As I reflect on my present classroom setting and my past school days as a student, in relation to multiculturalism, I wonder if the two are really that different. I will begin with the past. I was raised in a somewhat small town and had a graduating class of four hundred. At that time the demographic diversity was between white and black or rich and poor. The county was not ethnic diverse; therefore, I do not remember any students being considered “foreign” except for the occasional foreign exchange students. The diversity existing between black and whites was not an issue that caused tension or division in our school. The school was not multicultural, but at that time I really doubt anyone in my school would have been familiar with the word or its meaning. If you had ask a student for their ethniticity , I am sure some would have been familiar with the term ethnic and would have said they had a German, Scottish or British heritage. Although during that era, in my school, we basically all belonged to the same “polis” meaning city or nation, most had different ethnos that extended back many generations. (Hirsch, 1992) We rarely identified ourselves with those ethnos and would not have identified ourselves as part of the “cosmopolis” that Hirsch describes in his article.
In my present classroom setting and other classrooms, multiculturalism is a familiar term. The demographics are more diverse and we cannot all identify with one “polis”. For some their ethnos is not just an ethnic heritage that they know little about; instead it is a present part of their life and they strive to identify with it because the present surroundings do not resemble anything they knew in the past. I am describing the immigrant that comes to a new nation such as the United States. They must adapt to the new surroundings, new language, and new culture. The question is should we adapt our curriculum to educate students concerning the immigrant’s culture and heritage so that we will relate and accept their differences. In the article Multiculturalism in School Curriculum, Waxler suggest when we pull out different cultures and teach them individually we are teaching “intellectual segregation”. (Waxler, 2008) I do not agree that Black History Month or Women’s History month will once again lead to segregation, but I do agree with some of Waxler’s philosophies. At some point in history, someone was an immigrant, someone was the minority, and someone felt like they did not belong, but history continued to be written and eventually one day that person’s offspring was no longer considered the minority or the immigrant. I agree with Waxler, that we should continue to teach traditional history. If we do this multiculturalism will always have a place, but the names and ethnicities being taught will change and the term traditional will take on a new meaning with each generation.
I stated in the beginning of the blog that I felt the past and present may look the same. I still feel this statement to be true. Traditional education in my days of schooling was traditional and multicultural for that era. If that curriculum was still being taught today I would see bias in the curriculum, but it is not still being taught. Today, my children’s curriculum does teach diversity and I believe it will continue and evolve as our nation becomes more diverse.
References
Hirsch, E. D. (1992). Toward a Centrist Curriculum: Two Kinds of Multiculturalism in Elementary. Retrieved October 28, 2011, from elearn.mtsu.edu: https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=2975445&tId=19133313
Waxler, A. (2008). Multiculturalism in School Curriculum. Retrieved from elearn.mtsu.edu: https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=2975445&tId=19133312
