Education that is multicultural is important for so many reasons. First of all, in the future, people will be better equipped to work and interact with all different kinds of people if they have a better knowledge of their backgrounds and cultures. Secondly, students in school will be able to learn about themselves and their cultures which will give them a better grasp on the material being taught to them. Children should have a better (and truthful) understanding of their culture then what they see on television or in the movies. This also means that teachers should be more knowledgeable of different cultures so that they can relay the information in a way that all students will be able to understand. I always felt that students learn better when they can relate the information to their daily lives. In the Sleeter and Grant article "Multicultural Education," the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE) provides five elements for instructing multicultural education. Out of the five processes, the one that stands out the most to me is "connecting school to students' lives, and contextualizing teaching and curriculum in the experiences and skills of students' homes and communities" (167). For the reasons that I stated earlier, this step is important for the students to relate information learned in school to their outside lives. For example, I mentor at the Johnson City Middle School and my girl's english teacher once a week gives a poetry lesson on a popular song that the students listen to. I feel that this helps the students focus more and remember the concepts because they will remember the enjoyable lesson.

I really enjoyed the you tube video "Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity" because he was funny and made some interesting points. I like how he said that people "get educated out of creativity" because it is so true. When I get assigned a creative paper, I have no idea where to begin because I am used to having a set of rules for a structured essay. I feel that creativity should be an important part of the learning experience because the greatest inventions and ideas for change come from an imagination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdlBJ-q-4JE

This illustrates my point about creativity being important for the invention of new ideas and technology.

In the Sleeter and Grant article "Business as Usual," all of the statistics were intense but the ones that struck me the most were the wages between women and men. As it states in the article, "the earnings of full-time working women are only about 80% the earnings of full-time working men." Part of the reason this occurs is because men and women self select into different types of jobs; it just so happens that the jobs women choose to do are less well-paid due to the fact that women are doing them. Even within traditionally masculinized work, women are paid less than their male counterparts with the same jobs. This is a tremendous difference, especially when women who are single parents have children to care for. No wonder more single-parent women are in poverty compared to single-parent men. It also explains in the article that "women are given custody of children in about 84% of divorce cases and often must attempt to support the family on a low-wage budget." How are these women supposed to properly care for their children by giving them a good education and supplies for school with a low salary? Women often choose to identify with lower paying jobs, such as an educator, but why are these jobs considered less important than other well paying jobs.
In the "How Students are Grouped" section of the article, Sleeter and Grant explains ability grouping and tracking in schools. Tracking is a conflicting topic for me because on the one hand, as stated in the article, it "perpetuates race and class inequities" and "lower-track students were often turned off to school and felt academically incompetent." All students should feel comfortable and appreciated in schools and by giving them different labels separates them from their classmates in negative ways. Students in the upper-track could make rude comments to other students in the lower-track and vice versa. Also, expressed in class on Monday, students who are said to have"behavioral problems" and instead just have energy could be wrongly put into special education classes. On the other hand, students with learning disabilities who really need extra help benefit from being taken aside and taught more thoroughly. When I was in elementary school, I had a hard time with math so my teacher put me into an extra help math program. I feel that the smaller classroom size and the one on one help from a different teacher helped me out a lot. I do understand how students could feel academically incompetent because that is how I felt the first time I got taken out of class for this program. I do not have a suggestion of a different way to handle these situations other than tracking but a different system has to be set up to make students want to be in school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1p3lL1Mfg

This clip from Desperate Housewives illustrates tracking in schools. Throughout the clip, Susan and Gabby are trying to decide which classification (the leopards, chipmunks, or giraffes) has the gifted students and which has the slower students.

(Sources: Making Choices for Multicultural Education: Five Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender 5th Edition)

Multicultural Education

In Gay's article, the definition of multicultural education that sticks out to me the most is "an education free from inherited biases, with freedom to explore other perspectives and cultures, inspired by the goal of making children sensitive to the plurality of the ways of life, different modes of analyzing experiences and ideas, and ways of looking at history found throughout the world" because I think it is important to include the different perspectives of history and the experiences and ideas of the children. For example, in Christine Sleeter's interview, she explains how Thanksgiving is a lesson taught from the perspective of the European settlers coming to the "new world" and eating a big meal with the "Indians." However, from the perspective of the Native Americans, the US was not a new world because they were already living here and the European settlers took the land by force and killed their people. Throughout my experience in school, I only knew the story from the perspective of the European settlers and it was mentioned that the Native Americans were forced off their land. But, it was not until I came to college and took different classes that I read and realized the true extent of the whole story, from both perspectives, of what actually happened. It opened my eyes and make me realize how important it is to learn and understand about the whole history from every angle. Also, I believe that in order to fully understand different cultures, students should be able to share experiences about themselves and learn from each other. For example, in Wayne Au's article, he describes an incident in his history class where the teacher was explaining a type of food he ate and was pronouncing it wrong. When Au tried to correct him, the teacher said he was "simply wrong." Even though it was a part of Au's culture and experiences, the teacher did not care to listen to him. I feel that instead of the teacher blowing him off, he should have asked the student how he knew about it and then that would have opened up a discussion about his family and his cultural experiences. This would have helped the classmates better understand what the teacher was talking about and also learn about the individual student. I also agree with Au's statement that "when classes are not grounded in the lives of students, they create environments where not only are white students miseducated, but students of color feel as if their very identities are under attack." Students should feel comfortable in classrooms and by learning about your classmates helps you better understand the culture and experiences. Students relate better to people their own age rather than the teachers.

It was said in my class that whenever people are different from each other in any way, multiculturalism exists. Instead of people taking a single class called multiculturalism, it needs to be fully worked into the education system in some way so that people are learning and understanding different cultures and backgrounds their entire schooling experience. I believe that this will help people in our society better relate to each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hJFi7SRH7Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBxxavk9cOU&feature=related

These two videos illustrate how important multicultural education is to understand and learn about the history of different cultures. In the first video, it demonstrates how detrimental not learning both perspectives of history can be on a person's identity. For example, one of the women in the video explains how she saw herself and her people in a negative light because the old western movies portrayed Native Americans only as savages. These single stories stereotype Native Americans and alienates them from the rest of society. If people were educated about the other side of the story, as shown in the second video, Native Americans would feel less victimized and people would have a better understanding of the events in history.

(Sources: Rethinking Multicultural Education Textbook)

"The Danger of a Single Story" and "The Color of Fear"

In the video "The Danger of a Single Story," Chimamanda Adiche discusses her life experiences regarding the limitations that the "single story" has on people's lives. Adiche states, "the single story creates stereotypes... they make one story become the only story." This conveys that when people hear one particular story about a person of a different culture, they automatically generalize and assume that this story is true for all people of that culture. I agree with Adiche's speech because people make assumptions instantly, especially when they hear a negative or frightening story which in turn generates stereotypes. Everyone is guilty of stereotyping and falling into the trap of the single story. Adiche illustrates this by telling her assumptions about the house boy she had in Nigeria and her thought about Mexicans on her trip to Mexico. I enjoyed her final quote, which stated, "when we reject the single story... we regain a kind of paradise," because if everyone listens to the stories told by both sides of the argument, then maybe people would get along better and not generalize as much.

In the video "The Color of Fear," they started off the video going around the room and introducing themselves. Some men introduced themselves as American and others said Chinese-American, African-American, etc. Later David questions why people say so and so-American because we live in America. He wonders why people feel the need to add the extra identity. I understand what he is trying to say because they were born and raised here but the appeal of this country are the many different ethnicities and cultures. I do not believe that people should throw away there cultural identities in order to live in America. I also think that a woman's point of view would have made the arguments more interesting because women would offer a different perspective on the issues. Women have had to overcome struggles and still are today.