Multicultural Issues

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Multicultural Issues

• Spring 2013
• Freddie Bowles, Professor
• Aíxa García Mont, assistant

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• Unity.
• Not uniformity.

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Todays Lesson

• Goal To establish background
• information about MCE to learn about
• each others diversity and the diversity
• your students
• 1. Definitions
• 2. BINGO
• 3. Small group discussion

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Language Diversity in Arkansas
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Language Diversity in Arkansas
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Statistical Information

• 40 of P-12 population are students of color
• BUT
• 84 of teachers are European Americans
• AND
• 75 of those are female
• 41 of all 4th graders have F R lunches
• 14 of all students are in special programs

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How do you define values?

• Qualities that parents find desirable and
  important to the education of their children.
• Examples
• prestige, status, pride, family
• loyalty, love of country, morality,
• education, religious beliefs, honor

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What is culture?

• Culture
• defines who we are
• influences knowledge, beliefs, and values
• provides a blueprint for behavior, feeling, and
  thinking
• imposes order and meaning on who we are
• allows us to predict how others will behave in
  certain situations

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Characteristics of culture

• Culture is
• learned behavior
• shared behavior
• adapted behavior
• dynamic (changing) behavior
• Manifested in
• values
• non-verbal patterns
• language

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Our cultural lenses

• Ethnocentrism the only lens and the right one!
  http//www.corndancer.com/fritze/reformation2/refm
  aton2_home.html
• Cultural relativism the lens as a prism--seeing
  the world with many facets
• Multiple lenses ethnicity, religion, gender,
  sexual orientation, age, class or SES, first
  language, geographic region, residence,
  abilities, exceptionalities

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The majority culture

• Values and practices reflected in most
• Institutions
• (political, business, educational, social)
• Privilege unable to recognize inequality,
  racism, and powerlessness of anyone outside the
  dominant culture
• Result creates alienation in subgroups and
  subcultures

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Some characteristics of majority culture
influences

• Anglo-Saxon / Western European roots
• Language (England)
• Legal system (England)
• Democratic ideals (France and England)
• Logic (Socrates)
• Individualism (Germany)
• Freedom (France)

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Some values and ideologies of majority culture

• Time
• Money
• Success measured by accumulation of goods
• Control of destiny and nature
• Industriousness, ambition, competition,
  self-reliance, independence

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How other cultures relate to majority culture

• Acculturation adoption of cultural patterns of
  dominant group by new or oppressed group
• Consonant Parents and children learn the
  language and culture in which they live at the
  same time
• Dissonant Children learn language and
  culture/parents dont
• Selective Children learn both and still retain
  elements of native culture

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Continued

• Assimilation cultural patterns become part of
  dominant culture or disappear
• Structural primary group relationships are
  shared
• Cultural pluralism two or more groups function
  separately and equally
• Egalitarianism social, political, and economic
  rights and privileges for all people

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Continued

• Equality concern for groups welfare
• Inequality based on societal differences
• Meritocracy individual merit deserves greatest
  social and financial reward
• Inequality based on individuals differences
• Prejudice aversion to a group different from
  your own
• Discrimination denial of privileges and rewards
  to members of oppressed groups both individual
  and institutional
• Stereotypes generalizations about group without
  consideration of individual differences within
  that group

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Homework

• ABC Who Are We? Poem
• Read Chapter 3
• Bring McMenu choices and dates to class on a
  notecard