1. Multicultural Education: Chapter 8 For Freedoms Sake

2. Citizen of the Free World
Individuals should have the capacity to choose
Individuals should have the power to act to attain one’s purpose
Individuals should have the ability to help transform a world lived in common with others

3. What limits human freedom?
The cultural encapsulation (nutshell) into which all individuals are socialized
Multiculturalism:
Multiculturalism encourages immigrants and other minorities to retain their foreign cultures by not assimilating into the Euro-American culture

4. Community Cultures
Individual and group values, beliefs and stereotypes
Cultures enable people to survive
Cultures also restrict freedoms to make critical choices and actions to reform society

5. Education in a Pluralistic Society
Should
Affirm and help students understand their home and community cultures
Help free them from their cultural boundaries

6. Education in a Democratic Society
Should create and maintain a civic community with goals to:
Work for a common good
Help acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to participate in civic action to make society more equitable and just
Create a multicultural education

7. What Constitutes AMERICAN identity and who should participate in formulating the canon used to shape curriculum
An "educational canon with respect to some subject is the set of rules for determining what materials -- ideas, methods, heuristics, texts, data -- are essential for someone to learn if he or she is to grasp adequately that subject

8. 1990 Movement
Voices launched a movement to infuse content about ethnic groups and women into
School, college, and university curriculums
Creating a debate about multicultural education
Media publications rather than scholarly journals
Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic
Popular media instead of educational forum

9. Western Traditionalists vs the Multiculturalists
Western Defense
Criticizes where multiculturalism is taking the nation
Multiculturalism
- Fails to pay attention to the fact that multicultural education emerged out of Western democratic ideals

10. Major goal of Multiculturalist
Close the gap between the Western democratic ideals of equality and justice and societal practices that contradict those ideals
Such as discrimination based on race, gender and social class

11. New Leaders
To participate in genuine discussions, dialogue and debates
To formulate visionary and workable solutions
THE CHALLENGE
Creatively deal with the increased diversity in the US and the world
Transform the problems related to racial, ethnic, cultural, language, and religious diversity into opportunities and strengths

12. Share Power
Both sides need to put the power on the table and to negotiate and share
Western traditions hold the balance of power via schools, government, and publishing
African or Asian perspectives are thru the eyes of European concepts and paradigms generally studied under the “Age of Discover” when the Europeans arrived

13. Facing Realities Census 2008 – 28 of Americans were of color
By 2020 – ½ nations’ students will be of color
These individuals have a right to study their culture and in shaping a curriculum canon that reflects their experiences, histories, struggles and victories

14. Facts Multicultural advocates
Cultures need to be legitimized in the curriculum
Acknowledgement of African contributions to European civilization be acknowledged
Facts about women and people of color and their victimizations be told in an effort to reform society
Scholarly works and literacy by minority groups

15. Reinterpret Western Civilization
To acknowledge various groups’ dreams against all odds
Provide a more truthful, complex and more diverse version of the West
Describe ways in which African, Asian, and indigenous American cultures influenced and interacted with Western Civilization

16. Myths Western is homogenous It owes few debts to other civilizations
Privileged and upper class European American males are they only key actors

17. Classrooms
Should be a forum which multicultural debates concerning the construction of knowledge takes place
Social construction reflects:
Perspectives
Experiences
Values of the people and cultures that construct it
ALL VOICES should be heard in the classroom

18. Toward the Democratic Ideal
Multiculturalism
Reformulate and transform Western canon, not purge the curriculum
Write more about the intersections of multicultural content and Western centric canon
As a product of the Western Ideals, multiculturalism seeks human dignity, equality and freedom
Freedom movements are symbols of structural exclusion

19. Goals of Freedom Movement
Full inclusion of victimized groups into Western Institutions
Create a nation – state that actualizes
Not about diversity, but designed to reduce race/class/gender divisions in the US and world

20. Educating for Freedom Mainstream Education
Rarely have opportunity to identify, question and challenge their cultural assumptions: beliefs, values and perspectives
Few opportunities to be free from monocultural views that devalue other cultures
Inability to function within other American cultures and lack motivation to seek benefits
School forces them to learn and home and in their communities

21. All students need the skills of a multicultural education to understand others and thrive in a rapidly changing world