Multicultural Curriculum Reform Study Guide

Chapter 9 is about approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of ethnic minorities in the country is rapidly increasing. Based on the information given by the Bureau, the ethnic minorities will make up around 57% of the total U.S. population by 2060. In this chapter, Bank stresses that schools, colleges, and universities are not ready for this drastic change in the society. Since the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, a lot has been changed in the educational approach in the United States. Books and the mainstream curriculum in our days are much more multicultural than they used to be. The amount of work and effort that has been put in to make a change regarding diverse student learning cannot

It ignores the skills, knowledge, cultures, and histories of other ethnic and religious groups; this negatively affects both mainstream students and students from other diverse groups. Bank states that the lack of multicultural reflection on the mainstream curriculum is a result of two significant factors: ideological resistance and political resistance. Many observers believe that the multicultural aspect of the U.S. society challenges the dominant power structure. Bank thinks that there is another obvious factor that interferes with cultural integration into the education system in the U.S.-- high-stakes testing. Based on several studies, textbooks that are not prepared for the diverse population, are still the primary source for teaching. Teachers are not knowledgeable enough about ethnic cultures to integrate the required skills and the ethnic content into the curriculum. Bank stresses the importance of multicultural education for both mainstream and minority students. The author of the book offers four distinct ways that could be used to integrate multicultural content into the mainstream curriculum: the contributions approach, the additive approach, the transformation approach, and the social action

Many educators want and try to integrate multicultural education into the curriculum, but it starts and ends with some examples of heroes/heroines of other cultural groups that have some contributions to the U.S. history. There is not much information about the struggles of those ethnic groups, often because of racial and political discrimination. Due to that, students do not attain a global view of the contributions that many ethnic groups have had in the U.S. history. Teaching ethnic culture by using some names of heroes/heroines and their dedication to the country tends to overshadow the real picture of the victimization and maltreatment of those groups, as well as their strive for justice and equity.

Another essential attempt of multicultural integration that Bank offers is the additive approach. This approach allows the teachers to bring the ethnic content into the curriculum without changing anything in it. Bank states that the additive method can be the first step in a curriculum reform effort. The shortcoming of this approach is that the added content still comes from the perspective of the mainstream historians, writers, artists, and