Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (What's New in Foundations / Intro to Teaching)

This is a textbook for one of my grad school classes.While informative, it seems a little outdated when talking about race relations in the US. We are 60-70 years past the "Great White Flight" to the suburbs and the void that was left in urban centers.We are now in a period of gentrification and displacement of poor people and minorities in neighborhoods being taken over by white professionals, forcing the POC to be displaced after they did the work to clean up the neighborhoods, and that was 20 years ago.In that regard, this book seems a little outdated, because it is still talking about the "Great White Flight" and redlining.Given the added complexity of the backlash after the nation's first black president and the subsequent resurgence of blatant, outright, bold racism in the years to follow, the conversation about race relations in the U.S. is currently a lot more complex than merely the "Great White Flight" and redlining.Also, this seems to focus on black vs. white race relations, whereas, we are now also needed to expand the conversation about race to include how we treat our immigrant population and a need to adequately address privilege including race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, class, and adequate access to education.

Sadly self-righteous. A catalog of bias. More a rant. A required text for a required course in one of the typically inflated priced US graduate universities, a state one at that. Preaching to public school teachers who are on the frontline of education, it seems like having one's mouth washed with soap by the authors. Don’t question the highly qualified demographic of the authors! The authors specify that an equal education should be viewed in the socio-political-cultural aspect of society. A sermon from the pulpit of academia. I pine for the teachers honorably educating in structures without full resources, in an opioid epidemic, and I exclude this pandemic. Not to mention the last crisis of whether to arm teachers or to have arm guards on school premises. Teachers keep on teaching, a Masters is just an expensive train ticket to the next stop. But not a higher one than the one you all are in. I withdrew from the Masters in Education and the Education Department after chapter 2. Ch. 2 "In some schools . . .the highest academic tracts are overwhelming White, the lowest are populated primarily by students of color, and girls are nonexistent in calculus and physics classes. Although a school's policies may claim to be multicultural, the result is not necessarily explicitly antiracist and antidiscriminatory (p. 32)." There are no signs banning anyone from enrolling in Calculus or majoring in Education in U.S. schools. The professors fail to mention the dedication of math teachers like Jaime Escalante. I always remember my math teachers as willing to share their enthusiasm with math, but I was a young male reluctant to do the work. The fault is not in my stars that I am weak in math, but in my lack of discipline. As a distinguished professor of Math at Stanford said regarding diversity in math, "There is no feminist math, there is just math." And she received much criticism from academia for her view. The recent two winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry are women. The National Center for Educational Statistics 2004 stated "Females have consistently outperformed males in reading and writing (nces.ed.gov 2004). At that site, there is a demographic breakdown of H.S. completion till graduation. Re: Critical pedagogy and U.S. History: "...although the beautiful and heroic aspects of our history should be taught, so must the ugly and exclusionary (p. 33). Will the authors equally hold to account all history of all cultures? "Related to the fear of naming is the inconsistency of schools on 'sanitizing' the curriculum . . . (p.33)."The only thing most children know about him [MLK] is that he kept having a dream (p. 33). On this one, I drove to my small, local library and pulled off the shelf two books on M.L.K. containing his writings, and I ordered three more by inter-library loan. One of which has the famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail." which I would use for a U.S. History or Civics lesson, as I am sure many teachers already have. The authors imply that K-12 teachers are too lazy to do that. Instead, I find that the vice of sloth in teaching lies with professors who fail to be objective in their writing. For example, I found many interviews with Dr. King still available on Youtube, and his interview on "Meet the Press" on the topic of Civil Disobedience would be an excellent one to use in U.S. history or civics lessons. In my opinion, the authors have an ideology and an agenda that is beyond academic inquiry. Dr. King's writings are full of references to the great writers who the authors wish to eliminate from the curriculum. Still in Ch. 2 "Only the able-bodied are reflected in most curricula, save for exceptions as Helen Keller, who are presented as either bigger than life or as sources of pity (p. 37)." Having read "The Story of My Life" with the letters of her teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan, Helen Keller was bigger than life. She graduated university with the old curriculum, and she studied assiduously with her teacher using hand signs. She visited the troops blinded by the gas attacks in WWI, she advocated for the oppressed, and she met the great men of her times. Her story was made into a stage play and also a film which will inspire anyone for ages. Neither myself, nor the distinguished authors/professors can match those two women in excellence. An area where I find agreement is "All students would be enriched by the poetry of Langston Hughes or the stories of Gary Soto, by being fluent in a second language, or by understanding the history of Islam (p.38). I agree, poetry is food for the soul in all cultures. I include the well known and admired poet Rumi. Learning a second language is wonderful; having attended a foreign university, a second language gave me an education which I highly esteem, and an empathy for anyone struggling to babble out conversations the first years of living in a foreign land. However, the authors have a bias against Eurocentric culture; so I assume they mean other languages. For argument sake, let us agree with the author's "critical pedagogy." For example, studying the Chinese language in the K-12 curriculum is a great idea! However, choosing the Han language is just as culturally imposing as London English was. Choosing Spanish (Castilian) is an imposition too, as the Maya did not speak Spanish. As for the teaching the history of Islam in K-12, any teacher in the U.S.A. would have difficulty with their district in teaching the history of Christianity, and some districts would have difficulty with the teaching of evolution. Will the authors be as "critical" in their pedagogy there too? The author/professors rally all to the ramparts of polemics. Will their "critical pedagogy" and not "sanitizing" history be applied to all too? Will it include the slave trade in the Arab world? The conflict between the Hutu and the Tutsi? The Khmer Rouge? In deference to the authors to exclude a Eurocentric reference, I do not have to mention the city of Paris and the French history teacher who has brought all of France to mourning, and the city of Nice. I believe that K-12 education in the U.S. should be approached with less of a cavalier ideology than one that the authors declare. However, the educational reform that the authors advocate will soon come. Now, that we have experienced online learning, we are free to study for a degree from anywhere in the multicultural, beautiful world of affordable higher education. I am learning more on the internet about education for free! And I’m buying better textbooks than this required one for less from Amazon. The hegemony of inflated US higher education will soon find competition against better quality, more affordable degree granting universities throughout the multicultural world. This is the second Pearson text I was required to use for a M.Ed course, this one worse than the other. What has happened to the quality of college publications? Now, I’m out thousands of dollars, but I’m free to read better texts. My old college textbooks, and my father's older college textbooks were wonderfully written; even my Organic Chemistry text by Morrison & Boyd was not to complain about. As a retiree, I intend to volunteer teach for free, and I will use the canon of the great works that many authors have left us. I do not need to find my identity in Antigone, but I want to read it and see a good production. Where did Salman Rushdie flee after writing his book in his heritage culture? If the authors wish to convince me that their philosophy of Social Reconstructionism is the solution for U.S. pedagogy, they have failed to convince me. If the author's choose to impose it on their students, then my critical thinking allows me to ask, maybe the parents and students want another philosophy, but they do not know that there are others available; some may want a philosophy of Social and Economic efficiency, or Progressivism, or Constructivism, or like me Academic Rationalism.This adage is no longer taught in the USA: “....but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” For the professors wanting to assign this text, look beyond glancing at the table of contents and think critically. As a lifelong student, I reject the cult they advocate. For me, the identity of the living soul is supreme. When he passed, the people of the world came together to celebrate that Muhammad Ali was the Champ! Yes, as Dr. King said about being judged by, "...the content of one's character." The Champ had character to teach us all.

The book is very poorly structured. The references at the end of the chapter are almost completely wrong (numbers lead to wrong sources).The content is highly repetitive and written from a biased perspective.I had to buy it for a class, but after the class it went into a garbage can. I couldn't inflict this reading on anybody else, so didn't even bother to donate.

This was for a class. It's not worthy of being used for a class. Takes too strong of a stance against white people (and I am black; so it isn't racist for me to say that) and sounds like a book about division rather than unity. I would not recommend it.

Essentially it is a book about how to be racist against white people and how diversity is patronizing to other cultures and therforenot genuine. Unless you need it for a class dont get it complete waste of money and time to have to read. Awful awful read.

Was really good and enjoyed the mini stories in each chapter

It’s about equity and anti-racism. It’s a quality book. I needed it for a class on diversity in education, and it did its job. It also doesn’t contain a lot of info that isn’t easy to find on the internet. If I was the teacher, I’d skip the book and use we resources to save student money. If a book was required, this is a decent text.

I love this book! All about how diversity education and it give many tips or what I can do to deal some situations.