Blog 7 - Creating a Multicultural Curriculum

Creating a Multicultural Curriculum

A key concept I picked up in this week’s reading is multicultural curriculum is not enough to reduce bias.  It is important the multicultural curriculum is specifically, and overtly, anti-bias and anti-racist (Derman-Sparks, 1993/1994; Nieto, 1999).  In “Empowering Children to Create a Caring Culture in a World of Learners,” Louise Derman-Sparks (1993/1994) advocated providing students with the opportunities to take learning and actions into their own hands.  Her suggestion is to include the following goals when creating a multicultural curriculum:

1. Nurture each child’s construction of a knowledgeable, confident self-concept and group identity [, …]
2. Promote each child’s comfortable, empathic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds [, …]
3. Foster each child’s critical thinking about bias [, … and]
4. Cultivate each child’s ability to stand up for her/himself and for others in the face of bias.  (p. 180)

After first learning about themselves, students will be able to recognize the similarities in humanity among people who are different in any way.  Then students will advance to analyzing biases critically, and ultimately, acting on those analyses and advocating for equality.  Granted, this may be a highly idealized goal in an elementary level, but it is important to begin somewhere.  Young children may come into the classroom with some biased ideas that they have learned from their family or community, and I think Derman-Sparks would say it’s important not to say “Your mom is wrong; blind people can contribute to society,” but ask guiding questions that students would use to start analyzing their beliefs.  If I was to tell a student his parents were wrong, that student would tell his parents, who would get angry and call me, or my superior, to complain about me overstepping my boundaries.  However, if a student critiques a bias and reflects on how it might make the other person feel, he can tell his parents “I think blind people can work; they have all sorts of tools available to help them interact with the sighted world.”  The example cited in which Maria informed her grandmother a toy was offensive is an excellent representation of this (Derman-Sparks, 1993/1994).  To me, it is imperative to be sure students are changing biases based on what they learn and feel, rather than replace the beliefs of their parents, churches, communities, etc. with mine.

Derman-Sparks also pointed out how important it is to think of multicultural curriculum in ways other than what she termed “tourist multicultural curriculum” (1993/1994, p. 180).  Her point is simple: when we, as educators, only teach students about how different cultures celebrate their winter holiday, we are not doing our students any justice.  We are focusing on one part of a culture that we have decided is so important and so widely practiced that it is representative of an entire country/religion/ethnicity.  The fact is, just as there are multiple ways of celebrating Christmas in the United States (including not celebrating at all), looking at one aspect of one day in the life of others is not helpful or inclusive.  Derman-Sparks also cautioned against using a tourist multicultural curriculum in fear that it might patronize or trivialize other cultures and lead to further biases.

While reading the articles for this week, it made me feel a little overwhelmed.  “Teach more culture, but make sure you’re teaching it correctly” is a vague and daunting directive.  This class has helped, and I will appreciate having had it when I begin teaching at an urban middle school outside of Nashville, TN, next fall, and I have also found several resources throughout the semester that provide more information and guidance on improving my teaching practice.  I have linked to them throughout my blogging, but a new one is Teaching Tolerance, a magazine dedicated to reducing biases and improving tolerance.  It offers free magazine subscriptions to educators (mailed to their school twice a year) and has several online resources available, including a community for educators to blog and discuss issues, free .pdf versions of prior magazines, classroom activities, and free teacher kits (DVD’s, books, worksheets, etc.) available to teachers.  I found it at www.tolerance.org (they are also affiliated with TDSi, which I mentioned in an earlier post).

I am looking forward to taking all of the knowledge gained during this class into my classroom next year.  I will be in a new state, with new expectations, but I feel I will be able to use these reflections as a starting point for developing my curriculum and supporting all of my students.  The readings from this week, specifically, resonated with me as I am already thinking of building a new class library, and I want to be sure to cover all aspects of culture with my selections.  I apologize for writing yet another book as my blog entry, but I find it so difficult to limit myself to 400 words when a topic seems so relevant to my situation!

References

Derman-Sparks, L.  (1993/1994).  Empowering children to create a caring culture in a world of differences.  In Jana Noel (Ed.), Classic edition sources: Multicultural education (3rd ed.) (pp. 179-182).  New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill.

Nieto, S.  (1999).  Creating multicultural learning communities.  In Jana Noel (Ed.), Classic edition sources: Multicultural education (3rd ed.) (pp. 187-190).  New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill.