the opening, sanctity of multicultural education

While it has been a great challenge for educators to find out the best system to educate students as responsible individuals, educators should also prepare students to be part of multicultural society. According to (Pacino, 2008), teachers have a big responsibility to create teaching and learning environments that foster a democratic exchange of ideas based on mutual respect, reflection, and informed decision making. The students need to be taught about the sanctity of tolerance to others in multicultural community. I examine the importance of implementing multicultural and moral education at school. More specifically, I will argue that multicultural education is beneficial to (1), educate the students as the whole individuals, and (2) prepare students to become responsible member of society.

            First, multicultural education will educate students holistically. This means, teaching and learning aims to prepare students both academically and socially (Cunningham & Allington, 1999). Often as educators, we become focused on teaching and learning as processes solely concerned with the academic achievement of students. In Indonesia, for example, most schools employ the results of academic tests as the primary measurement of being a “good student”. This must be changed since it does not prepare students socially as citizens in a multicultural world.

Helping students to develop positive attitudes and become responsible individuals is strongly needed in our classrooms. We cannot rely on the traditional methods of teaching which put the teacher as the center of the classroom. The students should not be passive learners. According to (Pacino, 2008), teaching and learning must take place within a learning community where teachers and students are all learners. This means that we need to create an atmosphere of equality in our classrooms. To do this, teachers must encourage students to know each other as individuals, regard each other as equals, and be able to work together on common interest and goals in a safe and supportive classroom environment (Smardo and Schmidt, 1983, p.25). Creating such a classroom climate that promotes the internalization of these shared values through multicultural education will help students to actively develop as learners, as people, and as citizens.

Secondly, multicultural education can prepare students to be responsible member of society. We know that the students need to understand about how to be the part of society. As Pacino (2008) eloquently says, teaching and learning in the context of community is truly a moral, spiritual, and ethical journey. This means the concept of ethical and moral values and actions in society should be integrated in their classroom. According to Pacino, educators must acknowledge and address students’ need to have the real experience of being community, not only of individual academic achievement at school. Multicultural and moral knowledge should be the vital components in the learning process.

            In addition, in multicultural and democratic countries, teachers should educate students to actively participate and contribute in their society. By acquiring the moral and ethical values at school, students can develop their awareness of and ability to act for equality and social justice in participatory democracies. In order to achieve this, teachers should place themselves as the facilitators of information, not as dictators of information. Students have the wide access to information from the outside world. Teachers have a duty to put that wide and broad information into a coherent context in the classroom and actively involve the students in discussing and processing it. This kind of active engagement enables students to experience the feelings of respect and autonomy that they need to participate in a fully democratic society and a multicultural world.

            There are specific methods that teachers can implement to achieve more meaningful education for students. One example is implementing activities and discussions that focus on positive aspect of cultural identity, heritage and differences such as involving students in developing personally relevant multicultural stories, books, or even autobiographies. Teachers can ask students to actively present and discuss their own story. One of the purpose of inviting students to share their stories is to better understand how the students can use their background knowledge to gain access to curricular content (Campano, 2007). By combining the multicultural and moral components of learning, students will learn to respect the diversity in society too. This includes the understanding on cross-cultural differences and social challenges (Tilaar, 2004).

In addition, we can reinforce the importance of multicultural education by involving students with community service/learning activities. This gives students the opportunity to be more responsible, knowledgeable and sensitive to their communities. This sensitivity is good for the students’ personal moral development, their sense of community, and increased tolerance, acceptance, and respect to others.

It is not always easy to create meaningful education by implementing multicultural education in our classrooms. There are so many challenges such as complicated regulations, increased preparation, etc. Therefore this becomes huge duty to educators to build up classroom communities that extend into an awareness of students’ role in larger communities and responsibility on them. This can be done through introducing greater awareness of our communities through creating positive classroom environment that include community service and positive atmosphere of discussion. Hence, students are well-prepared as a whole individual and member of society.

Reference:

Campano, G.: Honoring student stories. Educational Leadership 65(2): 48-54.

Cunningham, P. M., & Allington, R. L. (1999). Classrooms that work. (2 ed.). New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publisher Inc.

Pacino, M.A. 2008. Reflection on Equity, Diversity, and Schooling. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books

Smardo, Frances A., & Schimdt, Velma. (1983). Developing multicultural awareness. Children Today, 12, 23-25.

Tilaar. (2004). Multikulturalisme. Lembaga Manajemen UNJ; Jakarta