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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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some educators and parents in the U.S. are coming to think that multicultural classroom instruction is undermining children's ability to read, write and reason. they claim that social goals now dominate academic goals in the reading curriculum, that children's literature and literary study has been corrupted, and that the classroom environment has been downgraded and degraded through the multi-culteral agenda and anti-intellectualism.
comments?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I'm inclined to say YSLIU but I wouldn't think of it.
If you have a look in "A Word a Day in Schools" you will see a similar thread. Perhaps you would like to join in?
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newbie
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Oh boy, if comments were solicited from the people of southern California, a couple of new servers would be required to handle the mail.
The trend here is away from multicultural pandering. "English immersion" is the language teaching method of the day — and it seems to work. Los Angeles Unified School District has well over 100 languages represented by the students; a "multicultural" language instruction would result in utter chaos, the Tower of Babel. English (Americanized) is the Mother Tongue and the language of many disciplines including computer science and the internet. I believe language is the source of experience (reality?) and also that multicultural (read — bilingual) instruction grossly interferes with "word as object." Words used with the vagaries of language constructs define who we are, what we see and feel, and even the world at large. I understand that because of developing brain functions language that is not learned by the age of 14 or so is grossly inferior to that learned earlier on. Why clutter up a child's head? Hey, for that matter, why clutter up my head? I love multiculturalism and relish ethnic variety, but as crucial as language is, a single one will be dominant and the one that is taught should be the language of choice (whatever it is) in the society with which one aspires to be communicative in.
If this is truly the Internet Age, then those with social agendas on the teaching block will be aiding an intellectual rift from which an elite will emerge, information haves vs the have-nots. I think this rift is dangerous to individual actualization and to society as a whole; it's already pervasive globally but why perpetuate such foolhardiness when in the end a multi-pronged language approach is bogged down, noisy, and unnecessary? English is cumbersome as it is and takes great focus to begin to master. A "multicultural" approach to education results in mediocrity of many languages and superiority of none.
michaelo
I notice that the spell checker offers "multidimensional" as a correction to "multicultural." This difference could sway my opinion a bit.....
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Just a thought, but my landlord's daughter is five, and she can speak Indonesian, Thai, and English, and some Javanese. Her head doesn't seem any more cluttered than that of any other child of that age.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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old hand
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>as crucial as language is, a single one will be dominant..
Dear Michaelo,
That's exactly the crux of the matter! If my personal "dominant" language happens to be dominant worldwide, i.e. english, I shall probably not feel information deprived unless I am a word-maven. In all other cases I think that cultivating at least a second language is absolutely vital, since, in the present age, language is used to ACQUIRE knowledge even more often than to communicate. Furthermore, given the mutual influence between languages, I doubt if you can be a true master in one language while completely disregarding the others.
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Languages are beautiful and none of them should be disregarded. I'm reminded of a mining operation in West Papua (Irian Jaya) that has displaced 250 tribes with 250 (!) languages. This is a nightmare. All languages add a great deal to human experience. I studied German for quite a few years and my own thinking and communication skills are that much richer for it.
And, yes, there are quite a few, including children, that can acquire and use multiple languages with seeming ease. However, I understood the original post was about the educational system. I don't believe that children (< 12?) should be instructed more than one language in a single system. A second language could be learned outside the school. Instructing two languages would be like instructing the metric _and_ the American systems of measurement. Sure, it's great to know both or even a host of systems, but given the time, subject and attention constraints in school, I don't think there is the pleasure of focusing on more than one language if one is to get a well-rounded education.
Language is the primary tool to learn to teach all other subjects. All communication is based on agreed upon symbols. There are fluid boundaries to these agreements but most of them are based on geography.
In other words, when in Rome......
Unfortunately, the multicultural approach in this country is most often really bi-cultural, especially when it comes to languages. It seems that the only language taught in school these days is Spanish. I don't think even French or German are offered in this "multicultural" city of Los Angeles. Why is that???
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addict
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'multicultural classroom instruction is undermining children's ability to read, write and reason'
tsuwm, did you mean multicultural, or multilingual? Everyone seems to have responded on the multilingual front, but I initially read your question as wider than that.
For me, multicultural education means teaching about various cultures, and equally importantly teaching with sensitivity to the beliefs and traditions of those cultures. I think that's a good thing. I think it's useful to know how major religions differ - I think it's even more useful if an education points out how much major religions have in common! (I realise using religion as an example may be strange in the US school environment, but in many cases it's hard to separate religion and culture, and anyway the same point would apply.)
'they claim that social goals now dominate academic goals in the reading curriculum'
At the risk of being incredibly cynical, haven't social goals always dominated? One of the purposes of education has always been socialisation to the existing norms. Learning the piano and how to do watercolours for the upper class Victorian era lady. Classes to teach orphan girls sewing, cooking and housemaid skills, while orphan boys learned trades. Preparation for life after education.
Perhaps part of the 'problem' is that we no longer have one generally accepted idea of the social goals that our education system(s) should be upholding. That's multicultural in that more than one set of values is accepted as valid. And I think that's probably good overall, even if it does lead to debate and tension.
Remembering that I am still thinking in a monolingual teaching environment (with the exception of lessons in 'foreign' languages, of course), I see no necessary connection between multicultural teaching and a lessening in children's ability to read, write and reason. Spelling, grammar, logic and mathematics are all independent of whether there is a God, whether pork is a clean meat to eat or whether it is permissible for a girl to wear a skirt. (Or a boy to wear a skirt, for that matter!)
As for the monolingual / multilingual debate, I side very strongly with Han Suyin, who said something along the lines of
'Speaking only one language is like looking at the world through only one eye - you lose perspective.'
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I wholeheartedly agree with much of your perspective, Bridget, particularly the quote from Han Suyin. You bring up an interesting point: the difference between multicultural and multilingual. It seems that multiculturalism would be instructed in the discipline of Geography and not Languages. I guess it is presumed that if one learns a foreign language that one is also learning about the culture and that is only true to a very limited extent. Multiculturalism, if it is being taught in the subject of Geography, is failing miserably as evidenced by school test scores and knowledge of the general public. Climate and location are intrinsic to any culture. Cultural practices must be taught with meaning and substance. Cultural behavior characteristics, e.g, they eat with chopsticks vs they eat with forks, do not in themselves convey culture but the meaning and history behind them do.
Oddly, I find myself questioning whether *any* culture is instructed in school outside of university.
My conclusions:
1) Multicultural instruction is good.
2) Multilingual instruction is not multicultural instruction.
3) *If * multiculturalism is indeed being taught, *then* its instruction is failing.
4) Multilingual instruction, of one's choice, is desirable if not essential for a global perspective.
michaelo
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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actually, when I started this thread I had in mind the multicultural "whole-language" concepts, such as "Black English" and "Spanglish", which has nothing much to do with multilingual teaching.
my own fellings are that such half-measures were doomed to failure.
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>It seems that multiculturalism would be instructed in the discipline of Geography and not Languages.<
I'm of the opinion that certain things should be taught in all disciplines and not be considered the preserve of one discipline.
For example, when I was at school correct use of English (the school language) was an integral requirement of lessons in any subject - or at least any subject that used English. I would lose marks in a science essay if I spelled (spelt?) a word wrongly, or wrote incomplete or unclear sentences. This seems to me to make the school environment reflect the real world - where you need not only the correct information but an ability to present it credibly.
Multiculturalism is perhaps more of an ideological wish or attitude than a 'future success factor', but personally I'd like to see it in the fabric of teaching in the same way.
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addict
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>the multicultural "whole-language" concepts, such as "Black English" and "Spanglish"<
I'm aware of Black English as a separate language/dialect/creole. I understand from something I read (perhaps Stephen Pinker's the Language Instinct) that it has an internal grammar as precise and consistent as standard English.
I'm not aware of Spanglish at all.
I grew up with something called Franglais - an unholy mixture of the two languages which required basic understanding of both to make sense of it, but as far as I'm aware that was only ever used humorously and I cannot imagine it was used in a school situation.
Enlighten me as to what the US school system means in practical terms by a 'multicultural whole-language concept' and I'll tell you what I think!
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