Diversity v. Acculturation

This article describes the disconnect between the rhetoric on and the actual respect for cultural diversity in our educational climate.  The article suggests that the state’s insistence on traditional educational standards and academic values is incompatible with effectively teaching our culturally diverse students, and that the multicultural methodology currently espoused in our educational system is little more than lip service.

The Great Campaign of our generation is Diversity.  However, despite the countless hours of training and schooling teachers are mandated to endure on this subject – despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars that must go into paying for diversity training programs – to speak of Diversity in our educational system is little more than lip service.  The rhetoric espoused by administrators and politicians, both to educators and to the general public, promises an egalitarian future where all cultures are loved equally in the schools, and English-learners are given every resource they could possibly require to make the content more fully accessible.  In reality, our politicians cannot understand why California’s non-white population has such trouble buying into the Eurocentric worldview, as evinced by the curious manner in which they scratch their heads while ruminating standardized testing scores.

Some schools seem to be faring quite well, with their high APIs and their enthusiastic school spirit, while others, particularly those in low-income, low socio-economic (vis-à-vis non-white) communities struggle desperately.  “How can this be?” wonders the Board of Education.  “After all, we’ve provided every last teacher with Diversity Training.”  They emphasize the need for schools to be the center of the community.  They scramble to find ways to guarantee parental involvement and community support, knowing (rightly so) that these are critical to reinforcing the students’ learning at school and therefore bolstering their progress.  They don’t understand.  A school does not declare itself an integral part of a community.  A community is organic.  It is a living thing.  And it is the community that decides who or what will be allowed to be a part of it.

Any institution that insists on espousing its own cultural values and norms on a foreign community will remain estranged.  Cultural diffusion draws both cultures involved to a blended medium.  It does not supplant one culture with the other.

Of course, history provides us many examples of non-whites being acculturated or assimilated into white culture.  European colonists did this successfully for centuries, but they were successful for two reasons: 1) They used force.  2) They actively eradicated the pre-existing culture.  They understood something quite clearly: an institution cannot embrace a foreign culture while simultaneously attempting to supplant it.

Now before I am accused of being a racist imperialist, let me state that I do not expect the California Board of Education to begin implementing force and eradicating non-white cultures.  Quite the opposite.  What I am saying is we cannot continue to champion Diversity while our content standards insist on indoctrinating all students, regardless of cultural background, into the traditional, upper-middle class white American worldview.  We cannot expect students, let alone their parents, and the community at large, to be engaged in our program when it does not have relevance to their present-day lives or pay any attention to their cultural values and norms.  Administrators insist that it is the job of the teachers to “make” the content engaging, to “relate” it to students’ Diverse backgrounds.  But the teachers can only do so much.  After that, they are bound by the content sure to appear on the state test, which is itself driven by the State Content Standards.  Why must they read Shakespeare when they could read Cervantes?  Can Spanish literature not be used to teach critical thinking?   Why must they analyze the Treaty of Paris of 1815 when they could analyze the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?  Can Latin American history not be used to teach social and civic responsibility?  Why must they recognize Vincent van Gogh’s work, but not Frida Kahlo’s?  Can Mexican art not be used to teach creative theories?  Why are they playing football, when they want to play fútbol?

Unfortunately, many of the California Content Standards are not structured to teach the students any of the higher-order thinking processes. They are structured to encourage rote learning and basic recall of superficial content.  This is not exclusively true, especially for the language arts, but it is becoming more so as standardized testing increasingly dominates the focus of public education.  Unless the California Board of Education is intent on actively eradicating all non-white cultures in this state, they must abandon their rigid adherence to the traditional, Amero-Eurocentric values and curriculum.  The Content Standards must be more liberal, not only for the sake of garnering student and community interest, and thereby increasing test scores, but also for the sake of truly embracing Diversity.