Multicultural Education is Natural to Some, a Threat to Others

By Adam Blust, contributing writer

May 1996

On the stump in his campaign for president, Pat Buchanan declares that "Jose" better think twice before trying to enter the United States and take jobs from U.S. citizens. O.J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran compares Mark Furhman to Adolf Hitler. News cameras film police officers in California beating illegal immigrants. A pro basketball player refuses to stand for the national anthem, citing his Muslim beliefs.

Issues of race and culture are touching nearly everyone in the United States in the '90s. But how are those issues and conflicts affecting teaching in Wisconsin classrooms? Not nearly enough, say several educators from around the state.

Different approaches

In the past, the "food and facts" approach was the closest most schools came to dealing with cultural issues. Have an ethnic food fair or a concert, put up posters of Martin Luther King Jr. in February, and move on to the next subject. That approach has problems, say teachers who deal with multicultural issues every day.

"We don't celebrate Black History Month here, because we're always doing it," said Andrew McCuaig, an English teacher at Malcolm Shabazz High School in Madison. If you say that February is Black History Month, what are the other months for?"

There's nothing wrong with such efforts, said Ruth Gudinas, a retired teacher who now runs workshops for teachers who want to study and talk about multicultural issues. But they should be a first step, not an end unto themselves.

Often when educators see how interested students are in cultural issues, it leads to more exploration. After teacher Cristina Diaz-Arntzen moved from a bilingual school in Waukesha to a nearly all-white single-language school, the students began to ask her to teach them Spanish. What started out as a few Spanish folk songs culminated in a well-attended concert where the students performed.

The best approach to multiculturalism is to broaden the curriculum in all areas, says University of Wisconsin-Madison Education Professor Carl Grant. Bring in authors from all kinds of backgrounds to an English class; include many different viewpoints in a history lesson. The idea isn't to exclude traditional subjects, but to add to them.

"I want students to be good readers. I want them to read Shakespeare," said Grant. "But I also want them to read Maya Angelou and James Baldwin."

Critics worry that multiculturalism will squeeze out traditional instruction. But Judith Rényi, executive director of the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education in Washington, D.C., said society's advancement has always meant adjusting what is taught.

"Somebody's ox is always going to get gored," she said. "But some things do get dropped off the back end."

Many think of multicultural education as an attitude, a mind set that allows the teacher to look beyond the ordinary and expected.

"There are all these incredible writers from around the world who we've never heard of because we're so self-centered," said McCuaig. "But I'm guilty too. When I hear that somebody from Egypt gets the Nobel Prize for literature, I find myself thinking, 'Why didn't Updike win?' "

For some educators, defining multicultural education in the widest sense is helpful. For Grant, multicultural education means bringing to a student any experience she might not have in her daily life.

Grant recalls a time he was teaching in an inner city Chicago school and he took his students on a tour of a bank. After the traditional look at the teller windows, the vault and the safe deposit boxes, the bank manager was ready to dismiss the class. That's when Grant asked if the students could see the top floor offices. The students saw something they probably never saw before — executive offices. In discussions back in class, students had a lot to say about the environment on the top floor. It was a cultural experience.

Advice

Teachers may want to include more multicultural education, Grant said, but feel overwhelmed by the number of balls they already are juggling. They say, "I'm not prepared. I have to teach reading." But educators say there are a lot of little ways teachers can deal with multicultural issues throughout the day, without taking time away from their subjects.

The first piece of advice is to respond to racist or biased comments immediately and with authority, said Rita Tenorio, a teacher at Fratney School in Milwaukee, a school founded on anti-racist and anti-bias principles. If teachers don't respond, students get the idea that those comments and attitudes are acceptable, she said.

"If you want to challenge the status quo, you have to begin with yourself," Tenorio said.

It's also important for teachers to examine their own attitudes, and work to understand how those come across in the classroom, said Randy Rasmussen, a speech pathologist in Fort Atkinson and chair of the district's equity committee.

"A lot of teachers have prejudices that they can't let go of," he said. Teachers also can scrutinize textbooks. Rasmussen gave the example of a 7th-grade history book with sidebars giving brief biographies of important people in a specific era. Of the 55 sidebars, he said, five described the accomplishments of women. But rather than being a liability, Rasmussen said, that textbook could be a jumping off point for a discussion of why there were so few women listed, and what other women could or should have been included in the book.

Holidays are fine times to introduce different cultures to children, but it's more important to explore culture in the context of the daily lives of people, Tenorio said.

"Teaching about Mexico isn't the same as learning about the experiences of Mexican-Americans in the United States," she said.

Pitfalls

Teachers may be reluctant to get involved with issues of multiculturalism, worried that parents, the administration, or the government may find fault. McCuaig told of a teacher he knew who was called before the school board for censure after teaching a history class that pointed out that Columbus didn't "discover" America.

One way to minimize those problems is to get parents involved. Rényi remembers a school she visited in South Carolina where teachers set up a reading group for parents and teachers to discuss the multicultural readings teachers wanted to include in their classes. In small-town South Carolina, Rényi said, a major push to include other cultures in reading lists might have met with a lot of resistance. But instead, parents were excited when they had a chance to get involved.

Unfortunately, the enthusiasm for multicultural ideas also can be its own enemy. Mary Jo Fesenmeier, a Lake Geneva 5th-grade teacher, remembers getting a new set of math worksheets that had "cultural diversity" stamped at the top. Unfortunately, the worksheets had nothing to do with diversity, cultural or otherwise.

McCuaig wanted so badly to include a book about a female detective in his mystery literature class that he overlooked quality in making his selection. The class panned the book. "They probably ended up thinking, 'Boy, those female detectives aren't nearly as good as the men,' " he said.

Why does it matter?

Multicultural education is far from a fad, Rényi said. The nation is becoming increasingly diverse, and many analysts believe Caucasians will become a minority in a few decades. Students have to learn to live and work in a variety of environments, with all kinds of people. In fact, one of the best ways to sell the benefits of a multicultural outlook to many parents is to emphasize the economic benefits in the work place.

"The world in 20 years is going to be far different from the world of 20 years ago. It's something we have to deal with," Rasmussen said.

For Diaz-Arntzen, one of the major benefits of multicultural education is to show each student the possibilities and opportunities that await them after graduation. Much of the culture outside the classroom seems to tell students what they can and cannot become, she said, and schools need to counteract the negative messages.

Diaz-Arntzen knows from experience. As an immigrant from Mexico in the late '60s, her high school counselor advised her to continue her job as a dishwasher and forget about college. More recently, one of her students — a Hispanic 5th-grader — said she planned to finish high school, go to college, and then work at McDonald's.

"That's all that she saw people like herself doing in the community," she said. "I felt terrible, like I'd failed her."

The future

It's all right with Grant that critics like Buchanan and others attack the concept of multicultural education.

"In the late '80s, people began to attack it — and in some ways, that's a good thing," he said. "At least you know you're in the game. It's through these discussions that the society grows."

Gudinas, who hosts workshops for teachers on multicultural issues, said she sees many teachers who are willing to spend time and energy on these complicated issues. But she wonders how widespread these efforts are in a society with an "us vs. them" mind set.

"The people who come to our retreats are very excited. But that's just a very small group of people who come because they want to," Gudinas said.

Rasmussen thinks multicultural education will grow as a natural response to the growth and change in our society. It is a force that will continue to strengthen.

"There is a battle between hope and fear," he said. "There are a lot of people who want to put up walls. But that's not going to work."