Culture-Rich Curriculum

A hot issue now is multiculturalism. The debate takes many forms: what to teach in schools, how to deal with immigration, racism, cultural superiority, etc. When it comes to multiculturalism in schools, it takes a couple basic forms. One is a multi-cultured approach. This form is as it sounds - teach what you teach from the perspective of multiple cultures. Ideally this takes shape every day in the classroom, not just in black history month. The other option (quite simplified) is that it's better to focus your attention as an educator on the basic needs of students, to answer the question "what do these kids need to know to make it in this world?"

This plays itself out in my school a number of ways. We celebrated black history month like most places, with an assembly and some extra information on famous African American contributions to the world. But the debate also takes shape in that I am constantly trying to challenge my kids to more. Sometimes am I less aware of cultural differences? Unfortunately, yes. I'm still learning. But sometimes do I make the choice to challenge my kids to answer the WHY questions in life instead of the WHAT questions in order to prepare them for the "real world" (as if school exists in some alternate dimension that isn't real...)? Yes, I do that as well.

Multiculturalism is a big part of our school. We have a quite diverse population and I'm thankful for that. I see many kids interact on a personal and friendly level every day and I find that to be a very good thing. But it would be unfair to say that I never see educational excellence diminished simply to add a piece of literature from another culture. I hope I don't sound insensitive (but I probably do), but there are times that an educator should not worry about what culture an author or history-maker comes from. Well, for history you probably should worry about it. We are all a part of the world's population. And as "we are the world" as it may seem, we all matter. I don't think it's necessary to spend five minutes discussing an author's personal, cultural history before we dive into his or her poetry or prose. I don't see a consistent benefit to that. If the piece is good, study it. If it's not, don't. It seems easy.

Now then, we do study other cultures in my English class. We did a good amount on Native American culture and Puritan culture, as two examples. I hope still to do a section on the Harlem Renaissance. But these pieces of literary history are good. They are not just studied because their authors filed into some special cultural realm.

At the end of the day, I don't know which one of these wins. I realize how culturally narcissistic I sound right now. I hope that over the next years of teaching I'll figure out the right answer.