Key Concepts in Multicultural Education

What must be considered first?

• Multicultural curricula is organized around concepts/themes dealing with history, culture, contemporary experiences of ethnic groups in US life, contributions of ethnic groups to the mainstream culture, expressions such as immigration, discrimination, protest and resistance, cultural assimilation and acculturation, etc.

• Attention must be given to the developmental level of the students, e.g. in the primary grade curriculum, the focus must be given to concrete concepts such as examples, similarities and differences, historical facts and evens and not to abstract concepts such as “results of constitutionalized racism on the lives of minorities.”

Types of concepts

• Curricula in any subject area can improve from Interdisciplinary concepts, social and behavioral science and expressions such Art, music, dance, foods, language and literature, not only history or discrimination, for example.

• Interdisciplinary concepts include: • Culture, ethnicity and related concepts: culture, ethnic group, ethnic

diversity, minorities

• Socialization and related concepts: prejudice, discrimination, racism, values

• Intercultural communication and related concepts: intercultural communication, perception

• Power and relations and related concepts: power, protest and resistance

• Migration and immigration

Culture, ethnicity and related concepts

Macrocultural group> microcultural group>ethnic group>ethnic minority

• Culture: behavioral patterns, symbols, institutions, values and other human-made components of society; an ethnic group is a type of cultural group

• Macroculture: US culture

• Microcultures, smaller groups within the macroculture:• Appalachian culture, Southern culture, Western culture

• gay culture (voluntary group)

• various ethnic groups

• Ethnic group: • Anglo-Saxon, Italian Americans, Mexican-American

• involuntary microcultural groups with which individuals may or may not identify

• group has a historic origin, shared heritage and ancestral tradition

• members (may) share orientation, values, behavioral patterns, and often political and economic interests;

• individuals may be members of many different groups: religious kinship (association, relationship), economic groups

• Ethnic identification or ethnicity may not be important to highly assimilated or upper socio-economic class members

• Ethnic minority group: • People of color--African Americans, Vietnamese Americans,

Hispanics

• Distinguished on the basis of religious characteristics: Muslims, Jewish Americans

• involuntary microcultural groups with a historic origin, heritage and ancestral tradition; shared orientation, values, behavioral patterns, and often political and economic interests;

• minority in number, and political and economic power

CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: Study the experiences of ethnic groups in the US from the point of view of (a) shared identity of peoplehood and ethnic

identity, (b) shared values and symbols that resulted from ethnic institutions created as a response to discrimination or from their social

class position. Study the ethnic institutions that have resulted in response to discrimination and segregation.

• Ethnic diversity vs. cultural assimilation (melting pot--true assimilation)

• The mainstream culture and ethnic minority groups incorporate concepts from each culture and are transformed as they interact;

• Ethnic individuals may be bicultural, especially members in ethnic minorities;

• Upper social classes and upwardly mobile member are less ethnic than lower-class members, i.e., they tend to conform to the dominant culture’s norms and language;

• Acceptance to upper classes and possibility of upward mobility requires assimilation to the mainstream culture: speech, behavior, values

• Mainstream culture has the economic and socio-political power and control of institutions

Goal: ethnic diversity and acculturation, not assimilation, encapsulation.

Schools should help release students from cultural and ethnic encapsulation and participate of ethnic diversity

Cultural assimilation: • process by which an individual or group acquires the cultural traits of a

different ethnic or cultural group, mainly for social mobility• culturally assimilated groups, especially color groups, may still be victims

of discrimination;• Types: voluntary –need of upward mobility

involuntary –forced assimilation such native migrants

(native Americans) or forced immigrants (African Americans) who were forcedly integrated to the mainstream culture.

• Acculturation: • process by which the mainstream culture incorporates components of

ethnic minority cultures: ethnic foods, artifacts

• Cultural encapsulation:

• process by which ethnic minority groups form cultural enclaves;

• Reverse cultural encapsulation: ethnic minority groups, in order to attain social and economic mobility, are usually forced out of their ethnic encapsulation—e.g. youths of color tend to devaluate their ethnic cultures to gain acceptance from peers;

• Mainstream culture groups show strong forms of encapsulation as they deny cultural values of other groups;

CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: Examine shared values among ethnic groups: values, sense of identity, common history; examine the different

perspectives in the way a certain value is interpreted by different ethnic groups. Study the influence of ethnic minority cultures on the

mainstream culture; the extent of assimilation to the mainstream culture of minority ethnic groups.

Intercultural communication and related concepts

The wider the differences in cultures or microcultures between individuals, the more ineffective communication is likely to be

Communication often fails across cultures because the message producer and the receiver have few shared symbols and have been socialized

within environments in which the same symbols are interpreted differently

• Perception: • “process by which people select, organize, and interpret sensory

stimulation into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world” (Berelson & Steiner, 1964)

• Factors that may influence perception:

• level of identification with a group,

• culture, ethnicity, and race are strong factors in The United States, a country characterized by inequality, high levels of ethnic discrimination and stratification along racial, social class, and ethnic lines

Power and related concepts

Struggle for power among competing groups (Anglo Saxon Protestants) has played a considerable role in shaping American history

Almost every decision is made by those in power to enhance, legitimize and reinforce their power

People in power make socio-political and economic decisions, laws, and determine which traits and characteristics are necessary for

admittance to society and full participation

Social protest emerges within ethnic communities to protest social conditions, political policies, and economic practices that attempt

against their integrity as humans

CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: Study about power relationships in American society –hypothesize about how we can make our nation an open society, one more

consistent with our national ideology. Propose several movements organized by ethnic groups and study the causes and consequences –Black movement

of the 1960’s,Chinese parents in CA fighting equality in education in the 1970’s, etc.

Movement and related concepts

• Migration: movement of natives or citizens within the same country

• American Indians, Eskimos, Native Hawaiians, Aleuts

• Puerto Ricans are migrants to the mainland; not considered immigrants as they became citizens with the passage of the Congressional Jones Acts of 1917.

• Immigration : individuals or groups who have settled in the US culture from a foreign country; legal, illegal, political asylum, etc.

CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: Examine the origins and immigration patterns of an ethnic group in the US; recreate the chronology of immigration waves to the US; compare and contrast reasons why

groups have immigrated; study the ‘forced’ immigration of African Americans; investigate the cultural assimilation of European immigrants in metropolis such as New York Boston, Chicago.