Michelle Drummond's List: MCE & Learning Theory Argument

• Emphases on multiculturalism have disappeared.
• This cultural diversity requires incorporation into the national identity though civic participation, social inclusion, and institutional recognition. American education, then, must recognize the responsive value in addressing the cultural histories and realities represented by students across the nation.
• Curiosity and engagement do not thrive on a single story. To participate in a diverse America and a multicultural world, children must learn the alternate narratives, different perspectives, and new ideas wrought by the nation’s cultural diversity.
• Though all core subjects are soils in which to plant multiculturalism’s seeds, curricula have bleached out people of color and muffled the voices of marginalized groups. Not only are American students performing poorly in core subjects, they are doing so without introduction to the cultural truths of our present and past.
• By the 1970s, spurred by these movements and immigration, schools had begun to implement curricula conscious of innovation economics. Pedagogy retreated from the assimilation rhetoric of the earlier 20^th century and began incorporating Americans’ multicultural histories.
• Without the principles of innovation economics and multicultural education, American children will be less able to participate in our diverse, democratic republic and in global society

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• The quarterly journal Rethinking Schools defines multicultural education as “an ongoing process of questioning, revising, and struggling to create greater equity in every nook and cranny of school life – whether in curriculum materials, school staffing policies, discipline procedures, teaching strategies, or course offerings. It is a fight against racism and other forms of oppression, including those based on gender, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, or national origin and language. It is a fight for economic and social justice.”
• • even this ignores the connection between culture and learning as a basic building block.
• multicultural practices, such as affirming diverse student voices, providing learning opportunities for students with different learning styles, and organizing to fight for social justice in education.
• like the fulfillment of democracy, multicultural education requires community participation to develop creative alternatives based on multiple perspectives. They also advocate for schools to adopt policies and practices that are more culturally inclusive and respectful of all members of the school community.

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• There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
• They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

• Among the changes: Students would be required to learn about the “unintended consequences” of Title IX, affirmative action, and the Great Society, and would need to study conservative icons like Phyllis Schlafly, the Heritage Foundation, and the Moral Majority.

  The slave trade would be renamed the “Atlantic triangular trade,” American “imperialism” changed to “expansionism,” and all references to “capitalism” have been replaced with “free enterprise.”

• In the process, Precious Knowledge reveals the ideological and political fervor afoot in Arizona and underscoring the anti-ethnic-studies ban and anti-immigrant measures, which claims the MAS courses promote the “overthrow of the government” and ethnic resentment. At the same time, the film places the founding of the ethnic studies program in the larger historical context of Tucson’s long-time struggles by the Mexican-American community for better education and an end to discriminatory policies.

• Social divides within a school amplify the social barriers outside of it. And if teachers and school administrators are isolated from the day-to-day realities students deal with, from economic hardship to violence in the home to limited English-speaking ability, school will become a pretty unwelcoming place for youth.
• In a troubled school, the social bond between students and teachers matters because it could buffer against the racism and class privilege that besiege them: the constant cycle of drilling and testing, dilapidated facilities, ethnocentric curricula that neither speak to nor inspire kids growing up in communities of color, security patrols that make them feel like trespassers in their own school. In an institution fraught with alienation, hiring a few more black, Latino or Asian teachers is “diversity” that doesn’t make a difference.
• The recent culture war over ethnic studies in Arizona is a case in point: When progressive educators, in partnership with Latino communities, sought diversity in their school programming, they were threatened by a political establishment that favored curricula that imposed conformity, leaving little room for global perspectives on culture and history.

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• Banks said he believes students not only need to learn the basic skills, but need to be taught to be reflective, moral and good citizens of the world.
• Banks said there is a lack of cultural education in schools. Students need to be educated so that they can develop their cultural identification. Banks described three concepts that he said are vital to the improvement of diversity in America.