Defining Multicultural Education (Class Assignment # 2)

For this past Monday's section of my "Multiculturalism and the Practice of Education" class, we read an incredibly engaging paper by Dr. Geneva Gay called "Synthesis of Scholarship in Multicultural Education." Herein, Gay offers a litany of possible and employed definitions for Multicultural Education. Now, as I said in class, while I do like a little bit of everything from each definition the fifth bullet point was the proposed definition that worked the most for me: "Institutionalizing a philosophy of cultural pluralism within the educational system that is grounded in principles of equality, mutual respect, acceptance and understanding, and moral commitment to social justice."

Why do I favor this definition of Multicultural education over some of the others offered by Gay? Well, this one, cited from Baptiste 1979, makes a point to highlight the practice of Multicultural education as an institutionalization, philosophical and principled. Moreover, it highlights "understanding." Understanding, for me, is the be all end all for all forms of Multiculturalism. Other definitions fell out of favor by citing the combatting of discrimination, prejudice and histories of oppression. These definitions implied that multicultural education is needed only in nations with systemic discriminations and histories of oppression--a theory that I am completely in disagreement with.

Wayne Au in his book, "Rethinking Multicultural Education" pursues the institutionalizing of culturally pluralism. In the interview with educator Christine Sleeter, the issue of colorblindness arose. Echoing the sentiments of the 90's racial discourse, the question pointed to the attitude of teachers to "not see a child's race." That is truly the worst. Fortunately, Sleeter shared my attitude and contested that taking a colorblind approach is a teacher's failure to understand his/her students and thus ineffectively curtail the education to that student. Denying the importance, as Sleeter puts it, of the child's background really proves to create an educational atmosphere that is anything but multicultural.

I must say that nothing really bugged me about any of the readings, which is rare. I do feel that I must re-emphasize how important understanding one another is to building social bonds as well as successful eductaion. My ability to understand another person will influence greatly how I relate to that person. How will a person who's not Caribbean know how to approach me as an American if they don't understand me. How will a White teacher know how insulting it is for a black student to be considered a credit to his race or essentialized as black if that teacher doesn't understand sufficiently the way the Black experience processes it all?

There are many people and things I don't understand that I should to augment the ways in which I approach people. As a vegetarian it helps when people aren't always down you're throat saying I need protein. (They have a grave lack of understanding of the vegetarian lifestyle due to the carno-logocentric food pyramid as constructed by our Western pattern diet). http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5uAQwVIwY As a Caribbean American, it helps when people understand that my culture cannot always be compared to Jamaica and that American pop culture is more infectious in Trinidad than you would think. I think that an education that is truly mutlicultural can address these things, not explicitly, but rather by incorporating considerations of other lifestyles in classes such as US History and Health/Nutrition classes. Basically, a pradigm shift (or reform) in education is needed to created this desired result.

--TAHS