Entry #3 Multiculturalism

After reading the three related articles, "Pithissippi Burning", "Why Multiculturalism is Wrong", and "The Challenge of Multiculturalism" it made me sick. Why would someone write a book detailing how to violently get rid of the white people and then make it available to read on the Internet? How can I protect my kids from all this hatred in the world? Reading "Pithissippi Burning" and all the comments at the bottom were very disturbing to me. Webb defines culture as "the behavioral patterns, ideas, values, attitudes, norms, religions, and moral beliefs, customes, laws, language, institutions, art, artifacts, and symbols characteristic of a given people at a given period of time" (Webb, 2010 p213). That's a lot of culture that cannot be taught in just one day or by reading a multicultural book every now and then.

In order to teach multiculturalism within my classroom, every culture and race is respected. Hatred and racism is not tolerated. Differences and similarities are discussed and promoted. All children must feel as if their culture is important. Webb states that in order to respect other cultures we must value the life and history of every student (Webb, 2010).

I wasn't sure how I felt about changing the history books at first after reading "The Challenge of Multiculturalism". I want my children to learn the same history that I was taught. As I read this article, I felt as if my history was being stripped from my kids and they would never be a part of that. On the other hand, I now see how other races and cultures must feel. History does have different points of views and our history books are written from the white person's point of view. I feel children should learn about past history from all points of view. Do not take one away to make another happy. This doesn't solve anything. This goes back to all differences and similarities must be promoted and respected.

Teachers do not need to just have multicultural days, fairs, or black history month. This teaches that blacks are only important one month out of the year or Hispanics just get one day. That creates anger and segregation. Multiculturalism has to be taught everyday in every classroom. We as teachers have a very difficult task. We have to compete with mass media. These kids are going to see and hear violence and racial remarks about others on the Internet, television, games, and in books. We have these kids for 7-8 hours, 5 days a week. We can be a powerful voice if we all do our part and win the war against cultural and racial discrimination and hatred. If not then God help us all. The world is only going to get worse. Here are two interesting articles about multiculturalism and the classroom.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=10627

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/effective_teacher/68230