Importance of multicultural education in indian context
Answers
Societal Reasons
Today, over 30% of our public school youth are students of color.
Demographers predict that students of color will make up 46% of the nation’s school age population by the year 2020.
Today, 18% of the world’s population of 5.5 billion people is white.
By 2010, only 9% of the world’s population will be white
Societal Reasons
Isolated communities or "ethnic enclaves"
American history is ethnically diverse.
Racism--societal, institutional, and individual
Multicultural education promotes connections between home/community, encourages inclusion of multiple perspectives, and builds a knowledge base about ethnic groups, develops students’ cross-cultural skills, and encourages positive attitudes about living and functioning in a multiracial, multicultural, global society.
Teaching and Learning
Matching teaching preferences with learning preferences generates increased learning.
Teachers must learn how to meet students learning needs by using a variety of content and teaching strategies that motivate various students.
Multicultural education promotes teacher understanding of cultural conditioning and learning preferences of different ethnic groups.
Human Development, Culture, and Ethnicity
Culture shapes behavior, attitudes, and values
Schools are operated on mainstream cultural beliefs and values, causing cultural discontinuity
87%+ of all teachers in the U.S.A. are European-American, whereas students are increasingly more diverse in all settings.
Human Development, Culture, and Ethnicity
Multicultural education teaches people to acknowledge, embrace, and respect difference.
Multicultural education promotes responsible decision-making after scrutinizing one’s own culture
Multicultural education helps teachers come to terms with personal, cultural, and ethnic identity while simultaneously encouraging and providing settings for students to come to terms with their own culture and ethnicity.
Psychological Reasons
The relationship between self-concept, academic achievement, ethnicity, culture, and individual identity are strong.
Cultural discontinuity is a common cause of school failure, more so than intellectual ability.
Multicultural education creates a psycho-social state of readiness in individuals and learning environments, positively effecting academic efforts and task mastery. It also addresses the need for culturally responsive teaching in order to maximize school success.
Legal Reasons
FEDERAL LEGISLATION
Civil Rights Bill of 1964
Bilingual Education Act
Ethnic Heritage Act
FEDERAL COURT CASES
Lau Decision
The King Decision of 1979
State and national education certification codes and requirements.