Multicultural Education Chapter Summary

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Chapter one’s main idea was to provide a basic definition of multicultural education and provide the reader with insight on how the multicultural education movement has developed and progressed throughout the years. Banks and Banks define multicultural education as an idea stating that all students, regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, language, culture, social class, religion, exceptionality, or sexual orientation, should experience the same educational equality in school. I completely agree with the statement in this chapter that several schools’ characteristics provide one or two main groups a better chance to succeed in school than students from other groups or minorities. The Multicultural Education reform movement was designed to bring about a transformation of schools in order to provide an equal chance at success for all genders, cultures, languages, and ethnic groups. The movement required a variety of changes of the schools, including school policies, instructional materials, attitudes, assessment methods, and teaching styles. It is important that all major components of schools be changed in order to create a multicultural environment rather than only changing one or two components and expecting such a major change. …show more content…

The United States has a dominant culture, also referred to as a macroculture, as well as several microcultures. Microcultures are specialized subgroups that are specially marked with their own languages, rule expectations, and characteristics. Such microcultures share common core values, but such core values can be and often are interpreted differently within each culture. There is a strong belief in individualism in our nation’s dominating macroculture that is not as strongly endorsed by other microcultures and can be viewed as rather estranged. Individualism rests on the belief that an individual’s hard work is morally good and laziness is

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