Term Papers on Multicultural Education

Term Paper Title	Multicultural Education
# of Words	1752
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.01

Multicultural Education

America has long been called "The Melting Pot" due to the fact that
it is made up of a varied mix of races, cultures,

and ethnicity's. As more and more immigrants come to America searching for a
better life, the population naturally

becomes more diverse. This has, in turn, spun a great debate over
multiculturalism. Some of the issues at stake are: who

is benefiting from education, and how to present material in a way so not to
offend a large number of people.

In the 1930's several educators called for programs of cultural diversity
that encouraged ethnic and minority

students to study their own heritages. This is not a simple feat due to the
fact that there is a lot of diversity within individual

cultures. A look at a 1990 census shows that the American population has
changed noticeably in the last ten years, with

one out of every four Americans identifying themselves as black, Hispanic,
Asian, Pacific Islander, or American Indian

(Gould 198). The number of foreign born residents also reached an all time
high of twenty million, easily passing the 1980

record of fourteen million. Most people, from educators to philosophers,
agree that an important first step in successfully

joining multiple cultures is to develop an understanding of each others
background.

In 1980, Stanford University came up with a program - later known as the
"Stanford-style multicultural curriculum"

which aimed to familiarize students with traditions, philosophy, literature,
and history of the West. The program consisted

of 15 required books by writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Aquinas,
Marx, and Freud. By 1987, a group called the

Rainbow Coalition argued the fact that the books were all written by DWEM's
(Dead White European Males). They felt

that this type of teaching denied students the knowledge of contributions by
people of color, women and other oppressed

groups. In 1987, the faculty voted 39 to 4 to change the curriculum and do
away with the fifteen book requirement and the

term "Western" for the study of at least one non-European culture
and proper attention to be given to the issues of race and

gender (Gould 199). This debate was very important because its publicity
provided the grounds for the argument that

America is a racist society and to study only one culture would not
accurately portray what really makes up this country.

Defenders of multicultural education argue that it offers students a balanced
appreciation and critique of other

cultures as well as our own (Stotsky 64). While it is common sense that one
could not have a true understanding of a

subject by only possessing knowledge of one side of it, this brings up the
fact that there would never be enough time in the

current school year to equally cover the contributions of each individual
nationality. This leaves teachers with two options.

The first would be to lengthen the school year, which is highly unlikely
because of the political aspects of the situation. The

other choice is to modify the curriculum to only include what the instructor
(or school) feels are the most important

contributions, which again leaves them open to criticism from groups that
feel they are not being equally treated. A national

standard is out of the question because of the fact that different parts of
the country contain certain concentrations of

nationalities. An example of this is the high concentration of Cubans in
Florida or Latinos in the west. Neverless, teachers

are at the top of the agenda when it comes to multiculturalism. They can do
the most for children during the early years of

learning, when kids are most impressionable. By engaging students in
activities that follow the lines of their multicultural

curriculum, they can open up young minds while making learning fun (Pyszkowski
154).

Students are not the only ones who can benefit from this type of learning.
Teachers certainly will pick up on

educational aspects from other countrie...

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