FIFTHEDITION

An Introduction to
Multicultural Education

James A. Banks
University of Washington, Seattle
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Text Credits: Page 11, Stiglitz excerpt: From Stiglitz, J.E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today’s
divided society endangers our future. New York, NY: Norton; page 18, Morrison excerpt: Morrison, T. (2012).
Home: A novel. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf; page 26, Goncalves e Sliva excerpt: Gonçalves e Sliva, P. B.
(2004). Citizenship and education in Brazil: The contribution of Indian peoples and Blacks in the struggle for
citizenship. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 185–217). San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; page 31: Appiah excerpt: Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethnics in a
world of strangers. New York, NY: Norton; page 38, Collins excerpt: Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist
thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge;
page 40, Au and Kawakami excerpt: Au, K. H., & Kawakami, A. J. (1985). Research currents: Talk story and
learning to read. Language Arts, 62(4), 406–411; page 61, Banks excerpt: Banks, J. A. (1998). The lives and
values of researchers: Implications for educating citizens in a multicultural society. The final, definitive
version of this paper has been published in Educational Researcher, 27(7), 4-17, by SAGE Publications Ltd,
All rights reserved. http:// online.sagepub.com; page 64, Myrdal excerpt: Myrdal, G. (with the assistance of R.
Sterner & A. Rose). (1944). An American dilemma: The Negro problem in modern democracy. New York,
NY: Harper; page 96: Muzzey excerpt: Muzzey, D. S. (1915). Readings in American history. Boston, MA:
Ginn; page 97, Jane excerpt: Jane, L. C. (1989). The journal of Christopher Columbus. New York, NY:
Bonanza Books; page 98, Olsen excerpt: Olsen, F. (1974). On the trail of the Arawaks. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press; page 115, Clark excerpt: Clark, C. (2012). School-to-prison pipeline. In J. A.
Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of diversity in education (Vol. 4, pp. 1894–1897). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications; page 130, Banks, et al. excerpt: Banks, J. A., Banks, C. A. M., Cortés, C. E., Merryfield, M. M.,
Moodley, K. A., Murphy Shigematsu, S., Parker, W. C. (2005). Democracy and diversity: Principles and
concepts for educating citizens in a global age. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Center for
Multicultural Education; page 130, NEA excerpt: National Education Association. (2010). Global competency
is a 21st century imperative. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved August 19, 2012, from http://www.nea.org/.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Banks, James A.
An introduction to multicultural education/James A. Banks, University of Washington,
Seattle.—Fifth edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-269633-3
ISBN-10: 0-13-269633-9
1. Multicultural education–United States. I. Title.
LC1099.3.B36 2014
370.1170973—dc23 2013000415

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 10: 0-13-269633-9

ISBN 13: 978-0-13-269633-3
To Angela and Patricia, my
daughters To whom the torch will
pass.
This page intentionally left blank

Contents
About the Author vii

Preface ix

1 Goals and Misconceptions 1

2 Citizenship Education and Diversity in a
Global Age 21

3 Dimensions and School Characteristics 35 4

Curriculum Transformation 45

5 Knowledge Construction and

 Curriculum Reform 59

6 Knowledge Components 76
7 Teaching with Powerful Ideas 89

v
vi CONTENTS

8 School Reform and Intergroup Education 112 9

Multicultural Benchmarks 127
APPENDIX A: Learning in and out of School in
Diverse Environments 138

APPENDIX B: Checklist for Evaluating

Informational Materials 146

APPENDIX C: A Multicultural Education

Evaluation Checklist 149

APPENDIX D: A Multicultural Education Basic

Library 151

Glossary 154

References 157

Index 175

About
the Author
James A. Banks holds the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in
Diversity Studies and is the founding director of the Center for Multi cultural
Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He was the Russell F.
Stark University Professor at the University of Washington from 2001 to
2006. Professor Banks is a past president of the American Educational
Research Association and of the National Council for the Social Studies. He
is a specialist in social studies education and multicultural education and
has written widely in these fields. His books include Teaching Strategies for
Ethnic Studies; Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum,
and Teaching; Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society; and Race,
Culture, and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks. Professor
Banks is the editor of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education;
The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education; Diversity
and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives; and the Encyclopedia of
Diversity in Education
(4 volumes). He is also the editor of the Multicultural Education Series of
books published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Professor
Banks is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of
the American Educational Research Association .
Professor Banks is widely considered the “father of multicultural
education” in the United States and is known throughout the world as one
of the field’s most important founders, theorists, and researchers. He holds
honorary doctorates from the Bank Street College of Educa
tion (New York), the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of
Wisconsin, Parkside, DePaul University, Lewis and Clark College, and
Grinnell College, and is a recipient of the UCLA Medal, the university’s
highest honor. In 2005, Professor Banks delivered the 29th Annual Fac
ulty Lecture at the University of Washington, the highest honor given to a
professor at the university. In 2007, he was the Tisch Distinguished Visiting
Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Research by Professor Banks on how educational institutions can
improve race and ethnic relations has greatly influenced schools, colleges,
and universities throughout the world. He has given lectures on citizenship

vii
viii ABOUT THE AUTHOR

education and diversity in many different nations, including Australia,

Canada, China, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel,
Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Sweden, and
New Zealand. His books have been translated into Greek, Japanese,
Chinese, and Korean.

Preface
Because of worldwide immigration and globalization, diversity and the
recognition of diversity are increasing in nations around the world, including
nations in Western Europe such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
and The Netherlands ( Osler, 2012a ). Diversity and its recognition are also
increasing in Asian nations such as Korea ( Moon, 2012 ), Japan (
Hirasawa, 2009 ), and China ( Teng & Shu, 2012 ). The growing Hispanic
population and immigration from Asian nations such as China, Korea, and
India are the major factors that are increasing ethnic, racial, linguistic, and
religious diversity in the United States.

Immigration and Changes in the U.S. Population

The United States is currently experiencing its largest influx of immigrants
since the early 1900s ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 ). In 2009, 39 million resi
dents of the United States were foreign born, which was the largest number
of foreign-born residents in any nation. The 13 percent of foreign-born resi
dents in the United States in 2009 was one of the highest in the world but
was lower than the foreign-born percentage of the population in Australia
and Canada ( Martin & Midgley, 2010 ). In 2010, non-Hispanic Whites made
up 63.7 percent of the U.S. population, which was a decrease from 69.1
percent in 2000 ( Mather, Pollard, & Jacobsen, 2011 ). The U.S. Census
Bureau projects that non-Hispanic Whites will make up 50.1 percent of the
U.S. population in 2050 and that people of color will make up 49.1 percent (
U.S. Census Bureau, 2004 ). Consequently, non-Hispanic Whites and peo
ple of color will each make up close to half of the national population.
Ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is also increasing in schools,
colleges, and universities in the United States. The percentage of White
students enrolled in U.S. public schools decreased from 67 to 54 percent
between 1990 and 2010. During the same period, the Hispanic enrollment
increased from 12 to 23 percent ( National Center for Education Statistics
[NCES]) (2012 ). The percentage of African American students enrolled in
the public schools decreased during this period from 17 to 15 percent.

ix
x PREFACE

In 18 of the 20 largest school districts in 2010, less than 50 percent of the

students were White ( NCES, 2012 ). During the 2010–2011 school year,
students of color were majorities in these 13 states: Arizona, California,
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New
Mexico, Nevada, New York, and Texas ( Aud et al., 2012 ).

Diversity and Challenges for Education

Language diversity is also increasing in U.S. schools—19.8 percent of the
school-age population spoke a language at home other than English in
2010 ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 ). English language learners are the
fastest-growing population in U.S. public schools. It is projected that 40
percent of the students in U.S. public schools will speak English as a
second language by 2030 ( Peebles, 2008 ). Religious diversity is also
increasing in the United States as well as in Europe. Harvard professor of
religion Diane Eck (2001)calls the United States the most religiously diverse
nation in the world. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States
as well as in several European nations, such as France, The Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom.
Diversity presents both challenges and opportunities for nations,
schools, and teachers. An important goal of multicultural education is to
help educators minimize the problems related to diversity and to maxi mize
its educational opportunities and possibilities. To respond creatively and
effectively to diversity, teachers and administrators need a sophisti cated
grasp of the concepts, principles, theories, and practices in multi cultural
education. They also need to examine and clarify their racial and ethnic
attitudes and to develop the pedagogical knowledge and skills necessary to
work effectively with students from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, gender,
social-class, and religious groups.

A Review of the Organization of This Text

An Introduction to Multicultural Education, Fifth Edition, is designed to intro
duce preservice and practicing educators to the major concepts, principles,
theories, and practices in multicultural education. It was written for read ers
who can devote only limited time to the topic. Chapter 1discusses the goals
of multicultural education and the misconceptions about it. Chapter 2
describes why multicultural education is essential to help students acquire
the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function as effective citizens
in a diverse nation and world. This chapter incorporates some of the con
cepts and insights from my most recent work on citizenship and multicul
tural education in nations around the world ( Banks, 2009a ; 2012 ). The
dimensions of multicultural education and the characteristics of an effective
multicultural school are discussed in Chapter 3 . Chapter 4 describes the
ways in which multicultural education seeks to transform
PREFACE xi

the curriculum so that all students can acquire the knowledge, attitudes,
and skills needed to become effective citizens in a pluralistic democratic
society. The idea that multicultural education is in the shared public inter
est of democratic nation-states is a key tenet of this chapter. The types of
knowledge that need to be taught to students and the knowledge
components required by practicing educators to function effec tively in
multicultural schools and classrooms are examined in Chapters 5 and 6 .
Chapter 5 —which is new to this fifth edition—describes how knowledge
reflects the life experiences, values, personal biographies, and cultural
communities of the historians and social scientists who create it. This
chapter also describes five types of knowledge and explains why stu dents
need to understand each type as well as how to construct their own
versions of the past and present and to realize the nature and limitations of
the knowledge they create. The categories of knowledge effective teach ers
need are described in Chapter 6 . This chapter also describes the major
paradigms, key concepts, powerful ideas, and the kinds of historical and
cultural knowledge related to ethnic groups that are essential for today’s
educators. Chapter 7discusses the characteristics of multicultural lessons
and units organized around powerful ideas and concepts. This chapter
contains two teaching units that exemplify these characteristics. School
reform and intergroup education are discussed in Chapter 8 . The need to
reform U.S. schools in response to demographic changes is examined in
the first part of the chapter; the second part discusses inter group education
and the nature of students’ racial attitudes. Guidelines for helping students
develop democratic racial attitudes and values are presented. School
reform with the goals of both increasing academic achievement and helping
students develop democratic racial attitudes is essential if the United States
is to compete successfully in an interdepen dent global society and to help
all students become caring, committed, and active citizens. Chapter
9summarizes the book with a discussion of major benchmarks that
educators can use to determine whether a school or educational institution
is implementing multicultural education in its best and deepest sense.

New to This Edition

In preparing this fifth edition of An Introduction to Multicultural Education, I
have made the following changes:

■ Incorporated new developments, trends, and issues throughout the

text.
■ Updated the statistics, citations, and references throughout the book.
■ Added a new chapter: Chapter 5 , Knowledge Construction and Cur
riculum Reform.
xii PREFACE

■ Added a new appendix: Appendix A , Learning in and out of School in

Diverse Environments. This appendix discusses why teachers should
use the learning that students experience in their homes and
communities to enrich learning in school.
■ Revised the Glossary and added new terms, including LBGT, post
modernism, and neoliberal.
■ Updated the statistics in the Glossary.

In updating the citations and references, I have incorporated many of the

theories, findings, and examples from the Encyclopedia of Diversity in
Education—which I edited—that was published in 2012. The theories and
findings from the Encyclopedia that are incorporated into this fifth edi
tion greatly enrich it. The Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education is the most
comprehensive reference book in multicultural education; it contains almost
700 articles and is published in four volumes ( Banks, 2012 ).

This book was written to provide readers with a brief, comprehensive

overview of multicultural education, a grasp of its complexity, and a help ful
understanding of what it means for educational practice. Readers who want
to study multicultural education in greater depth will find the refer ences and
resources at the end of this book helpful, including Appendix D , which is “A
Multicultural Education Basic Library.” I hope this book will start readers on
an enriching path in multicultural education that will continue and deepen
throughout their careers.

Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the help given to me by Tao Wang—a research
assistant in the Center for Multicultural Education at the Uni versity of
Washington—in updating the statistics throughout this fifth edition. I thank
Cherry A. McGee Banks for being a colleague and friend who always
listens and responds with thoughtful and keen insights. I wish to
acknowledge my colleagues in the College of Education and the Center for
Multicultural Education—especially Dafney Blanca Dabach, Geneva Gay,
Michael S. Knapp, Walter C. Parker, Tom T. Stritikus, and Manka M.
Varghese—for stimulating conversations about race, class, diversity,
language, and education. These colleagues help to make the college and
the center rich intellectual communities. The following reviewers provided
helpful suggestions for the preparation of this fifth edition—Jaclyn Gerstein,
Bluefield State College; Linda Easton Harvest, Essex County College;
Melissa Juchniewicz, Northern Essex Community College; and J. Corey
Steele, Loyola University.
James A. Banks
CHAPTER

1
Goals and Misconceptions

Multicultural education is a reform movement designed to make some

major changes in the education of students. Multicultural education the
orists and researchers believe that many school, college, and university
practices related to race, ethnicity, language, and religion are harmful to
students and reinforce many of the stereotypes and discriminatory prac tices
in Western societies ( Banks, 2011 ; Gillborn, 2008 ; Ladson-Billings, 2012 ;
Nieto, 2012 ).
Multicultural education is an idea or concept, an educational reform
movement, and a process ( Banks, 2013 ). Multicultural education incorpo
rates the idea that all students—regardless of their gender, sexual orienta
tion, social class, and ethnic, racial, or cultural characteristics—should have
an equal opportunity to learn in school. Another important idea in
multicultural education is that some students, because of these charac
teristics, have a better chance to learn in schools as they are currently
structured than do students who belong to other groups or who have
different cultural characteristics. Theory and research in multicultural
education indicate that the total school must be reformed in order to
implement multicultural education comprehensively and effectively. The
variables of the school that must be reformed in order to implement
multicultural education are illustrated in Figure 1.1 .
Multicultural education assumes that race, ethnicity, culture, reli gion,
and social class are salient parts of the United States and other Western
nations. It also assumes that diversity enriches a nation and increases the
ways in which its citizens can perceive and solve personal and public
problems. In addition, diversity enriches a nation by provid ing all citizens
with rich opportunities to experience other cultures and thus to become
more fulfilled as human beings. When individuals are able to participate in a
variety of cultures, they are more able to benefit from the total human
experience.

1
2 CHAPTER 1

School Policy and Politics

The School Staff:

The School Culture and
Attitudes, Perceptions, Hidden Curriculum
Beliefs, and Actions

The Instructional Teaching Styles and

Total
Materials Strategies
School
Environment
Assessment and The Languages and Dialects
Testing Procedures of the School

The Formalized Community

Curriculum and Course of Participation and Input
Study The Counseling Program

FIGURE 1.1 The Total School Environment

Multicultural education focuses on how race, ethnicity, class, gender,

religion, language, exceptionality, sexual orientation (lesbian, gay, bisex ual,
or transgender [LGBT ] ), and religion influence student learning and
behavior. Multicultural education examines the ways in which these
variables singly and interactively influence student behavior. Multicul tural
educators use the term intersectionality to describe the ways in which these
variables interact to influence the behavior of students ( Grant & Sleeter,
1986 ; Grant & Zwier, 2012 ). Teachers cannot comprehensively understand
the behavior of a student by knowing only her race or eth nicity. Teachers
will gain a better understanding of the student and her behavior if the
teacher also knows her primary language, social class, ethnic identity, and
the extent to which the student identifies with her ethnic group. Figure
1.2illustrates how these variables intersect and interact to influence student
behavior.

The Goals of Multicultural Education

Individuals who know the world only from their own cultural perspec tives
are denied important parts of the human experience and are cultur ally and
ethnically encapsulated. These individuals are also unable to know their
own cultures fully because of their cultural blinders. We can get a full view
of our own backgrounds and behaviors only by viewing them from the
perspectives of other cultures. Just as fish are unable to
Goals and Misconceptions 3

Social Class

Gender Ethnic Identity

Intersectionality Racial Group

Sexual Orientation
Language

Religion Abilities and

Disabilities

FIGURE 1.2 Intersection of Diversity Variables

appreciate the uniqueness of their aquatic environment, so are many

mainstream individuals and groups within a society unable to fully see and
appreciate the uniqueness of their cultural characteristics. A key goal of
multicultural education is to help individuals gain greater self
understanding by viewing themselves from the perspectives of other
cultures. Multicultural education assumes that with acquaintance and
understanding, respect may follow.
Another major goal of multicultural education is to provide stu dents
with cultural, ethnic, and language alternatives. Historically, the school
curriculum in the United States and other Western nations has focused
primarily on the cultures and histories of mainstream groups with power and
influence. The school culture and curriculum in the United States were
primarily extensions of the culture of mainstream Anglo American students (
Spring, 2010 ). The school rarely presented mainstream students with
cultural and ethnic alternatives.
The Anglocentric curriculum, which still exists to varying degrees in
U.S. schools, colleges, and universities, has harmful consequences for both
mainstream Anglo American students and students of color, such as African
Americans and Mexican Americans ( Lomawaima, 2012 ; Nieto, 2010 ;
Nussbaum, 2012 ). By teaching mainstream students only about their own
cultures, the school is denying them the richness of the music, literature,
values, lifestyles, and perspectives of such ethnic groups as African
Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Polish Americans. Mainstream
American students should know that African American
4 CHAPTER 1
 literature is uniquely enriching ( Morrison, 2012 ) and that groups such as
Italian Americans and Mexican Americans have values they can embrace.
The Anglocentric curriculum negatively affects many students of
color because they often find the school culture alien, hostile, and self
defeating. Because of the negative ways in which students of color and
their cultures are often viewed by educators and the negative experiences
of these students in their communities and in the schools, many of them do
not attain the skills needed to function successfully in a highly tech
nological, knowledge-oriented society ( Conchas & Vigil, 2012 ; Darling
Hammond, 2010 ).
A major goal of multicultural education is to provide all students with
the skills, attitudes, and knowledge needed to function within their
community cultures, within the mainstream culture, and within and across
other ethnic cultures ( Banks, 2011 ). Mainstream American stu
dents should have a sophisticated understanding and appreciation for the
uniqueness and richness of Black English (also called “Ebonics,” which is
formed from the words ebony and phonics). African American students
should be able to speak and write Standard English and to func
tion successfully within mainstream institutions without experiencing cultural
alienation from family and community ( Alim & Baugh, 2007 ; Hudley &
Mallinson, 2011 ).
Another major goal of multicultural education is to reduce the pain and
discrimination that members of some ethnic and racial groups expe rience
because of their unique racial, physical, and cultural characteris tics. Filipino
Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Chinese
Americans often deny their ethnic identity, ethnic heritage, and family in
order to assimilate and participate more fully in main stream institutions (
Cross, 2012 ). Jewish Americans, Polish Americans, and Italian Americans
also frequently reject parts of their ethnic cultures when trying to succeed in
school and in mainstream society ( Brodkin, 1998 ; Jacobson, 1998 ). As
Dickeman (1973) has insightfully pointed out, schools often force members
of these groups to experience “self alienation” in order to succeed. Wong
Fillmore (2005) describes how the school alienates immigrant children from
their families when it forces them to give up their home languages. These
are high prices to pay for educational, social, and economic mobility.
Students who become suc cessful in school and in the larger society but
become alienated from self, family, and community experience what
Fordham (1988)has called a “pyrrhic victory”—a victory with pain and
losses.
Some individuals of color in the United States—such as many African
Americans, Native Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans—in their effort
to assimilate and to participate fully in mainstream institutions, become very
Anglo-Saxon in their ways of viewing the world and in their values and
behavior. However, highly culturally assimilated members of
Goals and Misconceptions 5

ethnic groups of color are often denied full participation in mainstream

institutions because of their skin color ( Touré, 2011 ; Robinson, 2010 ).
These individuals may also become alienated from their community cul tures
and families in their attempts to fully participate in mainstream institutions.
They may become alienated from both their community cultures and
mainstream society and consequently experience marginality.
Jewish Americans and Italian Americans may also experience mar
ginality when they deny their cultures in an attempt to become fully
assimilated into American mainstream society and culture ( Dershowitz,
1997 ). Although they usually succeed in looking and acting like Anglo
Americans, they are likely to experience psychological stress and identity
conflict when they deny and reject their family and their ethnic lan guages,
symbols, behaviors, and beliefs ( Brodkin, 1998 ). Ethnicity plays a major
role in the socialization of many members of ethnic groups; eth nic identity is
an important part of the identity of such individuals ( Appiah, 2006 ;
Gutmann, 2003 ). When these individuals deny their eth nic cultures and
identities, they reject an important part of self.
It is important for educators to realize that ethnic group membership is
not an important part of personal identity for many individual mem bers of
ethnic groups. Other group affiliations—such as religion, social class,
gender, or sexual orientation—are more important identities for these
individuals. Some people identify with more than one ethnic or cultural
group. This is especially likely to be the case for individuals who are racially
and ethnically mixed—an increasing population within American society (
Joseph, 2012 ). Ethnic identity becomes complicated for individuals of color
for whom ethnic identity is not significant. Even though such individuals
may not view their ethnic group membership as important, other people,
especially those within other racial and ethnic groups, may view these
individuals as members of a racial/ethnic group and think that ethnicity is
their primary identity.
Ethnic group members who experience marginality are likely to be
alienated citizens who feel that they have little stake in society. Those who
reject their basic group identity are incapable of becoming fully functioning
and self-actualized citizens and are more likely to experience political and
social alienation. It thus is in the best interests of a political democracy to
protect the rights of all citizens to maintain allegiances to their ethnic and
cultural groups ( Banks, 2011 ; Benhabib, Shapiro, & Petranovic, 2007 ;
Kymlicka, 2004 ). Individuals are capable of maintain
ing allegiance both to their ethnic group and to the nation-state. Another
goal of multicultural education is to help students to acquire the reading,
writing, and math skills needed to function effec tively in a global and “flat”
technological world—that is, one in which students in New York City,
London, Paris, and Berlin must compete for
6 CHAPTER 1

jobs with students educated in developing nations such as India and

Pakistan ( Darling-Hammond, 2010 ). Technology enables companies to
outsource jobs to developing nations to reduce the costs of products and
services. Multicultural education assumes that multicultural content can
help students to master basic skills essential to function in a global and flat
world. Providing multicultural readings and data can be highly moti
vating and meaningful for students ( Lee, 2007 ). Students are more likely
to master skills when the teacher uses content that deals with significant
human problems related to race, ethnicity, and social class within soci ety.
Students around the world, including American students, live in societies in
which ethnic, racial, language, and religious problems are real and salient (
Banks, 2009a ). Providing content related to these issues and to the cultural
communities in which students live is significant and meaningful to
students. Multicultural education theorists and research ers maintain that
skill goals are extremely important ( Lee & Buxton, 2010 ; Nasir & Cobb,
2007 ).
Education within a pluralistic society should affirm and help stu dents
understand their home and community cultures. It should also help free
them from their cultural boundaries. To create and maintain a civic
community that works for the common good, education in a demo cratic
society should help students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills
needed to participate in civic action to make society more equitable and
just.

Education and Global Citizenship

Another important goal of multicultural education is to help individuals from
diverse racial, cultural, language, and religion groups to acquire the
knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively within their
cultural communities, the national civic culture, their regional cul
ture, and the global community ( Banks, 2004a , 2008 ). In the past, most
nation-states required citizens to experience cultural assimilation into the
national culture and to become alienated from their community cultures in
order to become citizens. The assimilationist conception of citizen
ship and citizenship education have come into question in view of the
historical, political, social, and cultural developments that have occurred
around the world since World War II. Institutionalized notions of citi zenship
have been vigorously contested since the ethnic revitalization movements
began in the 1960s and 1970s. Worldwide immigration, the challenges to
nation-states brought by globalization, and the tenacity of nationalism and
national borders have stimulated debate, controversy, and rethinking about
citizenship and citizenship education ( Benhabib, 2004 ; Castles, 2009 ).
Goals and Misconceptions 7

Traditional notions of citizenship assume that individuals from dif ferent

groups had to give up their homes and community cultures and languages
in order to attain inclusion and participate effectively in the national civic
culture. Assimilationist conceptions of citizenship educa tion need to be
questioned. Citizenship education needs to be expanded to include cultural
rights for citizens from diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, language, and
religious groups ( Gutmann, 2004 ; Young, 2000 ).
An effective citizenship education helps students to acquire the
knowledge, skills, and values needed to function effectively within their
cultural communities, nation-states, regions, and the global community.
Such an education helps students acquire the cosmopolitan perspectives
and values needed to work to attain equality and social justice for people
around the world ( Nussbaum, 2002 ). Schools should be reformed so that
they can implement a transformative and critical conception of citizen
ship education that will enhance educational equality for all students.

The Standardization Movement

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in
2001 and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 to address the
academic achievement gap between White students and students of color.
One of the stated goals of the act is to make school districts and states
accountable for the academic achievement of students from diverse racial,
ethnic, and language groups. The act requires states to formulate rigorous
standards in reading, mathematics, and science and to annually test all
students in grades 3 through 8 in these subjects. The act also requires that
the results of the assessments be disaggregated by income, race, ethnicity,
disability, and limited English proficiency ( Guthrie, 2003 ).
Many of the standards-based school reforms were created to respond
to the requirements of the NCLB. However, many states had initiated
standards-based reforms prior to the passage of NCLB. President Barack
Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the Race to
the Top initiative on July 24, 2009. The Race to the Top initiative is very
similar to the NCLB initiative because it awards points to states for
performance-based standards for teachers and principals and for establish
ing charter schools.
The national focus on creating high academic standards and holding
educators accountable for student achievement is having mixed results in
the nation’s schools. Some researchers and educational leaders view the
focus on national standards and standardized testing as promising. A study
by Roderick, Jacob, and Bryk (2002)indicates that performance improved in
low-performing schools after the implementation of standards
based reform. Some school leaders in high-minority, low-achieving
8 CHAPTER 1

schools have applauded NCLB because it requires school districts and

states to disaggregate achievement data by income, race, ethnicity,
disability, and limited English proficiency. These administrators believe that
the disaggregation of achievement data has helped to focus atten
tion on the academic achievement gap between White students and
students of color such as African Americans, Mexican Americans, and
Native Americans.
The NCLB, Race to the Top, and related reforms have evoked a cho
rus of criticism from other researchers and school reformers ( Au, 2012b ;
Darling-Hammond, 2010 ; Meier & Wood, 2005 ). The critics of the act
argue that standards-based reforms have had many negative conse
quences on the curriculum and on school life ( Kumashiro, 2012 ). They
contend that these reforms have forced many teachers to focus on nar row
literacy and numeracy skills rather than on critical thinking and the broad
goals of schooling in a democratic society. In addition, concerns are voiced
about an overemphasis on testing, less focus on teaching, and deskilled
and deprofessionalized teachers ( Au, 2009 ; Giroux, 1988 ). Amrein and
Berliner (2002) analyzed 18 states to determine how high stakes tests were
affecting student learning. They concluded that in all but one of their
analyses, student learning was indeterminate, remained at the same level
before high-stakes testing was implemented, or went down when
high-stakes testing policies were initiated.
Sleeter (2005)makes an important distinction between standards and
standardization and explains why she supports standards but is opposed to
standardization. Standards—which describe quality—can be used by
teachers to help students attain high levels of academic achievement.
Standardization has negative effects on students, teachers, and schools
because it leads to bureaucratization and to a focus on low-level knowl
edge and skills that can be easily measured by norm-referenced tests.
Teachers face a dilemma when they try to teach in culturally respon sive
ways as well as help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to
perform successfully on state and national standardized tests. If teach ers
ignore the tests, low-achieving students will become further margin alized
within schools and society, and the existing social, political, and economic
structures will be perpetuated. Teachers may also put their own
professional reputations and status at risk because of punitive sanc tions
they can experience in many school districts if the test scores of their
students do not increase between testing cycles.
Sleeter (2005)recommends that teachers use multicultural con tent—which
is highly motivating to students when it focuses on their own historical and
cultural experience—to help students from diverse groups attain the
knowledge and skills needed to reach high levels of achievement on
standardized tests. At the same time, teachers should help students
conceptualize actions they can take to change the political,
Goals and Misconceptions 9

economic, and social systems that have victimized their groups histori cally
and that still victimize them today ( Baldwin, 1985a ; Freire, 2000 ).

The Multicultural Debate

Multicultural education is an education for freedom that is essential in
today’s ethnically polarized and troubled world ( Parekh, 2006 ). During the
early 1990s, multicultural education evoked a divisive national debate, in
part because of the divergent views that citizens hold about what
constitutes an American identity and about the roots and nature of
American civilization. In turn, the debate sparked a power struggle over
who should participate in formulating the canon used to shape the cur
riculum in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universities. During the 1990s,
the bitter canon debate in the popular press and in several widely reviewed
books overshadowed the progress in multicul tural education that had been
made since the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The debate
also perpetuated harmful misconcep tions about theory and practice in
multicultural education. It conse quently increased racial and ethnic tension
and trivialized the field’s remarkable accomplishments in theory, research,
and curriculum devel opment ( Nieto, 2012 ). The truth about the
development and attain ments of multicultural education needs to be told,
for the sake of balance, scholarly integrity, and accuracy.

Misconceptions
Multicultural Education Is for the Others
To reveal the truth about multicultural education, some of the frequently
repeated and widespread myths and misconceptions about it must be
identified and debunked. One such misconception is that multicultural
education is an entitlement program and curriculum movement for African
Americans, Latinos, the poor, women, and other marginalized groups (
Chavez, 2010 ; Glazer, 1997 ).
 The major theorists and researchers in multicultural education agree that it
is a reform movement designed to restructure educational institu tions so
that all students—including White, male, and middle-class students—will
acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively in
a culturally and ethnically diverse nation and world ( Banks & Banks, 2004 ;
Gay, 2010 ; Ladson-Billings, 2012 ; Nieto, 2012 ). Multicultural education,
as defined and conceptualized by its major architects during the last
decade, is not an ethnic- or gender- specific
10 CHAPTER 1

movement, but a movement designed to empower all students to become

knowledgeable, caring, and active citizens in a deeply troubled and
ethnically polarized nation and world.
The claim that multicultural education is only for ethnic groups of color
and the disenfranchised is one of the most pernicious and damaging
misconceptions with which the movement has to cope ( Chavez, 2010 ;
Glazer, 1997 ). It has caused serious problems and has haunted the multi
cultural education movement since its inception. Despite everything writ ten
and spoken about multicultural education being for all students, the image
of multicultural education as an entitlement program for the “others”
remains strong and vivid in the public imagination as well as in the hearts
and minds of many teachers and administrators. Teachers who teach in
predominantly White schools and districts often state that they do not have
a program or plan for multicultural education because they
have few African American, Latino, or Asian American students. When
multicultural education is viewed by educators as the study of the “other,” it
is marginalized and prevented from becoming a part of mainstream
educational reform. During the 1990s, the critics of multi cultural education,
such as Schlesinger (1991)and Glazer (1997), per petuated the idea that
multicultural education is the study of the “other” by defining it as the same
as Afrocentric education.
The history of intergroup education teaches us that only when educa tional
reform related to diversity is viewed as essential for all students—and as
promoting the broad public interest—will it have a reasonable chance of
becoming institutionalized in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universi ties
( C. A. M. Banks, 2005 ). The intergroup education movement of the 1940s
and 1950s failed in large part because intergroup educators were never
able to get mainstream educators to believe that it was needed by and
designed for all students ( Taba, Brady, & Robinson, 1952 ). To its bitter and
quiet end, intergroup education was viewed as something for schools with
racial problems and as something for “them” and not for “us.”

Multicultural Education Is Against the West

Another harmful misconception about multicultural education has been
repeated so often by its critics that it is frequently viewed by readers as
self-evident. This is the claim that multicultural education is a move ment
against the West and Western civilization. Multicultural education is not
against the West because most writers of color—such as Rudolfo A. Anaya,
Paula Gunn Allen, N. Scott Momaday, Maxine Hong Kingston, Maya
Angelou, and Toni Morrison—are Western. Multicultural educa tion itself is a
thoroughly Western movement. It grew out of a civil rights movement
grounded in Western democratic ideals such as freedom, jus tice, and
equality. Multicultural education seeks to expand for all people ideals that
were meant for an elite few at the nation’s beginning.
Goals and Misconceptions 11

Although multicultural education is not against the West, its theorists

believe that the truth about the West should be told, that its debt to people
of color and women be recognized and included in the curriculum, and that
the discrepancies between the ideals of freedom and equality and the reali
ties of racism and sexism be taught to students. Reflective citizen action is
also an integral part of multicultural theory. Multicultural education views
citizen action to improve society as an integral part of education in a democ
racy. It links knowledge, values, empowerment, and action ( Banks, 1996 ).
Multicultural education is postmodern in its assumptions about knowledge
and knowledge construction. It challenges Enlightenment, positivist assump
tions about the relationship between human values, knowledge, and action.
Positivists, who are heirs of the Enlightenment, believe that it is
possible to structure knowledge that is objective and beyond human val ues
and interests. Multicultural theorists maintain that knowledge is positional,
that it relates to the knower’s values and experiences, and that knowledge
implies action ( Harding, 2012 ). Consequently, different concepts, theories,
and paradigms imply different kinds of actions. Mul ticultural theorists
believe that in order to have valid knowledge, infor mation about the social
condition and experiences of the knower is essential ( Code, 1991 ; Collins,
2000 ; Harding, 2012 ).

Multicultural Education Will Divide the Nation

Many of its critics claim that multicultural education will divide the nation
and undercut its unity. Schlesinger (1991) underscores this view by titling
his book The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.
This misconception of multicultural education is based partly on
questionable assumptions about the nature of U.S. society and partly on a
mistaken view about multicultural education. The claim that multi
cultural education will divide the nation assumes that the nation is already
united. Although we are one nation politically, sociologically our nation is
deeply divided along racial, gender, sexual orientation, and class lines.
Class is one of the most pernicious divisions in the United States; the gap
between the classes is widening. The percentage of the nation’s wealth
owned by the top 1 percent increased from 20 percent in 1976 to more than
a third of the nation’s wealth in 2007 ( DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Lee, 2005 ;
Stiglitz, 2012 ). Writes Stiglitz,

America has been growing apart, at an increasingly rapid rate. In the first
post-recession years of the new millennium (2002–2007), the top 1 percent
seized more than 65 percent of the gain in the total national income. (p. 2 )

In his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, Murray
(2012)argues compellingly that the widening income gap in the United
States is causing Whites in the nation to “come apart.”
12 CHAPTER 1

Multicultural education is designed to help unify a deeply divided

nation rather than to divide a highly cohesive one. Multicultural educa tion
supports the notion of e pluribus unum—one out of many. The
multiculturalists and the Western traditionalists, however, often differ about
how the unum can best be attained. Traditionally, the larger U.S. society as
well as the schools have tried to create the unum by assimilat ing students
from diverse racial and ethnic groups into a mythical Anglo American
culture that required them to experience a process of self alienation and
harsh assimilation. Spring (2010)calls this process decul turalization.
Valenzuela (2012)calls it subtractive schooling. However, even when
people of color became culturally assimilated, they were often structurally
excluded from mainstream institutions.
Multicultural educators view e pluribus unum as the appropriate
national goal but believe that the goal must be negotiated, discussed, and
restructured to reflect a nation’s ethnic, cultural, language, and reli gious
diversity. The reformulation of the unum must be a process and must
involve the participation by diverse groups within the nation, such as people
of color, women, straights, gays, the powerful, the powerless, the young,
and the old. The reformulation of the unum must also involve power sharing
and participation by people from many different cultural communities. They
must discuss, debate, share power, experience equal status, and reach
beyond their cultural and ethnic borders in order to create a common civic
culture that reflects and contributes to the well
being of all. This common civic culture will extend beyond the cultural
borders of each group and constitute a civic borderland culture. In
Borderlands, Anzaldua (1999)contrasts cultural borders and bor derlands.
She indicates the need to weaken cultural borders and to create a shared
borderland culture in which people from many different cul tures can
interact, relate, and engage in civic talk and action. Anzaldua states that

borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distin guish
us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A
borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the resi due of an
unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. (p. 3 )

Progress in Multicultural Education

Multicultural Education Has Made Significant
Curriculum Inroads
While it is still not the center of the curriculum in many schools, colleges,
and universities, multicultural content and perspectives have made sig
nificant inroads into both the school and the higher education curriculum
Goals and Misconceptions 13

within the last five decades. The truth lies somewhere between the claim
that no progress has been made in infusing and transforming the school
and college curriculum with multicultural content and the claim that such
content has replaced the European and American classics.
In the elementary and high schools, much more ethnic content
appears in social studies and language arts textbooks today than was the
case 10 or 20 years ago. Also, some teachers assign works written by
authors of color along with the more standard American classics. More
classroom teachers today have studied multicultural education concepts
 than at any previous point in U.S. history. A significant percentage of
today’s classroom teachers took a required teacher education course in
multicultural education when they were in college. The multicultural
education standard adopted by the National Council for the Accredita
tion of Teacher Education (NCATE) in 1977—which became effective
January 1, 1979—was a major factor that stimulated the growth of mul
ticultural education in teacher education programs. The NCATE diversity
standard (standard 4) requires individuals preparing to become teachers to
acquire the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions needed to work
effectively with diverse student population groups ( NCATE, 2008 ). In
commenting on the diversity standard, NCATE gives examples of behaviors
expected of teacher education programs and candidates, which includes the
ability to use examples of the cultures of students when teaching concepts
and principles and to engage all students (including English language
learners) in reflective interactions about challenging content ( NCATE, 2008
).
The teacher education market in multicultural education textbooks is
now a substantial one. Most major publishers currently publish several
major college textbooks in the field. Most major textbooks in other required
education courses—such as educational psychology and the foundations of
education—have separate chapters or sections that exam
ine concepts and developments in multicultural education. Some of the
nation’s leading colleges and universities—such as the University of
California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities; and Stanford
University—revised their core curriculum within the last several decades to
include ethnic content or established an ethnic studies course requirement.
However, the transformation of the traditional canon on college and
university campuses has often been bitter and divisive ( Nussbaum, 2012 ).
All curriculum changes come slowly and painfully to university campuses.
The linkage of curriculum change with issues related to race evokes latent
primordial feelings and reflects the racial crisis in Western societies,
including the United States. On some campuses—such as the University of
Washington, Seattle—a bitter struggle ended with the defeat of the ethnic
studies requirement. Ironically, the undergraduate population of
14 CHAPTER 1

TABLE 1.1 Number and Percentage Distribution of Public Elementary and

Secondary Students, by Race/Ethnicity: Selected Years, 2000–01 Through
2010–11

American
Total Hispanic Indian/ Alaska
Enrollment Total Asian/ Native
Year White Black Pacific Islander

2000–01 46,120,425 100.0 61.0 17.0 16.6 4.2 1.2 2003–04 47,277,389 100.0
58.4 17.1 18.8 4.5 1.2 2007–08 48,397,895 100.0 55.8 17.0 21.2 4.8 1.2
2010–11 49,402,385 100 52.4 16.0 23.1 4.6 1.1

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common
Core of Data (CCD), “Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey,” 2000–01,
2003–04, 2007–08, and 2010–2011.
students of color at the University of Washington is increasing substan tially.
In autumn 2010, they made up 38.3 percent of the Washington
undergraduate population on the Seattle campus, most of whom were
Asian Americans (22.7 percent; University of Washington, 2011 ).
Significant changes are also being made in elementary and high school
textbooks. The demographic imperative is an important factor driving the
changes in school textbooks. The color of the nation’s stu dents is changing
rapidly. In the 2010–11 school year, 47.6 percent of the nation’s public
elementary and secondary students were students of color ( National
Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2011 ). Table 1.1 shows the
enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools by race or ethnicity
in school years 2000–01, 2003–04, 2007–08, and 2010– 11. It is projected
that 66 percent of the students in the United States will be African
American, Asian, Latino, or Native American by 2020 ( Johnson, 2008 ).
Language diversity is also increasing in the United States. The 2010
American Community Survey indicates that approximately 19.8 percent of
the school-age population spoke a language at home other than Eng lish in
2010 ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 ). It is projected that by 2030 about 40
percent of the students in the United States will speak English as a second
language ( Peebles, 2008 ). Table 1.2shows the 20 most frequently spoken
languages at home other than English by people who live in the United
States. Parents of color and parents who speak a first language other than
English are demanding that their leaders, images, hopes, and dreams be
mirrored in the curriculum and in the textbooks their chil dren study in
school.
Goals and Misconceptions 15

TABLE 1.2 Twenty Languages Most Frequently Spoken at Home for the
Population Ages 5 Years and Over, 1990, 2000, and 2010

1990 2000 2010

Number of Speakers Rank Speakers
Language Spoken Speakers Rank Number of
at Home Rank Number of

United States (X) 230,445,777 (X) 262,375,152 (X) 289,215,746 English only (X)
198,600,798 (X) 215,423,557 (X) 229,673,150 Total non-English (X) 31,844,979
(X) 46,951,595 (X) 59,542,596 Spanish 1 17,339,172 1 28,101,052 1 36,995,602
Chinese 5 1,249,213 2 2,022,143 2 2,808,692 Tagalog 6 843,251 5 1,224,241 3
1
1,573,720 Vietnamese 9 507,069 6 1,009,627 4 1,381,488 French 2 1,702,176 3
1,643,838 5 1,322,650 Korean 8 626,478 8 894,063 6 1,137,325 German 3
1,547,099 4 1,382,613 7 1,067,651 Arabic 13 355,150 11 614,582 8 864,961
Russian 15 241,798 9 706,242 9 854,955 French Creole 19 187,658 14 453,368 10
1
746,702 Italian 4 1,308,648 7 1,008,370 11 725,223 Portuguese 2 10 429,860 12
564,630 12 688,326 Hindi 3 14 331,484 16 317,057 13 609,395 Polish 7 723,483 10
2 3
667,414 14 608,333 Japanese 11 427,657 13 477,997 15 443,497 Urdu (NA)
(NA) 18 262,900 16 388,909 Persian 18 201,865 17 312,085 17 381,408 Gujarati
26 102,418 19 235,988 18 356,394 Armenian 20 149,694 20 202,708 X X Greek 12
388,260 15 365,436 19 307,178 Serbo-Croatian (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA) 20 284,077
All other languages (X) 3,182,546 (X) 4,485,241 5,996,110
NA Not available. X Not applicable.
1
In 2000, the number of Vietnamese speakers and the number of Italian speakers were not
statistically different from one another.
2
In 1990, the number of Portuguese speakers and the number of Japanese speakers were
not statistically different from one another.
3
In 1990, Hindi included those who spoke Urdu.
Note: The estimates in this table vary from actual values due to sampling errors. As a result,
the number of speakers of some languages shown in this table may not be statistically different
from the number of speakers of languages not shown in this table.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2003); U.S. Census Bureau (2010), American Community Survey.
16 CHAPTER 1

Textbooks have always reflected the myths, hopes, and dreams of the
people in society with money and power. As African Americans, Latinos,
Asians, and women become more influential participants on the power
stage, textbooks will increasingly reflect their hopes, dreams, and disap
pointments. Textbooks will have to survive in the marketplace of a nation
that is increasingly racially, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse.
Because textbooks still carry the curriculum in U.S. public schools, they
remain an important focus for multicultural curriculum reformers.

The Challenges to Multicultural Education

Within the last two decades, neoliberal movements have become influen tial
in most of the Western nations, including Canada, Germany, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. These movements are a conse quence of
the terrorism that occurred on and after September 11, 2001, as well as of
the wrenching economic problems around the world. In Canada ( Joshee,
2009 ) and in the United Kingdom ( Tomlinson, 2012 ), the leaders of the
neoliberal movement have called for “social cohesion,” which is a veiled
form of assimilation. Joshee states that “the hallmark of neoliberalism is a
belief in the free market system and an acceptance that society should
operate as a marketplace” (p. 96 ). Consequently, the emphasis shifts from
a focus on social justice and educational equality to competition,
standardization, and marketization. The call for vouchers, charter schools,
extensive standardized testing of students ( Au, 2009 ), the criticism of the
public schools, teachers, and unions ( Kumashiro, 2012 ), and the support
of fast-track teacher certification reforms are manifestations of
neoliberalism in education.
The chancellor of Germany and prime minister of the United Kingdom
have publicly criticized multicultural initiatives in their coun tries. At a
meeting in October 2010, in Potsdam, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
said, “[T]he approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by
side and to enjoy each other . . . has failed, utterly failed” ( Weaver, 2010 ).
Prime Minister David Cameron—speaking at a conference in Munich,
Germany, on February 5, 2011—said that multi culturalism has encouraged
“segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can survive. He also
said that the “hands-off tolerance” policy in the United Kingdom and other
European nations has encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups to
“live separate lives apart from each other and the mainstream” ( BBC
News, 2011 ).
An important manifestation of the neoconservative movement in the
United States was the passage of a bill in Arizona —which became
effective on January 1, 2011— that bans ethnic studies courses “designed
primarily for pupils of one ethnic group”, which “advocate ethnic soli
darity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” or which teach
Goals and Misconceptions 17

“resentment toward a race or class of people” ( Liu, 2012 ). The target of

the bill was the Mexican American studies program in the Tucson Uni fied
School District, which the teachers who developed it called “The Social
Justice Education Project” (SJEP) ( Cammarota & Augilera, 2012 ).
John Huppenthal, the state superintendent of public instruction, con cluded
that the Mexican American program violated the state law because it taught
“divisive ethnic studies.” His decision was upheld in an Arizona court.
However, research conducted by Cammarota (cited in Sleeter, 2011 )
indicates that the program had a positive effect on students, including
decreasing the dropout rate of Mexican American students. According to
Cammarota, the students who participated in the program during its first
year “overwhelmingly reported that the project made them think more about
their other classes, about their future, and about going to college” ( cited in
Sleeter , p. 14 ).
In 2012, Bruce Bawerrenewed the attack on ethnic studies at the
university level with his book The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity
Studies and the Closing of the American Mind. In a critical and compelling
review of Bawer’s book in The New York Times Book Review, Andrew
Delbanco (2012)states that although there is a modicum of truth in Bawer’s
critique of ethnic studies, women’s studies, and gay studies programs, his
book is “mostly a caricature” and a misrepresentation. Delbanco correctly
points out that Bawer’s critique of these programs is out-of-date and mis
leading, and that Bawer is “over-wrought by his own outrage” (p. 20 ). We
need accurate descriptions of ethnic studies and multicultural education
programs in the schools, colleges, and universities. Accounts such as those
by Bawer distract from the significant research and scholarship that have
been done in ethnic studies, women’s studies, and gay studies.

The Debate over Ethnic Studies

In an editorial in the Dallas Morning News, Linda Chavez (2010) —who
speaks frequently to the media about education and diversity—argued
teachers should teach American history rather than ethnic studies. This is a
false dichotomy because ethnic studies is an integral part of American his
tory, and we cannot accurately teach the American story unless we teach
about the ways in which it has been shaped and influenced by American
ethnic groups—and how ethnic groups in America have both shaped and
have been shaped by their experiences in America. Although he left people
of color out of his narrative, Oscar Handlin’s (1951/2002)classic book, The
Uprooted, has the subtitle The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made
the American People. Handlin started out to write the history of immigration,
and in the end decided that immigration was the story of America.
To teach American history without the experiences and perspec tives
of ethnic groups (both White and people of color)—which has been
18 CHAPTER 1
often done in the past and is sometimes done today—is to teach a dis torted
version of American history. The ethnic studies movement emerged largely
because the roles of people of color were either distorted or left out of
American history ( Takaki, 1993 ). In other words, the ethnic studies
movement emerged to make “American” history “American,” and not just
Anglo American history. People of color have had—and still have—a deep
influence on American history, literature, and culture. The history of Whites
in the United States and the history of people of color are also deeply and
tightly connected. In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literacy
Imagination, Toni Morrison (1992)argues that Blacks are pres ent in
American literature even when they are not visible because throughout their
history in the United States, Whites have defined them selves in opposition
to Blacks—Blacks were essential for Whites to con struct their identity as
Americans. Writes Morrison:

Through significant and understood omissions, startling contradictions, heavily

nuanced conflicts, through the way writers peopled their work with the signs
and bodies of this presence—one can see that a real or fabri cated Africanist
presence was crucial to their sense of Americanness. And it shows. (p. 6 )

The critics of ethnic studies— such as Chavez (2010)and Glazer

(1997) —also argue that educators should develop students’ identities as
Americans and not their ethnic identities. These critics call efforts to help
students clarify their ethnic identities “identity politics.” It is also a false
dichotomy to argue that we should focus on developing students’ national
identities rather than their ethnic identities. In my work, I concep
tualize cultural identity, national identity, and global identity as highly inter
connected, complex, changing, and contextual ( Banks, 2008 ; see Figure
2.1 , page 33 ) . My work and that of other citizenship education theorists,
such as Kymlicka (1995)and Ladson-Billings (2004) , indicate that stu dents
from culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse communities
will find it difficult to develop strong commitments and identities with the
nation-state if the nation-state does not reflect and incorporate important
aspects of their ethnic and community cultures. Gutmann (2004)calls this
phenomenon “recognition,” and argues that students need to experience
civic equality, recognition, and tolerance in order to develop civic
commitments to the nation-state.

Multicultural Education and the Future

Despite its past and present challenges, the attainments of multicultural
education since the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s are
noteworthy and should be acknowledged. Its shapers have been able to
Goals and Misconceptions 19

establish goals, aims, and approaches on which there is a high level of

agreement ( Banks, 2009a , 2013 ). Most multicultural education theorists
agree that the major goal of multicultural education is to restructure
schools, colleges, and universities so that all students will acquire the
knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function in an ethnically and
racially diverse nation and world ( Gay, 2012 ; Nieto, 2012 ). As in other
interdisciplinary fields of study—such as social studies, leadership, and
special education—there are internal debates within the field. These
debates are consistent with a field that values democracy and diversity and
are a source of strength.
Multicultural education is experiencing impressive success in its
implementation in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universities. The
number of national conferences and teacher education courses in multi
cultural education are evidence of its success and perceived importance. It
is increasingly becoming institutionalized in educational institutions in
nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, China, and Korea, as
is documented by researchers and scholars from many different nations in
The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education ( Banks,
2009a ). Although the process is slow and sometimes contentious, multi
cultural content is increasingly becoming a part of core courses in school,
college, and university. Textbook publishers are also integrating their books
with ethnic and cultural content and perspectives. The publica tion of the
Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education by Sage in 2012 is another
significant indication of the increasing legitimacy and institutionaliza tion of
multicultural education ( Banks, 2012 ). With about 700 signed entries with
cross-references and recommended reading, the Encyclopedia of Diversity
in Education—four volumes in both print and electronic for mats—presents
research and statistics, case studies, and best practices, policies, and
programs at pre- and postsecondary levels. It is the most comprehensive
publication in the field of multicultural education.
Despite its impressive successes, multicultural education faces
important opportunities and challenges. The debate about diversity reflects
the value dilemma and identity crisis in U.S. society. The American identity
is being reshaped as groups on the margins of society begin to participate
in the center and demand that their visions be reflected in a transformed
America. The power sharing and identity transformation required to make
racial peace may be valued rather than feared in the future because of the
contributions these groups will make to our national and global salvation.
As the ethnic texture of nations such as the United States, Canada, France,
the United Kingdom, and Korea continues to deepen, educa tional programs
related to ethnic and cultural diversity will continue to emerge and will take
various shapes and forms. New challenges will con tinue to evolve in
pluralistic democratic societies. The extent to which
20 CHAPTER 1

these challenges will be transformed into opportunities will depend largely

on the vision, knowledge, and commitment of each nation’s edu cators. You
will have to take a stand on multicultural education and determine what
related actions you will take in your classroom and school. The chapters in
this book are designed tohelp you conceptualize and take informed and
reflective actions that will make your classroom and school a more caring
and humane place for all students.

CHAPTER
 2
Citizenship Education and
Diversity in a Global Age

Migration within and across nation-states is a worldwide phenome non.

The movement of peoples across national boundaries is as old as the
nation-state itself. However, never before in the history of the world has the
movement of diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, religious, and language groups
within and across nation-states been as frequent and rapid or raised such
complex and difficult questions about citizen ship, human rights, democracy,
and education. In 2008, the world’s population was almost 7 billion, and
approximately 200 million migrants were living outside the nation in which
they were born— which was about 3 percent of the world’s population ( De
Blij, 2008 ). Many worldwide trends and developments are challenging the
notion of educating students to function in one nation-state. These trends
include the ways in which people are moving back and forth across national
borders, the rights of movement permitted by the European Union, and the
rights codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( Starkey, 2012
).
In nation-states throughout the world, there is increasing diver sity as well as
increasing recognition of diversity. After World War II, large numbers of
people from former colonies in Asia and the West Indies immigrated to the
United Kingdom to improve their economic status ( Tomlinson, 2012 ).
Since the late 1960s, Canada, Germany, France, and The Netherlands
have experienced an increase in racial, cultural, language, religious, and
ethnic diversity when thousands of people seeking better economic
opportunities emigrated to these nations ( Bauder, 2011 ; Castles, 2009 ;
Joppke, 2010 ; Schierup, Hansen, & Castles, 2006 ). Australia ( Inglis, 2009
), Japan ( Hirasawa, 2009 ), and

21
22 CHAPTER 2

Korea ( Moon, 2012 ) also experienced an increase in racial, cultural, lan

guage, religious, and ethnic diversity when many people—who were
seeking better economic opportunities—emigrated to those nations. China
is giving increasing recognition and educational opportunities to its 55
officially designated ethnic minority groups ( Law, 2011 ; Postiglione, 2009 ;
Teng & Zhu, 2012 ).
Although the United States has been diverse since its founding, its
ethnic texture has changed dramatically since 1965 when the Immigra tion
Reform Act was enacted. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most
immigrants to the United States came from Europe; today, most come from
nations in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Large numbers of
immigrants are now entering from Mexico, the Caribbean, the Philippines,
China, Korea, and India. The United States is presently experiencing its
largest influx of immigrants since the early 1900s ( U.S. Census Bureau,
2012 ).
The U.S. Census (2010) estimated that people of color made up 36.3
percent of the nation’s population in 2010 and predicts that they will make
up 50 percent in 2042 ( Mather, Pollard, & Jacobsen, 2011 ). Forty-six
percent of the students enrolled in U.S. public schools in 2010 were ethnic
minorities ( NCES, 2012 ). This percentage is increasing each year,
primarily because of the growth in the percentage of Latino stu
dents ( NCES, 2012 ). Language diversity is also increasing in the U.S.
student population. In 2010, about 19.8 percent of the school-age pop
ulation spoke a language at home other than English ( U.S. Census Bureau,
2010 ).
Religious diversity is increasing in the United States and in other
nations around the world. Writes Diana Eck (2001) , Harvard professor of
comparative religion and Indian studies, “The United States is the most
religiously diverse nation on earth” (p. 4 ). The fastest-growing religion in
the United States is Islam. Almost half of the growth in Islam in the United
States is from converts; the majority of these converts are African
Americans ( Cesari, 2004 ). Most Muslims in the United States come from a
variety of countries and ethnic groups ( Cesari, 2004 ).
Religion is a major issue in Europe and has become an increasingly
divisive issue since September 11, 2001, and other terrorist activities by
extremist Muslim groups. Muslims make up the “largest religious minority in
Europe” ( Cesari, 2004 , p. 9 ). France, Germany, the United Kingdom, The
Netherlands, and Greece have significant Muslim popu
lations ( Schierup, Hansen, & Castles, 2006 ). Because of the terrorist
activities by groups of Muslim extremists, Islamophobia has increased in
nations throughout Western Europe, including in France, the United
Kingdom, and The Netherlands ( van Driel, 2012 ). Islamophobia has also
increased in the United States since September 11, 2001 ( King, 2012 ).
Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 23

Increasing World Diversity

and Citizenship Education
The quests for rights by ethnic minority groups that intensified in the 1960s
and 1970s, the increase in international migration, the tightening of national
borders, and the growth in the number of nation-states raise complex
questions about diversity and citizenship education in a global world. The
number of recognized nation-states continues to increase. The number of
people living outside their country of birth or citizenship grew from 120
million in 1990 to 160 million in 2000 ( Martin & Widgren, 2002 ).
The growth in international migration, the increasing recognition of
structural inequality within democratic nation-states, and the growing
recognition and legitimacy of international human rights ( Starkey, 2012 )
have raised complex issues related to citizenship and citizenship educa
tion in nation-states around the world, and especially in the Western
democracies. The Western world is perplexed and fear ridden as it attempts
to envision and implement viable and creative strategies to respond effec
tively to the conflicts in the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism, and ethnic
protest and violence in their own societies ( Appadurai, 2006 ). Bruce
Bawer (2006) , an American who has lived in Europe since 1998, wrote
While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from
Within, an alarming book about how Islam is detrimental to Europe. Islamic
fundamentalists have initiated bombings that have created a reign of terror
throughout the world—including the bombing of the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; the bomb ings of four
commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, on March 11, 2004; the bombings in the
London transportation system on July 7, 2005; and the bombing of a Red
Sea resort at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on July 23, 2005.
We are living in a dangerous, confused, and troubled world that
demands leaders, educators, and classroom teachers who can bridge cul
tural, ethnic, and religious borders, envision new possibilities, invent novel
paradigms, and engage in personal transformation and visionary action.
The concepts, paradigms, and projects that facilitated the rise and triumph
of the West between the 16th and the 20th centuries are ineffective in the
recreated world of the 21st century.
The world is undergoing a transformation—and in the words of
Thomas L. Friedman (2005) , “the world is flat.” In the flat world described
by Friedman, scientific and technological workers educated in Asian nations
such as India and China are competing successfully with—and sometimes
outperforming—scientific and technological workers edu
cated at universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other
24 CHAPTER 2

Western nations. The Western nations can no longer take their scientific
and technological superiority for granted because of the leap in scientific
and technological education in Asian nations such as India and China.
Students in the United States are scoring lower than many other nations on
the Program for International Assessment (PISA). On the 2009 PISA,
15-year-olds “in the U.S. ranked 25th among peers from 34 countries on a
math test and scored in the middle in science and reading, while China’s
Shanghai topped the charts, raising concern that the U.S. isn’t prepared to
succeed in the global economy” ( Hechinger, 2010 ).

Balancing Unity and Diversity

Multicultural societies are faced with the problem of constructing nation
states that reflect and incorporate the diversity of their citizens yet have an
overarching set of shared values, ideals, and goals to which all of their citi
zens are committed ( Banks, 2011 ). Only when a nation-state is unified
around a set of democratic values such as justice and equality can it protect
the rights of cultural, ethnic, language, and religious groups and enable
them to experience cultural democracy and freedom. Kymlicka (1995) , a
Canadian political theorist, and Rosaldo (1997) , a New York University
anthropologist, have constructed theories about diversity and citizenship.
Both Kymlicka and Rosaldo argue that in a democratic society, ethnic and
immigrant groups should have the right to maintain their cultures and
languages as well as to participate in the national civic culture. Kymlicka
calls this concept “multicultural citizenship”; Rosaldo refers to it as “cul
tural citizenship.” In 1920, Drachslercalled it “cultural democracy.” Cultural,
ethnic, racial, language, and religious diversity exist in most nations around
the world. One of the challenges for diverse demo cratic nation-states is to
provide opportunities for various groups to maintain aspects of their
community cultures while building a nation in which these groups are
structurally included and to which they feel alle giance. A delicate balance of
diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nation-states
and of teaching and learning in democratic societies ( Banks et al., 2001 ).
Unity without diversity results in cultural repression and hegemony, as was
the case in the former Soviet Union and during the Cultural Revolution that
occurred in China from 1966 to 1976. Diversity without unity leads to
Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state, as occurred during the
Iraq war when sectarian conflict and violence threat ened that fragile nation
in the late 2000s. Unity must be an important aim when nation-states are
responding to diversity within their popula tions. They can protect the rights
of minorities and enable diverse groups to participate only when they are
unified around a set of democratic val ues such as justice and equality (
Gutmann, 2004 ).
Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 25

Citizenship education must be transformed in the 21st century

because of the deepening racial, ethnic, cultural, language, and religious
diversity in nation-states around the world. Citizens in a diverse demo cratic
society should be able to maintain attachments to their cultural communities
as well as participate effectively in the shared national cul ture. Diversity and
unity should coexist in a delicate balance in demo cratic multicultural
nation-states.
Nations such as France, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands,
Australia, and Japan are struggling to balance unity and diversity. France
prevented Muslim girls from wearing a headscarf to state schools because
it is a religious symbol. This was an attempt to deal with the issue of unity
and diversity within the context of the French concept of integra
tion, which interprets equality to mean that “citizens . . . should be treated
identically under the law . . . [and] that no distinction can be made between
citizens on the basis of race, religion or national origin” ( Limage, 2000 , pp.
74 – 75 ). The riots in France in 2005 indicated that the French notion of
integration is not functioning effectively in the real world ( Lemaire, 2009 ).
Many Arab, Muslim, and Black youths are alienated in France; they
have a difficult time attaining a French identity and believe that most White
French citizens do not view them as French. On Novem ber 7, 2005, a
group of young Muslim males in France were inter viewed on the public
television station (PBS) in the United States. One of the young men said, “I
have French papers but when I go to the police station they treat me like I
am not French.” Abd Al Malik— an acclaimed French rapper and poet, and
a son of Congolese immigrants who converted to Muslim—was profiled in
the New York Times, on Saturday, August 25, 2012. He said that although
he “views himself as profoundly French,” he “nonetheless feels a ‘deep’ and
‘perverse” rac ism” ( cited in Sayare, 2012 , p. A7). He also said, “There’s
really a lag between how France sees itself and what France really is” (
cited in Sayare , p. A7).
The French prefer the term integration to race relations or diversity,
and integration has been officially adopted by the state. Integration is
predicated on the assumption that differences are or should be reduced
during the process of integration ( Hargreaves, 1995 ).
The London subway and bus bombings that killed at least 56 people
and injured more than 700 on July 7, 2005, deepened ethnic and reli gious
tension and Islamophobia in Europe after the police revealed that the
suspected perpetrators were Muslim suicide bombers. The young men who
were accused of these bombings were British citizens who apparently had
weak identities with most of their fellow White main stream British citizens.
26 CHAPTER 2

Defining Citizenship and Citizenship Education

The definition of citizen in Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of
the English Language (1989, p. 270 ) is a “native or naturalized member of
a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its
protection.” This same dictionary defines citizenship as the “state of being
vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen” (p. 270 ). Absent
from these minimal definitions of citizen and citizenship are the deep and
complex meanings of these terms in democratic multicultural societies that
were developed by the scholars who participated in a con
ference on diversity and citizenship education held in Bellagio, Italy, in 2002
that was sponsored by the Center for Multicultural Education at the
University of Washington ( Banks, 2004a ).
The scholars at the Bellagio conference stated that citizens within
democratic multicultural nation-states endorse the overarching ideals of the
nation-state such as justice and equality, are committed to the main tenance
and perpetuation of these ideals, and are willing and able to take action to
help close the gap between their nation’s democratic ideals and practices
that violate those ideals, such as social, racial, cultural, and eco nomic
inequality ( Banks, 2004a ). Consequently, an important goal of citizenship
education in a democratic multicultural society is to help students acquire
the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to make reflective decisions
and to take actions to make their nation-states more democratic and just (
Banks, 2011 ).
To become thoughtful decision makers and citizen actors, students need to
master social science knowledge, clarify their moral commit ments, identify
alternative courses of action, and act in ways consistent with democratic
values ( Banks, 2006c ; Banks & Banks, 1999 ). Gutmann (2004)states that
democratic multicultural societies are characterized by civic equality,
toleration, and recognition. Consequently, an important goal of citizenship
education in multicultural societies is to teach toleration and recognition of
cultural differences. Gutmann views deliberation as an essential component
of democratic education in multicultural societies. Gonçalves e Silva (2004)
, a Brazilian scholar, states that citizens in a dem ocratic society work for the
betterment of the whole society, not just for the rights of their particular
racial, social, or cultural group. She writes,

A citizen is a person who works against injustice not for individual recogni tion
or personal advantage, but for the benefit of all people. In realizing this
task—shattering privileges, ensuring information and competence, acting in
favor of all—each person becomes a citizen. (p. 197 )

Gonçalves e Silva (2004)also states that becoming a citizen is a

process and that education must play an important role to facilitate the
development of civic consciousness and agency within students. She
 Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 27

provides powerful examples of how civic consciousness and agency are

developed in community schools for the children of indigenous peoples and
Blacks in Brazil. Osler (2005)points out that students should experience
citizenship within the schools and should not be “citizens-in-waiting.”

Multiple Views of Citizenship

In the discussion of his citizenship identity in Japan, Murphy-Shigematsu
(2004 , 2012 ) describes how complex and contextual citizenship identifi
cation is within a multicultural nation-state such as Japan. Becoming a legal
citizen of a nation-state does not necessarily mean that an individ ual will
attain structural inclusion in the mainstream society and its institutions or
will be perceived as a citizen by most members of the dominant group
within the nation-state. A citizen’s racial, cultural, lan guage, and religious
characteristics often significantly influence whether she is viewed as a
citizen within her society. It is not unusual for American citizens to assume
that Asian Americans born in the United States emigrated from another
nation. Asian Americans are sometimes asked, “What country are you
from?”
Brodkin (1998)makes a conceptual distinction between ethnoracial
assignment and ethnoracial identity that is helpful in considering the rela
tionship between citizenship identification and citizenship education. She
defines ethnoracial assignment as the way outsiders define people within
another group. Ethnoracial identities are how individuals define themselves
“within the context of ethnoracial assignment” (p. 3 ). Indi viduals who are
Arab Americans, are citizens of the United States, and have a strong
national identity as Americans are sometimes defined by many of their
fellow American citizens as non-Americans ( Sensoy, 2012 ).

The Bellagio Diversity and Citizenship Education

Project
Citizenship education needs to be changed in significant ways because of
the increasing diversity within nation-states throughout the world and the
quests by racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups for cultural recogni
tion and rights ( Banks, 2004a , 2011 ; Castles, 2004 , 2009 ). The Center
for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington has implemented
a project to reform citizenship education so that it will advance democracy
as well as be responsive to the needs of cultural, racial, ethnic, religious,
and immigrant groups within multicultural nation-states. The first part of this
project consisted of a conference, “Ethnic Diversity and Citizenship
Education in Multicultural Nation-States,” held at the Rockefeller
Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in
28 CHAPTER 2

Bellagio, Italy, June 17–21, 2002. The conference, which was supported by
the Spencer and Rockefeller Foundations, included participants from 12
nations: Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Pales
tine, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The
papers from this conference are published in a book titled Diversity and
Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives ( Banks, 2004a ). One of the
conclusions of the Bellagio conference was that world migration and the
political and economic aspects of globalization are challenging nation-states
and national borders ( Banks, 2004a ). At the same time, national borders
remain tenacious; the number of nations in the world is increasing rather
than decreasing. The number of U.N. member states increased from 80 in
1950 to 193 in 2012. Globalization and nationalism are coexisting and
sometimes conflicting trends and forces in the world today ( Banks et al.,
2005 ). Consequently, educators throughout the world should rethink and
redesign citizenship education courses and programs. Citizenship
education should help students acquire the knowl edge, attitudes, and skills
needed to function in their nation-states as well as in a diverse world
society that is experiencing rapid globalization and quests by ethnic,
cultural, language, and religious groups for recog nition and inclusion.
Citizenship education should also help students to develop a commitment
to act to change the world to make it more just. Another conclusion of the
Bellagio Conference is that citizenship and citizenship education are
defined and implemented differently in various nations and in different
social, economic, and political contexts ( Banks, 2004a ; Osler, 2012b ).
Citizenship and citizenship education are contested ideas in nation-states
around the world. However, there are shared problems, concepts, and
issues, such as the need to prepare stu dents in various nations to function
within as well as across cultural and national borders. The conference also
concluded that these shared issues and problems should be identified by
an international group that would formulate guidelines for dealing with them.

Democracy and Diversity

In response to the Bellagio Conference recommendations, the Center for
Multicultural Education at the University of Washington created an
International Consensus Panel that was supported by the Spencer Foun
dation in Chicago and the University of Washington. The Consensus Panel
formulated four principles and identified 10 concepts for educat ing citizens
for democracy and diversity in a global age. The panel’s report is titled
Democracy and Diversity: Principles and Concepts for Educat ing Citizens in
a Global Age ( Banks et al., 2005 ). Its principles and concepts are shown
in Table 2.1 . The entire report can be downloaded as a PDF file at
http://education.washington.edu/cme/demdiv.htm
Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 29

TABLE 2.1 Principles and Concepts for Educating Citizens in a Global Age

Principles
Section I. Diversity, Unity, Global Interconnectedness, and Human Rights 1.
Students should learn about the complex relationships between unity and diversity
in their local communities, the nation, and the world. 2. Students should learn
about the ways in which people in their community, nation, and region are
increasingly interdependent with other people around the world and are connected
to the economic, political, cultural, environmental, and technological changes
taking place across the planet. 3. The teaching of human rights should underpin
citizenship education courses and programs in multicultural nation-states.

Section II. Experience and Participation

 4. Students should be taught knowledge about democracy and democratic
institutions, and they should be provided opportunities to practice
democracy.

Concepts
1. Democracy
2. Diversity
3. Globalization
4. Sustainable Development
5. Empire, Imperialism, Power
6. Prejudice, Discrimination, Racism
7. Migration
8. Identity/Diversity
9. Multiple Perspectives
10. Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism

Source: J. A. Banks et al. (2005), Democracy and Diversity: Principles and Concepts
for Educating Citizens in a Global Age. Seattle: University of Washington, Center for
Multicultural Education. Reprinted with permission.

One of the conclusions of Democracy and Diversity is that diversity

describes the wide range of racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and reli gious
variations that exists within and across groups that live in multi cultural
nation-states. The publication presents a broad view of diversity and points
out that the variables of diversity—such as race, gender, social class, and
religion—interact in complex ways and are highly interactive and
interrelated. Consequently, a student might be female, Mexican American,
Catholic, and working-class at the same time. Each of these
30 CHAPTER 2

group memberships will influence her behavior. However, how these

variables influence her behavior will vary with the specific context and
situation. For example, her ethnic group may influence her behavior more
significantly when she is at home and in her community than when she is at
school. The dynamic relationships of the variables of diversity are illustrated
in Figure 1.2on page 3 .

Assimilationist Theory and Citizenship Education

In the assimilationist conception of citizenship education that existed in the
United States and in other Western nations prior to the civil rights
movement of the 1960s and 1970s, community cultures and languages of
students from diverse groups were to be eradicated. One consequence of
assimilationist citizenship education was that many students lost their first
cultures, languages, and ethnic identities ( Wong Fillmore, 2005 ). Some
students also became alienated from their families and communi
ties. Another consequence was that many students became socially and
politically alienated within the national civic culture, as many Muslim youths
in France and the United Kingdom are today ( Osler, 2012a ).
Members of identifiable racial groups often become marginalized both
in their community cultures and in the national civic culture because they
can function effectively in neither. When they acquire the language and
culture of the mainstream dominant culture, they are often denied structural
inclusion and full participation in the civic culture because of their racial
characteristics ( Leonardo, 2012 ). Teachers and schools must practice
democracy and human rights in order for these ideals to be internalized by
students. The concept of democracy concep
tualized in this book includes cultural democracy in addition to political and
economic democracy. Cultural democracy means that students have a right
to express their cultural identity and to use their home languages in
schools.
Schools and classrooms must become microcosms and exemplars of
democracy and social justice in order for students to develop democratic
attitudes and learn how to practice democracy. As Dewey (1959)stated, “All
genuine education comes through experience” (p. 13 ). However, much
work must be done—in nation-states throughout the world—
before most teachers and schools in democratic multicultural nation states
actualize democracy and social justice in their curricula, their teaching
materials, and their attitudes, expectations, and behaviors.
Multicultural democratic nation-states must find ways to help stu dents
develop balanced and thoughtful attachments and identifications with their
cultural community, their nation-state, and the global com munity. In some
cases, such as in the European Union and in parts of Asia, it is also
important for citizens to develop a regional identification.
Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 31

Nation-states have generally failed to help students develop a delicate

balance of identifications. Rather, they have given priority to national
identifications and have neglected the community cultures of students as
well as the knowledge and skills students need to function in an inter
dependent global world.
Nationalists and assimilationists in nation-states throughout the world
worry that if they help students develop identifications and attach ments to
their cultural communities, they will not acquire sufficiently strong
attachments to their nation-states. Kymlicka (2004) points out that
nationalists have a “zero-sum conception of identity” (p. xiv). Nuss baum
(2002) believes that a focus on nationalism may prevent students from
developing a commitment to cosmopolitan values such as human rights and
social justice—values that transcend national boundaries, cul tures, and
times. Nussbaum states that we should help students develop
cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism and Local Identity

Cosmopolitans view themselves as citizens of the world. Nussbaum (2002)
states that their “allegiance is to the worldwide community of human
beings” (p. 4 ). She contrasts cosmopolitan universalism and
internationalism with parochial ethnocentrism and inward-looking patriotism.
She points out, however, that “to be a citizen of the world one does not
need to give up local identifications, which can be a source of great
richness in life” (p. 4 ).
Appiah (2006), another proponent of cosmopolitanism, also views
local identities as important. He writes,
 In the final message my father left for me and my sisters, he wrote, “Remem
ber you are citizens of the world.” But as a leader of the independence
movement in what was then the Gold Coast, he never saw a conflict between
local partialities and universal morality—between being a part of
the place you were and a part of a broader human community. . . . Raised with
this father and an English mother, who was both deeply connected to our
family in England and fully rooted in Ghana, where she has now lived for half
a century, I always had a sense of family and tribe that was multiple and
overlapping; nothing could have seemed more com monplace. (p. xviii)

Identity is multiple, changing, overlapping, and contextual, rather than fixed

and static. The multicultural conception of identity is that citizens who have
clarified and thoughtful attachments to their community cul tures, languages,
and values are more likely than citizens who are stripped of their cultural
attachments to develop reflective identifications with their nation-state (
Banks, 2004b ; Kymlicka, 2004 ). They will also be
32 CHAPTER 2

better able to function as effective citizens in the global community.

Nation-states, however, must make structural changes that reduce struc
tural inequality and that legitimize and give voice to the hopes, dreams, and
visions of their marginalized citizens in order for them to develop strong and
clarified commitments to the nation-state and its goals.

The Development of Cultural, National, Regional, and

Global Identifications
Assimilationist notions of citizenship are ineffective today because of the
deepening diversity throughout the world and the quests by marginal ized
groups for cultural recognition and rights . Multicultural citizenship is
essential for today’s global age ( Kymlicka, 1995 ; Uberoi & Modood, 2012 )
. It recognizes and legitimizes the right and need of citizens to maintain
commitments both to their cultural communities and to the national civic
culture. Only when the national civic culture is trans formed in ways that
reflect and give voice to the diverse ethnic, racial, language, and religious
communities that constitute it will it be viewed as legitimate by all of its
citizens ( Banks, 2004b , 2011 ; Kymlicka, 1995 ). Only then can they
develop clarified commitments to the nation-state and its ideals.
Students should develop a delicate balance of cultural, national,
regional, and global identifications and allegiances. (See Figure 2.1 .)
Citizenship edu cation should help students develop thoughtful and clarified
identifica tions with their cultural communities and their nation-states (
Banks, 2004b ).
Regional identifications are especially important for students who live
in some parts of the world, such as in the European Union ( Osler, 2012b )
and in Asia ( Lee, 2012 ). Citizenship education should also help students
develop clarified global identifications and deep understand
ings of their roles in the world community. Students need to understand
how life in their cultural communities and nations influences other nations
and the cogent influence that international events have on their daily lives.
Global education should have as major goals helping students develop
understandings of the interdependence among nations in the world today,
clarified attitudes toward other nations, and reflective iden
tifications with the world community. I conceptualize global identifica tion
similar to the way in which Nussbaum (2002) and Appiah (2006) define
cosmopolitanism.
Nonreflective and unexamined cultural attachments may prevent the
development of a cohesive nation with clearly defined national goals and
policies ( Banks, 2004b ). Although we need to help students develop
reflective and clarified cultural identifications, they must also be helped to
clarify their identifications with their nation-states. However, blind
Citizenship Education and Diversity in a Global Age 33

Cultural
Identification

National Global
Identification
IdentificationThe Regional Identification
Individual

FIGURE 2.1 Cultural, National, Regional, and Global Identifications

Source: Adapted from J. A. Banks, Ed. (2004). Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global
Perspectives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Reprinted with permission.

nationalism may prevent students from developing reflective and posi tive
regional and global identifications ( Westheimer, 2012 ). Nationalism and
national attachments in most nations are strong and tenacious. An
important aim of citizenship education should be to help students develop
global identifications. Students also need to develop a deep understanding
of the need to take action as citizens of the global com munity to help solve
the world’s difficult global problems. Cultural, national, regional, and global
experiences and identifications are interac tive and interrelated in a dynamic
way ( Banks, 2004b ) (See Figure 2.1 .).
A nation-state that alienates and does not structurally include all
cultural groups in the national culture runs the risk of creating alienation and
causing groups to focus on their specific concerns and issues rather than
on the overarching goals and policies of the nation-state. To develop
reflective cultural, national, regional, and global identifications, students
must acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function within
and across diverse groups and the commitment to make their nations and
the world more just and humane.
 As a teacher, you can play an important role in helping students
develop balanced cultural, national, and global identifications and
attachments by giving recognition to their home languages and cultures,
and by helping them to identify ways in which their ethnic and cultural
34 CHAPTER 2

groups have influenced the national American culture. You can also help
students become effective global citizens by helping them understand how
they are connected to peoples throughout the world even if they have never
traveled outside their community or city; and by describing the ways
globalization influences the work done by family members, the foods they
eat, and the technology they use each day. You can use the media in
creative ways to connect your students to people around the globe.

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3
Dimensions and School
Characteristics

O ne problem that continues to haunt the multicultural education

movement—from both within and without—is the tendency by the public,
teachers, administrators, and policy makers to oversimplify the concept.
Multicultural education is complex and multidimensional, yet media
commentators and educators alike often focus on only one of its many
dimensions. Some teachers view it only as the inclusion of content about
ethnic groups into the curriculum; others view it as prej
udice reduction; still others view it as the celebration of ethnic holidays and
events. Some educators view it as a movement to close the achieve ment
gap between White mainstream students and low-income stu dents of color.
After a presentation in a school in which I described the major goals of
multicultural education, a math teacher told me that what I said was fine
and appropriate for language arts and social studies teachers but it had
nothing to do with mathematics teachers like him. After all, he said, math
was math, regardless of the color of the students.

The Dimensions of Multicultural

Education
This statement by a respected teacher at a prestigious independent school,
and his reaction to multicultural education, caused me to think deeply about
the images of multicultural education that had been cre ated by the key
theorists in the field. I wondered whether we were partly responsible for this
teacher’s narrow conception of multicultural education as merely content
integration. It was in response to these

35
36 CHAPTER 3

kinds of statements by classroom teachers that I conceptualized the

dimensions of multicultural education. I use the dimensions in this chapter
to describe the field’s major components and to highlight important
developments within the last two decades ( Banks, 2004c ). The
dimensions of multicultural education are (1) content integration, (2) the
knowledge construction process, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) an equity
pedagogy, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure. (See
Figure 3.1. )

Content Integration
Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use exam ples,
data, and information from a variety of cultures and groups to illus trate the
key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories in their subject area
or discipline. In many school districts as well as in popular writings,
multicultural education is viewed only (or primarily) as content integration.
This narrow conception of multicultural education is a major reason that
many teachers in subjects such as biology, physics, and mathematics
believe that multicultural education is irrelevant to them and their students.
In fact, this dimension of multicultural education probably does have
more relevance to social studies and language arts teachers than it does to
physics and math teachers. Physics and math teachers can insert
multicultural content into their subjects, for example, by using biogra
phies of physicists and mathematicians of color and examples from dif
ferent cultural groups. However, these kinds of activities are probably not
the most important multicultural tasks that can be undertaken by sci ence
and math teachers. Activities related to the other dimensions of multicultural
education—such as the knowledge construction process, prejudice
reduction, and an equity pedagogy—are probably the most fruitful areas for
the multicultural involvement of science and math teachers ( Lee & Buxton,
2010 ; Nasir & Cobb, 2007 ).

The Knowledge Construction Process

The knowledge construction process describes the procedures by which
social, behavioral, and natural scientists create knowledge and how the
implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases
within a discipline influence the ways that knowledge is con
structed within it. The knowledge construction process is an important part
of multicultural teaching. Teachers help students to understand how
Process
The knowledge construction process
relates to the extent to which
Content Integration teachers help students to
understand, investigate, and
Content integration deals with the extent to determine how the implicit cultural
which teachers use examples and content assumptions, frames of reference,
from a variety of cultures and groups to
perspectives, and biases within a
illustrate key concepts, principles,
discipline influence the ways in
generalizations, and theories in their subject
which knowledge is constructed
area or discipline.
within it.

An Equity
Pedagogy

An equity pedagogy
Prejudice
exists when teachers
modify their teaching
Dimensions and School Characteristics 37

The Knowledge Construction

in ways that will consistent with the wide focuses on the
facilitate the academic range of learning styles withincharacteristics of students’
achievement of various cultural and ethnic racial
students from diverse racial, groups. attitudes and how they can
cultural, and social-class Multicultural Education be modified by teaching
groups. This includes using a methods and materials.
Reduction
variety of teaching styles that
are
This dimension

An Empowering School Culture and

Social Structure
Grouping and labeling practices, sports participation,
disproportionality in achievement, and the interaction of the
staff and the students across ethnic and racial lines are
among the components of the school culture that must be
examined to create a school culture that empowers
students from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.

FIGURE 3.1 The Dimensions of Multicultural Education

Source: J. A. Banks (2006). Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum, and
Teaching (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson, p. 5 . Reprinted with permission.
38 CHAPTER 3

knowledge is created and how it is influenced by the racial, ethnic, gen der,
and social-class positions of individuals and groups. Important landmark
work related to the construction of knowledge has been done by feminist
social scientists and epistemologists as well as by scholars in ethnic
studies. Working in philosophy and sociology, Sandra Harding (1998 , 2012
), Lorraine Code (1991) , and Patricia Hill Collins (2000) have done some of
the most important work in knowledge construction. This seminal work in
knowledge construction being done by scholars such as Harding, Code,
and Collins, although influential among scholars and curriculum developers,
has been overshadowed in the popular media by the polarized canon
debates. These writers and researchers have seriously challenged the
claims made by the positivists that knowledge is value free and have
described the ways in which knowledge claims are influenced by the
gender and ethnic characteristics of the knower. These scholars argue that
the human interests and value assumptions of those who create knowl edge
should be identified, discussed, and examined.
Code (1991)states that the gender of the knower is epistemologically
significant because knowledge is both subjective and objective, and that
both aspects should be recognized and discussed. Collins (2000) , an
African Ameri can sociologist, extends and enriches the works of writers
such as Code (1991) and Harding (1991 , 2012 ) by describing the ways in
which race and gender interact to influence knowledge construction. Collins
calls the perspective of African American women “the outsider-within
perspective.” She writes,

As outsiders within, Black women have a distinct view of the contradic tions
between the dominant group’s actions and ideologies. (p. 11 )

Curriculum theorists, scholars in multicultural education, and his torians are

conceptualizing and developing ways to apply the work being done by
feminist and ethnic studies epistemologists to the classroom. My book
Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies ( Banks, 2009b ) contains
conceptual and transformative lessons for teaching about the various ethnic
groups, including African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans,
and European Americans. Rethinking Schools, Ltd., a non profit educational
publisher in Milwaukee founded by teachers, pub lishes a number of
publications that help teachers conceptualize and teach transformative
lessons about diversity, including Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for
Equity and Justice, Volume 1 ( Au, Bigelow, & Karp, 2007 ), and Rethinking
Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World ( Bigelow & Peterson,
2002 ). Loewen has written four books that contain transformative
perspectives about race in the United States that are highly accessible and
useful for teachers: Lies My Teachers Told Me: Every thing Your American
History Textbook Got Wrong ( Loewen, 1995 ); Lies Across America: What
Our Historic Sites Get Wrong ( Loewen, 1999 ); Sundown Towns: A Hidden
Dimension of American Racism ( Loewen, 2005 ); and
Dimensions and School Characteristics 39

Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks

and Get Students Excited About Doing History ( Loewen, 2010 ).

Prejudice Reduction
The prejudice reduction dimension of multicultural education describes the
characteristics of children’s racial attitudes and strategies that can be used
to help students to develop more positive racial and ethnic attitudes (
Aboud, 2009 ; Stephan & Mealy, 2012 ; Stephan & Vogt, 2004 ). Since the
1960s, social scientists have learned a great deal about how racial attitudes
in children develop and about ways in which educators can design
interventions to help children to acquire more positive feel
ings toward other racial groups. Stephan and Vogt (2004) , Stephan and
Mealy (2012) , and Stephan and Stephan (2004)provide extensive dis
cussions about the research on children’s racial attitudes and strategies that
can be used to help students attain democratic racial attitudes and
behaviors.
The research on children’s racial attitudes tells us that by the age of 4,
African American, White, and Mexican American children are aware of
racial differences and often make racial preferences that are biased toward
Whites. Students can be helped to develop more positive racial attitudes if
realistic images of ethnic and racial groups are included in teaching
materials in a consistent, natural, and integrated fashion. Involving students
in vicarious experiences and in cooperative learning activities with students
of other racial groups will also help them to develop more positive racial
attitudes and behaviors. Researchers such as Cross (1991)and Wright
(1998)question the research showing that African American children have
negative attitudes toward themselves and other African Americans. The
second part of Chapter 8in this book discusses the research on children’s
racial attitudes, strategies that can be used to help students develop
positive racial attitudes, and guidelines for reduc ing prejudice in students.

Equity Pedagogy
An equity pedagogy exists when teachers use techniques and teaching
methods that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse
racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. Teaching techniques responsive to
the learning and cultural characteristics of diverse groups ( Au, 2011 ;
Boykin, 2012 ; Gay, 2010 ; Moll & Spear-Ellinwood, 2012 ) and cooperative
learning techniques ( Horn, 2012 ; Lotan, 2012 ) are some of the
interventions that teachers have found effective with students from diverse
racial, ethnic, social-class, and language groups.
40 CHAPTER 3

If teachers are to increase learning opportunities for all students, they

must be knowledgeable about the social and cultural contexts of teaching
and learning ( Au, 2011 ; Lee, 2007 ). Although students are not solely
products of their cultures and vary in the degree to which they identify with
them, there are some distinctive cultural behaviors associ
ated with ethnic groups ( Au, 2011 ; Boykin, 2012 ). Effective teachers are
aware of the distinctive backgrounds of their students and have the skills to
translate that knowledge into effective instruction ( Gay, 2010 ; Ladson
Billings, 1994 ).
Research indicates that teachers can increase the classroom partici
pation and academic achievement of students from different racial, cul tural,
and language groups by modifying their instruction so that it draws upon
their cultural strengths. Some studies provide evidence to support the idea
that when teachers use culturally responsive teaching, the aca demic
achievement of students from diverse groups increases. Au and Kawakami
(1985)found that when teachers used participation structures in lessons
that were similar to the Hawaiian speech event “talk story,” the reading
achievement of Native Hawaiian students increased signifi cantly. They
write,

The chief characteristic of talk story is joint performance, or the coopera tive
production of responses of two or more speakers. For example, if the subject
is going surfing, one of the boys begins by recounting the events of a
particular day. But he will immediately invite one of the other boys to join him
in describing the events to the group. The two boys will alter nate as speakers,
each telling a part of the story, with other children pres ent occasionally
chiming in. ( Au & Kawakami, 1985 , p. 409 ; emphasis in original)

Talk story is very different from recitations in most classrooms, in

which the teacher usually calls on an individual child to tell a story.
Lee (2007) found that the achievement of African American stu dents
increases when they are taught literary interpretations with lessons that use
the African American verbal practice of signifying. Signifying is a practice of
speech within African American English (or Ebonics) in which speakers
tease and affront each other.

An Empowering School Culture and

Social Structure
An empowering school culture and social structure describes the process of
restructuring the culture and organization of the school so that stu dents
from diverse racial, ethnic, language, and social-class groups will
Dimensions and School Characteristics 41

experience educational equality and empowerment. This dimension of

multicultural education involves conceptualizing the school as a unit of
change and making structural changes within the school environment so
that students from all groups will have an equal opportunity for suc
cess. Establishing assessment techniques that are fair to all groups ( Korn
haber, 2012 ; Shepard, 2012 ; Taylor & Nolen, 2012 ), detracking the school
( Watanabe, 2012 ), and creating the norm among the school staff that all
students can learn—regardless of their racial, ethnic, or social-class
groups—are important goals for schools that wish to create a school cul ture
and social structure that are empowering and enhancing for students from
diverse groups.

Characteristics of a Multicultural School

To implement the dimensions of multicultural education, schools and other
educational institutions must be reformed so that students from all
social-class, racial, cultural, gender, and language groups will have an
equal opportunity to learn and experience cultural empowerment ( Banks &
Banks, 2013 ). Educational institutions should also help all students to
develop democratic values, beliefs, and actions and the knowledge, skills,
and attitudes needed to function cross-culturally.
What parts of the school need to be reformed in order to imple ment
the dimensions of multicultural education? A reformed school that
exemplifies the dimensions has the eight characteristics listed in Table 3.1 .
Consequently, school reform should be targeted on the following school
variables:

1. Attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and actions of the school staff.

Research indicates that teachers and administrators often have low
expectations for language minority students, low-income students, and
students of color ( Gándara & Hopkins, 2010 ; Gay, 2010 ; Green, 2012 ). In
a restructured multicultural school, teachers and administrators have high
academic expectations for all students and believe that all students can
learn ( Au, 2011 ; Howard, 2010 ; Nieto, 2010 ; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012 ;
Sizemore, 2008 ).
2. Formalized curriculum and course of study. The curriculum in most
schools describes numerous concepts, events, and situations from the
perspectives of mainstream Americans ( Au, 2012a ; Banks, 2009b ). It
often marginalizes the experiences of people of color, women, and LGBT
students ( Kavanagh, 2012 ). Multicultural education reforms the curricu
lum so that students view events, concepts, issues, and problems from the
perspectives of diverse racial, ethnic, language, gender, and social-class
42 CHAPTER 3

TABLE 3.1 The Eight Characteristics of the Multicultural School

1. The teachers and school administrators have high expectations for all students
and positive attitudes toward them. They also respond to them in positive and
caring ways.
2. The formalized curriculum reflects the experiences, cultures, and perspectives
of a range of cultural and ethnic groups as well as of both genders. 3. The
teaching styles used by the teachers match the learning, cultural, and
motivational characteristics of the students.
4. The teachers and administrators show respect for the students’ first
languages and dialects.
5. The instructional materials used in the school show events, situations, and
concepts from the perspectives of a range of cultural, ethnic, and racial
groups.
6. The assessment and testing procedures used in the school are culturally
sensitive and result in students of color being represented proportionately in
classes for the gifted and talented.
7. The school culture and the hidden curriculum reflect cultural and ethnic
diversity.
8. The school counselors have high expectations for students from different
racial, ethnic, and language groups and help these students to set and
realize positive career goals.

groups ( Au, 2012a ; Banks, 2009b ). The perspectives of both men and
women—as well as those of LGBT people ( Mayo, 2013 ) are also important
in the restructured, multicultural curriculum.
3. Learning, teaching, and cultural characteristics favored by the
school. Research indicates that a large number of low-income, linguistic
minority, Latino, Native American, and African American students have
learning, cultural, and motivational characteristics that differ from the
teaching styles that are used most frequently in the schools ( Au, 2011 ;
Lee, 2007 ). These students often learn best when cooperative rather than
competitive teaching techniques are used ( Horn, 2012 ; Lotan, 2012 ).
Many of them also learn best when school rules and learning outcomes are
made explicit and expectations are made clear ( Delpit, 2012 ; Heath, 2012
).
4. Languages and dialects of the school. Many students come to school
speaking languages and dialects of English that differ from the Standard
English being taught. Although all students must learn Stan dard English in
order to function successfully in the wider society, the school should respect
the first languages and varieties of English that
Dimensions and School Characteristics 43

students speak ( Gándara & Hopkins, 2010 ; Valdés, Capitelli, & Alvarez,
2011 ). Many African American students come to school speaking what
many linguists call Ebonics, or “Black English” ( Alim & Baugh, 2007 ;
Hudley & Mallinson, 2011 ). In the restructured, multicultural school,
teachers and administrators respect the languages and dialects of English
that students come to school speaking and use the students’ first lan
guages and dialects as vehicles for helping them to learn Standard English
( Varghese & Stritikus, 2013 ).

5. Instructional materials. Many biases—sometimes latent—are found in

textbooks and other instructional materials. These materials often
marginalize the experiences of people of color, language minori ties,
women, and low-income people and focus on the perspectives of men who
are members of the mainstream society ( C. A. M. Banks, in press ). In the
restructured, multicultural school, instructional materials are reformed and
depict events from diverse ethnic and cultural perspec tives ( Au, 2012a ;
Banks, 2009a , b ). Teachers and students are also taught to identify and
challenge the biases and assumptions of all materials.

6. Assessment and testing procedures. IQ and other mental ability tests

often result in students of color, low-income students, and language
minority students being overrepresented in classes for students with mental
retardation and underrepresented in classes for students who are gifted
and talented ( Ford, 2013 ). Human talent, as well as mental retarda
tion, is randomly distributed across human population groups. Conse
quently, in a restructured multicultural school, assessment techniques are
used that enable students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and language
groups to be assessed in culturally fair and just ways ( Taylor & Nolen, 2012
; Shepard, 2012 ). In a restructured multicultural school, students of color
and language minority students are found proportionately in classes for the
gifted and talented ( Ford, 2013) . They are not heavily concentrated in
classes for mentally retarded students ( Huber, Artiles, & Hernandez-Caca,
2012 ; Richman, 2012 ).

7. The school culture and the hidden curriculum. The hidden cur riculum
has been defined as the curriculum that no teacher explicitly teaches but
that all students learn. Jackson (1992)calls the hidden cur riculum “untaught
lessons.” The school’s attitudes toward cultural and ethnic diversity are
reflected in many subtle ways in the school culture, such as the kinds of
pictures on the bulletin boards, the racial composi tion of the school staff,
and the fairness with which students from differ ent racial, ethnic, cultural,
and language groups are disciplined and suspended. Multicultural
education reforms the total school environ ment so that the hidden
curriculum sends the message that ethnic, cul tural, and language diversity
is valued and celebrated.
44 CHAPTER 3

8. The counseling program. In an effective multicultural school,

counselors help students from diverse cultural, racial, ethnic, and lan guage
groups to make effective career choices and to take the courses needed to
pursue those career choices ( Kim & Sue, 2012 ). Culturally responsive
counselors also help students to reach beyond their grasp, to dream, and to
actualize their dreams.

Multicultural educators make the assumption that if the preceding

eight variables within the school environment are reformed and restruc tured
and the dimensions of multicultural education are implemented, students
from diverse groups will attain higher levels of academic achievement and
the intergroup attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of stu dents from all groups
will become more democratic.

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Curriculum Transformation

It is important to distinguish between curriculum infusion and curricu lum

transformation. When the curriculum is infused with ethnic and gen der
content without curriculum transformation, the students view the
experiences of cultural groups and of women from the perspectives and
conceptual frameworks of the traditional Western canon ( Au, 2012a ;
Nussbaum, 2012 ). Consequently, groups such as Native Americans, Asian
Americans, and Latinos are added to the curriculum, but their experi ences
are viewed from the perspective of mainstream historians and social
scientists. When curriculum infusion occurs without transforma tion, women
are added to the curriculum but are viewed from the per spectives of
mainstream males. Concepts such as “The Westward Movement,” “The
European Discovery of America,” and “Men and Their Families Went West”
remain intact.
 When curriculum transformation occurs, students and teachers make
paradigm shifts and view the American and world experience from the
perspectives of different racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender groups.
Columbus’s arrival in the Americas is no longer viewed as a “discovery” but
as a cultural contact or encounter that had very different conse
quences for the Tainos (Arawaks), Europeans, and Africans ( Bigelow &
Peterson, 2003 ). In a transformed curriculum, the experiences of women in
the West are not viewed as an appendage to the experience of men but
“through women’s eyes” ( Armitage, 1987 ; Limerick, 1987 ).
This chapter discusses the confusion over goals in multicultural
education, describes its goals and challenges, and states the rationale for a
transformative multicultural curriculum. Important goals of multicul tural
education are to help teachers and students transform their think ing about
the nature and development of the United States and the world and to
develop a commitment to act in ways that will make the United States and
the world more democratic and just.

45
46 CHAPTER 4

The Meaning and Goals of Multicultural

Education

A great deal of confusion exists—among both educators and the public—

about the meaning of multicultural education. The meaning of multicul tural
education among these groups varies from education about people in other
lands to educating African American students about their heri tage but
teaching them little about the Western heritage of the United States. The
confusion over the meaning of multicultural education is exemplified by a
question the editor of a national education publication asked me: “What is
the difference between multicultural education, eth nocentric education, and
global education?” Later during a telephone interview, I realized that she
had meant “Afrocentric education” rather
than “ethnocentric education.” To her, these terms were synonymous.
Before we can solve the problem caused by the multiple meanings of
multicultural education, we need to better understand the causes of the
problem. One important cause of the confusion over the meaning of mul
ticultural education is the multiple meanings of the concept in the profes
sional literature itself. Sleeter and Grant (1997), in their comprehensive
survey of the literature on multicultural education, found that the term has
diverse meanings and that the only commonality the various definitions
share is reform designed to improve schooling for students of color. To
advance the field and to reduce the multiple meanings of multi cultural
education, scholars need to develop a higher level of consensus about
what the concept means. Agreement about the meaning of multi cultural
education is emerging among academics. A consensus is develop ing
among scholars that an important goal of multicultural education is to
increase educational equality for students from diverse ethnic, cultural, (
Banks, 2013 ; Nieto, 2012 ), social-class ( Weis & Dolby, 2012 ; Weis, 2013
), and language groups ( Gándara & Hopkins, 2010 ); for female and male
students; for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students (
Mayo, 2013 ); and for exceptional students ( Friend, 2012 ). A major
 assumption of multicultural education is that some groups of students—
because their cultural characteristics are more consistent with the culture,
norms, and expectations of the school than are those of other groups of
students—have greater opportunities for academic success than do stu
dents whose cultures are less consistent with the school culture. Low
income African American males, for example, tend to have more problems
in schools than do middle-class White males ( T. C. Howard, 2012 ).
Because one of its goals is to increase educational equality for stu dents
from diverse groups, school restructuring is essential to make mul ticultural
education become a reality. To restructure schools in order to provide all
students with an equal chance to learn, some of the major
Curriculum Transformation 47

assumptions, beliefs, and structures within schools must be radically

changed. These include tracking and the ways in which mental ability tests
are interpreted and used ( Shepard, 2012 ; Taylor & Nolen, 2012 ;
Watanabe, 2012 ). New paradigms about the ways students learn, about
human ability ( Shearer, 2012 ), and about the nature of knowledge will
have to be institutionalized in order to restructure schools and make mul
ticultural education a reality. Teachers will have to believe that all stu dents
can learn, regardless of their social class or ethnic group membership, and
that knowledge is a social construction that has social, political, and
normative assumptions ( Bailey & Cuomo, 2008 ; Harding, 1998 ; Hartsock,
1998 ). Implementing multicultural education within a school is a con tinuous
process that cannot be implemented within a few weeks or over several
years. The implementation of multicultural education requires a
long-term commitment to school improvement and restructuring. Another
important goal of multicultural education—on which there is wide
consensus among authorities in the field but that is neither understood nor
appreciated by many teachers, journalists, and the public— is to help all
students, including White mainstream students, to develop the knowledge,
skills, and attitudes they will need to survive and func tion effectively in a
future U.S. society in which about half the popula tion will be people of color
by 2042 ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 ). Our survival as a strong and
democratic nation will be seriously imperiled if we do not help our students
attain the knowledge and skills they need to function in a culturally diverse
future society and world. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated eloquently, “We
will live together as brothers and sisters or die separate and apart as
strangers” ( King, 1987 ). This goal of multicultural education is related to
an important goal of global education—to help students to develop
cross-cultural compe tency in cultures beyond our national boundaries and
the insights and understandings needed to understand how all peoples
living on the earth have highly interconnected fates ( Banks et al., 2005 ).
Citizens who have an understanding of and empathy for the cultures within
their own nation are probably more likely to function effectively in cultures
out side of their nation than are citizens who have little understanding of
and empathy for cultures within their own society.
Although multicultural and global education share some important
aims, in practice global education can hinder teaching about ethnic and
cultural diversity in the United States. Some teachers are more comfort able
teaching about Mexico than they are teaching about Mexican Amer icans
who live within their own cities and states. Other teachers, as well as some
publishers, do not distinguish between multicultural education and global
education. Although the goals of multicultural and global edu cation are
complementary, they need to be distinguished both conceptu ally and in
practice.
48 CHAPTER 4

Multicultural Education Is for All

Students
We need to think seriously about why multicultural educators have not been
more successful in conveying to teachers, journalists, and the pub lic the
idea that multicultural education is concerned not only with stu dents of color
and linguistically diverse students but also with White mainstream students.
It is also not widely acknowledged that many of the reforms designed to
increase the academic achievement of ethnic and linguistic minority
students—such as a pedagogy that is sensitive to student learning
characteristics and cooperative learning techniques— will also help White
mainstream students to increase their academic achievement and to
develop more positive intergroup attitudes and val ues ( Gay, 2012 ; Horn,
2012 ; Lotan, 2012 ).
It is important for multicultural education to be conceptualized as a
strategy for all students for several important reasons. U.S. schools are not
working as well as they should be to prepare all students to function in a
highly technological, postindustrial society ( Darling-Hammond, 2010 ).
Most students of color (with the important exception of some groups of
Asian students such as Chinese Americans and Japanese Ameri
cans) and low-income students are more dependent on the school for
academic achievement than are White middle-class students for a variety of
complex reasons. However, school restructuring is needed for all stu dents
because of the high level of literacy and skills needed by citizens in a
knowledge society and because of the high expectations that the public has
for today’s schools. Public expectations for the public schools have
increased tremendously since the turn of the century, when many school
leavers were able to get jobs in factories ( Graham, 2005 ). School restruc
turing is an important and major aim of multicultural education. Multicultural
education should also be conceptualized as a strategy for all students
because it will become institutionalized and supported in U.S. schools,
colleges, and universities only to the extent that it is per ceived as universal
and in the broad public interest. An ethnic-specific notion of multicultural
education stands little chance of success and implementation in the
nation’s educational institutions.

Challenges to the Mainstream

Curriculum
Some readers might rightly claim that an ethnic-specific curriculum and
education already exists in U.S. educational institutions and that it is
Eurocentric and male dominated. I would agree to some extent with
Curriculum Transformation 49

this claim. However, I believe that the days for the primacy and domi nance
of the mainstream curriculum are limited. The curriculum that is
institutionalized within U.S. schools, colleges, and universities is being
seriously challenged today and will continue to be challenged until it is
reformed and more accurately reflects the experiences, voices, and
struggles of people of color, of women, of LGBT people, and of other
cultural, language, and social-class groups in U.S. society. The curricu lum
within U.S. schools, colleges, and universities has changed sub stantially
within the last three decades. It is important that these changes be
recognized and acknowledged. Students in today’s educa tional institutions
are learning much more content about ethnic, cul tural, racial, and gender
diversity than they learned three decades ago. The ethnic studies and
women’s studies movements have had a signifi cant influence on the
curriculum in U.S. schools, colleges, and universities.
The dominance of the mainstream curriculum is much less com plete
and tenacious than it was before the civil rights and women’s rights
movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The historical, social, and economic
factors are different today than they were when Anglo Americans estab
lished control over the major social, economic, and political institutions in
the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries. The economic,
demographic, and ideological factors that led to the establishment of Anglo
hegemony early in U.S. history are changing, even though Anglo
Americans are still politically, economically, and culturally dominant. Anglo
dominance was indicated by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that slowed
the pace of affirmative action during the 1980s and that chipped away at
civil rights laws protecting people with disabilities in 2001. The court also
ruled against diversity interests when it declared the school desegregation
plans in Seattle, Washington, and in Louisville, Kentucky, unconstitutional in
2007.
Nevertheless, there are signs throughout U.S. society that Anglo
dominance and hegemony are being challenged and that groups such as
African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos are increasingly
demanding full structural inclusion and a reformulation of the canon used to
select content for the school, college, and university curriculum ( Chang,
2012 ; Hu-DeHart, 2012 ). It is also important to realize that many
compassionate and informed Whites are joining people of color to sup
port reforms in U.S. social, economic, political, and educational institu tions.
It would be a mistake to conceptualize or perceive the reform movements
today as people of color versus Whites.
One pervasive myth within our society is that Whites are a mono lithic
group. The word White conceals more than it reveals. Whites are a very
diverse group in terms of ethnic and cultural characteristics, political
affiliations, and attitudes toward ethnic and cultural diversity
50 CHAPTER 4

( G. Howard, 2012 ; McIntosh, 2012 ). Many Whites today, as well as

historically, have supported social movements to increase the rights of
African Americans and other people of color. Reform-oriented White
citizens who are pushing for a more equitable and just society are an
important factor that will make it increasingly difficult for the Anglo
mainstream vision to continue to dominate U.S. political and educa
tional institutions.
Whites today are playing an important role in social reform move
ments and in the election of African American and Latino politicians. Barack
Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008 with significant
support from White voters. African Americans who have been elected as
mayors, as governors, and to Congress have also received wide White
support, as was the case in the election of Deval Patrick, who was elected
governor of Massachusetts and assumed office in January 2007. Many
White students on university campuses are forming coalitions with students
of color to demand that the university curriculum be reformed to include
content about people of color and women. Students who are demanding
ethnic studies requirements on university campuses have experienced
major victories ( Chang, 2012 ; Hu-DeHart, 2012 ).
The Anglocentric curriculum will continue to be challenged until it is
reformed to include the voices and experiences of a range of eth nic,
cultural, and language groups. Lesbian and gay groups are also demanding
that content about them be integrated into the school, college, and
university curriculum ( Mayo, 2013 ; Kavanagh, 2012 ). Colleges and
universities are responding to the concerns of these groups much more
effectively than are the schools ( Chang, 2012 ; Hu-DeHart, 2012 ).
The significant percentage of people of color—including African
Americans and Latinos who are in positions of leadership in educational
institutions—will continue to work to integrate the experiences of their
people into the school and university curricula. These individuals include
researchers, professors, administrators, and authors of textbooks. Stu
dents of color will continue to form coalitions with progressive White
students and demand that the school and university curriculum be reformed
to reflect the ethnic, cultural, and language reality of U.S. soci ety. Students
of color were 46 percent of the public school population in the United States
in 2010 ( NCES, 2012) . Parents and community groups will continue to
demand that the school and university curricula be reformed to give voice to
their experiences and struggles. African Ameri can parents and community
groups will continue to push for a curricu lum that reflects African
civilizations and experimental schools for Black males ( T. C. Howard, 2012
).
Feminists will continue to challenge the mainstream curriculum
because many of them view it as malecentric, patriarchal, and sexist
Curriculum Transformation 51

( Bailey & Cuomo, 2008 ). Much of the new research in women’s studies
deals with the cultures of women of color ( Guy-Sheftall, 2012 ). Women’s
studies and ethnic studies will continue to interconnect and challenge the
dominant curriculum in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universi
ties. Gay and lesbian groups will continue to demand that their voices,
experiences, hopes, and dreams be reflected in a transformed curriculum (
Mayo, 2013 ; Schneider, 2012 ).

Challenges to Multicultural Education

I have argued that an ethnic-specific version of multicultural education is
not likely to become institutionalized within U.S. schools, colleges, and
universities and that the days of Anglo hegemony in the U.S. cur riculum are
limited. This is admittedly a long view of our society and future. Multicultural
education is frequently challenged by conservative writers and groups, such
as the attacks that occurred on the ethnic stud ies program in the Tucson,
Arizona, school district in 2010 ( Chavez, 2010 ; Conant, 2010 ). These
attacks occurred even though research indi cates that the ethnic studies
program increased the academic achieve ment of Mexican American
students in the Tucson school district ( Sleeter, 2011 ). Challenges to
multicultural education and education related to diversity are likely to
continue and will take diverse forms, expressions, and shapes. They are
part of the dynamics of a democratic society in which diverse voices are
freely expressed and heard.
Part of the confused meanings of multicultural education results from
the attempts by neoconservative scholars to portray multicultural education
as a movement against Western civilization, as anti-White, and by
implication, anti-American ( Chavez, 2010 ). The popular press frequently
calls the movement to infuse an African perspective into the curriculum
“Afrocentric,” and it has defined the term to mean an educa
tion that excludes Whites and Western civilization.
The term Afrocentric has different meanings to different people. Because of
its diverse interpretations by various people and groups, neo conservative
scholars have focused many of their criticisms of multicul tural education on
this concept. Asante (1998)defines Afrocentricity as “placing African ideals
at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior” (p.
6 ). In other words, Afrocentricity is looking at African and African American
behavior from an African or African Amer ican perspective. His definition
suggests that Black English, or Ebonics, cannot be understood unless it is
viewed from the perspective of those who speak it. Afrocentricity, when
Asante’s definition is used, can describe the addition of an African
American perspective to the school and university curriculum. When
understood in this way, it is consistent
52 CHAPTER 4

with a multicultural curriculum because a multicultural curriculum helps

students to view behavior, concepts, and issues from different ethnic and
cultural perspectives.

The Canon Battle: Special Interests

Versus the Public Interest
The push by people of color and women to get their voices and experi ences
institutionalized within the curriculum and the curriculum canon transformed
has evoked a strong reaction from some neoconservative scholars (
Chavez, 1991 , 2010; Huntington, 2004 ). Many of the argu ments in the
editorials and articles written by the opponents of multicul tural education
are smoke screens for a conservative political agenda designed not to
promote the common good of the nation but to rein force the status quo and
dominant group hegemony and to promote the interests of a small elite. A
clever tactic of the neoconservative scholars is to define their own interests
as universal and in the public good and the interests of women and people
of color as special interests that are par ticularistic ( Glazer, 1997 ;
Huntington, 2004 ). When a dominant elite describes its interests as the
same as the public interest, it marginalizes the experiences of structurally
excluded groups, such as women and peo ple of color.
 The term special interest implies an interest that is particularistic and
inconsistent with the overarching goals and needs of the nation-state or
commonwealth. To be in the public good, interests must extend beyond the
needs of a unique or particular group. An important issue is who formulates
the criteria for determining what is a special interest. It is the dominant
group or groups in power that have already shaped the cur
riculum, institutions, and structures in their images and interests. The
dominant group views its interests not as special but as identical with the
common good. A special interest, in the view of those who con trol the
curriculum and other institutions within society, is therefore any interest that
challenges the dominant group’s power and ideologies and paradigms,
particularly if the interest group demands that the canon, assumptions, and
values of the institutions and structures be trans formed. History is replete
with examples of dominant groups that defined their interests as the public
interest.
One way in which people in power marginalize and disempower those
who are structurally excluded from the mainstream is by calling their
visions, histories, goals, and struggles special interests. This type of
marginalization denies the legitimacy and validity of groups that are
excluded from full participation in society and its institutions.
Curriculum Transformation 53

Only a curriculum that reflects the experiences of a wide range of

groups in the United States and the world—and the interests of these
groups—is in the national interest and is consistent with the public good (
Banks, 2007 ). Any other kind of curriculum reflects a special interest and is
inconsistent with the needs of a nation that must survive in a pluralis
tic and highly interdependent global world. Special interest history and
literature, such as history and literature that emphasize the primacy of the
West and the history of European American males, is detrimental to the
public good because it will not help students to acquire the knowl
edge, skills, and attitudes essential for survival in the 21st century. The aim
of the ethnic studies and women’s studies movements is not to push for
special interests, but to reform the curriculum so that it will be more truthful
and more inclusive, reflecting the histories and experiences of the diverse
groups and cultures that make up U.S. soci ety. These are not special
interest reform movements, because they con tribute to the democratization
of the school and university curriculum. They contribute to the public good
instead of strengthening special interests.
We need to rethink concepts such as special interests, the national
interest, and the public good and to identify which groups are using these
terms and for what purposes. We also must evaluate the use of these terms
in the context of a nation and world that are rapidly changing. Powerless
and excluded groups accurately perceive efforts to label their visions and
experiences as special interests as an attempt to marginalize them and
make their voices silent and their faces invisible ( Guy-Sheftall, 2012 ).

A Transformed Curriculum and Multiple

Perspectives

Educators use several approaches, summarized in Figure 4.1 , to integrate

cultural content into the school and university curriculum ( Banks, 2009b ).
These approaches include the contributions approach, in which content
about ethnic and cultural groups is limited primarily to holidays and
celebrations, such as Cinco de Mayo, Asian/Pacific Heritage Week, African
American History Month, and Women’s History Week. This approach is
used often in the primary and elementary grades. Another frequently used
approach to integrate cultural content into the curricu
lum is the additive approach. In this approach, cultural content, concepts,
and themes are added to the curriculum without changing its basic struc
ture, purposes, and characteristics. The additive approach is often accom
plished by the addition of a book, a unit, or a course to the curriculum
without changing its framework.
54 CHAPTER 4

Level 4
The Social Action Approach
Students make decisions on important
social issues and take actions to help
solve them.

Level 3
The Transformation Approach
The structure of the curriculum is changed
to enable students to view concepts, issues,
events, and themes from the perspective of
diverse ethnic and cultural groups.

Level 2
The Additive Approach
Content, concepts, themes, and perspec
tives are added to the curriculum without
changing its structure.

Level 1
The Contributions Approach
Focuses on heroes, holidays, and discrete
cultural elements.

FIGURE 4.1 Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform

Neither the contributions nor the additive approach challenges the basic
structure or canon of the curriculum. Cultural celebrations, activi ties, and
content are inserted into the curriculum within the existing curriculum
framework and assumptions. When these approaches are used to integrate
cultural content into the curriculum, people, events, and interpretations
related to ethnic groups and women often reflect the norms and values of
the dominant culture rather than those of cultural communities. Individuals
and groups challenging the status quo and dominant institutions are less
likely to be selected for inclusion in the
Curriculum Transformation 55

curriculum. Thus, Sacajawea, who helped Whites conquer Native Ameri can
lands, is more likely to be chosen for inclusion than Geronimo, who resisted
the takeover of Native American lands by Whites.
The transformation approach differs fundamentally from the contri
butions and additive approaches. It changes the canon, paradigms, and
basic assumptions of the curriculum and enables students to view con
cepts, issues, themes, and problems from different perspectives and points
of view. Major goals of this approach include helping students to understand
concepts, events, and people from diverse ethnic and cul tural perspectives
and to understand knowledge as a social construction. In this approach,
students are able to read and listen to the voices of the victors and the
vanquished. They are also helped to analyze the teacher’s perspective on
events and situations and are given the opportunity to formulate and justify
their own versions of events and situations. Impor tant aims of the
transformation approach are to teach students to think critically and to
develop the skills to formulate, document, and justify their conclusions and
generalizations.
When teaching a unit such as “The Westward Movement” using a
transformation approach, the teacher assigns appropriate readings and
then asks the students such questions as the following: What do you think
the Westward movement means? Who was moving West—the Whites or
the Native Americans? What region in the United States was referred to as
the West? Why? The aim of these questions is to help stu
dents to understand that the Westward movement is a Eurocentric term. It
refers to the movement of the European Americans who were headed in the
direction of the Pacific Ocean. The Lakota Sioux were already liv ing in the
West and, as Limerick (2000)insightfully points out, were try ing hard to stay
put. They did not want to move. The Sioux did not consider their homeland
“the West” but the center of the universe. The teacher could also ask the
students to describe the Westward movement from the point of view of the
Sioux. The students might use such words as “The End,” “The Age of
Doom,” or “The Coming of the People Who Took Our Land.” In addition, the
teacher could also ask the students to give the unit a name that is more
neutral than “The Westward Move
ment.” They might name the unit “The Meeting of Two Cultures.” The
decision-making and social action approach extends the transfor mative
curriculum by enabling students to pursue projects and activities that allow
them to make decisions and to take personal, social, and civic actions
related to the concepts, problems, and issues they have studied. After they
have studied the unit on different perspectives on the West ward movement,
the students might decide that they want to learn more about Native
Americans and to take actions that will enable the school to depict and
perpetuate more accurate and positive views of America’s first inhabitants.
The students might compile a list of books written by
56 CHAPTER 4
Native Americans for the school librarian to order and present a pageant for
the school’s morning exercise on “The Westward Movement: A View from
the Other Side.”

Teaching Students to Know, to Care,

and to Act

The major goals of a transformative curriculum that fosters multicultural

literacy should be to help students to know, to care, and to act in ways that
will develop and foster a democratic and just society in which all groups
experience cultural democracy and cultural empowerment. Figure 4.2shows
how knowing, caring, and acting intersect and are tightly interrelated.
Knowledge is an essential part of multicultural literacy, but it is not
sufficient. Knowledge alone will not help students to develop an empa thetic,
caring commitment to humane and democratic change. An essen tial goal of
a multicultural curriculum is to help students develop empathy and caring.
To help the United States and world become more culturally democratic,
students must also develop a commitment to per sonal, social, and civic
action as well as the knowledge and skills needed to participate in effective
civic action.

Knowing

Caring Acting

FIGURE 4.2 The Intersection of Knowing, Caring, and Action

Curriculum Transformation 57

Although knowledge, caring, and action are conceptually distinct, in

the classroom they are highly interrelated. In my multicultural classes for
teacher education students, I use historical and sociological knowl edge
about the experiences of different ethnic and racial groups to inform as well
as to enable the students to examine and clarify their personal attitudes
about ethnic diversity. These knowledge experiences are also a vehicle that
enables the students to think of actions they can take to actualize their
feelings and moral commitments. Knowledge experiences I have used to
help students examine their value commitments and think of ways to act
include the reading of Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer, Sara Lawrence
Lightfoot’s (1988)powerful biography of her mother, one of the nation’s first
African American child psychiatrists; the historical overviews of various U.S.
ethnic groups in my book Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies ( Banks,
2009b ); and several video and film presentations, including selected
segments from Eyes on the Prize II, the award-winning history of the civil
rights movement produced by Henry Hampton, and Eye of the Beholder, a
powerful videotape that uses simulation to show the cogent effects of
discrimination on adults. The videotape features Jane Elliott, who attained
fame for her well-known experiment in which she discriminated against
children on the basis of eye color to teach them about discrimination (
Peters, 1987 ). During the summer of 2012, we showed the students
Precious Knowledge, an informative DVD that describes the controversy
over ethnic studies in the Tucson, Arizona, school district that occurred in
2010.
To enable the students to analyze and clarify their values regarding
these readings and video experiences, I ask them questions such as these:
How did the book, film, or videotape make you feel? Why do you think you
feel that way? To enable them to think about ways to act on their feelings, I
ask such questions as the following: How interracial are your own personal
experiences? Would you like to live a more interracial life? What are some
books that you can read or popular films that you can see that will enable
you to act on your commitment to live a more racially and ethnically
integrated life? The power of these kinds of experiences is often revealed in
student papers.
The most meaningful and effective way to prepare teachers to involve
students in multicultural experiences that will enable students to know, to
care, and to participate in democratic action is to involve teach ers in
multicultural experiences that focus on these goals. When teachers have
gained knowledge about cultural and ethnic diversity themselves, looked at
that knowledge from different ethnic and cultural perspectives, and taken
action to make their own lives and communities more cultur ally sensitive
and diverse, they will have the knowledge and skills needed to help
transform the curriculum canon as well the hearts and minds of their
students. Only when the curriculum canon is transformed to reflect
58 CHAPTER 4

cultural diversity will students in our schools, colleges, and universities be

able to attain the knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed to par ticipate
effectively in today’s global society.

Multicultural Education and National

Survival
Multicultural education is needed to help all future citizens of the United
States to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to survive in
the 21st century. Nothing less than our national and global survival is at
stake ( Darling-Hammond, 2010 ). The rapid growth in the nation’s popu
lation of people of color; the escalating importance of non-White nations
such as China and India; and the widening gap between the rich and the
poor ( Stiglitz, 2012 ) make it essential for future citizens to have multicul
tural literacy and cross-cultural skills. A nation whose citizens cannot
negotiate on the world’s multicultural global stage are tremendously dis
advantaged in the 21st century, and its very survival is imperiled.

CHA
PTE
R

5
Knowledge Construction and
Curriculum Reform

C hapter 4describes curriculum transformation and why it is needed to

help students understand the United States and the world from diverse
cultural and ethnic perspectives. This chapter describes how knowledge is
constructed and how it reflects the biographical journeys, cultures,
perspectives, and values of the historians, social scientists, and educators
who construct it. This chapter also describes five types of knowledge and
maintains that students should learn each type, as well as how knowledge
is influenced by its creators. Students should also learn how to construct
knowledge themselves and how their own val ues, perspectives, and
biographical journeys influence the knowledge they construct.

An Epistemological Journey
I was an elementary school student in the Arkansas Delta in the 1950s.
One of my most powerful memories is the image of the happy and loyal
slaves in my social studies textbooks. I also remember that there were
three other Blacks in my textbooks: Booker T. Washington, the educator;
George Washington Carver, the scientist; and Marian Anderson, the con
tralto. I had several persistent questions throughout my school days: Why
were the slaves pictured as happy? Were there other Blacks in his tory
beside the two Washingtons and Anderson? Who created this image of
slaves? Why? The image of the happy slaves was inconsistent with
everything I knew about the African American descendants of enslaved
people in my segregated community. We had to drink water from foun tains
labeled “colored,” and we could not use the city’s public library.

59
60 CHAPTER 5
However, we were not happy about either of these legal requirements. In
fact, we resisted these laws in powerful but subtle ways each day. As chil
dren, we savored the taste of “White water” when the authorities were
preoccupied with more serious infractions against the racial caste system.
Throughout my schooling, these questions remained cogent as I tried
to reconcile the representations of African Americans in textbooks with the
people I knew in my family and community. I wanted to know why these
images were highly divergent. My undergraduate curriculum did not help
answer my questions. I read one essay by a person of color during my four
years in college, “Stranger in the Village,” by James Baldwin (1953 / 1985b)
. In this powerful essay, Baldwin describes how he was treated as the
“Other” in a Swiss village. He was hurt and disappointed— not
happy—about his treatment.
My epistemological quest to find out why the slaves were repre sented
as happy became a lifelong journey that continues, and the closer I think I
am to the answer, the more difficult and complex both my question and the
answers become. The question—Why were the slaves represented as
happy?—has taken different forms in various peri ods of my life. I have lived
with these questions all of my professional life. I now believe that the
biographical journeys of researchers greatly influ ence their values, their
research questions, and the knowledge they construct. The knowledge they
construct mirrors their life experiences and values. The happy slaves in my
school textbooks were invented by the South ern historian Ulrich B. Phillips
(1918/1966 ). The images of enslaved people he constructed reflected his
belief in the inferiority of African Americans and his socialization in Georgia
near the turn of the century ( Smith & Inscoe, 1993 ).

The Values of Researchers

Social scientists are human beings who have both minds and hearts.
However, their minds and the products of their minds have dominated
research discourse in history and the social sciences. The hearts of social
scientists exercise a cogent influence on research questions, findings,
concepts, generalizations, and theories. I am using “heart” as a metaphor
for values, which are the beliefs, commitments, and generalized princi
ples to which social scientists have strong attachments and commit ments.
The value dimensions of social science research was largely muted and
silenced in the academic community and within the popular culture until the
neutrality of the social sciences was strongly challenged by the
postmodern, women’s studies, and ethnic studies movements of the 1960s
and 1970s ( King, 2004 ; Ladner, 1973 ).
Knowledge Construction and Curriculum Reform 61

Social science research has supported historically and still supports

educational policies that affect the life chances and educational opportu
nities of students. The educational policies upheld by mainstream social
science and educational researchers have often harmed low-income stu
dents and students of color. However, the values of social scientists are
complex within diverse nations such as the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom. Social science and educational research over time and
often within the same period have both reinforced inequality ( Herrnstein &
Murray, 1994 ) and supported liberation and human bet terment ( Clark,
1965 ).
In my American Educational Research Association (AERA) presiden
tial address ( Banks, 1998 ), I describe research that supports these claims:

• The cultural communities in which individuals are socialized are also

epistemological communities that have shared beliefs, perspec tives,
and knowledge.
• Social science and historical research are influenced in complex ways
by the life experiences, values, personal biographies, and epis
temological communities of researchers.
• Knowledge created by social scientists, historians, and public intel
lectuals reflects and perpetuates their epistemological communities,
experiences, goals, and interests.
• How individual social scientists interpret their cultural experiences is
mediated by the interaction of a complex set of status variables, such
as gender, social class, age, political affiliation, religion, and region.
(p. 5 )

Valuation and Knowledge Construction

In nations around the world, the assimilationist ideology has been the
dominant historical force since the age of colonization and the expan sion of
Western nations into the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and
Australia. The assimilationist ideology maintains that in order to construct a
cohesive nation and civic culture individuals from diverse racial, ethnic,
cultural, linguistic, and religious groups must surrender their home and
community cultures and acquire those of the dominant and mainstream
groups ( Patterson, 1977 ; Schlesinger, 1991 ). Assimila tionists believe that
ethnic attachments prevent individuals from devel oping commitments and
allegiance to the national civic culture (see Kymlicka, 2004 , for a critique of
this view).
The assimilationist ideology was seriously challenged by the ethnic
revitalization and protest movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
62 CHAPTER 5

These movements began with and were stimulated by the Black civil rights
movement in the United States ( Painter, 2006 ). Multiculturalism and
multicultural education grew out of these movements. Multicultur alism
challenges and questions the assimilationist ideology and argues that
ethnic and cultural diversity enriches the mainstream culture, that the
identities of individuals are “multiple, nested, and overlapping” ( Kymlicka,
2004p. xiv), and that individuals who are firmly rooted in their home and
community cultures are more—not less—capable of being effective citizens
of the nation-state and cosmopolitan citizens of the world community (
Appiah, 2006 ).

The Debate Between the

Assimilationists and Multiculturalists

Neoliberal and political conservatives—who are also strong assimilation

ists—claim that multiculturalism is detrimental to the nation-state and the
civic community ( Bawer, 2012 ; Patterson, 1977 ; Schlesinger, 1991 ).
Multiculturalists maintain that civic equality, recognition ( Gutmann, 2004 ),
and structural inclusion into the nation-state are essential for citi zens from
diverse groups to acquire allegiance to the nation-state and to become
effective participants in the civic community ( Banks, 2007 ; Kymlicka, 2004
).
I hope to make a scholarly contribution to the debate between the
assimilationists and the multiculturalists in this chapter by providing
evidence for the claim that the positions of both groups reflect values,
ideologies, political positions, and human interests. Each position also
implies a kind of knowledge that should be taught in the schools, col
leges, and universities, and in public sites such as museums, theaters,
films, and other visual media. I will describe a typology of the kinds of
knowledge that exist in society and in educational institutions. This typology
is designed to help practicing educators, researchers, and cul
tural workers identify types of knowledge that reflect specific values,
assumptions, perspectives, and ideological positions.
Educators and cultural workers should help students to understand all
types of knowledge. Students should be involved in the debates about
knowledge construction and conflicting interpretations, such as the extent to
which Egypt and Phoenicia influenced Greek civilization ( Bernal,
1987/1991 ). Students should also be taught how to construct their own
interpretations of the past and present, as well as how to iden
tify their own positions, interests, ideologies, and assumptions. Students
should become critical thinkers who have the knowledge, attitudes, skills,
and commitments needed to participate in democratic action to
Knowledge Construction and Curriculum Reform 63

help their nation and the world close the gap between ideals and reali ties.
Multicultural education is an education for functioning effectively in a
pluralistic democratic society. Helping students to develop the knowledge,
skills, and attitudes needed to participate in reflective civic action is one of
its major goals ( Banks, 2007 ).
The philosophical position that underlies this chapter is within the
transformative tradition in ethnic studies and multicultural education (
Banks, 1996 ). This tradition links knowledge, social commitment, and
action ( Meier & Rudwick, 1986 ). A transformative, action-oriented educa
tion can best be implemented when students examine different types of
knowledge, freely examine their perspectives and moral commitments, and
experience democracy in schools ( Dewey, 1959 ) and in public sites such
as museums, theaters, and historical monuments ( Loewen, 1999 ).

The Characteristics of Knowledge

I define knowledge as the way an individual explains or interprets real ity. I
conceptualize knowledge broadly, and use it the way it is utilized in the
sociology of knowledge literature to include ideas, values, and
interpretations ( Farganis, 1986 ). As postmodern theorists have pointed
out, knowledge is socially constructed and reflects human interests, values,
and action ( Code, 1991 ; Foucault, 1972 ; Harding, 1991 ; Kerdeman, 2012
). Knowledge is also a product of human interactions ( Nejadmehr, 2009 ).
Although many complex factors influence the knowledge that is created by
an individual or group—including the actuality of what occurred and the
interactions that knowledge constructors have with other people—the
knowledge that people create is heavily influenced by their interpretations of
their experiences and their positions within particular social, economic, and
political systems and structures of society.
In the Western empirical tradition, the ideal within each academic
discipline is the formation of knowledge without the influence of the
researcher’s personal or cultural characteristics ( Greer, 1969 ; Kaplan,
1964 ). However, as critical and postmodern theorists have pointed out,
personal, cultural, and social factors influence the formulation of knowl
edge even when objective knowledge is the ideal within a discipline (
Foucault, 1972 ; Habermas, 1971 ). Researchers are frequently unaware of
how their personal experiences and positions within society influence the
knowledge they produce. Most mainstream historians were unaware of how
their regional and cultural biases influenced their interpretation of the
Reconstruction period of U.S. history until W. E. B. DuBois
(1935/1962)published a study that challenged the accepted and estab
lished interpretations of that historical period.
64 CHAPTER 5

Positionality and Knowledge

Construction

Positionality is a significant concept that emerged out of feminist schol

arship; this term describes how important aspects of identity such as
gender, race, social class, age, religion, and sexual orientation influence the
knowledge that scholars construct ( Tetreault, 2013 ). Positionality reveals
the importance of identifying the positions and frames of refer ence from
which scholars and writers present their data, interpretations, and analyses
( Anzaldúa, 1999 ). The need for researchers and scholars to identify their
ideological positions and the normative assumptions in their work—an
inherent part of feminist and ethnic studies scholar ship—contrasts with the
empirical paradigm that has dominated West ern science ( Code, 1991 ;
Harding, 1991 , 2012 ).
The assumption in the Western empirical paradigm is that the knowl edge
produced within it is neutral and objective and that its principles are
universal. The effects of values, frames of references, and the normative
positions of researchers and scholars are infrequently discussed within the
traditional empirical paradigm that has dominated scholarship and teach ing
in colleges and universities in the West since the early 20th century.
However, scholars such as the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (1944)
and the American psychologist Kenneth B. Clark (1965)—prior to the femi
nist, ethnic studies, and postmodern movements—wrote about the need for
scholars to recognize and state their normative positions and valuations and
to become, in the apt words of Clark, “involved observers.” Myrdal stated
that valuations are not just attached to research but permeate it. He wrote,
 There is no device for excluding biases in social sciences than to face the
valuations and to introduce them as explicitly stated, specific, and sufficiently
concretized value premises. (p. 1043 ; emphasis in original)

A Knowledge Typology
A description of the major types of knowledge can help educators and
cultural workers to identify perspectives and content needed to make
education multicultural and culturally responsive ( Gay, 2010 ; Nieto, 2010 ).
Each of the types of knowledge described below reflects specific purposes,
perspectives, experiences, goals, and human interests. Teach
ing students various types of knowledge can help them to better under stand
the perspectives of different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups as well as to
develop their own versions and interpretations of issues and events.
Different types of knowledge also help students to gain more
Knowledge Construction and Curriculum Reform 65

comprehensive and accurate conceptions of reality. Multiple perspec tives

and different types of knowledge enable knowers to construct knowledge
that is closer approximations to the actuality of what occurred than single
perspectives. In an important and influential essay, Merton (1972)maintains
that the perspectives of both “insiders” and “outsiders” are needed to
enable social scientists to gain a comprehensive view of social reality.
I identify and describe five types of knowledge (see Figure 5.1 ): (1)
per sonal/cultural knowledge; (2) popular knowledge; (3) mainstream
academic knowledge; (4) transformative academic knowledge; and (5)
pedagogical knowledge. This is an ideal-type typology in the Weberian
sense. The Ger man sociologist Max Weber pioneered the idea of using
typologies to classify social phenomenon. His typology of three forms of
authority— traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic—is an example (
Henry, n.d. ). The five categories of my knowledge typology, like the
categories in Weber’s typology, approximate but do not describe reality in
its total complexity. The categories are useful conceptual tools for thinking
about knowledge and planning multicultural teaching and learning. Although
the categories can be conceptually distinguished, in reality they overlap and
are interrelated in a dynamic way.
Since the 1960s, some of the findings and insights from transforma
tive academic knowledge have been incorporated into mainstream aca
demic knowledge and scholarship. Traditionally, students were taught in

Personal/Cultural

Popular
Pedagogical Transformative
 Academic Mainstream Academic

FIGURE 5.1 Types of Knowledge and How They Are Interrelated

66 CHAPTER 5

U.S. schools and universities that the land that became North America was
a thinly populated wilderness when the Europeans arrived in the 16th
century and that African Americans made few contributions to the
development of American civilization (mainstream academic knowl
edge). Some of the findings from transformative academic knowledge that
challenged these conceptions have influenced mainstream aca demic
scholarship and have been incorporated into mainstream college,
university, and school textbooks ( Hu-DeHart, 2012 ;Snipp, 2012 ). Conse
quently, the relationship between the five categories of knowledge is
dynamic and interactive rather than static.

The Types of Knowledge

Personal and Cultural Knowledge
The concepts, explanations, and interpretations that students derive from
personal experiences in their homes, families, and community cul tures
constitute personal and cultural knowledge. The assumptions, per spectives,
and insights that students derive from their experiences in their homes and
community cultures are used as screens to view and interpret the
knowledge and experiences they encounter in school and in other
institutions and sites within the larger society, such as museums and the
media.
Research and theory by Fordham and Ogbu (1986)indicate that
low-income African American students often experience academic diffi
culties in school because of the ways that cultural knowledge within their
community conflicts with pedagogical knowledge and with school norms
and expectations. Fordham and Ogbu also state that the culture of many
low-income African American students is oppositional to school culture.
These students believe that if they master the knowledge taught in the
schools they will violate fictive kinship norms and run the risk of “acting
White.” Fordham (1988 , 1991 ) has suggested that African Ameri can
students who become high academic achievers resolve the conflict caused
by the interaction of their personal cultural knowledge with the knowledge
and norms within the schools by becoming “raceless” or by “ad hocing a
culture.”
Personal and cultural knowledge is problematic when it conflicts with
scientific ways of validating knowledge, is oppositional to the cul ture of the
school, or challenges the main tenets and assumptions of mainstream
 academic knowledge. Much of the knowledge about out groups that
students learn from their home and community cultures consists of
misconceptions, stereotypes, and inaccurate information ( Aboud, 2009 ).
Many students around the world are socialized within
Knowledge Construction and Curriculum Reform 67

communities that are segregated along racial, ethnic, and social-class lines
( Banks, 2009a ). These youths have few opportunities to learn first hand
about the cultures of people from different racial, ethnic, cultural, religious,
and social-class groups.
The challenge for educators is to make effective instructional use of
the personal and cultural knowledge of students while at the same time
helping them to reach beyond their cultural boundaries ( Lee, 2007 ; Moll &
Spear-Ellinwood, 2012 ). Educational institutions should recognize, validate,
and make effective use of student personal and cultural knowl
edge. However, an important goal of education is to free students from their
cultural and ethnic boundaries and enable them to cross cultural borders
freely ( Banks, 2007 ).
In the past, the school and other educational institutions have paid
little attention to the personal and cultural knowledge of students and have
taught them mainly popular and mainstream knowledge. It is important for
teachers and cultural workers to be aware of the personal and cultural
knowledge of students when designing educational experi
ences for students from diverse groups. Educators can use student per
sonal cultural knowledge to motivate them and as a foundation and scaffold
for teaching other types of knowledge ( Ladson-Billings, 1994 ).

Popular Knowledge
Popular knowledge consists of the facts, interpretations, and beliefs that are
institutionalized within television, movies, videos, DVDs, CDs, and other
forms of mass media. Many of the tenets of popular knowledge are
conveyed in subtle rather than explicit ways ( Cortés, 2012 ). These state
ments are examples of significant themes in U.S. popular knowledge: (1)
The United States is a powerful nation with unlimited opportunities for
individuals who are willing to take advantage of them. (2) To succeed in the
United States, an individual only has to work hard. You can realize your
dreams in the United States if you are willing to work hard and pull yourself
up by the bootstraps. (3) As a land of opportunity for all, the United States is
a highly cohesive nation, whose ideals of equality and freedom are shared
by all.
Most of the major tenets of American popular culture are widely
shared and are deeply entrenched in U.S. society. However, they are rarely
explicitly articulated. Rather, they are presented in the media, in museums (
Sherman, 2008 ), historical sites ( Loewen, 1999 ), and in other sources in
the forms of stories, anecdotes, news stories, and interpreta
tions of current events ( Cortés, 2012 ). In his engaging and informative
book, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, Loewen
describes how historical sites in the U.S. perpetuate and reinforce popu lar
myths about American heroes, events, and exceptionalism.