Multicultural Education

Multicultural Education

Multicultural education is an idea of making school reforms to promote social justice, democracy, and equity. It is aimed at improving diversity in schools so that all students can effectively acquire skills and knowledge despite their difference in ethnicity or race (Banks, 2019). To achieve this, there is a need to restructure schools to be more inclusive and accommodate different students from different backgrounds. Hopkins High School has students from different races, cultures, and countries. This has brought conflict from parents and teachers since they want the school to celebrate all the cultures because the school has been celebrating the African American culture. To solve this, the principal has established a committee to come up with a solution. This paper will discuss the recommendations made by the committee.

The committee of Hopkins High School should recommend the increase in the number of speakers during assemblies from two to as many as ethnic groups or races are. Two speakers who usually are invited speak about the African American culture make the rest of the cultures in school view it as discrimination. Inviting more speakers with each representing a specific culture will deal with their problem. This is because it will ensure that all the cultures are included hence making the event more diverse. These speakers should reflect on the famous heroes and heroines of various ethnic groups while making sure that they are diverse. With each culture being represented, the members of the culture will feel a sense of importance. This will make them understand better and appreciate their cultures.

The committee should also recommend the addition of visuals which reflect ethnicity and racial diversity in the classrooms, and any other venue during the cultural week. The school should look for different images of food and clothing, heroes, and heroines that represent different cultures and heritage. These images should then be pinned in different parts of the school but mainly the venue for holding the cultural event. This integrative approach will ensure that even the smallest cultural group is represented and celebrated by the rest of the cultures during the cultural day.  During the cultural day also is also important to display images of the various icons from all the cultures with captions that are diverse. This will make the students and parents learn of their cultural heroes and history of their culture while being able to celebrate everyone’s culture.

Hopkins High School committee should recommend the use of equity pedagogy and that the school should introduce the teaching of culture in classrooms and continue with the cultural day (Ladson, 2017). Equity pedagogy is a strategy that helps students from different cultural, ethnic, and racial groups to acquire knowledge and skills effectively within and a democratic environment. This will help the school to run its learning activities without any problem of discrimination since the teachers can accommodate all the groups during learning. Equity pedagogy is also applicable during the cultural day because the teachers will be able to plan the cultural event in such a way that it will contain all the cultures in school.  Through this method, all the cultures will be celebrated and appreciated by all the school community; hence the learning and celebration will be run smoothly.

The committee of Hopkins High School should recommend that the event of cultural day should not only be done in February but also numerous times in a year. This is to enable the school to celebrate all the cultures during particular days of different cultures. Different cultural groups have separate different days or holidays in which they might not share any other culture. These days might have religious importance, and the school should look for representatives for the community to conduct the celebration. To demonstrate diversity in school, the administration should a particular group in celebration of their holiday. These events include Ramadan for Muslims, Di de Muertos, and even Chinese year for the Chinese. These days should be honored, and to show diversity, the school should use such days to demonstrate the culture involved. However, this should be conducted in such a way that the faith of the other students will not be hurt since such days may include religious days. This is important because the different cultures will feel important and part of the school, and it will also ensure that the students get to know more about different cultures.

The school committee also should recommend a step to make the cultural days more than just wearing cultural costumes, food, music, and even learning heroes of a chosen culture. This will mean adding more events to the cultural day (Khalifa, 2016). These events may include having lessons about a cultural subject planned. It is also advisable to go on trips to visit the site of the selected culture. The recommendation will enable the school to cover more than half of the cultures in school, which will bring fairness to students and parents involved. The lessons during this period should be planned in such a way that it has a transformative approach that brings the content of ethnic and cultural groups from the margin to the center of the curriculum. The trip also should be targeted at one of the factors about a culture that may be about a hero of the culture or museum, which shows everything about the culture such as the clothing, and food. This step will help attain multicultural education since it will bring several cultures together and make them overlook their differences, making it easy to learn as a group and in a democratic environment.

Hopkins High School committee should recommend that the lesson planning should be reconstructed considering prejudice reduction during the lessons on a cultural day (A. Prejudice reduction is aimed at developing the student’s attitudes to be positive and democratic. The students and parents at Hopkins High School saw the celebration of the African American culture alone as biased since their respective cultures were not represented. This shows their attitude towards different cultures, and therefore there is a need to adjust their lessons to make them appreciate other people’s cultures.  It will also help them to overlook their differences in cultures and promote unity among them, which will encourage active learning in school. Prejudice reduction apart from bringing a positive view if different cultures, it will make classrooms and school to be a democratic place which brings healthy competition in learning among the students. The positive attitude also will solve the issue at the school about cultural days by making them agree to the school’s decision on the culture to be celebrated on that day.

References

A Harvard Educational Review forum with Alim, H. S., Baglieri, S., Ladson-Billings, G., Paris, D., Rose, D. H., & Valente, J. M. (2017). Responding to “cross-pollinating culturally sustaining pedagogy and universal design for learning: Toward an inclusive pedagogy that accounts for dis/ability.” Harvard Educational Review, 87(1), 4-25.

Aronson, B., & Laughter, J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education: A synthesis of research across content areas. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 163-206.

Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (Eds.). (2019). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. John Wiley & Sons.

Khalifa, M. A., Gooden, M. A., & Davis, J. E. (2016). Culturally responsive school leadership: A synthesis of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 1272-1311.