Posted on 12/28/2004 8:36:22 PM PST by Ellesu
Advocates of multicultural education from schools and colleges across the country gathered in Kansas City the week before the 2004 presidential election to rededicate themselves to transforming teaching and school systems into instruments of social justice as they define it.
Many of the more than 200 presentations at the 14th annual conference of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) focused on teacher preparation as the best hope for making multicultural diversity the engine of educational progress.
At one session, presenters from Central Missouri State University and local school districts expressed the view that teachers should be trained to rewrite a curriculum they view as oppressively Eurocentric.
"The silent but deadly oppressor of the ethnic minority child's spirit is a state of injustice that is imbedded in a systemic society of a one-sided truth espoused through the Eurocentric lens of American education," Uzziel Pecina and Catherine Frazier said in their prepared presentation.
Excoriating textbooks that continue to be dominated by "white middle-class values," they said "these oppressive and culturally exclusive curriculums leave the faces of minority children off the pages of history, and leave the minds of the middle-class majority children ignorant of their minority counterpart's societal contributions."
The pair concluded that "the only hope" for change "lies in the embrace of an educational system that can transform and restructure the political imbalance of curriculum practices in the American schools. ... Teachers must get educational training that empowers them with knowledge about their ethnic minority students so that they can feel committed and confident in unleashing the voices for social justice."
They made these comments as they presented research indicating relatively few schools of education are requiring undergraduates to take courses on multiculturalism that align with the objectives of organizations like NAME. The presenters strongly urged that such coursework be mandatory, and that it be geared to helping future teachers transform the curriculum according to multiculturalist objectives.
Their depiction of widely used textbooks as being European-dominated was at odds with a Thomas B. Fordham Institute study, "The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption," reported in last month's edition of School Reform News. "The chief historical shortcoming [of history texts] was their willingness to rewrite history by downplaying the European heritage of America, while exaggerating the significance of pre-Columbian civilizations and African tribal kingdoms," the study stated.
Teacher Training
The multiculturalists' most extensive look at teacher training came at a day-long pre-conference institute led by former NAME president Donna Gollnick, senior vice president of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Gollnick said that while five of the six NCATE standards have diversity implications for teacher-training institutions seeking NCATE accreditation, Standard Four is 100 percent about commitment to diversity.
It requires teacher-education units to provide curricula and experiences for teaching candidates "to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. These experiences include working with diverse higher education and school faculty, diverse candidates, and diverse students in P-12 schools." ("P" stands for preschool.) Gollnick suggested college officials seeking NCATE accreditation heed NCATE's definition:
"Diversity: Differences among groups of people and individuals based on ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender, exceptionalities, language, religion, sexual orientation, and geographical area."
During discussion, Gollnick denied NCATE seeks any sort of hiring and admissions quotas.
"There is no magic number," she said. However, she also pointed out the institutions should have an assessment system to ensure that trainers and teachers do not harbor racist, sexist, or homophobic attitudes.
Her copresenter, Professor G. Pritchy Smith of the University of North Florida, expressed his goal for teacher education this way: "People who live multicultural lifestyles, live multicultural ways. We need a deep-rooted transformation of values and dispositions: the multicultural teacher."
In his booklet titled "Common Sense About Uncommon Knowledge," which was distributed to conference participants, Smith spells out 13 "knowledge bases" he deems essential for the multicultural teacher. These knowledge bases range from distinctive "learning styles" members of each minority group supposedly exhibit to the foundations of racism to issues of gender and sexual orientation.
Homosexuality an Honored Culture
In NAME's early years, the idea of homosexuality as an honored and protected culture was controversial. That's no longer the case. Smith argues in his booklet, published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, that the "minimal essential elements" of a teacher-education knowledge base must include "the unique psychological, emotional, and education needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students."
Many workshops at the Kansas City conference built on that theme. One roundtable examined inclusion of what was called "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) issues" in teacher preparation.
The National Education Association (NEA), the 2.7-million-member teacher union, cosponsored the conference with NAME and took the lead in making it resemble, at times, a political convention. In a spirited keynote speech, NEA executive committee member Rebecca Pringle charged that President George W. Bush's signature education reform, No Child Left Behind, is "an unfair, unworkable, and punitive form of accountability that threatens the very existence of public education."
Pringle further charged that Bush's vision of "an ownership society" was just a scheme to privatize education and other services. She urged the NEA/NAME allies to go to the polls and defeat it. Election Day--just two days after adjournment of the NAME conference--brought them great disappointment.
I don't know how much "good" their propoganda campaign will do, if their charges can't read. I must say that the article presents the most compelling case for illiteracy I have yet read.
Middle class values --- we wouldn't want those taught.
Only the enemy within can destroy America.
And all along I thought communism's rhetoric was passe...
No problem. This is what's going on in muslim-Europe right now.
Agreed!
My sister who is a teacher told me at the last so-called teachers learning conference she had to attend,that they were taught when talking about any subject that could be controversial that they should not make kids raise their hands for questions. They should have a little piece of paper that the teacher could see on each desk that says question and the teacher can go to that kids desk and talk with them in a low voice. Or they could have hand signals like a clinched fist or open palm for the signal. Now this is the crap teachers spend their time on supposidly learning to teach with better methods. Don't want to hurt or embaress a student. Tax money being put to good teacher training.
Get yer kiddies out of the Publik Skools - NOW!
Unless it's to handcuff them and haul them off to the cop station because they had a pair of scissors.
This article validates our decision to homeschool our children. This is war, and they're using our children as pawns on the battlefield. If they can indoctrinate the next generation, they win.
This crap needs to be stopped at all costs, or we won't have a United States of America to worry about anymore.
More of America's domestic enemies. When will they be called to account?
If i had kids i would never send them to public school. Am i correct in assuming that these teachers return to their respective schools and in turn indoctrinate their students re political correctness?
It is time for some HEADLINES that PARENTS have met in the Nations school districts and elected representatives for a Parental Summit to be held wherever to demand that they are in charge of their schools and must approve the Curriculum that will be taught to their Children.
For those of you who have not read this before, this link will be very enlightening for you and your family. This is where they plan to take our children. Everything that you have taught them about Patriotism, Religion, Moral Values is WRONG. They want to Control your Children and turn them into MULTICULTURIST, so here it is:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=954
I don't suffer cockroaches in my house, why should we have to suffer them in school.
Redistribution of property is consistent with a leftist notion of "social justice".
But these people are lousy with contradictions. I know a teacher who confiscated a radio that a student insisted on playing during class. She was severely reprimanded by the more enlightened in the administration.
Now why do I think that this multicultural curriculum is going
to conveniently leave out such facts as Africans selling their
own people into slavery, and the people of India burning
widows alive before the British made them stop?
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