presentation multicultural and anti-racist curriculum - jill, corlynn, stephanie, devi

WEEK 8: Multicultural and Anti-Racist Curriculum

By: Jill, Carolynn, Stephanie, and Devi

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REQUIRED READINGS

Sleeter, Christine. (2005). Multicultural curriculum, democracy and visionary pragmatism. Ch 9 in Un-standardizing curriculum (pp. 167-182). New York:

Teachers College Press.

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Sleeter (2005)

Introduction

This chapter presents the tensions that exist between curriculum as framed by the standards movement and by multicultural movements (Sleeter, 2005, p.168). In addition, participatory democracy and content standards are viewed through the experience of a sixth-grade teacher named Terri. Her point of view and beliefs are expressed in relation to those two principles and four central questions.

Sleeter (2005)What does the standards movement entail?

• Makes the U.S economically competitive globally by making sure students have the skills to contribute to the economy

• Curriculum built by ‘experts’• Standards selected via a traditional perspective

– This support Gay’s (2003-4) argument that “Multicultural education has not yet become a central part of the curriculum regularly offered to all students” (p. 316) since only one view is used.

• Children are empty vessels to be filled with knowledge and there are ‘best ways to do that for all across the country

• Worthwhile knowledge is measured on standardized tests• Criterion-referenced standardized testing• Schools and teachers accountable to the state and parents

Sleeter (2005)

Role of the teacher• “They are not supposed to think or question, but rather

act as clerks, checking to make sure that the requisite topics have been covered” (Sleeter, 2005,p.170)

• Produce results or else they can be blamed for school shutdown

• Follow the standards set out in the curriculum • Autonomy and creativity becomes non-existent

Sleeter (2005)

• However, the standards movement is tricking us to believe that equity can be achieved but the reality is showing us something completely different (Sleeter, 2005).

• “Yet the economy, particularly at the upper levels, does not have room for everyone, and there is no evidence that closing achievement gaps will close opportunity gaps that have been widening for reasons unrelated to student achievement”(Sleeter, 2005, p.168)

Sleeter (2005)What does the Multicultural/Democratic movement

entail?• Social improvement and educating citizens for participation in

multicultural democracy• Challenge deficit perspective by building on students’ community,

language and culture• Curriculum decision making should include bottom-up input

– Dei and Doyle-Wood question whose voice is assigned legitimacy or illegitimacy and it becomes clear that only one voice dominants curriculum

• Accountability to communities– This connects to Dei and Doyle-Woods idea of presenting the challenges of

inequity as a community wide discussion.

• Evaluation should capture what students really know and can do• Supporting democracy and justice• Value equity in student academic achievement

Sleeter (2005)What key ideas are at stake in regards to the standards-

based reform?

Teacher autonomy• Prescribing what teachers should teach means the rejection of freedom and creativity for both teachers and students

Students’ achievement• Based only on the standards

Goals of education• To prepare students so that they can participate in the global economy • Results driven so that teachers are held accountable and therefore must adhere to the standards

Sleeter (2005)Understanding Participatory Democracy Versus Content Standards through Terri’s experience

The following four questions will be answered through Terri’s point of view and beliefs.

1. What purpose should curriculum serve?

2. How should knowledge be selected, who decides what knowledge is most worth teaching and learning, and what is the relationship between those in the classroom and the knowledge selection process?

3. What is the nature of students and the learning process, and how does it suggest organizing learning experiences and relationships?

4. How should curriculum be evaluated? How should learning be evaluated? To whom is curriculum evaluation accountable?

Sleeter (2005)What purpose should curriculum serve?

• There should be importance placed on both academic learning and preparing for democracy• Helping students to develop skills such as: the ability to speak up, debate, listen and think• Lead students to understand their environment • Engage students in personally relevant subject matter and to make connections to history

Sleeter (2005)

How should knowledge be selected, who decides what knowledge is most worth teaching and learning, and what is the relationship between

those in the classroom and the knowledge selection process?

• Knowledge should be selected in a way that helps students learn to hear and understand multiple perspectives (Sleeter, 2005.p.175)• Knowledge should come, in part, from the students themselves and therefore teachers can learn from students and vice versa

Sleeter (2005)

What is the nature of students and the learning process, and how does it suggest organizing learning experiences and relationships?

• Students are inquirers who make can make meaning out of their learning, however the quantity of content presented to the standards limits students from exploring more in depth questions they might have• Terri begins to see that inquiry becomes minimized in the classroom

Sleeter (2005)

How should curriculum be evaluated? How should learning be evaluated? To whom is curriculum evaluation accountable?

•Using written work to evaluate their learning•Unfortunately, helping students become better people is not seen as important in schools and therefore not evaluated •Terri knew that it was her responsibility to teach the standards and make sure her students learned that material, however, she made time during lunch, before and after school to help students solve their problems.

Sleeter (2005)

Administrative support• Principals also face the pressure of making sure

their teachers are adhering to the standards• Some administrators either turn to resources to

assist their teachers with learning how to effectively teach the students they have or they hire outside education consultants.

Sleeter (2005)Visionary Pragmatism in a Time of Standardization

•Teachers finding space to use the agency they still have, and using it with a sense of vision (Sleeter, 2005, p.167)

–This idea is also seen in Dei and Doyle- Wood’s (2006) article. They state , “The possibilities of pedagogy include educators being bold to acknowledge and respond to difference and diversity within the schooling population; this means ensuring that curriculum, pedagogy, and texts reflect the diverse knowledges, experiences, and accounts of history, ideas, and lived experiences and struggles” (p.164).

• “Visionary pragmatists reach for what may seem unattainable, seeking ways to turn the impossible into the possible” (Sleeter, 2005, p.182)• Visualizing exciting curricula that engage their students in important questions• However, their vision is interrupted when teachers are expected to only teach the standards and therefore there is very little time to help students prepare for a democratic life

Sleeter (2005)

Conclusion• Teachers are caught between choosing between content standards

and a democratic curriculum • Content standards curriculum emphasizes on results, standardized

testing and accountability• Multicultural/Democratic education emphasizes on supporting

democracy and justice by taking into account the importance of learning various perspectives and is geared towards recognizing student knowledge

• Sleeter (2005) suggests that “Ethically teachers need to decide what is in the best interests of the students they teach, the students’ communities, and the larger society” (p.182)

Dei, George J. Sefa & Doyle-Wood, Stanley. (2006). Is We Who Haffi Ride Di Staam: Critical knowledge/Multiple knowings – Possibilities, challenges and resistance in curriculum/cultural contexts.

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Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Introduction

Dei and Doyle-Wood provide an analysis of education and curriculum as it applies to social inequity and exclusionary practices. They maintain that an asymmetrical relationship of power has enabled inequities to be reproduced, as a result of an imposition of school knowledge discourses that make claims to supremacy, normalcy, and legitimacy. Their analysis challenges Western cultural knowledge and offers suggestions regarding how to challenge this predominant knowledge within curriculum and education by focusing on the indigenous knowledge and spirituality of marginalized people and communities. Their solution to the marginalization of these people and communities are encompassed by the idea of anticolonial agency.

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Key Questions

The authors address issues of difference, pedagogy, curriculum as cultural practice, and the roles of educators in bringing about educational change by focusing on key questions:

1) What do we see as the role that educators can play in the creation of a socially cohesive society?

2) What do we see as the crisis of public education today?3) How do we allow our schools to do what they do best?4) How do we achieve the characteristics of a healthy school

system?5) Do we believe that we have some consensus on what we see

as the urgent and most enduring task of public education?

• Race, gender, class, dis/ability, sexuality and other difference must be central to the discussion of these answers

• Openly confronting the challenges that these differences pose for educators, learners, policymakers, and organizations is the only way to ensure the success of public school systems

• We must engage in these conversations as a community that includes educators, parents, families, and social workers

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Anticolonialism

Educational projects must strive to include students at the ‘margins’, or in other words, those who do not fit into traditional definitions of success and excellence, which are based on a conventional, Western sense of academic scores. The authors stress the need to adopt a broader view of education that includes personal satisfaction, achievement, significance, and happiness. Our educational spaces should be places where everyone, including those from disadvantaged groups have the opportunity to realize their goals and dreams.

Coloma’s article (2009) describes the situation that exists in reality. The diversity of Filipino/as were not acknowledged by the Americans and instead, they were all labeled as “negros”, fitting one description. Once this label was given, the school system priorities shifted to use a manual-industrialized curriculum for the Filipinos/as based on the curriculum for the African Americans. Goals and dreams of the students were not acknowledged, only the goals for the colonizing Americans who wanted to cultivate dependency of the Filipino/as on the dominant Americans for their own benefit.

White and Eurocentric dominance is normalized through the institution of schooling. This projects understandings of what is culturally acceptable and what is not onto students. Furthermore, it creates an understanding of what is seen as valid knowledge. Minoritized students are constrained to the expectations of normalcy adopted by the dominant group.


Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Views of Multicultural Education“… we would suggest that it is precisely the dominant

conceptualization of ‘multicultural’ that lends itself to the acculmulation of oppression and/or repression that is experienced by minoritized students.” (Dei and Doyle-Woods 2006, pg. 161)

Culturally diverse spaces do not necessarily promote the expression of cultural difference. Educators cannot be misled into thinking that creating these spaces is ameliorating the problem at hand. It would be more beneficial for educators to look at colonial practices that continue to marginzalize certain groups of students as a result of their values and ideas not fitting within the normalized system.

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Differences

• Difference refers to both personal identity and asymmetrical power relations based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of social difference

• Differences amongst students are based on indigenous or local knowledge, as well as lived experiences. These differences cannot be separated from the learning process

• Using difference in anticolonial work means challenging what has traditionally been perceived as normal

• Critical education is highlighted in the discussion of including these differences in curriculum and instruction-We see an example of a critical educator, Terri, in the Sleeter (2005) article describe her own teaching focus on cultivating citizen participation. Ultimately she tries to develop a classroom in which students are supported in speaking up, debating, thinking, and listening without putting forth her own point of view. Through her creative and innovative teaching methods, she aims to help students find autonomy in becoming problem solvers of “institutional inequality.”

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Anticolonial Agency and Indigenous

KnowledgeAnticolonialism focuses on the negative impacts of asymmetrical power relations in the interactions between the colonizer and the colonized

• Education has been a way instituionalize the colonized to the social order of colonizers in the Carribean, Africa, and Latin America

• Much of the Canadian curriculum places white and European normative middle-class values at the forefront, thereby excluding other knowledge

• Agency is seen as a way to liberate marginalized individuals and to help them resist systemic oppression

• Anticolonial agency stresses the fact that power is held and sustained through practice in social spaces to maintain the colonial and colonizing encounters

• An emphasis is placed on opposing these traditional encounters by focusing on indigenous concepts, analytical systems, and cultural frames of reference


• Indigenous knowledge is a body of knowledge derived from a long term occupancy by a group of people in a specific place– This knowledge determines ways of acting, feeling,

and knowing, creating different perspectives– This indigenous knowledge emerges from

interpretations of social, political, physical, and spiritual worlds

• In Western education, indigenous knowledge and anticolonial agency provide students with the opportunity to arrive at different ways of seeing things, and to articulate community and individual differences


Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Spiritual Resistance and Decolonizing Knowledge

• The authors refer to spirituality as an understanding of the self and culture that serves as a starting point for education and learning

• Spirituality can be pursued as a valid body of knowledge in schools, as it enables the learner to engage in personal experiences of understanding

• In this way, colonial education can be further resisted because the learner is arriving at new understandings, independent of the understandings that have become normalized

Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006)Conclusion

The authors emphasize anticolonial and multiple-centred curriculum. This means accepting many ways of knowing based on the differences of students. In creating this type of curriculum, we are called to question the colonial social order that has been pervasive in the institution of education. This type of curriculum critiques all oppressive relationships that result from power and privilege. The colonized have the power to question and resist the structure that results from the perpetuation of the normalized values of the colonizers, while the colonizers are urged to think critically about the oppression of marginalized group based on the reproduction of normalized values.

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

Coloma, Roland Sintos. (2009). “Destiny has thrown the Negro and the Filipino under

the tutelage of America”: Race and curriculum in the age of empire.

Curriculum Inquiry, 39(4), 495-519.

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Coloma (2009)Part 1: The Study of Transnational History of Race, Empire,

and Curriculum • Coloma (2009) brings together the fields of curriculum studies,

history of education, and ethnic studies to a perspective called “transnational history of race, empire, and curriculum.”

• The author suggests that rather than discussing curriculum in terms of national and international analysis in isolation, transnational studies can provide insights into the interrelatedness of nations and the flow of “people, ideas, goods, cultures, and institutions.”

• In this article, Coloma uses a transnational perspective to examine connections and relations of power between the US and the Philippines.

• Similarities are drawn between the curriculum used for African American students in the US during the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and the Filinpino/as students in the Philippines.

Coloma (2009)Part 2: The Racialization of Colonized Filipino/as

• A statement from literary and cultural critic Homi Bhabha (1994) argues that “the objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction.”

• The US occupied and governed the Philippines from 1898-WW2 • At the time of US colonization, the Filipino/as people were quite heterogeneous,

consisting of various ethnic, socioeconomic, spiritual, regional, and linguistic backgrounds.

• The process of colonial discourse is evident in the American description of Filipinos/as in this time as a “wild devil child” or “savages” who are in need of rescuing.

• For imperialist purposes, American media outputs such as cartoons, photos, and statements from US officials dismissed the cultural diversity of Filipinos/as and instead portray them as inferior and underdeveloped culturally, intellectually, and physically compared to Americans.

• Further, the distorted perceptions of African Americans in the US were applied to the Filipino/as and they were labeled as “Negroes”

This political cartoon from U.S newspaper in 1989 “shows a stars-and-stripes-clad Uncle Sam balancing five dark-skinned children who are marked as the Philippines, Porto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii, and Ladrones. Infantilized as a child and racially construed as Black, hence visually conjuring Kipling’s devil-child figure, the Filipino with bulging eyes, protruding lips, and twisted, coarse hair is displayed and held high by the United States-like the other colonized subjects-in front of well-dressed European men.”

Coloma (2009)Part 2: The Racialization of Colonized Filipino/ as

Continued

This picture emphasized the idea that the Philippines needed rescuing and protection by the US from other potential colonizers.

1899 cartoon School Begins in popular US magazine. “The cartoon illustrates a bewildered Filipino dressed in the Western style of long-sleeved shirt and pants and seated in the front row with three other students representing Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. All four students are looking up at the towering, bespectacled Uncle Sam who is leaning over his desk with a stick in hand. Underneath the image are the words of Uncle Sam’s stern lecture to these newly arrived students: ‘Now children, you’ve got to learn these lessons whether you want to or not! But just take a look at the class ahead of you, and remember that in a little while, you will be as glad to be here as they are!”

A public education system was established by the US to help pacify, discipline, and civilize the Filipino/as to benefit the Imperialism agenda.


Continued

• In the previous image, the author describes 4 options presented to the Filipino/as

1) Assimilate to the US norms of whiteness seen by the White children reading behind the front row

2) Follow the Native American who is reading an upside down book in the corner by himself which emphasizes “education of extinction”

where indigenous students were removed and isolated from both their own communities and the White America

3) Follow the Chinese child and have no access; represented by the Chinese child standing outside the school door

4) Become like the African American child who is washing the classroom window


Continued

• The author argues that “since the options of whiteness, extinction, or exclusion were not completely tenable for Filipino/as in the Philippines, the last option of adhering to the policy and curriculum for African Americans in the U.S South became the educational template for Filipino/as across the Pacific.”

• Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006) discuss the dehumanizing asymmetrical power relations resulting from colonial systems controlling production, education, and knowledge.

• We see this occur in the Filipino/as when colonized by the USA, as described in Coloma’s (2009) article. Not only did the Americans force their education system on the country, but they acted as if it was a gift given from the goodness of their hearts. I appeared as though they ultimately expected Filipino/as to graciously accept the subordinate role given to them.


Continued

Coloma (2009)Part 3: African American Perspectives on Filipino/as

• Most African Americans could sympathize with the oppression the Filipinos/as faced as being a “colored minority in a white-dominated society.”

• Most African Americans emphasized solidarity with Filipinos/as as they stand “outside the American Constitution but under the American flag.”

• One contrary opinion was that African Americans felt superior to the Filipinos/as by describing a US nation that “excluded those not White or Black.”

Coloma (2009)Part 4: Educational Policy, Curriculum, and Teacher Preparation

• US officials implemented a mass public education system in the Philippines to reach more children; English was the primary language of instruction.

• Initially American educators taught in the Philippines, but Filipinos/as were eventually recruited to develop a sustainable national public school system.

• 4 strategies were used to train Filipinos/as teachers: The most common were after school sessions (daily one hour teacher training

sessions and vacation institutes (4 to 5 week training sessions) both which were conducted by US teachers and trained teachers to teach primary grades. For these options, teachers often taught one week the material they had learned in the previous week.

The capital city Normal School (trained teachers for secondary grades) and government scholarships to US colleges and universities (trained teachers for secondary and university teaching)

• The National School was the highest institution for teacher training in the Philippines, and many Filipino/as therefore saw the additional employment and status opportunities with this type of training.

• Government scholarships to US colleges and universities allowed select Filipino/as with a keen interest in US history and politics to live in the US amongst Americans. After training they were required to return to the Philippines to provide lectures on America, its history, American people, and how America has rescued the Philippines from Spain.


Continued

• The teachers who taught the primary grades were initially trained to focus on liberal arts topics, with supplementary instruction on agriculture, arts, and handicrafts. But by 1908, the teacher training shifted to focus on a manual-industrial training curriculum.

• The manual-industrial training curriculum was based on the curriculum used in the States for African American students and intended, according to US administrators to, “service the greatest possible good” by directing Filipinos/as towards practical fields such as carpentry, woodwork, agriculture and handicraft making.

• At the same time it tried to deter students from becoming high status professionals with legal, business, and medical training who could potentially challenge the “political, economic, and scientific contradictions of empire in their own country.”

• While this approach seemed benevolent, it served the agenda to keep the Filipinos/as submissive to the US.

Coloma (2009)Part 5: The Dominance of the Manual-Industrial Curriculum

• The manual-industrial curriculum worked in the economic interests of the US, goods produced by Filipino/as were exported and sold for foreign purchase.

• Similar to the education that African Americans were receiving in the states during that time, in the Philippines “majority of teachers and students worked under a curriculum geared toward the interest, consumption of and hence, dependence upon external markets as opposed to the enrichment and sustainability of local communities. By relying on foreign external markets for Filipinos/as labor and products, a culture of dependency was created, a conduction that remains to haunt the Philippines to this day.”

Coloma (2009)Part 5: The Dominance of the Manual-Industrial Curriculum

• Half of the Filipinos/as did not receive any schooling at all, and 95% of those who did only completed up to grade 3. Of those who went to school, he overwhelming majority (over 99%) received education through the manual-industrial schooling.

• Those who made it through the secondary schools and university were members of the social, economic, and political elite.

• This caused a huge gap between high and low SES.


Continued

• Dei & Doyle-Wood (2006) discuss the concept of ‘deep curriculum’ in which cultural and racial concepts deemed “legitimate” by the school become imbedded in the formal and informal school environment. Unfortunately, for non-dominant students, their expression and communication is limited to the system of the dominant group that decides what is acceptable, appropriate, and approved.

• In all aspects of ‘deep curriculum’, Filipino/as were purposefully meant to feel inferior to the “rescuing” Americans. Their cultural, spiritual, and language diversity was completely ignored by colonizers, and they were required to conform to the schooling that was developed by the Americans. Students were not encouraged to think critically about themselves and their learning, instead had to be educated in a manner completely different for them, in a foreign language. Alienation from all forms of communication, expression, and knowledge were disregarded.

Coloma (2009)Conclusion

• The educational model developed in the USA for African Americans was proven effective in creating an oppressive two-tiered education program: one with an academic focus for the elite, and one with an industrial-manual focus for the majority.

• Coloma concludes by stating “How those in power construe racialized and colonialized Others indelibly shapes the type of education provided to them. Discourse matters, after all”

Supplementary Reading:

Gay, Geneva. (2003-4). The importance of multicultural education. Ch 28 in Flinders, David & Thornton, Stephen. (Eds.) The curriculum studies reader, 2nd ed New York: Routledge.

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Gay (2003-4)

Geneva Gay urges for a need to develop instructional programs and practices in education that “…respond positively and constructively to diversity” (p. 315).

The result?

•Disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes among ethnic groups, resulting in concerning achievement gaps (p. 316).

•Irrelevant learning experiences for ethnically diverse students, which “dampen their academic interest, engagement, and achievement” (p. 319).

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Why?

•Despite the “vibrant mixture of cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and experiential plurality” that makes up the U.S. today, school curriculums “still do not regularly and systematically include important information and deep study about a wide range of diverse ethnic groups” (p. 316).

Gay (2003-4)

The solution: Multicultural Education

Gay argues that:

•“Multicultural education is integral to improving the academic success of students of color and preparing all youths for democratic citizenship in a pluralistic society” (p. 316).

•“Students need to understand how multicultural issues shape the social, political, economic, and cultural fabric of the United States as well as how such issues fundamentally influence their personal lives” (p. 316).

• This parallels Sleeter’s (2005) encouragement for teachers to lead students to understand their environment.

• This also connects to Friere’s notion of ‘problem-posing’ education, in which students are encouraged to engage in the process of inquiry and to think critically about social issues, events, etc.

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Gay (2003-4)

The problem: “Multicultural education has not yet become a central part of the curriculum regularly offered to all students” (p. 316)

Why not?

•Educators have relegated multicultural education to social studies, language arts, and the fine arts and have targeted instruction for students of color (p. 316).

•Educators are “unconvinced of its worth or its value in developing academic skills and building unified national community” and about the feasibility of its implementation (p. 316).

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Gay (2003-4)

The misconception: Educators perceive multicultural education as ‘separate content’ that educators must ‘append to existing curriculums as separate lessons, units, or courses’ (p. 316).

“School curriculums are already overburdened. What do I take out to make room for multicultural education?” (p. 316)

•This mentality relates to the pressures of teachers having to adhere to the standards, and the standards having priority, which is described in Sleeter’s (2005) article.

However, Gay explains that:

•“Multicultural education is more than content; it includes policy, learning climate, instructional delivery, leadership, and evaluation” (p. 316).

•Virtually all aspects of multicultural education are interdisciplinary. As such, they cannot be adequately understood through a single discipline, and instead must be connected across disciplines (p. 318).

Gay (2003-4)

Example decision-making process: •Creating learning goals and objectives that incorporate multicultural aspects.•Using a frequency matrix to ensure the inclusion of a variety of ethnic groups in a variety of ways in curriculum materials and instructional activities.•Introducing different ethnic groups and their contributions on a continuous basis.•Including several examples from different ethnic experiences to explain subject matter concepts, facts, and skills.•Showing how multicultural content, goals, and activities interconnect with subject-specific curricular standards.

What does this mean for educators?

•Educators must systematically weave multicultural education into the central core of curriculum, instruction, school leadership, policymaking, counseling, classroom climate, and performance assessment (p. 317).•In practice, this means developing intentional and orderly decision-making processes for including multicultural content (p. 317).

Gay (2003-4)

Examples of approaches to accomplish multicultural curriculum integration (continued):

•Teachers could demonstrate mathematical concepts (i.e. percentages, ratios, probabilities) using ethnic demographics (p. 317).

•“Educators should teach students how to think critically and analytically about certain events, propose alternative solutions to social problems, and demonstrate understanding through such forms of communication as poetry, personal correspondence, debate, editorials, and photo essays” (p. 317).

• This was portrayed in the “Why Critical Pedagogy” video by Friere Project, as students used ‘Slam Poetry’/‘Performance Poetry Curriculum’ to express their feelings and raise awareness about social issues.

• This also connects to Sleeter’s (2005) suggestion to help students develop skills such as: the ability to speak up, debate, listen, and think.

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Gay (2003-4)Reality/representation:

•Curriculum studies needs to help “students understand the realities of the social condition and how they came to be as well as adequately representing those realities” (p. 318).

• This relates to Friere’s ‘problem-posing’ education, which ‘involves a constant unveiling of reality’ (Friere, 1970, p. 7).

•School curriculums need to include “equitable representations of diversity” (p. 318) because the reality is that diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural groups and individuals have made contributions all aspects of U.S. history, life, and culture.

• This connects to Sleeter’s (2005) encouragement for students to make connections to history. Gay argues for these connections to be accurate and include contributions of may ethnic groups.

Example: “the study of American literature, art, and music should include contributions of males and females from different ethnic groups in all genres and in different expressive styles” (p. 318)

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Gay (2003-4)

Gay paints the unfortunate reality that “many ethnically diverse students do not find schooling exciting or inviting; they often feel unwelcome, insignificant, and alienated (p. 319).

Why? Because schooling does not reflect who they are (p. 319).

Solution: Educators need to practice “culturally relevant teaching” (p. 319).• This mirrors Sleeter’s (2005) argument for students to engage in

personally relevant subject matter.How?

•Teach content about the cultures and contributions of many ethnic groups so that students find the content to be relevant and relatable.•Understand the distinguishing characteristics of different learning styles and use a variety of instructional techniques that are culturally responsive best suited to different ethnic learning styles (p. 319). Example: the teacher might offer three or four ways for students to learn, helping to equalize learning advantages and disadvantages among the different ethnic groups in the classroom (p. 319).

Gay (2003-4)

Closing points:

Studies have shown that “students perform more successfully on all levels when there is greater congruence between their cultural backgrounds and such school experiences as task interest, effort, academic achievement, and feelings of personal efficacy or social accountability” (p. 320).

Therefore, multicultural education is critical for student success, and to provide equitable and relevant education.

Gay: “Multicultural education may be the solution to problems that currently appear insolvable: closing the achievement gap; genuinely not leaving any children behind academically; revitalizing faith and trust in the promises of democracy, equality, and justice; building education systems that reflect the diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, and social contributions that forge society; and providing better opportunities for all students” (p. 320).