Issues in Multicultural Education

Issues in Multicultural Education

Introduction

The United States of America is the host to more than a hundred different communities and cultures. Since the beginning of this nation's journey, it has attracted people from all over the world who travel to this land of opportunities and settle down for the sake of a better future and a progressive lifestyle. With the increase in population comes an increase in the number of children in a locality and this creates an increase in the multicultural characteristics of a school/educational institute. Today, every school in the United States has local and international students from different backgrounds studying under a single roof.

Discussion

A multicultural environment provides many advantages and positive outcomes. May it be a school, college, workplace or a colony, if the people living there are from diversified backgrounds, it bring cultural richness to the entire mixture. People from different cultures and backgrounds add their own essence to the setup and in most cases, this helps create synergy and strong bonds. Subsequently, multicultural setups pose their share of disadvantages too. Often it is witnessed that people belonging to similar cultures and backgrounds tend to cluster together and form sub groups within the main group. This disrupts the synergy and unity of the entire group and causes a misbalance. Additionally, the sub-group which has the most people becomes dominant over the others.

Issues in a multicultural educational setup

In an educational setup where the students belong to different ethnicities and cultures, certain problems tend to rise. As mentioned previously, the formation of sub groups and sub divisions is highly likely. Students may take comfort in mingling and forming bonds with students from their own backgrounds (Banks, 2008). This may lead to the following issues:

Communication

Suppose a class where thirty percent of the students are British, twenty percent are Americans and the remaining fifty percent are Chinese or Indian. This would lead to the usage of Mandarin or Chinese as the primary language of the class as more than fifty percent of the students would be comfortable using that language. This would undermine the British and American students who would have a difficult time coping with the class work.

Teaching Material

Mostly, teachers analyse the dynamics of a class and base the teaching material on those dynamics. In the case of a class with fifty percent of Chinese students, the teacher might use examples related to China or the Chinese culture to ensure that the students understand what is going on. This would again cause discomfort for the other students (Campbell, 2010).

Growth Opportunities

Studying in a class where more than fifty percent of the students are from a different culture not only disturbs students mentally but may also limit their growth in class. For example, if the teacher decides to take a vote to reach a decision, the Chinese (being more than 50%) would have advantage over the other students.

Class activities

In most teaching setups, the curriculum includes extra-curricular activities and group activities as a key element. In a class with diversified cultures, ...