Varieties
of Multicultural Education: An Introduction
What we now call
multicultural education originated in the 1960s in the wake
of the civil rights movement as a corrective to the long-standing
de facto policy of assimilating minority groups into the "melting
pot" of dominant American culture (Sobol, 1990). Multicultural
education has captured almost daily headlines in recent years,
as it has become an ever more contentious and politicized
battleground. To cite just two instances, attempts to establish
multicultural curricula in New York City and California were
the subject of considerable public attention. In the debate
over New York's Children of the Rainbow curriculum, opponents
such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1991) argued that multicultural
education threatened to divide students along racial and cultural
lines, rather than unite them as Americans. California's curriculum
was met with strong attacks from both opponents and proponents
of multicultural education; depending upon one's perspective,
the curriculum either carried diversity too far, or merely
bolstered the traditional curriculum's Eurocentric biases
(Kirp, 1991; King, 1992).
The public debate
continues. As recently as May 1994, a school board in Lake
County, Florida, voted that its schools could teach children
about other cultures, but only as a way of teaching them that
American culture was inherently "superior," a decision
much discussed around the country ("School Board,"
1994).
In the midst of
such controversy, there has been little agreement on a precise
conceptualization of multicultural education; indeed, while
some limit its applicability to curriculum, multicultural
education has also been broadly defined to include "any
set of processes by which schools work with rather than against
oppressed groups" (Sleeter, 1992, p. 141). Even more
sweeping, one scholar asserted that multicultural education
can have an impact upon every aspect of a school's operation:
staffing, curriculum, tracking, testing, pedagogy, disciplinary
policies, student involvement, and parent and community involvement
(Nieto, 1992). Clearly, multicultural education, as practiced
in the United States, takes many varied forms.
TYPOLOGIES
OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
Multicultural education, however, cannot be all things to
all people. Several attempts have been made to detail the
various educational strategies that fall under the broad umbrella
of multicultural education--to develop a "typology."
A typology can provide a useful framework for thinking about
multicultural education, giving educators--and others--a clearer
understanding of what people mean by the term. Two of the
most useful typologies, albeit different from each other,
were developed by Banks (1994), and by Sleeter and Grant (1993).
Drawing upon both those typologies, this article presents
a third typology in order to offer a brief summary of how
multicultural education is implemented in the United States.
It is intended for educators, policy makers, and others who
are just beginning to consider multicultural education options;
future articles will address more advanced issues.
The multicultural
education typology presented here is comprised of programs
that can be broadly divided into three categories, according
to their primary emphasis. Each is discussed below.
CONTENT-ORIENTED
PROGRAMS
As the controversies in New York City and California suggest,
content-oriented efforts are the most common and immediately
recognizable variety of multicultural education. Their primary
goal is to include content about different cultural groups
in the curriculum and educational materials in order to increase
students' knowledge about these groups. In its simplest form,
this type of program adds a multicultural patina to a standard
curriculum, perhaps incorporating a few short readings or
a few in-class celebrations of cultural heroes and holidays
within the school year. Other versions of content-area programs
take a more thorough approach, adding numerous multicultural
materials and themes to the curriculum.
More sophisticated versions actively transform the curriculum.
According to Banks (1994), these programs have three goals:
* to develop
multicultural content throughout the disciplines;
* to incorporate
a variety of different viewpoints and perspectives in the
curriculum; and
* to transform
the canon, ultimately developing a new paradigm for the
curriculum.
Such programs often
take the form that Sleeter and Grant (1993) call "single-group
studies"; common examples include black, ethnic, and
women's studies programs. In some cases, single-group studies
programs can play a major role in the transformation of entire
schools, as, for instance, in the development of independent
Afrocentric schools (Shujaa, 1992). Some schools have also
created single-gender classrooms, designed specifically to
meet the educational needs of girls away from the distractions
of a mixed-gender situation. Afrocentric schools and single-gender
classrooms, thus, combine elements from content-oriented programs
with aspects of student-oriented programs, described below.
STUDENT-ORIENTED
PROGRAMS
Because multicultural education is an effort to reflect the
growing diversity of America's classrooms, many programs move
beyond curricular revisions to specifically address the academic
needs of carefully defined groups of students, often minority
students. Primarily, as Banks (1994) notes, while curricular
programs attempt to increase the body of knowledge about different
ethnic, cultural, and gender groups, student-oriented programs
are intended to increase the academic achievement of these
groups, even when they do not involve extensive changes in
the content of the curriculum.
As Sleeter and
Grant (1993) describe them, many of these programs are designed
not to transform the curriculum or the social context of education,
but to help culturally or linguistically different students
make the transition into the educational mainstream. To do
this, these programs often draw upon the varied linguistic
and cultural backgrounds of their student bodies.
As a result, student-oriented
programs can, themselves, take many forms, some of which are
not typically thought of as types of multicultural education.
Banks (1994) outlines four broad program categories:
* programs that
use research into culturally-based learning styles in an
attempt to determine which teaching styles to use with a
particular group of students;
* bilingual or
bicultural programs; language programs built upon the language
and culture of African-American students; and
* special math
and science programs for minority or female students.
As a result of
this variety--and because they attempt to help students make
the transition into the mainstream--many student-oriented
programs can be viewed as compensatory in nature; in fact,
they can often be nearly indistinguishable from other compensatory
programs which may not be multicultural in their emphasis.
SOCIALLY-ORIENTED
PROGRAMS
These programs seek to reform both schooling and the cultural
and political contexts of schooling, aiming neither simply
to enhance academic achievement nor to increase the body of
multicultural knowledge, but to have the much broader impact
of increasing cultural and racial tolerance and reducing bias.
According to Banks
(1994), this category of program encompasses not only programs
designed to restructure and desegregate schools, but also
programs designed to increase all kinds of contact among the
races: programs to encourage minority teachers, anti-bias
programs, and cooperative learning programs. As Sleeter and
Grant (1993) describe it, this type of multicultural education
emphasizes "human relations" in all its forms, and
incorporates some characteristics of the other two program
types; that is, it can entail curricular revisions in order
to emphasize positive social contributions of ethnic and cultural
groups, while using research on learning styles to enhance
student achievement and reduce racial tensions within the
classroom.
But Sleeter and
Grant (1993) also extend this type of multicultural education
to include a much broader spectrum of programs with socially-oriented
and social activist goals. The programs they refer to, which
are much less common--and which can be much more controversial--emphasize
pluralism and cultural equity in the American society as a
whole, not simply within the schools. In order to reach their
goals, such programs can employ a number of approaches. Many
emphasize the application of critical thinking skills to a
critique of racism, sexism, and other repressive aspects of
American society; some emphasize multilingualism; others attempt
to examine issues from a large number of viewpoints different
from that of the predominant culture; still others can utilize
cooperative learning approaches and decision-making skills
in order to prepare students to become socially-active citizens.
CONCLUSION
These clearly drawn categories of multicultural education
may facilitate educators' attempts to develop programs that
reflect the diversity of their student body. Public articulation
of the programs and goals of specific approaches can help
to temper some of the political rhetoric surrounding multicultural
education, and give educators and policymakers on all sides
of the issue a common basis for their discussions.
REFERENCES
Banks, J. A. (1994). An introduction to multicultural education.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Kirp, D. L. (1991).
Textbooks and tribalism in California. Public Interest, 104,
20-36.
King, J. E. (1992).
Diaspora literacy and consciousness in the struggle against
miseducation in the black community. Journal of Negro Education,
61(3), 317-40.
Nieto, S. (1992).
Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural
education. New York: Longman. (ED 361 440)
Schlesinger, A.,
Jr. (1991). Report of the social studies syllabus review committee:
A dissenting opinion. In New York State Social Studies Review
and Development Committee, One nation, many peoples: A declaration
of cultural interdependence. New York: Author.
School board will
recognize other cultures, but as inferior. (1994, May 13).
The New York Times, p. A16.
Shujaa, M. J. (1992).
Afrocentric transformation and parental choice in African
American independent schools. Journal of Negro Education,
61(2), 148-59.
Sleeter, C. E.
(1992). Restructuring schools for multicultural education.
Journal of Teacher Education 43, 141-48.
Sleeter, C. E.,
& Grant, C. A. (1993). Making choices for multicultural
education: Five approaches to race, class and gender (2nd
ed.). New York: Merrill.
Sobol, T. (1990).
Understanding diversity. Educational Leadership, 48(3), 27-30.
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