary writings of members of various ethnic and cultural groups. Poetry, short stories, folklore, essays, plays, and novels should be used. Ethnic autobiographies offer special insight into what it means to be ethnic in the United States. Students can benefit from positive and cooperative interactions with students from various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups when plans are made to mix students through school desegregation, exchange programs and visits. The basic organizational structures of schools should be reformed to reflect the nation's multicultural realities. The curriculum should be reorganized so that ethnic and cultural diversity is an integral, natural, and normal component of educational experiences for all students, with ethnic and cultural content accepted and used in everyday instruction, and with various ethnic and cultural perspectives introduced. Multicultural content is as appropriate and important in teaching such fundamental skills and abilities as reading, thinking, and decision making as it is in teaching about social issues raised by racism, dehumanization, racial conflict, and alternative ethnic and cultural life-styles.
- 9. School rules and policies Every institution or school must have rules and regulations that enhance cross-cultural harmony and understanding among students, staff, and teachers. School policies should recognize and accommodate individual and ethnic group differences. They should also allow for ethnic traditions. For example, customs that affect Jewish students' food preferences and school attendance on certain religious days should be respected. Schools should recognize the holidays and festivities of major importance to various ethnic groups. Provisions should be made to ensure that traditional holidays and festivities reflect multicultural modes of celebration. For example, the ways in which Jews celebrate Hanukkah can be appropriately included in school programs.
- 10. School personnel Members of various ethnic and cultural groups must be part of a school's instructional, administrative, policymaking, and support staffs. School personnel-teachers, principals, cooks, custodians, secretaries, students, and counselors-make contributions to multicultural environments as important as do courses of study and instructional materials. Students learn important lessons about ethnic and cultural diversity by observing interactions among racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender groups in their school, observing and experiencing the verbal behavior of the professional and support staffs, and observing the extent to which the staff is ethnically and racially mixed. School policies should be established and implemented to recruit and maintain a multiethnic school staff. Attention should be devoted to the training of teachers and professional staff. Materials and instructional program components are ineffective in the hands of teachers who lack the skills, attitudes, perceptions, and content background essential for a positive multicultural school environment. An effective staff development program must involve all staff. This is necessary because any well-trained and sensitive teacher must work within a supportive institutional environment to succeed. Key administrators, such as principals, must set by example the school norms for ethnic and cultural differences.
- 11. School personnel Effective professional staff development should begin at every level for educators and should focus on helping the staff members: (a) clarify and analyze their feelings, attitudes, and perceptions toward their own and other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. (b) acquire knowledge about and understanding of the historical experiences and sociological characteristics of ethnic and cultural groups in the United States (c) increase their instructional skills within multicultural school environments (d) improve their intercultural communications skills. (e) improve their skill in curriculum development as it relates to ethnic and cultural diversity (f) improve their skill in creating, selecting, evaluating, and revising instructional materials. Effective staff development programs must be carefully conceptualized and implemented. Short workshops, selected courses, and other short-term experiences may be essential components of such programs in addition to components including needs assessments, curriculum development, peer teaching, and materials selection and evaluation.
- 12. The role of the teacher Effective teaching about U.S. ethnic and cultural groups can best take place within an educational setting that accepts, encourages, and respects the expression of ethnic and cultural diversity. Teachers must help students to function effectively in mainstream society and in social settings different from the ones in which they were socialized, and help them learn new cognitive styles and learning patterns. They must successfully help students become aware of and acquire cultural and cognitive alternatives enabling them to function successfully within cultural environments other than their own. Teachers must help students become aware of the commonalities within and among ethnic groups. This would greatly help counteract stereotyping by making students aware of the rich diversity within each ethnic group in their societies. It also helps them develop more comprehensive and realistic understandings of the broad range of ethnic group heritages and experiences.
- 13. The role of the teacher Students in a school responsive to ethnic and cultural diversity cannot be treated identically and still be afforded equal educational opportunities. Some students have unique cultural and ethnic characteristics to which the school should respond deliberately and sensitively. All students develop more positive racial and ethnic attitudes when teachers use cooperative, rather than competitive, learning activities. A school's culture and instructional programs should be restructured and made to reflect the cultures and learning styles of students from diverse ethnic and social-class groups. Educators should not ignore racial and ethnic differences when planning instruction; nor should they dismiss the question of racial and ethnic differences and treat all students the same way.