THE MULTICULTURAL CURRICULUM: Children can and will learn important concepts while incorporating cul

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THE MULTICULTURAL CURRICULUMChildren can and
will learn important concepts while incorporating
cultural diversity into daily lessons and the
overall curriculum
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A multiculturally-oriented curriculum

• Enrich courses in the social studies by including
  multiple perspectives on American culture and
  history, reflecting various viewpoints of
  different groups of Americans
• Use comparisons in describing and analyzing
  traditions, events, and institutions to help
  students know and appreciate similarities and
  differences among various ethnic groups
• Communicate to students of various ethnic
  identities that they are valued members of the
  school community
• Provide opportunities for students to have
  positive interpersonal relations with individuals
  of various ethnic groups

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A multiculturally-oriented curriculum..

• Reaches beyond the textbook to use community
  resources on ethnic diversity
• Strives to expand students' knowledge of ethnic
  groups in American history and contemporary
  society through reading programs that expose
  students to books of fiction, biography, and
  history, and to magazine and newspaper articles
  about ethnic diversity
• Stresses values of ethnic diversity and national
  unity.

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Culturally responsive teaching

• Acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural
  heritages of different ethnic groupsthat affect
  students dispositions, attitudes, and approaches
  to learning and as worthy content to be taught in
  the formal curriculum
• Builds bridges of meaningfulness between home and
  school experiencesand lived sociocultural
  realities
• Uses a wide variety of instructional strategies
  that are connected to different learning styles
• Encourages students to know and praise their own
  and each others cultural heritages
• Incorporates multicultural information,
  resources, and materials in all the subjects and
  skills routinely taught in schools
• Has high expectations for all group of students
  alike.

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Key Concepts in Multicultural Education
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What must be considered first?

• Multicultural curricula is organized around
  concepts/themes dealing with history, culture,
  contemporary experiences of ethnic groups in US
  life, contributions of ethnic groups to the
  mainstream culture, expressions such as
  immigration, discrimination, protest and
  resistance, cultural assimilation and
  acculturation, etc.
• Attention must be given to the developmental
  level of the students, e.g. in the primary grade
  curriculum, the focus must be given to concrete
  concepts such as examples, similarities and
  differences, historical facts and evens and not
  to abstract concepts such as results of
  constitutionalized racism on the lives of
  minorities.

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Types of concepts

• Curricula in any subject area can profit from
  multidisciplinary, multicultural concepts from
  different disciplines such as history or math and
  expressions such Art, music, dance, languages and
  literature, etc.
• Interdisciplinary concepts include
• Culture, ethnicity and related concepts culture,
  ethnic group, ethnic diversity, minorities
• Socialization and related concepts prejudice,
  discrimination, racism, values
• Intercultural communication and related concepts
  intercultural communication, perception
• Power and relations and related concepts power,
  protest and resistance
• Migration and immigration

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Culture, ethnicity and related concepts

• Macrocultural groupgt microcultural groupgtethnic
  groupgtethnic minority
• Culture behavioral patterns, symbols,
  institutions, values and other human-made
  components of society an ethnic group is a type
  of cultural group
• Macroculture US culture
• Microcultures, smaller groups within the
  macroculture
• Appalachian culture, Southern culture, Western
  culture
• gay culture (voluntary group)
• various ethnic groups

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• Ethnic group
• Anglo-Saxon, Italian Americans, Mexican-American
• involuntary microcultural groups with which
  individuals may or may not identify
• group has a historic origin, shared heritage and
  ancestral tradition
• members (may) share orientation, values,
  behavioral patterns, and often political and
  economic interests
• individuals may be members of many different
  groups religious kinship (association,
  relationship), economic groups
• Ethnic identification or ethnicity may not be
  important to highly assimilated or upper
  socio-economic class members

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• Ethnic minority group
• People of color--African Americans, Vietnamese
  Americans, Hispanics
• Distinguished on the basis of religious
  characteristics Muslims, Jewish Americans
• involuntary microcultural groups with a historic
  origin, heritage and ancestral tradition shared
  orientation, values, behavioral patterns, and
  often political and economic interests
• minority in number, and political and economic
  power
• CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES Study the experiences of
  ethnic groups in the US from the point of view of
  (a) shared identity of peoplehood and ethnic
  identity, (b) shared values and symbols that
  resulted from ethnic institutions created as a
  response to discrimination or from their social
  class position. Study the ethnic institutions
  that have resulted in response to discrimination
  and segregation.

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• Ethnic diversity vs. cultural assimilation
  (melting pot--true assimilation)
• The mainstream culture and ethnic minority groups
  incorporate concepts from each culture and are
  transformed as they interact
• Ethnic individuals may be bicultural, especially
  members in ethnic minorities
• Upper social classes and upwardly mobile member
  are less ethnic than lower-class members, i.e.,
  they tend to conform to the dominant cultures
  norms and language
• Acceptance to upper classes and possibility of
  upward mobility requires assimilation to the
  mainstream culture speech, behavior, values
• Mainstream culture has the economic and
  socio-political power and control of institutions
  

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• Goal ethnic diversity and acculturation, not
  assimilation, encapsulation.
• Schools should help release students from
  cultural and ethnic encapsulation and participate
  of ethnic diversity
• Cultural assimilation
• process by which an individual or group acquires
  the cultural traits of a different ethnic or
  cultural group, mainly for social mobility
• culturally assimilated groups, especially color
  groups, may still be victims of discrimination
• Types voluntary need of upward mobility
• involuntary forced assimilation such native
  migrants
• (native Americans) or forced immigrants
  (African Americans) who were forcedly
  integrated to the mainstream culture.
• Acculturation
• process by which the mainstream culture
  incorporates components of ethnic minority
  cultures ethnic foods, artifacts

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• Cultural encapsulation
• process by which ethnic minority groups form
  cultural enclaves
• Reverse cultural encapsulation ethnic minority
  groups, in order to attain social and economic
  mobility, are usually forced out of their ethnic
  encapsulatione.g. youths of color tend to
  devaluate their ethnic cultures to gain
  acceptance from peers
• Mainstream culture groups show strong forms of
  encapsulation as they deny cultural values of
  other groups
• CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES Examine shared values
  among ethnic groups values, sense of identity,
  common history examine the different
  perspectives in the way a certain value is
  interpreted by different ethnic groups. Study the
  influence of ethnic minority cultures on the
  mainstream culture the extent of assimilation to
  the mainstream culture of minority ethnic groups.

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Intercultural communication and related concepts

• The wider the differences in cultures or
  microcultures between individuals, the more
  ineffective communication is likely to be
• Communication often fails across cultures because
  the message producer and the receiver have few
  shared symbols and have been socialized within
  environments in which the same symbols are
  interpreted differently
• Perception
• process by which people select, organize, and
  interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful
  and coherent picture of the world (Berelson
  Steiner, 1964)
• Factors that may influence perception
• level of identification with a group,
• culture, ethnicity, and race are strong factors
  in The United States, a country characterized by
  inequality, high levels of ethnic discrimination
  and stratification along racial, social class,
  and ethnic lines

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Power and related concepts

• Struggle for power among competing groups (Anglo
  Saxon Protestants) has played a considerable role
  in shaping American history
• Almost every decision is made by those in power
  to enhance, legitimize and reinforce their power
• People in power make socio-political and economic
  decisions, laws, and determine which traits and
  characteristics are necessary for admittance to
  society and full participation
• Social protest emerges within ethnic communities
  to protest social conditions, political policies,
  and economic practices that attempt against their
  integrity as humans
• CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES Study about power
  relationships in American society hypothesize
  about how we can make our nation an open society,
  one more consistent with our national ideology.
  Propose several movements organized by ethnic
  groups and study the causes and consequences
  Black movement of the 1960s,Chinese parents in
  CA fighting equality in education in the 1970s,
  etc.

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Movement and related concepts

• Migration movement of natives or citizens within
  the same country
• American Indians, Eskimos, Native Hawaiians,
  Aleuts
• Puerto Ricans are migrants to the mainland not
  considered immigrants as they became citizens
  with the passage of the Congressional Jones Acts
  of 1917.
• Immigration individuals or groups who have
  settled in the US culture from a foreign country
  legal, illegal, political asylum, etc.
• CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES Examine the origins and
  immigration patterns of an ethnic group in the
  US recreate the chronology of immigration waves
  to the US compare and contrast reasons why
  groups have immigrated study the forced
  immigration of African Americans investigate the
  cultural assimilation of European immigrants in
  metropolis such as New York Boston, Chicago.

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A persons beliefs, attitudes and values may be
viewed together as an integrated system and
together they result in shaping a persons
behavior with respect to the other
Socialization And Related ConceptsAttitudes,
Beliefs, Values
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Attitude relatively stable organization of
interrelated beliefs that describe, evaluate, and
advocate action with respect to a person, object
or situation An attitude has three
components idea or thought, feeling or
emotion readiness to respond or predisposition
to action
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• Value beliefs about how one ought or ought not
  to behave, or about some end state of existence
  worth or not worth attaining
• Values are abstract ideals, positive or
  negative, that represent a persons beliefs about
  ideal modes of conduct and ideal terminal goals

Belief opinion, expectation, or judgment that a
person accepts as true
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Religionsystem of social coherence based on a
common group of beliefs or attitudes concerning
an object, person, unseen being, or system of
thought considered to be supernatural, sacred,
divine or highest truth, and the moral codes,
practices, values, institutions, and rituals
associated with such belief or system of thought.
It is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith"
or "belief system", but is more socially defined
than that of personal convictions
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Socialization And Related ConceptsStereotype,
prejudice, racism, discrimination
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Stereotype

• mental category based on exaggerated and
  inaccurate generalization used to describe all
  members of a group (Bennett, 1995)
• erroneous beliefs, either favorable or
  unfavorable, that are applied universally and
  without exception (Bennett, 1995)
• stereotypes become truths
• African Americans are violent and sexually
  promiscuous,
• Mexicans are illegal, hard-workers
• athletes are dumb and fat people are lazy,
• Jews are stingy

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Discrimination

• differential treatment of individuals considered
  to belong to particular groups or social
  categories (Rose, 1974).
• set of rigid and unfavorable attitudes toward a
  particular group or groups that are formed in
  disregard of facts
• individualized attitude (behavior)
• leads to discrimination.

Prejudice
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Racism

• belief that human groups can be grouped on the
  basis of their biological traits these
  identifiable groups inherit certain mental,
  personality, and cultural characteristics that
  determine their behavior
• extension of an attitude into an action. In a
  racist society, the political, economic, and
  social systems reflect and perpetuate racism
  thus, racism is institutionalized (Gay, 1973)
• related to the idea of race,
• Race human or biological traits of a group
• practiced when a group has the power to enforce
  laws, institutions, and norms based on its
  beliefs that oppress and dehumanize another
  group.
• Prejudice is an individualized attitude while
  racism is an institutionalized concept/belief

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Ethnocentrism

• feeling of superiority of a culture over another
  culture culture is defined by our values
• important to comprehend the complex dimensions of
  American racism and the separatist movements that
  have emerged within ethnic minority groups.