Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education 223multicultural education on its head. A reasonable desire to pay closerattention to ‘disadvantaged’ ethnic populations can produce a curriculumthat essentially replaces one existing unidimensional thrust withanother. An ostensible concern for cultural pluralism writ large oftenturns out to be special pleading for some particular group. We see thismost notably in programs that are actively committed to equity andsocial justice (see also below). Third, a great deal of the literature iscouched in inflated but vacuous language. We have already had a briefexposure to this, but there are many examples. If you go, for instance, tothe website of the National Association for Multicultural Education (anAmerican organization based in Maryland), you will find a lengthydefinition, parts of which read as follows:Multicultural education is a philosophical concept built on the idealsof freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity... it challengesall forms of discrimination... it helps students develop apositive self-concept... it prepares all students to work activelytoward structural equality in organizations and institutions byproviding the knowledge, dispositions, and skills for the redistributionof power and income among diverse groups. Thus, school curriculum[sic] must directly address issues of racism, classism, linguicism,ablism [sic], ageism, heterosexism, religious intolerance, andxenophobia... students and their life histories and experiences shouldbe placed at the center of the teaching and learning process...multicultural education demands a school staff that is culturallycompetent, and to the greatest extent possible racially, culturally, andlinguistically diverse... multicultural education attempts to offer allstudents an equitable educational opportunity, while at the same timeencouraging students to critique [sic] society in the interest of socialjustice. (National Association for Multicultural Education, 2003)I apologize for such a lengthy extract, but it surely contains someinteresting material. The most salient feature is the alternation betweenassertions that no educationalist could quarrel with and others that arerather more pointed. Freedom, justice, dignity, tolerance and even theslightly more dubious ritual nod in the direction of self-esteem whatteacher would gainsay these? Some of the other statements, however,make multicultural education sound more like a training ground for thepolitically correct shock troops of anti-discrimination and ethno-racialequality. Another point of interest here is the placement of children’s ‘lifehistories’ and teachers’ ‘cultural competence’ at the center of theeducational exercise. What exactly is this meant to imply that is, if it