Multiculturalism in Pedagogy
What is multiculturalism in our education about?
- It is about diversity, not only in ethnicity but in religion, political preferences, and sexual orientation
- it is about how our differences makes us unique but how those differences unite all of us
- but mainly it's about how we can help ourselves get informed on how we can teach tolerance to our young students
Website created by:
Liz Velez
Connie Ordonez
Carmel M. Ramos
Liana Reyes
Ernie Moriel
Miguel A. Martinez
for our UTEP-SCED 3317class
Christine I. Bennett describes in her book, Comprehensive Multicultural Education: Theory and Practice, multicultural education as "an approach to teaching and learning that is based on democratic values and beliefs and affirms cultural pluralism within culturally diverse societies in an interdependent world. In a pluralistic democracy such as the United States, proponents of multicultural education argue that the primary goal of public education is to foster the intellectual, social, and personal devlopment of all students to their highest potential" (4).
What is that?
Well, basically, it's teaching curriculum with emphasis on knowing that there are multiple perspectives. It is knowing that you are not teaching to a blank mind or a Tabula Rasa; a student already comes with preconceptions, misconceptions, stereotyping, prejudices, and a cultural background. It is your job as a teacher to know how to incoorporate these differences amongst your students in your lesson plans to be able to help them learn that in order to live in the same global community, we must learn how to live with each other.
This website is broken into three different sections.
Please follow the links so that you can learn a little bit about each one.
1. Ethnicity
2. Sexual orientation
3.Politics
We have also posted our four lesson plans that have to do with multiculturalism.
Follow the links for more
Lesson Plans
Here are several links that might give you more information or that might give you information that you were afraid to ask!
Dr. Pruyn, professor at NMSU, advocate of including multiculutralism in lesson plans
PBS website and lesson plan about gay rights and the US Constitution
A website that supposedly informs why it is bad to teach students about homosexuality
Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools for the Department of Education, founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
National Council of La Raza; The largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States
Official Website for The Nation of Islam
An artist's website that infuses all that is multiculturalism and more!
