Types

What is multiculturalism?
Multiculturalism has come to mean a variety of things theoretically and in practice. At a basic level, it refers to a fundamental change in the curriculum of primary, secondary and post-secondary schools. It involves adopting the study of many cultures and their products and histories alongside traditional curriculum. (http://www.princeton.edu/progrev/95-96hov.gsdhtml) Similarly, Paul Gorski of the Curry school of education, University of Virginia says multiculturalism can be defined as "a transformative movement in education which produces critically thinking socially active community members." (http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/multicultural/initial./html IT quad).

Multicultural curriculum means that the histories and cultures of minority-Americans, whose cultures have been underrepresented or misrepresented will be accurately presented in text, depicted, and taught in the classroom. The essence of multiculturalism, however, is not to include minorities in the curriculum because they have in the past, been excluded, rather because they have in the past, been excluded, rather because they are an integral part of accurate American history and current culture. For example, as one Hamilton College student said in frustration, "there are hundreds of books and criticisms of Chaucer and Mark Twain in our library, I needed to find a criticism of Vincente Huidobro and I only found two really thin books." Multiculturalism seeks to put minority contributors on the shelves of college and public libraries. Under a multicultural curriculum, students would be expected to study authors such as Huidobro, Gabriel Garcia Maquez and Shakespeare and Dickens in addition to minority contributors in other disciplines. For example, learning about the works of artists such as Gustav Klimt, Raul Conti, The Pueblo Indians and Frederick Remington can be added to the curriculum. Instead of reading Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, five Shakespeare plays, and two other Steinbeck novels, a multicultural curriculum might include three Shakespeare plays, a Dickens novel, a Steinbeck novel, a novel by a contemporary African American author such as James Baldwin, and a play by a Latin-American playwright.

What else is Multiculturalism?
According to James Banks, multiculturalism is education that addresses the teaching pedagogy and learning methods of students throughout the globe. Specifically, it addresses the similarities and differences amongst students and incorporates these within the classroom on a daily basis, rather than in a "tokenistic" manner. Furthermore, it is designed to give both male and female students an equal chance to experience educational success. It is also a functional way of viewing reality. It includes: content integration, equity pedagogy, empowering school culture and social structure and prejudice reduction. (James Banks, Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice: Third edition, 1994, Allyn and Bacon. From (http://lcc.usu.edu/~graceh/multi.html) As James Banks indicated, multicultural education would not only serve to include minorities, but it would also serve as an equalizer to the gender biases found in American classrooms. If successful, multicultural education may reduce the large achievement gap found between men and women in mathematics and science. (Curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/multicultural/initia/html IT quad)

According to Banks and Banks (1995 from: (http://www.ncrel.org.skrs/areas/issues/educators/presrace/pe31/k1/.hm)
there are 10 goals of multiculturalism: To have every student achieve to his or her potential, to learn how to think critically and to think carefully, to encourage students to take an active role in their own education by bringing their stories and experiences into the learning scope, to address diverse learning styles. To appreciate the contributions of different groups of people who have contributed to our knowledge base, to develop positive attitudes towards groups of people who are different from ourselves, to become good citizens of the school, the community, the country and the world community, to learn how to evaluate knowledge from different perspectives, to develop an ethnic, national and global identity and to provide
decision making skills so the students can make better choices in everyday life. (http://www.ncrel.org.skrs/areas/issues/educators/presrace/pe31/k1/.hm)


Types of Multicultural Curriculums
There are three main types of multicultural curriculums. They are: Content-Oriented, Student-Oriented, and Socially-Oriented.

Content-Oriented
Goal is to include content about different cultural groups in the curriculum and educational materials in order to increase students’ knowledge about these groups. (Banks, 1994)

Want to:

• develop multicultural content throughout the disciplines
• incorporate a variety of different viewpoints and perspectives in the curriculum
• transform the canon, ultimately developing a new paradigm for the curriculum.

Student-Oriented
Goal is to increase the academic achievement of these groups, even when they do not involve extensive changes in the context of the curriculum. (Banks, 1994)

Four types:

• 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
• special math and science programs for minority and female students

Socially-Oriented
Goal is to reform both schooling and the cultural and political contexts of schooling, aiming to have the much broader impact of increasing cultural and racial tolerance and reducing bias. (Banks, 1994)

Encourages:

• minority teacher acquisition
• anti-bias programs
• cooperative learning programs

What multiculturalism is not
Contrary to the traditionalist sentiment, multicultural advocates are not militants eager to destroy their precious curriculums. Contrary to the words of such opponents as Dinesh D’Souza, multiculturalists do not seek to maliciously eliminate Harvard professors who teach courses which question the efforts of multiculturalists. Multiculturalism does not seek to infiltrate and replace traditional curriculum as many fear. Traditionalists fear multiculturalists because the multicultural movement represents a detour from the curriculum that has been institutionalized throughout American schools. In contrast, multiculturalism seeks to enrich and diversify the curriculum, not to replace it. It seeks to include other perspectives, ideas, thoughts and works besides the Western-Eurocentric. According to Derrick Bell, "Advocates of multiculturalism are careful to explain that this educational agenda is not about supplanting Western Eurocentric scholarship with Afrocentric or Islamic approaches. Rather it seeks to enlarge our vision of exemplary scholarship and reintegrate at the center of human knowledge all of the voices that have been marginalized." (Bell, 1993)

Multiculturalism is not anti-Western and anti-intellectual as opponents may claim. According to staunch traditionalist John Searle, multiculturalism is an abomination to education, "an assumption made by traditionalists is that there is a certain tradition in our curriculum. There are intersubjective standards of rationality, intelligence, truth, validity and intellectual merit in our current canon. In our list of required readings we include Plato and not randomly selected comic strips because we think there is an important distinction between the two." (Searle, 1993). Traditional curriculum advocates stress that the current curriculum is the best, most rational and most intellectual system of training future generations. To them, no system of alternative curriculums would hold the same values, even if they build upon the traditional curriculum. Inherent in the above assertion is that all other curriculums are inferior because they haven’t met the rigorous standards met by the traditional curriculum. But since white males have always judged the "standards" for Americans, no multicultural curriculum is given a chance. However, a multicultural curriculum is every bit as intellectual as a traditional curriculum. It allows students to evaluate cosmopolitan knowledge, while promoting a concern for the world as a whole; it doesn’t exclusively promote nationalistic sentiments. Furthermore, what happened to all of John Searle’s standards? At last count American students were at the bottom of a tall list of foreign nations in overall achievement. What about truth? Do American history books really tell the whole story about the building of our sentiments?