When thinking about different topics and readings in class that perturbed me an article from this summer came to mind, “Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research And The Overwhelming Presence Of Whiteness.” This article focused on the disadvantages that white teachers bestow onto minority students because of their attitudes and lack of knowledge of multicultural backgrounds and lack of education on teaching multicultural students. Here are a couple of the quotes from the article that really annoyed me.
“Students (preserive teachers) of color tend to bring richer experiences and perspectives to multicultural teaching than do most White students (preservice teachers), who dominate numerically.” (p. 94)
Okay – how can anyone truly know this??? The article states that several studies documented this pattern in preservice teachers.
“As a whole, however, they (white teachers) bring very little cross-cultural background, knowledge, and experience”. (p.95)
So does this mean that non-white teachers bring and share cross-cultural background knowledge and experiences of all multicultural students or just students from their own culture?
I do believe that some of the information in the article was interesting and I agree that multicultural teaching is an area of focus that ALL preservice teachers need to be better educated in. However, overall I felt that this article made the assumption that basically only “certain” teachers should be selected and good enough to teach diverse students and insure success for these students within urban schools.
2 responses so far ↓
1
polo1
// Mar 14, 2009 at 10:05 am
Kim, I appreciate your frankness. Don’t you wonder why certain people write certain things, or say certain things? What bothers me are the generalizations and an overall sense of judgment. I wonder about the audacity of these generalizations, even when we hear them in our classes.Yes, some of the things we have read have made me quite angry, yet some have left me wondering, “Is there any truth to it?”. I think that truth spurs us on.
2
rdomenick1
// Mar 15, 2009 at 8:43 am
When I read this article, I remember being annoyed at first and then I thought about it. In all reality, if I were a teacher in a predominantly multicultural class, what I could bring to that class in regards to my personal experience in a family, community, my undergraduate schooling, the schools in which I have taught, and other lifetime situations would be completely unlike theirs. I’ve grown up, conducted my life, and live in a predominantly White, middle class setting and I would have a lot to learn.
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