Multcultural Education

11 Pages 2771 Words

ral curriculum” which aimed to familiarize the students with traditions, philosophy, literature, and history of the West. The program consisted of fifteen 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 or 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 by doing away with the fifteen book requirement as well as the term “Western” in order to give proper attention to the issues of race and gender (Gould, p.199). This debate was very important because its publicity provided grounds for the argument that America is a pluralistic society and to study only one people would not accurately portray what really makes up this country. Proponents of multicultural education argue that it offers students a balanced appreciation and critique of other cultures as well as their own (Stotsky, 1992, p.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 our current school year to equally cover the contribution 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 and economic aspects surrounding 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 ...