Blog Entry #4 - Multiculturalism in the Curriculum - 9/28/2009

As I have mentioned before, I was born and raised and received my schooling right here in Murfreesboro, TN. I went all the way through school, from primary up to high school, in the Murfreesboro City and Rutherford County school systems. Looking back over my school years, in primary and elementary grades, I cannot particularly pinpoint any policies or structures that were used as a means of social control. While I was in middle school, a group of people in accordance with school officials opened up a teen social club called "The Dry Dock"that encouraged teens to stay away from drugs and alcohol and still be socially accepted. In high school, I don't necessarily think of any particular curriculum or structure that exerted social control; however, one huge policy still stands out in my mind that exerted social control in my life in a negative way. As a senior in high school with outstanding grades and outstanding school attendance and participation, I found myself facing the crisis of an unplanned pregnancy. Rather than meeting the diverse needs of the entire student population, one of the policies that I recall vividly is that I was not allowed to be a part of the National Honor Society, even though I met all of the academic requirements.


In the school where I work today, I do not see social control exerted through curriculum or structure but again through the policies of the school. For instance, in our elementary school, clothing that promotes alcohol, drugs, wrestling or other "offensive topics" as determined by the administration are not allowed. Additionally, jeans with holes in them are not allowed when they are bought and worn that way to be fashionable. However, with the mixed socio-economic status of our school population, a written policy against "holes in pants" is not included in our handbook. Our administration feels that this could be viewed as discriminatory against lower income families who cannot afford to buy new pants when old ones become worn.



In looking back over what I have already written, I am thinking that I may be way off base in talking about multicultural curriculum, but then I remember that one of the points that I noted in the "New Immigration Stirs the Melting Pot" article is the idea that mutliculturalism applies to any minority, not just a minority race. Therefore, I was certainly considered a minority in high school as a pregnant teenager, people from other cultures are considered to be minorities, and the marginalized and underprivileged are also considered to be minorities. When people protest and stage rallies and public protests, many times it is not just for the interest of their particular minority group but for the interest of all minorities not receiving equal treatment.


Reading and pondering the article entitled "Toward a Centrist Curriculum" was eye-opening for me. I have always heard about core curriculum as such a negative concept, an idea in which the government is "taking over control of what we teach and when and how we teach it". However, the viewpoint of this particular article really gives some merit to the core curriculum idea from my perspective. The author begins with the assumption that all people are in agreement that children should be taught from an early age to respect all people and should be taught the basic foundations of diverse people and cultures. He goes on to discuss the difficulty teachers have in dealing with the vagueness about what children learn in each grade level at various schools and in various school systems. He points out that children have gaps in learning due to this vagueness, which occurs not only from one grade to the next but most certainly from one school or one district to the next in the case of a child transferring from one to another. The idea of having a core curriculum, particularly in the early grades of school, certainly seems to be a somewhat logical solution to this problem. The author points out that this core curriculum would mostly pertain to the literature and history portions of the curriculum, thereby giving all children the same common foundations and points of reference. This curriculum would also only take up fifty percent of the total curriculum, leaving teachers half of their time to individualize their instruction.


While core curriculum seems like a good starting point to equalize education for all and to correct some of the misinformation being taught in history classes in particular today, the author of the article entitled "Multiculturalism in School Curriculum" emphasizes the need for balance in this or any other approach to multicultural education. His main point is that by going to the extreme of taking each culture out and addressing it individually, the teacher would be segregating each culture even more so instead of intertwining all of the cultures together. He believes that all cultures should be taught through all units of study in order to have an effective multicultural curriculum. It is also his belief that presenting all cultures to a group of students allows them to utilize higher order thinking skills to compare and contrast all of the information and then synthesize their own opinions based on all of the facts. His opinion that teachers should provide students information and remain objective is great in theory, but all teachers are human and probably find it difficult to remain objective in actuality.


As an educator, I believe that it is my responsibility to teach all chidren to respect one another and to be tolerant of individual differences. While my view of history in America is almost inevitably biased by my own upbringing and experiences, it is also my obligation as a teacher to provide students with factual information about the history of our country and all of the events that have led up to this point in time. Hopefully, through my example and through the enviroment I foster in my classroom, students will begin to develop a multicultural attitude which they will carry with them beyond the walls of that room.