The Guidance Channel: How would you define multicultural education?

Dr. Paul Gorski: Multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education that holistically critiques and addresses current shortcomings, failings, and discriminatory practices in education. It is grounded in ideals of social justice, education equity, and a dedication to facilitating educational experiences in which all students reach their full potential as learners and as socially aware and active beings, locally, nationally, and globally. Multicultural education acknowledges that schools are essential to laying the foundation for the transformation of society and the elimination of oppression and injustice.

The underlying goal of multicultural education is to affect social change. The pathway toward this goal incorporates three strands of transformation: the transformation of self; the transformation of schools and schooling; and the transformation of society.

A multicultural curriculum includes two key features. First, it seamlessly weaves a variety of perspectives and voices into the knowledge base. In a mainstream curriculum, American history is usually taught on a timeline based on Europeans` movement across what is now the United States. While that is a perspective of U.S. history, it is not the only perspective, nor should it be seen as the most logical or sort of validated perspective. What if that same history was taught on a timeline of a Native American or an African American slave? A multicultural curriculum presents multiple voices, rather than a single historical narrative.

Second, a multicultural curriculum directly addresses important social issues, such as racism, sexism, and classism. A lot of schools have mission statements that talk about preparing students to participate in a democracy. Multicultural education prepares them to do exactly that as it examines what shapes relationships and power structures in our country.

GC: Some opponents of multicultural education argue that it’s incompatible with patriotism as it emphasizes only the negative aspects of our country`s past. How can educators examine examples of historical injustices while also cultivating sense of pride in our nations heritage?

Dr. Gorski: This is something that astounds me. For instance, think back to the 1760’s and 1770’s. Without this proud history of critical consideration of government, there would have never been the United States. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were created to protect critical thought. I can’t imagine what could be anymore patriotic than making sure that when I see inequities and injustices in my country that I insist something is done about it.

Some people will say that those of us promoting multicultural education are just activists. Does that mean that someone has to be an activist to advocate that every student who walks into our school has an opportunity to achieve to their fullest, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status? What we`re simply asking for liberty and justice for all.

Multicultural education provides students with a more accurate and complete understanding of the world around them. If I`m only giving them a candy-coated version of U.S. history, then I am not giving them a real picture of what the world is like. In the same way, if I am teaching all of my history based on the lives and choices of a few heroic characters, I am not providing an accurate picture of the U.S. How can we be on the side of equity and social justice if we are not informed? How can we challenge and confront racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty, if we are led to believe that they don’t really exist in the first place?

GC: How can schools create multicultural curricula that address these issues?

Dr. Gorski: It can be done through multicultural curriculum transformation. Most mainstream curricula typically present a Eurocentric and male-centric view and fully ignore other perspectives. There are some programs that use the "heroes and holidays" approach of celebrating diversity at certain times. For example, in February they put up a Martin Luther King, Jr. poster for Black History Month and then replace it in March with a poster on Eleanor Roosevelt.

While that is a step forward, it is not a particularly progressive step. The problem is that we never take it further. The truth is that I cannot have any understanding of what the country or the world was like during any given point of time, if all I am basing that on is a few heroic characters. For example, to understand what the U.S. is like right now, I wouldn’t just base it on Bill Gates` life story. I`d also need to learn about people in the inner cities, rural communities, and suburbia to find out what life is actually like.

GC: How can teachers move beyond the heroes and holidays approach?

Dr. Gorski: For some reason, we`ve had this notion that we must have a central textbook in every class. Yet, it’s almost impossible for a single textbook to offer diverse perspectives and voices. Teachers need to move away from basing everything on a single central text – and not only the textbook, but the text in terms of a historical narrative, as well.

Another thing teachers can do is to have students take a critical look at the textbook itself. I had an eighth grade English teacher who, on the first day of class, had all of us open our textbooks to the Table of Contents and look at the names and voices that were represented. We then discussed who was there, who wasn`t and what it meant.

GC: Certain critics assert that the effort to incorporate ethnically diverse literature in the classroom has led to the "dumbing down" of student textbooks and limited children’s knowledge and overall literacy. How would you respond to this assertion?

Dr. Gorski: It’s purely racist. It starts with the assumption that one cannon, defined by white people for the purpose for the benefit and privilege of white people, is somehow more valuable and more conducive to literacy than another. I think that is the response of the people who are comfortable with the status quo and want to maintain it.

These people argue that we are insisting on a more multicultural, equitable approach for political reasons. Of course we are doing it for political reasons! But one needs to recognize that they are assuming that the exclusion of these approaches, the consideration for equity, and diverse voices, wasn`t political in the first place. So, it’s just the power structure trying to maintain power and a system of institutionalized racism.

GC: Why do educators need to consider not only what they teach, but also how they teach, in order to effectively implement multicultural curriculum transformation?

Dr. Gorski: Most of what is learned in schools is learned through modeling and how things are taught, as opposed to what things are taught. Therefore, it is crucial that teachers model a willingness to validate a variety of perspectives. They also need to model critical thinking about their own position in society, in terms of what that means and how they view the world. In my own teaching, I try really hard to be honest about the prejudices and biases that I struggle with to model that for my students. I often think that stands out more to students than content.

GC: Does offering instruction that appeals to a wide variety of learning styles to accomplish this as well?

Dr. Gorski: That`s just good teaching in general. As educators, our goal is to create an atmosphere in which every student has an opportunity to achieve to his or her fullest. Of course, part of that is providing an accurate and complete curriculum and encouraging critical thinking skills.

But another aspect is adapting teaching approaches to accommodate various learning styles. For example, some of my students like a lot of visual stimulation, while others are distracted by it. My job is to figure out how to vary things enough so I can pull in all of them. It`s important for teachers to realize that we tend to fall back on teaching that would be most attractive to us as learners. Therefore, we need to be aware of that and make sure that we try as hard as we can to vary our teaching approaches.

GC: By doing that, you are also modeling the continuous reexamination your own behavior and bias, as well.

Dr. Gorski: Absolutely! That’s an example of what some people refer to as the hidden curriculum. These are the things that students pick up on that aren’t in a textbook. As I said earlier, students often learn more from that than actual content.

GC: Does educating a school staff about different cultures strengthen their relationships with students and each other?

Dr. Gorski: I am hesitant about that. I have seen so many of those types of programs that are misguided. In Minnesota, we have a big population of Hmong and Somali students. While there are loads of workshops on their cultures, they are usually overly simplistic. While this makes the workshops more comfortable for people to attend, they miss out on the complexity and diversity within each culture. I think the best way for me to learn about the culture of my students is to ask them about it.

GC: So you are inviting their voices into the classroom?

Dr. Gorski: Yes, but not just into the classroom, but into my own personal learning about who they are. It’s much more useful for me to ask my individual students about their cultures than to have a textbook that is somehow supposed to represent the culture of the students. I think that gets us off track. It goes beyond what you need to know about these students. It`s what we need to do to ensure that everyone of these students has an equitable opportunity to achieve in this school. We need to consider how we are going to eliminate racism from the classroom and the school.

GC: It sounds like you are expanding beyond changing the curriculum in the classroom and transforming the entire school culture.

Dr. Gorski: It really needs to extend to the society at large. We need to go further than being tolerant and appreciating differences. We need to stand up for people`s rights.

GC: What can students learn from examining how that was done in the past?

Dr. Gorski: We often view rebellion negatively because people often don’t know how to spend their pent up frustration and there seem to be few positive outlets for it. But there are numerous examples to illustrate how to stand up for justice, like the labor movement that earned rights for underpaid and mistreated workers and the women’s movement that led to women`s right to vote. Multicultural education can serve as a vehicle to teach young people how these movements have fought inequity in the past and show them how to challenge the injustices of the present.

About Dr. Paul Gorski

Paul Gorski is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Hamline University. He is an active consultant, conducting workshops and guidance to schools and educational organizations committed to equity and diversity. He created and continues to maintain the Multicultural Pavilion and the McGraw-Hill Multicultural Supersite, two websites focused on multicultural education. Gorski is actively involved in the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), and serves on its board of directors. He is Associate Editor, Technology, for NAME’s journal, Multicultural Perspectives, and Associate Editor, Multicultural Literature and Reviews, for Multicultural Education. Prior to his current position at Hamline University, Gorski taught for the University of Virginia, the University of Maryland, and George Mason University. He earned a doctorate in Educational Evaluation at the University of Virginia, where he spent four years facilitating multicultural workshops and dialogues for teachers and students and co-teaching several courses on multicultural education. He continues to publish and present in education-focused forums on topics ranging from whiteness and racism studies to multicultural curriculum transformation. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his cat, Unity.

Paul Gorski is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Hamline University. He is an active consultant, conducting workshops and guidance to schools and educational organizations committed to equity and diversity. Gorski is actively involved in the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), serving on its board of directors. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his cat, Unity.