Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education

Introduction

Publishing a revision of Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education is especially appropriate and timely because of the significant increase in the nation's population of people of color that has occurred since they were published sixteen years ago. The percentage of people of color in the nation will continue to rise throughout the early decades of the next century. Indeed, the 1990 census revealed that one out of every four people who live in the United States is a person of color and that one out of every three people will be a person of color by the turn of the century. Likewise, the ethnic and racial makeup of the nation's classrooms is changing significantly. Students of color constitute a majority in twenty-five of the nation's largest school districts and in California, our most populous state with a population of thirty million people. Students of color will make up nearly half (46 percent) of the nation's school-age youth by 2020, and about 27 percent of those students will be victims of poverty.

One important implication of these demographic trends is that education in the twenty-first century must help low-income students and students of color to develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to participate in the work force and in society. This goal is not possible without restructuring schools, colleges, and universities, and institutionalizing new goals and ideals within them. As currently conceptualized and organized, schools today are unable to help most low-income students and students of color attain these goals.

Another important implication of the demographic imperative is that students from all social groups, i.e., class, racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender, must attain the knowledge, skills, and competencies necessary to participate in public discourse and civic action with people who differ from them in significant ways. People are socialized within families and in communities where they learn the values, perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors of their primordial culture. Community culture enables people to survive. It also, however, restricts their freedom and their ability to make critical choices and to reform their society.

Multicultural education helps students understand and affirm their community cultures and helps to free them from cultural boundaries, allowing them to create and maintain a civic community that works for the common good. Multicultural education seeks to actualize the idea of e pluribus unum within our nation and to create a society that recognizes and respects the cultures of its diverse people, people united within a framework of overarching democratic values. A unified and cohesive democratic society can be created only when the rights of its diverse people are reflected in its institutions, within its national culture, and within its schools, colleges, and universities. A national culture or school curriculum that does not reflect the voices, struggles, hopes, and dreams of its many peoples is neither democratic nor cohesive. Divisiveness within a nation-state occurs when important segments within its society are structurally excluded and marginalized.

The changing ethnic texture in the United States has stimulated a bitter debate over the extent to which the school, college, and university curricula should be revised to reflect ethnic, cultural, and gender diversity. This polarized debate has become forensic and has generated more heat than light.

The increase of our nation's students of color and the debate over the curriculum make this an appropriate time for National Council for the Social Studies to reaffirm its commitment to educational programs and curricula that reflect the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity within the United States and the world. As diversity in the world grows, it becomes increasingly important for students in the United States to acquire the knowledge, skills, and values essential for functioning in cross-racial, cross-ethnic, and cross-cultural situations. For democracy to function in a pluralistic nation-state, its citizens must be able to transcend their ethnic and cultural boundaries in order to participate in public discussion and action. An important goal of multicultural education is to help students from diverse cultures learn how to transcend their cultural borders and engage in dialogue and action essential for the survival of our democratic political system and way of life. No goal for education is more important as we approach the threshold of the new century.

When Margit McGuire, president of National Council for the Social Studies, invited me to revise these guidelines, I asked each original author to send me his or her revisions and suggestions. I have incorporated most of the suggestions they sent me. I must assume total responsibility for this revised edition, however, because I selected the ideas to incorporate and wrote the new text. I wish to publicly thank each member of the task force for sending me thoughtful revisions and suggestions in a timely fashion. We have remained warm friends and professional colleagues for nearly two decades.

I am grateful to Charlotte Anderson and the NCSS Equity and Social Justice Committee for preparing thoughtful and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this revised edition of the guidelines.

This revised edition of the guidelines differs from the original in many ways. The term multiethnic education was used in the title and throughout the first edition; in the revised edition, multicultural education is used. Today, multicultural education is the most frequently used term to refer to the issues and concerns discussed in this document. The term multiethnic education has almost faded from our lexicon, a trend the task force resisted and did not foresee when the guidelines were written in 1976.

Multicultural education is also used in this edition because it more readily communicates to the new generation of readers its focus and content. Furthermore, I have tried to broaden the document's scope to include cultural groups that may not be ethnic, although ethnic groups remain the primary focus. Many of the principles, concepts, and issues discussed in the guidelines are linked to issues related to gender, class, and region-and to the intersection of these variables-as much as they are to ethnic groups and ethnicity. Also, people who are ethnic also have a gender, a social class, and a region; the intersection of these variables is an important and growing concern of multicultural theorists.

This revised edition also focuses more on race than the original does. We rarely used the word race in the first edition, perhaps because of our vain hope that silence would facilitate racism's disappearance. The ugly racial incidents that have occurred in our society-specifically on college and university campuses-since the guidelines were first published have eroded our hope that racism would dry up like a raisin in the sun. Racism is cyclic, and is alive and well today. Both racism and sexism must be examined seriously in any sound multicultural curriculum.

New concepts, terms, and statistics have also been incorporated into this edition. The bibliography reflects the new research and the extent to which the field of multicultural education has matured and prospered since the guidelines were first published. I hope this revision will both promote further growth and development in the field and raise the level of dialogue about multicultural education, especially among the public and within the popular media.

These guidelines are divided into four sections: A Rationale for Ethnic Pluralism and Multicultural Education, Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education, The Multicultural Education Program Evaluation Checklist, plus a section of references.

The rationale section describes the view of society on which these guidelines are predicated, describes the nature of educational institutions and learners in a culturally pluralistic society, and delineates goals for school reform.

The second section describes the ideal characteristics of educational environments that are consistent with the ethnic pluralism described in the rationale. The term multicultural education, as used in these guidelines, does not necessarily refer to educational institutions that have mixed racial and ethnic populations, but, rather, to the idealized educational institutions and curricula that reflect and are sensitive to the ethnic and cultural diversity within the United States and the world.

The third section encourages and helps in the assessment of specific educational environments to determine how they reflect an idealized educational institution. The guidelines describe goals that each educational institution can strive to achieve and provide specific guidelines intended to clarify the meaning of the general guideline and to facilitate the assessment of educational environments.

I would like to acknowledge the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington for research assistance that enabled me to find time within a hectic schedule to revise these guidelines. I am grateful to Allen D. Glenn, dean of our College of Education, for his support of the Center and my work. I thank my family-Cherry, Angela, and Patricia-for paying a high price of family time and weekends for a professional duty that I felt was a high calling.

James A. Banks, Director

Center for Multicultural Education

University of Washington

Seattle, Washington

Part One

A Rationale for Ethnic Pluralism and Multicultural Education

Three major factors make multicultural education a necessity: (1) ethnic pluralism is a growing societal reality that influences the lives of young people; (2) in one way or another, individuals acquire knowledge or beliefs, sometimes invalid, about ethnic and cultural groups; and (3) beliefs and knowledge about ethnic and cultural groups limit the perspectives of many and make a difference, often a negative difference, in the opportunities and options available to members of ethnic and cultural groups. Because ethnicity, race, and class are important in the lives of many citizens of the United States, it is essential that all members of our society develop multicultural literacy, that is, a solidly based understanding of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups and their significance in U.S. society and throughout the world. Schools cannot afford to ignore their responsibility to contribute to the development of multicultural literacy and understanding. Only a well-conceived, sensitive, thorough, and continuous program of multicultural education can create the broadly based multicultural literacy so necessary for the future of our nation and world.

In the United States, ethnic diversity has remained visible despite the acculturation process that takes place in any society made up of many ethnic groups. Although ethnic affiliations are weak for many U.S. citizens, a large number still have some attachments to their ethnic cultures and to the symbols of their ancestral traditions. The values and behavior of many U.S. citizens are heavily influenced by their ethnicity. Ethnic identification is often increased by the discrimination experienced by many because of their racial characteristics, language, or culture. Ethnic identification is also increased when significant numbers of new immigrants from the homeland arrive in the United States. Thousands of immigrants from Asia and Latin America made the United States their home during the 1980s. About 85 percent of the documented immigrants that settled in the United States between 1981 and 1989 came from Asia (47 percent) and Latin America (38 percent) (Banks 1991a, 4).

During the 1980s and 1990s, a significant increase in the population of people of color in the United States and the expression of new forms of racism stimulated a vigorous and contentious debate among educators about the extent to which the curriculum should be revised to reflect ethnic and cultural diversity. At least three major groups that participated in this debate can be identified-the Western traditionalists, the Afrocentrists, and the multiculturalists. The Western traditionalists argue that content about Europe and Western civilization should be at the center of the curriculum in the nation's schools, colleges, and universities because of the extent to which Western ideas and values have influenced the development of U.S. culture and civilization (Howe 1991; Ravitch 1990; Schlesinger 1991). The Afrocentrists maintain that it is essential that an African perspective be incorporated into the curriculum (Asante 1991). The multiculturalists believe that concepts and events should be viewed from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives (Banks 1991a; Sleeter and Grant 1987; Tetreault 1989). The multiculturalists also argue that the conception of Western civilization taught in schools should be reconceptualized to acknowledge the debt the West owes to Asian and African civilizations (Bernal 1991). The multiculturalists also believe that the conflict inherent in the West's commitment to democratic ideals and the racism and sexism still practiced in Western societies should be made explicit in the curriculum.

The bitter debate about the extent to which issues related to race and ethnicity should be reflected in the curriculum of the nation's schools indicates that race and ethnicity are cogent forces in contemporary U.S. society. The debate over the curriculum canon is an appropriate one for a pluralistic democratic society. It reflects the extent to which various interest groups are trying to shape the national identity and culture in the United States in ways that are consistent with their views of the nation's past, present, and future.

The concept of cultural diversity embraced in these guidelines is most consistent with the position of the multiculturalists-a position that incorporates important elements of both the Western traditionalist and the Afrocentrist approaches. The multiculturalists' position contributes best to the building of a society that incorporates diversity within a cohesive and unified nation-state. Multicultural education supports and enhances the notion of e pluribus unum-out of many, one. To build a successful and inclusive nation-state, the hopes, dreams, and experiences of the many groups within it must be reflected in the structure and institutions of society. This is the only viable way to create a nation-state in which all groups will feel included, loyal, and patriotic.

The guidelines presented in this document are predicated on a democratic ideology in which ethnic and cultural diversity is viewed as a positive, integral ingredient. A democratic society protects and provides opportunities for ethnic and cultural diversity at the same time having overarching values-such as equality, justice, and human dignity-that all groups accept and respect. Ethnic and cultural diversity is based on the following four premises:

1. Ethnic and cultural diversity should be recognized and respected at individual, group, and societal levels.

2. Ethnic and cultural diversity provides a basis for societal enrichment, cohesiveness, and survival.

3. Equality of opportunity should be afforded to members of all ethnic and cultural groups.

4. Ethnic and cultural identification should be optional for individuals.

Characteristics of an Ethnic Group

Because this document focuses on ethnic pluralism and its implications for school reform, it is essential that we establish a working definition of ethnic group that reflects social science theory and research and facilitates school reform. No one definition of the term is accepted by all social scientists or is adequate for the purpose of this document. Consequently, the working definition used herein reflects a composite of existing definitions and the results of task force discussions.

An ethnic group is distinguished from other kinds of cultural groups in the definition for this document. An ethnic group is a specific kind of cultural group having all the following characteristics:

a. Its origins precede the creation of a nation-state or are external to the nation-state. In the case of the United States, ethnic groups have distinct pre-United States or extro-United States territorial bases, e.g., immigrant groups and Native Americans.

b. It is an involuntary group, although individual identification with the group may be optional.

c. It has an ancestral tradition and its members share a sense of peoplehood and an interdependence of fate.

d. It has distinguishing value orientations, behavioral patterns, and interests.

e. Its existence has an influence, in many cases a substantial influence, on the lives of its members.

f. Membership in the group is influenced both by how members define themselves and by how they are defined by others.

The definition of ethnic group stated above includes some groups that are distinguished primarily on the basis of race, such as African Americans and Japanese Americans, some that are distinguished primarily on the basis of unique sets of cultural and religious attributes, such as Jewish Americans, and some that are distinguished on the basis of national origin, such as Polish Americans. The criteria for characterization, of course, frequently overlap; Japanese Americans, for example, constitute an ethnic group characterized by national, cultural, and racial origins. The definition does not include cultural or regional groups of United States origin, such as those from the Appalachian region. This exclusion does not imply that such groups do not have unique cultural experiences that have teaching implications. Although they are not the primary focus of this document, many of the guidelines are applicable to the study of regional and other kinds of cultural groups. Factors such as region, race, gender, social class, and religion are variables that cut across ethnic groups. Students must examine these factors to gain a valid understanding of the nature of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in U.S. society.

Characteristics of a Cultural Group

A cultural group shares behavioral patterns, symbols, values, beliefs, and other human-constructed characteristics that distinguish it from other groups. Kroeber and Kluckhuhn (1952, 161), after surveying definitions of culture, concluded that "culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional...ideas and especially their attached values."

Like most social scientists today, Kroeber and Kluckhuhn emphasize the intangible, symbolic, and ideational aspects of culture. Ideas, ways of thinking, values, symbols, and other intangible aspects of human life-and not tangible objects such as tools, clothing, or foods-distinguish one cultural group from another in modernized societies. Two cultural groups might eat the same foods but have different meanings and interpretations for them. It is their values, perspectives, and ways of viewing reality that distinguish cultural groups from one another in the United States, not their clothing, foods, or other tangible aspects of group life.

Principles of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity

1. Ethnic and cultural diversity should be recognized and respected at the individual, group, and societal levels.

Ethnic and cultural diversity is a social reality all too frequently ignored by educational institutions, yet it deserves open recognition. Members of ethnic and cultural groups often have worldviews, values, traditions, and practices that differ from those of the mainstream society and from those of other ethnic groups.

Even in the midst of a marked degree of assimilation and acculturation, and in spite of efforts to ignore, belittle, or eliminate some ethnic differences, many U.S. citizens have strong feelings of ethnic identity (Alba 1990). Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, some ethnic groups have heightened their visibility and increased their demands for equal opportunity (Alba 1990). Ethnic and cultural diversity continues to permeate life in the United States. Its persistence and our nation's changing demographics suggest that it will characterize the future (Hodgkinson 1985).

Nearly half (46 percent) of school-age youths in the United States will be people of color by 2020 (Pallas, Natriello, and McDill 1989). People of color, women, and immigrants will make up more than 83 percent of the new additions to the U.S. work force between now and the turn of the century. White men born in the United States will make up only 15 percent of the new additions to the labor force during this period (Johnson and Packer 1987).

Simply recognizing ethnic and cultural diversity is not enough. Understanding and respect for diverse values, traditions, and behaviors are essential if we are to actualize fully our nation's democratic ideals. The call for understanding and respect is based on a belief that the existence and expression of differences can improve the quality of life for individuals, for ethnic and cultural groups, and for society as a whole.

For individuals, group identity can provide a foundation for self-definition. Ethnic and cultural group membership can provide a sense of belonging, of shared traditions, of interdependence of fate-especially for members of groups who have all too often had restricted access to institutions in the larger society. When society views ethnic and cultural differences with respect, individuals can define themselves ethnically without conflict or shame.

The psychological cost of assimilation has been and continues to be high for many U.S. citizens. It too often demands self-denial, self-hatred, and rejection of family and ethnic ties. Social demands for conformity, which have harmful human consequences, are neither democratic nor humane. Such practices deny dignity by refusing to accept individuals as persons in themselves and by limiting the realization of human potential. Such demands run counter to the democratic values of freedom of association and equality of opportunity.

A society that respects ethnic group differences aims to protect its citizens from discriminatory practices and prejudicial attitudes. Such respect supports the survival of these groups and augments their opportunities to shape their lives in ways they choose. For society as a whole, ethnic groups can serve as sources of innovation. By respecting differences, society is provided a wider base of ideas, values, and behaviors that increase its capacity for creative change.

Coping with change is fundamental to the survival of culture. Adapting to new conditions is critical. Without constructive reaction to change, cultures may weaken and deteriorate. In the face of rapidly changing conditions, the United States, as a nation, has to be concerned with ensuring mechanisms for coping with change. One way cultures change is through the process of innovation: a person (or persons) introduces new ways of thinking or behaving which are accepted by society or challenge cultural views. By respecting the plurality of ethnic and cultural life-styles, and by permitting them to flourish, our national culture may expand the base of alternatives from which it can draw in responding to new conditions and new problems.

Conversely, to the extent that a culture is homogeneous, its capability for creative change is limited. When the range of tolerated differences in values and behaviors is minimal, rigidity inhibits innovation. Too much conformity and convergence is characteristic of mass culture. On the other hand, too little acceptance of common cultural values and practices can produce social disorganization. The balance is a delicate one in a culture that must face up to the challenge of changing conditions; a dynamic and pluralistic nation cannot be left without access to competing, unique, and creative ideas. Recognition and respect for ethnic and cultural differences enable society to enhance the potential of individuals and the integrity and contributions of ethnic and cultural groups, and so to invigorate the culture.

2. Ethnic and cultural diversity provides a basis for societal enrichment, cohesiveness, and survival.

The principles on which these guidelines are based seek not only to recognize and respect ethnic and cultural diversity but to establish across racial, ethnic, and cultural lines intercultural bonds that will contribute to the strength and vitality of society.

This position maintains the right of ethnic groups to socialize their young into their cultural patterns as long as such practices are consistent with human dignity and democratic ideals. Therefore, an individual's primary group associations-family relations, friendship groups, religious affiliations-may be heavily influenced by ethnic traditions. At the same time, members of ethnic groups have both the right and the responsibility to accept U.S. democratic values and to help shape the significant institutions of the larger society. Legal and educational institutions must have a strong commitment to affecting the conditions that will permit members of ethnic groups to become fully participating members of the larger society. Ethnic groups must feel that they have a stake in this society; to the extent that ethnic group members feel a sense of ownership in societal institutions, their cultural practices will reflect the inherent values of society as a whole. What is needed is a cohesive society, characterized by ethnic pluralism, wherein the self-identities of individuals allow them to say: "I am an African American (or a Polish American, or a Mexican American)-and I am an American."

Respect for ethnic differences should promote, not destroy, societal cohesion. Although separatism is not the desire of most members of ethnic groups, they strongly demand that their histories and cultures become integral parts of the school curriculum and the larger society (Asante 1987, 1991). To the extent that society creates an environment in which all ethnic groups can flourish, and in which such groups can contribute constructively to the shaping of public institutions, hostilities will be defused and the society will benefit from its rich base of ethnic traditions and cultures. In effect, unity thrives in an atmosphere where varieties of human potential are neither socially censored nor ignored, but valued.

3. Equality of opportunity must be afforded to all members of ethnic and cultural groups.

Recognition and respect for ethnic and cultural groups require legal enforcement of equal economic, political, and educational opportunity. Anything less relegates ethnic groups and their members to the inferior status that has too often limited the quality of their lives.

Ethnic and cultural groups themselves continue to demand equal participation in society as a whole. If society is to benefit from ethnic and cultural differences, it must provide for significant interactions within social institutions. To reach this goal, ethnic and cultural groups must have access to the full range of occupational, educational, economic, and political opportunities. Society will benefit from structural integration and the mutual involvement of all sorts of people in political, educational, and economic life.

4. Ethnic and cultural identification for individuals should be optional in a democracy.

Although the assimilationist ideology has dominated our national thought for two centuries, ethnicity has proved to be a resilient factor in U.S. life and culture. The centrality of Anglo-American tradition notwithstanding, many individuals continue to derive their primary identity from their ethnic group membership. At the same time, it must be recognized that widespread cultural assimilation and acculturation has taken place in U.S. society. Many individuals of white ethnic origin are no longer identified ethnically with their original or primordial ethnic group. Although a large number of these individuals have intermarried and much cultural exchange among white ethnic groups has taken place, a new collective ethnic identity has emerged among white Americans that most of them share. Alba (1990) calls this new ethnic identity and group European Americans.

The degree of individuals' ethnic attachments and affiliations vary greatly. The beliefs and behaviors of some individuals are heavily influenced by their ethnic culture or cultures; others maintain only some ethnic beliefs and behavioral characteristics; still others try to reject or lose, or are simply unaware of, their ethnic origins. There are also individuals of mixed ethnic origin who identify with more than one group or for whom ethnic identification may be difficult or impossible.

For many persons, then, ethnic criteria may be irrelevant for purposes of self-identification. Their identities stem primarily from, for example, gender, social class, occupation, political affiliation, or religion. Moreover, ethnic origins ought not to be romanticized. Many, though not all, who left their original homelands did so because opportunities were closed to them there. However good "the good old days" were, they are gone. The "old countries" too have been changing. Ethnicity should not be maintained artificially.

It is inconsistent with a democratic ideology to mandate ethnic affiliation. In an idealized democratic society, individuals are free to choose their group allegiances. Association should be voluntary-a matter of personal choice. In our society, however, members of some ethnic groups have this option while others do not. Society should maximize the opportunity for individuals to choose their group identifications and affiliations.

Although a democratic society can and should protect the right to ethnic identification, it cannot insist upon it. To do so would violate individual freedom of choice. To confine individuals to any given form of affiliation violates the principles of liberty guaranteed by the basic documents upon which this nation was founded.

The Role of the School

The societal goals stated in this document are future oriented. In effect, they present a vision of our society that recognizes and respects ethnic and cultural diversity as compatible with national and societal unity rather than one that seeks to reduce ethnic and cultural differences. Further progress in that direction is consistent with the democratic ideals-freedom, equality, justice, and human dignity-embodied in our basic national documents. By respecting ethnic and cultural differences, we can help to close the gap between our democratic ideals and societal practices. Such practices are too often discriminatory toward members of ethnic and cultural groups.

It follows, therefore, that schools need to assume a new responsibility. Their socialization practices should incorporate the ethnic diversity that is an integral part of the democratic commitment to human dignity. At the same time, however, schools must help socialize youth in ways that will foster basic democratic ideals that serve as overarching goals for all U.S. citizens. The schools' goal should be to help attain a delicate balance of diversity and unity-one nation that respects the cultural rights and freedoms of its many peoples. As schools embark on educational programs that reflect multiculturalism, they must demonstrate a commitment to:

a. recognize and respect ethnic and cultural diversity;

b. promote societal cohesiveness based on the shared participation of ethnically and culturally diverse peoples;

c. maximize equality of opportunity for all individuals and groups; and

d. facilitate constructive societal change that enhances human dignity and democratic ideals.

The study of ethnic heritage should not consist of a narrow promotion of ethnocentrism or nationalism. Personal ethnic identity and knowledge of others' ethnic identities is essential to the sense of understanding and the feeling of personal well-being that promote intergroup and international understanding. Multicultural education should stress the process of self-identification as an essential aspect of the understanding that underlies commitment to the dignity of humankind throughout the world community.

The Nature of the Learner

Research indicates that individual learning styles vary, that all people do not learn in the same way. Of particular interest to multicultural education is research suggesting that learning styles may be related to ethnicity in some ways (Hale-Benson 1982; Shade 1989). On the basis of this research, schools can reject the notion that all students learn in precisely the same way. For too long, educational practices have reflected such universal views of learning and have expected all students to conform to them. Schools should recognize that they cannot treat all students alike or they run the risk of denying equal educational opportunity to all persons. Educators should be aware of behavior that is normative and acceptable in various ethnic and cultural groups. The practices of multicultural schools must be both responsive and adaptive to ethnic differences.

Goals for School Reform

Two major goals for school reform follow. Both are based on what has preceded: the principles of ethnic and cultural diversity, the role of the school, and cultural differences among individual learners.

1. Schools should create total school environments that are consistent with democratic ideals and cultural diversity.

Schools reflect their values not only in their curricula and materials, but in policies, hiring practices, governance procedures, and climate-sometimes referred to as the informal, or "hidden," curricula. It can be argued that students often learn as much about the society from nonformal areas of schooling as from the planned curriculum. Education for multiculturalism, therefore, requires more than a change in curricula and textbooks. It requires systemwide changes that permeate all aspects of school life.

2. Schools should define and implement curricular policies that are consistent with democratic ideals and cultural diversity.

Schools should not promote the ideologies and political goals of any specific group, including those of dominant groups, but should promote a democratic ideology. Too often, school curricula have promoted the interests of dominant groups and, therefore, have been detrimental to the interests of some ethnic groups. Promoting the interests of any group over those of others increases the possibility of ethnic and racial tension and conflict.

In recent years, a contentious debate has taken place about whose culture or cultures should be reflected and represented in the school and university curriculum. The debate has centered on which social science, philosophical, and literary works should constitute the canonical knowledge taught in the nation's schools, colleges, and universities.

The Western traditionalists are concerned that more content about women and people of color will result in insufficient attention to the Western roots of American civilization (Howe 1991; Ravitch 1990). Multiculturalists have pointed out that the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people of color and women are often left out or muted in many school and university courses about Western civilization and U.S. society (Lerner 1979; Sleeter and Grant 1987; Tetreault 1989). Other advocates have called for an Afrocentric curriculum for predominantly African-American schools (Asante 1987, 1990, 1991).

Curriculum transformation is necessary for the nation's schools, colleges, and universities to describe accurately the Western roots of American civilization and to depict the diversity that characterizes the West. The debt that Western civilization owes to Africa, Asia, and indigenous America should also be described in the curriculum (Bernal 1991; Diop 1974; Sertima 1988; Weatherford 1988).

The conception of Western civilization most often taught in schools, colleges, and universities should be broadened. Too often, the West is conceptualized in a narrow way to include primarily the heritage of Western European upper-class males. Yet the ideas and writings of women and people of color in the United States are also Western. Zora Neale Hurston, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rudolfo A. Anaya, W. E. B. Dubois, Carlos Bulosan, and N. Scott Momaday-like Milton, Shakespeare, Virgil, and Locke-are Western writers. The West should also be described in ways that accurately describe the gap between its democratic ideals and realities. Western civilization is characterized by ideals such as democracy and freedom but also by struggle, conflict, and deferred and shattered dreams.

The curriculum in the nation's schools, colleges, and universities should reflect all of its citizens. When particular groups feel excluded or victimized by schools and other institutions, conflicts, tensions, and power struggles ensue. The pluralist dilemma related to the curriculum canon debate can only be resolved when all groups involved-the Western traditionalists, the Afrocentrists, and the multiculturalists-share power and engage in genuine dialogue and discussion. Power sharing is a requisite to genuine debate and conflict resolution. When groups and individuals feel victimized by the school and the larger society because of ethnicity, conflict and tension result, and struggles to gain rights occur.

Part 2: Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education

1.0 Ethnic and cultural diversity should permeate the total school environment.

Effective teaching about U.S. ethnic and cultural groups can best take place within an educational setting that accepts, encourages, and respects the expression of ethnic and cultural diversity. To attain this kind of educational atmosphere, the total school environment-not merely courses and programs-must be reformed. Schools' informal or "hidden" curricula are as important as their formalized courses of study.

Teaching about various ethnic or cultural groups in a few specialized courses is not enough. Content about a variety of ethnic groups should be incorporated into many subject areas, preschool through 12th grade and beyond. Some dimensions of multicultural education, however, have higher priority in some subject areas than in others. We can identity several dimensions of multicultural education, including content integration, the knowledge construction process, and an equity pedagogy (Banks 1991b). In social studies, the humanities, and the language arts, content integration is often the first and most important concern. In physics, however, developing pedagogies that will help students of color and female students to excel academically might be of greater concern than content integration (Belenky et al. 1986). Students can examine how knowledge is constructed in each discipline.

Multicultural education clearly means different things in different disciplines and areas of study. To interpret or attempt to implement multicultural education the same way in each discipline or area of study will create frustration among teachers and build resistance to the concept. Nevertheless, teachers in each discipline can analyze their teaching procedures and styles to determine the extent to which they reflect multicultural issues and concerns. An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their instruction in ways that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, gender, and social-class groups. This includes using a variety of teaching styles and approaches that are consistent with the wide range of learning styles found in various cultural, ethnic, and gender groups.

To permeate the total school environment with ethnic and cultural diversity, students must have readily available resource materials that provide accurate information on the diverse aspects of the histories and cultures of various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Learning centers, libraries, and resource centers should include a variety of resources on the history, literature, music, folklore, views of life, and art of different ethnic and cultural groups.

Ethnic and cultural diversity in a school's informal programs should be reflected in assembly programs, classrooms, hallway and entrance decorations, cafeteria menus, counseling interactions, and extracurricular programs. School-sponsored dances that consistently provide only one kind of ethnic music, for example, are as contrary to the spirit and principles of multicultural education as are curricula that teach only about mainstream U.S. ideals, values, and contributions.

Participation in activities-such as cheerleading, booster clubs, honor societies, and athletic teams-should be open to all students; in fact, the participation of students from various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds should be solicited. Such activities can provide invaluable opportunities not only for the development of self-esteem, but for students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to learn to work and play together, and to recognize that all individuals, whatever their ethnic identities, have worth and are capable of achieving.

2.0 School policies and procedures should foster positive multicultural interactions and understandings among students, teachers, and the support staff.

School governance should protect the individual's right to (1) retain esteem for his or her home environment, (2) develop a positive self-concept, (3) develop empathy and insight into and respect for the ethnicity of others, and (4) receive an equal educational opportunity.

Each institution needs rules and regulations to guide behavior so as to attain institutional goals and objectives. School rules and regulations should enhance cross-cultural harmony and understanding among students, staff, and teachers. In the past, school harmony was often sought through efforts to "treat everyone the same"; experience in multiethnic settings, however, indicates that the same treatment for everyone is unfair to many students. Instead of insisting on one ideal model of behavior that is unfair to many students, school policies should recognize and accommodate individual and ethnic group differences. This does not mean that some students should obey school rules and others should not; it means that ethnic groups' behaviors should be honored as long as they are not inconsistent with major school and societal goals. It also means that school policies may have to make allowances for ethnic traditions. For example, customs that affect Jewish students' food preferences and school attendance on certain religious days should be respected.

Equal educational opportunity should be increased by rules that protect students from procedures and practices that relegate them to low-ability or special education classes simply because of their low scores on standardized English reading and achievement tests.

It is especially important for educators to consider equity issues related to testing because many groups and individuals are pushing for the establishment of a national test or tests. Unless significant changes are made within schools and society that will enable low-income students and students of color to perform well on national tests, these students will become double victims-victims of both a poor educational system and national tests that relegate them to inferior jobs and deny them opportunities for further education (Mercer 1989). If developed, these national tests should be constructed and used in ways that are consistent with the principles of ethnic pluralism and multicultural education described in these guidelines.

Guidance and other student services personnel should not view students stereotypically regarding their academic abilities and occupational aspirations, and students must be protected from responses based on such views. Counselors should be cautioned to counsel students on the basis of their individual potentials and interests as well as their ethnic needs and concerns. Counselors will need to be particularly aware of their own biases when counseling students whose ethnicity differs from theirs.

Schools should recognize the holidays and festivities of major importance to various ethnic groups. Provisions should be made to ensure that traditional holidays and festivities reflect multicultural modes of celebration. For example, the ways in which some American Indian tribes celebrate Thanksgiving, Orthodox Greeks celebrate Easter, and Jews celebrate Hanukkah can be appropriately included in school programs.

3.0 A school's staff should reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity within the United States.

Members of various ethnic and cultural groups must be part of a school's instructional, administrative, policymaking, and support staffs if the school is truly multiethnic and multicultural. School personnel-teachers, principals, cooks, custodians, secretaries, students, and counselors-make contributions to multicultural environments as important as do courses of study and instructional materials. Students learn important lessons about ethnic and cultural diversity by observing interactions among racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender groups in their school, observing and experiencing the verbal behavior of the professional and support staffs, and observing the extent to which the staff is ethnically and racially mixed. Therefore, school policies should be established and aggressively implemented to recruit and maintain a multiethnic school staff, sensitive to the needs of a pluralistic democratic society.

In addition, students can benefit from positive and cooperative interactions with students from various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups (Slavin 1983; Cohen 1986). When plans are made to mix students from diverse groups-whether through school desegregation, exchange programs and visits, or program assignment-extreme care must be taken to ensure that the environment in which the students interact is a positive and enhancing one (Banks 1991c). When students from different ethnic and racial groups interact within a hostile environment, their racial antipathies are likely to increase (Stephan 1985).

4.0 Schools should have systematic, comprehensive, mandatory, and continuing staff development programs.

A teacher is an important variable in a student's formal learning environment. Attention should be devoted to the training and retraining of teachers and other members of the professional and support staff to create the kind of multicultural school environment recommended in these guidelines. Sound materials and other instructional program components are ineffective in the hands of teachers who lack the skills, attitudes, perceptions, and content background essential for a positive multicultural school environment. An effective staff development program must involve administrators, librarians, counselors, and members of the support staff such as cooks, secretaries, and bus drivers. This is necessary because any well-trained and sensitive teacher must work within a supportive institutional environment to succeed. Key administrators, such as principals, must set by example the school norms for ethnic and cultural differences. The need to involve administrators, especially building principals, in comprehensive and systematic staff development programs cannot be overemphasized.

Effective professional staff development should begin at the preservice level, continue when educators are employed by schools, and focus on helping the staff members: (a) clarify and analyze their feelings, attitudes, and perceptions toward their own and other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups; (b) acquire knowledge about and understanding of the historical experiences and sociological characteristics of ethnic and cultural groups in the United States; (c) increase their instructional skills within multicultural school environments; (d) improve their intercultural communications skills; (e) improve their skill in curriculum development as it relates to ethnic and cultural diversity; and (f) improve their skill in creating, selecting, evaluating, and revising instructional materials.

Staff development for effective multicultural schools is best undertaken jointly by school districts, local colleges and universities, and local community agencies. Each bears a responsibility for training school personnel, at both the preservice and in-service levels, to function successfully within multicultural instructional settings.

Effective staff development programs must be carefully conceptualized and implemented. Short workshops, selected courses, and other short-term experiences may be essential components of such programs, but these alone cannot constitute an entire staff development program. Rather, sound staff development programs should consist of a wide variety of program components including needs assessments, curriculum development, peer teaching, and materials selection and evaluation. Lectures alone are insufficient. Ongoing changes should be made to make staff development programs more responsive to the needs of practicing professionals.

5.0 The curriculum should reflect the cultural learning styles and characteristics of the students within the school community.

Students in a school responsive to ethnic and cultural diversity cannot be treated identically and still be afforded equal educational opportunities. Some students have unique cultural and ethnic characteristics to which the school should respond deliberately and sensitively. Research indicates that the academic achievement of African-American and Hispanic students increases when cooperative teaching techniques such as the jigsaw are used (Aronson and Gonzalez 1988). Moreover, all students develop more positive racial and ethnic attitudes when teachers use cooperative, rather than competitive, learning activities (Aronson and Gonzalez 1988).

Research indicates that many students of color, especially those from low-income families, often have value orientations, behaviors, cognitive styles, language characteristics, and other cultural components that differ from those of the school's culture (Delpit 1988; Deyhle 1986; Fordham 1991; Fordham and Ogbu 1986; Gay 1991; Heath 1983; Hale-Benson [1982]; Shade 1989). These components often lead to conflict between students and teachers. By comparison, most middle-class mainstream youths find the school culture consistent with their home cultures and are, therefore, much more comfortable in school. Many students, though, regardless of their racial, ethnic, or cultural identity, find the school culture alien, hostile, and self-defeating.

A school's culture and instructional programs should be restructured and made to reflect the cultures and learning styles of students from diverse ethnic and social-class groups (Banks and Banks 1989). Research indicates that the instructional strategies and learning styles most often favored in the nation's schools are inconsistent with the cognitive styles, cultural orientations, and cultural characteristics of some groups of students of color (Aronson and Gonzalez 1988; Fordham 1991). This research provides important guidelines and principles that educators can use to change schools to make them more responsive to students from diverse cultural groups. Educators should not ignore racial and ethnic differences when planning instruction; nor should they dismiss the question of racial and ethnic differences with the all-too-easy cliché, "I don't see racial differences in students and I treat them all alike." Research on cognitive styles and language and communication characteristics of ethnic groups suggests that if all students are treated alike, their distinctive needs are not being met and they are probably being denied access to equal educational opportunities (Cummins 1986; Heath 1983; Kochman 1981; Philips 1983).

Although differences among students are accepted in an effective multicultural school, teaching students to function effectively in mainstream society and in social settings different from the ones in which they were socialized, and helping them learn new cognitive styles and learning patterns, must also be major goals. The successful multicultural school helps students become aware of and able to acquire cultural and cognitive alternatives, thus enabling them to function successfully within cultural environments other than their own.

6.0 The multicultural curriculum should provide students with continuous opportunities to develop a better sense of self.

The multicultural curriculum should help students to develop a better sense of self. This development should be an ongoing process, beginning when the student first enters school and continuing throughout the student's school career. This development should include at least three areas:

1. Students should be helped to develop accurate self-identities. Students must ask questions such as who am I? and what am I? in order to come to grips with their own identities.

2. The multicultural curriculum should help students develop improved self-concepts. Beyond considering such questions as who they are and what they are, students should learn to feel positively about their identities, particularly their ethnic identities. Positive self-concepts may be expressed in several ways. The multicultural curriculum, for example, should recognize the varying talents of students and capitalize on them in the academic curriculum. All students need to feel that academic success is possible. The multicultural curriculum should also help students develop a high regard for their original languages and cultures.

3. The multicultural curriculum should help students develop greater self-understanding. Students should develop more sophisticated understandings of why they are the way they are, why their ethnic and cultural groups are the way they are, and what ethnicity and culture mean in their daily lives. Such self-understanding will help students to handle more effectively situations in which ethnicity and culture may play a part.

Students cannot fully understand why they are the way they are and why certain things might occur in their future until they have a solid knowledge of the groups to which they belong and the effects of group membership on their lives. Multicultural education should enable students to come to grips with these individual and group relationships in general and the effects of ethnicity and culture on their lives in particular.

Looking at group membership should not undermine a student's individuality. Rather, it should add a dimension to the understanding of a student's unique individuality by learning the effects of belonging to groups. Neither are students to be assigned and locked into one group. Instead, students should be aware of the many groups to which they belong, both voluntarily and involuntarily, and recognize that at various moments one or more of these groups may be affecting their lives.

The multicultural curriculum should also help students understand and appreciate their personal backgrounds and family heritages. Family studies in the school can contribute to increased self-understanding and a personal sense of heritage, as contrasted with the generalized experiences presented in books. They can also contribute to family and personal pride. If parents and other relatives come to school to share their stories and experiences, students will become increasingly aware that ethnic groups are a meaningful part of our nation's heritage and merit study by all of us so that we can better understand the complexity of the nation's pluralistic experiences and traditions.

7.0 The curriculum should help students understand the totality of the experiences of ethnic and cultural groups in the United States.

The social problems that ethnic and cultural group members experience are often regarded as part of their cultural characteristics. Alcoholism, crime, and illiteracy, for example, are considered by many people cultural characteristics of particular racial or ethnic groups. Ethnicity is often assumed to mean something negative and divisive, and the study of ethnic groups and ethnicity often becomes the examination of problems such as prejudice, racism, discrimination, and exploitation. To concentrate exclusively on these problems when studying ethnicity creates serious distortions in perceptions of ethnic groups. Among other things, it stereotypes ethnic groups as essentially passive recipients of the dominant society's discrimination and exploitation. Although these are legitimate issues and should be included in a comprehensive, effective multicultural curriculum, they should not constitute the entire curriculum.

Although many ethnic group members face staggering sociopolitical problems, these problems do not constitute the whole of their lives. Nor are all ethnic groups affected to the same degree or in the same way by these problems. Moreover, many ethnic groups have developed and maintained viable life-styles and have made notable contributions to U.S. culture. The experiences of each ethnic group are part of a composite of human activities. Although it is true that each ethnic group has significant unifying historical experiences and cultural traits, no ethnic group has a single, homogeneous, historical-cultural pattern. Members of an ethnic group do not conform to a single cultural norm or mode of behavior, nor are ethnic cultures uniform and static.

Consequently, the many dimensions of ethnic experiences and cultures should be studied. The curriculum should help students understand the significant historical experiences and basic cultural patterns of ethnic groups, the critical contemporary issues and social problems confronting each of them, and the dynamic diversity of the experiences, cultures, and individuals within each ethnic group.

A consistently multifaceted approach to teaching benefits students in several major ways. It helps them to become aware of the commonalities within and among ethnic groups. At the same time, it helps counteract stereotyping by making students aware of the rich diversity within each ethnic group in the United States. It also helps students develop more comprehensive and realistic understandings of the broad range of ethnic group heritages and experiences.

8.0 The multicultural curriculum should help students understand that a conflict between ideals and realities always exists in human societies.

Traditionally, students in U.S. common schools have been taught a great deal about the ideals of our society. Conflicts between ideals, however, are often glossed over. Often values, such as freedom in the U.S. democracy, are treated as attainable ideals, and the realities of U.S. society have been distorted to make it appear that they have, indeed, been achieved. Courses in U.S. history and citizenship especially have been characterized by this kind of unquestioning approach to the socialization of youth. This form of citizenship education, "passing down the myths and legends of our national heritage," tends to inculcate parochial national attitudes, promote serious misconceptions about the nature of U.S. society and culture, and develop cynicism in youth who are aware of the gaps between the ideal and the real.

When ethnic studies emerged from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there was a strong and negative reaction to the traditional approach to citizenship education. A widely expressed goal of many curriculum reformers was to "tell it like it is and was" in the classroom. In many of the reformed courses, however, U.S. history and society were taught and viewed primarily from the viewpoints of specific ethnic groups. Little attention was given to basic U.S. values, except to highlight gross discrepancies between ideals and practices of U.S. society. Emphasis was often on how ethnic groups of color had been oppressed by Anglo-Americans.

Both the unquestioning approach and the tell-it-like-it-is approach result in distortions. In a sound multicultural curriculum, emphasis should be neither on the ways in which the United States has "fulfilled its noble ideals" nor on the "sins committed by the Anglo-Americans" (or any other group of Americans). Rather, students should be encouraged to examine the democratic values that emerged in the United States, why they emerged, how they were defined in various periods, and to whom they referred in various eras. Students should also examine the extent to which these values have or have not been fulfilled, and the continuing conflict between values such as freedom and equality and between ideals in other societies.

Students should also be encouraged to examine alternative interpretations of the discrepancies between ideals and realities in the life and history of the United States. From the perspectives of some individuals and groups, there has been a continuing expansion of human rights in the United States. Others see a continuing process of weighing rights against rights as the optimum mix of values, none of which can be fully realized as ideals. Many argue that basic human rights are still limited to U.S. citizens who have certain class, racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural characteristics. Students should consider why these various interpretations arose and why there are different views regarding conflicts between the ideals and between the ideals and realities of U.S. society.

9.0 The multicultural curriculum should explore and clarify ethnic and cultural alternatives and options in the United States.

Educational questions regarding students' ethnic and cultural alternatives and options are complex and difficult. Some individuals, for a variety of complex reasons, are uncomfortable with their ethnic and cultural identities and wish to deny them. Some individuals are uncomfortable when their own ethnic groups are discussed in the classroom. Teachers need to handle these topics sensitively; they must not ignore them.

The degree of a class's resistance when studying ethnic or cultural groups is influenced by the teacher's approach to the study of diversity. Students can sense when the teacher or other students in the class are intolerant of their particular group or some of its characteristics. Students often receive such messages from nonverbal responses. The teacher can minimize students' resistance to studying their own heritage by creating a classroom atmosphere that reflects acceptance and respect for ethnic and cultural differences. Most importantly, teachers need to model their own acceptance of and respect for ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity.

Teachers should help students understand the options related to their own ethnic and cultural identity and the nature of ethnic and cultural alternatives and options within the United States. Students should be helped to understand that, ideally, all individuals should have the right to select the manner and degree of identifying or not identifying with their ethnic and cultural groups. They should learn, however, that some individuals, such as members of many white ethnic groups, have this privilege while others, such as most African Americans, have more limited options. Most persons of European ancestry can become structurally assimilated into the mainstream U.S. society. When they become highly assimilated, they can usually participate completely in most U.S. economic, social, and political institutions. On the other hand, no matter how culturally assimilated or acculturated members of some ethnic groups become, they are still perceived and stigmatized by the larger society on the basis of their physical characteristics.

Students should also be helped to understand that although individualism is strong in the United States, in reality many Americans, such as American Indians and Chinese Americans, are often judged not as individuals but on the basis of the racial or ethnic group to which they belong. While teachers may give American Indian or Chinese American students the option of examining or not examining their ethnic heritage and identity, such students need to be helped to understand how they are perceived and identified by the larger society. Educators must respect the individual rights of students, at the same time, however, they have a professional responsibility to help students learn basic facts and generalizations about the nature of race and ethnicity in the United States.

10.0 The multicultural curriculum should promote values, attitudes, and behaviors that support ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity as well as build and support the nation-state and the nation's shared national culture. E pluribus unum should be the goal of the schools and the nation.

Ethnicity and cultural identity are salient factors in the lives of many U.S. citizens. They helps individuals answer the question, Who am I? by providing a sense of peoplehood, identity, and cultural and spiritual roots. They provide a filter through which events, life-styles, norms, and values are processed and screened. They provide a means through which identity is affirmed, heritages are validated, and preferred associates are selected. Therefore, ethnicity and cultural identity serve necessary functions in many people's lives. Ethnicity and cultural identity are neither always positive and reinforcing, nor always negative and debilitating, although they have the potential for both. An effective multicultural curriculum examines all of these dimensions of ethnicity and cultural identity.

The curriculum should help students understand that diversity is an integral part of life in the United States. Ethnic and cultural diversity permeate U.S. history and society. Demographic projections indicate that the United States will become increasingly multiethnic and multicultural in the future. Consequently, schools should teach about ethnic and cultural diversity to help students acquire more accurate assessments of history and culture in the United States. Major goals of multicultural education include improving respect for human dignity, maximizing cultural options, understanding what makes people alike and different, and accepting diversity as inevitable and valuable to human life.

Students should learn that difference does not necessarily imply inferiority or superiority, and that the study of ethnic and cultural group differences need not lead to polarization. They should also learn that although conflict is unavoidable in ethnically and racially pluralistic societies, such conflict does not necessarily have to be destructive or divisive. Conflict is an intrinsic part of the human condition, especially so in a pluralistic society. Conflict is often a catalyst for social progress. Multicultural education programs that explore ethnic diversity in positive, realistic ways will present ethnic conflict in its proper perspective. They will help students understand that there is strength in diversity, and that cooperation among ethnic groups does not necessarily require identical beliefs, behaviors, and values.

The multicultural curriculum should help students understand and respect ethnic diversity and broaden their cultural options. Too many people in the United States learn only the values, behavioral patterns, and beliefs of either mainstream society or their own ethnic groups, cultural groups, or communities. Socialization is, in effect, encapsulating, providing few opportunities for most individuals to acquire more than stereotypes about ethnic and cultural groups other than their own. Therefore, many people tend to view other ethnic groups and life-styles as "abnormal" or "deviant." The multicultural curriculum can help students correct these misconceptions by teaching them that other ways of living are as valid and viable as their own.

The multicultural curriculum should also promote the basic values expressed in our major historical documents. Each ethnic group should have the right to practice its own religious, social, and cultural beliefs, albeit within the limits of due regard for the rights of others. There is, after all, a set of overarching values that all groups within a society or nation must endorse to maintain societal cohesion. In our nation, these core values stem from our commitment to human dignity, and include justice, equality, freedom, and due process of law. Although the school should value and reflect ethnic and cultural diversity, it should not promote the practices and beliefs of any ethnic or cultural group that contradict the core democratic values of the United States. Rather, the school should foster ethnic and cultural differences that maximize opportunities for democratic living. Pluralism must take place within the context of national unity. E pluribus unum-out of many, one-should be our goal.

Although ethnic and cultural group membership should not restrict an individual's opportunity and ability to achieve and to participate, it is sometimes used by groups in power to the detriment of less powerful groups. Individuals who do not understand the role of ethnicity often find it a troublesome reality, one extremely difficult to handle. Multicultural curricula should help students examine the dilemmas surrounding ethnicity as a step toward realizing its full potential as an enabling force in the lives of individuals, groups, and the nation.

11.0 The multicultural curriculum should help students develop their decision-making abilities, social participation skills, and sense of political efficacy as necessary bases for effective citizenship in a pluralistic democratic nation.

The demands upon people to make reflective decisions on issues related to race, ethnicity, and culture are increasing as the nation's ethnic texture deepens. When people are unable to process the masses of conflicting information-including facts, opinions, interpretations, and theories about ethnic groups-they are often overwhelmed.

The multicultural curriculum must enable students to gain knowledge and apply it. Students need a rich foundation of sound knowledge. Facts, concepts, generalizations, and theories differ in their capability for organizing particulars and in predictive capacity; concepts and generalizations have more usefulness than mere collections of miscellaneous facts. Young people need practice in the steps of scholarly methods for arriving at knowledge-identifying problems, formulating hypotheses, locating and evaluating source materials, organizing information as evidence, analyzing, interpreting, and reworking what they find, and making conclusions. Students also need ample opportunities to learn to use knowledge in making sense out of the situations they encounter.

When curricular programs are inappropriate, teaching is inept, or expectations are low for students of some ethnic groups, and especially for those who are low-income, the emphasis in class is likely to be on discrete facts, memorization of empty generalizations, and low-level skills. Even if the names, dates, and exercises in using an index are drawn from ethnic content, such an emphasis is still discriminatory and inconsistent with the basic purpose of multicultural education. All young people need opportunities to develop powerful concepts, generalizations, and intellectual abilities when studying content related to ethnic and cultural diversity.

Students must also learn to identify values and relate them to knowledge. Young people should be taught methods for clarifying their own values relating to ethnic and cultural diversity. Such processes should include identifying value problems (their own and others'), describing evaluative behaviors, recognizing value conflicts in themselves and in social situations, recognizing and proposing alternatives based on values, and making choices between values in light of their consequences.

Determining basic ideas, discovering and verifying facts, and valuing are interrelated aspects of decision making. Ample opportunity for practice in real-life situations is necessary; such practice frequently requires interdisciplinary as well as multicultural perspectives. Decision-making skills help people assess social situations objectively and perceptively, identify feasible courses of action and project their consequences, decide thoughtfully, and then act.

The multicultural curriculum must also help students develop effective social and civic action skills because many students from ethnic groups are overwhelmed by a sense of a lack of control of their destinies. These feelings often stem from their belief that, as in the past, they and other people of color have little influence on political policies and institutions (Ogbu 1990). The multicultural curriculum should help students develop a sense of political efficacy and become active and effective in the civic life of their communities and the nation. With a basis in strong commitments to such democratic values as justice, freedom, and equality, students can learn to exercise political and social influence responsibly to influence societal decisions related to race, ethnicity, and cultural freedom in ways consistent with human dignity.

The school, in many ways, is a microcosm of society, reflecting the changing dynamics of ethnic group situations. The school can provide many opportunities for students to practice social participation skills and to test their political efficacy as they address themselves to resolving some of the school's racial and ethnic problems. Issues such as the participation of ethnic individuals in school government, the uneven application of discriminatory disciplinary rules, and preferential treatment of certain students because of their racial, ethnic, cultural, and social-class backgrounds are examples of problems that students can help to resolve. Applying social action skills effectively, students can combine knowledge, valuing, and thought gained from multicultural perspectives and experiences to resolve problems affecting racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.

By providing students with opportunities to use decision-making abilities and social action skills in the resolution of problems affecting ethnic, racial, and cultural groups, schools can contribute to more effective education for democratic citizenship.

12.0 The multicultural curriculum should help students develop the skills necessary for effective interpersonal, interethnic, and intercultural group interactions.

Effective interpersonal interaction across ethnic group lines is often difficult to achieve. The problem is complicated by the fact that individuals bring to cross-ethnic interaction situations attitudes, values, and expectations that influence their own behavior, including their responses to the behavior of others. These expectations are sometimes formed on the basis of what their own groups deem appropriate behavior and what each individual believes he or she knows about other ethnic groups. Much knowledge about ethnic groups is stereotyped, distorted, and based on distant observations, scattered and superficial contacts, inadequate or imbalanced media treatment, and incomplete factual information. Attempts at cross-ethnic interpersonal interactions, therefore, are often stymied by ethnocentrism.

The problems created by ethnocentrism can be at least partially resolved by helping students recognize the forces operating in interpersonal interactions, and how these forces affect behavior. Students should develop skills and concepts to overcome factors that prevent successful interactions including identifying ethnic and cultural stereotypes, examining media treatment of ethnic groups, clarifying ethnic and cultural attitudes and values, developing cross-cultural communication skills, recognizing how attitudes and values are projected in verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and viewing the dynamics of interpersonal interactions from others' perspectives.

One of the goals of multicultural education should be to help individuals function easily and effectively with members of both their own and other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. The multicultural curriculum should provide opportunities for students to explore lines of cross-cultural communication and to experiment with cross-ethnic and cross-cultural functioning. Actual experiences can be effective teaching devices, allowing students to test stereotypes and idealized behavioral constructs against real-life situations, and make the necessary adjustments in their frames of reference and behaviors. In the process, they should learn that ethnic group members, in the final analysis, are individuals, with all of the variations that characterize all individuals, and that ethnicity is only one of many variables that shape their personalities. Students will be forced to confront their values and make moral choices when their experiences in cross-ethnic and cross-cultural interactions produce information contrary to previously held notions. Thus, students should broaden their ethnic and cultural options, increase their frames of reference, develop greater appreciation for individual and ethnic differences, and deepen their own capacities as human beings.

13.0 The multicultural curriculum should be comprehensive in scope and sequence, should present holistic views of ethnic and cultural groups, and should be an integral part of the total school curriculum.

Students learn best from well-planned, comprehensive, continuous, and interrelated experiences. In an effective multicultural school, the study of ethnic and cultural content is integrated into the curriculum from preschool through 12th grade and beyond. This study should be carefully planned to encourage the development of progressively more complex concepts and generalizations. It should also involve students in the study of a variety of ethnic and cultural groups.

A comprehensive multicultural curriculum should also include a broad range of experiences within the study of any group: present culture, historical experiences, sociopolitical realities, contributions to the nation's development, problems faced in everyday living, and conditions of existence in society.

Students should be introduced to the experiences of persons from widely varying backgrounds. Although the study of ethnic and cultural success stories can help students of an ethnic group develop pride in their own group, the curriculum should include study of ethnic peoples in general, not just heroes and success stories. In addition, those outside of an ethnic group can develop greater respect for that group by learning about these heroes and successes. Moreover, in establishing heroes and labeling people as successes, teachers should move beyond the standards of the dominant society and consider the values of each ethnic group and the worth of each individual life. An active contributor to an ethnic neighborhood may be more of a hero to the local community than a famous athlete; a good parent may be more of a "success" than a famous politician.

For optimum effectiveness, the study of ethnic and cultural group experiences must be interwoven into the total curriculum. It should not be reserved for special occasions, units, or courses, nor should it be considered supplementary to the existing curriculum. Such observances as African-American History or Brotherhood Week, Hanukkah, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday are important and necessary, but insufficient in themselves. To rely entirely on these kinds of occasions and events, or to relegate ethnic content to a marginal position in the curriculum, is to guarantee a minimal influence of ethnic studies.

The basic premises and organizational structures of schools should be reformed to reflect the nation's multicultural realities. The curriculum should be reorganized so that ethnic and cultural diversity is an integral, natural, and normal component of educational experiences for all students, with ethnic and cultural content accepted and used in everyday instruction, and with various ethnic and cultural perspectives introduced. Multicultural content is as appropriate and important in teaching such fundamental skills and abilities as reading, thinking, and decision making as it is in teaching about social issues raised by racism, dehumanization, racial conflict, and alternative ethnic and cultural life-styles.

14.0 The multicultural curriculum should include the continuous study of the cultures, historical experiences, social realities, and existential conditions of ethnic and cultural groups, including a variety of racial compositions.

The multicultural curriculum should involve students in the continuous study of ethnic groups of different racial compositions. A curriculum that concentrates on one ethnic or cultural group is not multicultural. Nor is a curriculum multicultural if it focuses exclusively on European ethnics or exclusively on ethnic groups of color. Every ethnic group cannot be included in the curriculum of a particular school or school district-the number is too large to be manageable. The inclusion of groups of different racial compositions, however, is a necessary characteristic of effective multicultural education.

Moreover, the multicultural curriculum should include the consistent examination of significant aspects of ethnic experiences influenced by or related to race. These include such concepts as racism, racial prejudice, racial discrimination, and exploitation based on race. The sensitive and continuous development of such concepts should help students develop an understanding of racial factors in the past and present of our nation.

15.0 Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches should be used in designing and implementing the multicultural curriculum.

No single discipline can adequately explain all components of the life-styles, cultural experiences, and social problems of ethnic groups. Knowledge from any one discipline is insufficient to help individuals make adequate decisions on the complex issues raised by racism, sexism, structural exclusion, poverty, and powerlessness. Concepts such as racism, anti-Semitism, and language discrimination have multiple dimensions. To delineate these requires the concepts and perspectives of the social sciences, history, literature, music, art, and philosophy.

Single-discipline or mono-perspective analyses of complex ethnic and cultural issues can produce skewed, distorted interpretations and evaluations. A promising way to avoid these pitfalls is to employ consistently multidisciplinary approaches in studying experiences and events related to ethnic and cultural groups. For example, ethnic protest is not simply a political, economic, artistic, or sociological activity; it is all four of these. Therefore, a curriculum that purports to be multicultural and is realistic in its treatment of ethnic protest must focus on its broader ramifications. Such study must address the scientific, political, artistic, and sociological dimensions of protest.

The accomplishments of the United States are due neither to the ingenuity and creativity of a single ethnic or cultural group, nor to accomplishments in a single area, but rather to the efforts and contributions of many ethnic groups and individuals in many areas. African American, Latino, American Indian, Asian American, and European immigrant group members have all contributed to the fields of science and industry, politics, literature, economics, and the arts. Multidisciplinary analyses will best help students to understand them.

16.0 The multicultural curriculum should use comparative approaches in the study of ethnic and cultural groups.

The study of ethnic and cultural group experiences should not be a process of competition. It should not promote the idea that any one ethnic or cultural group has a monopoly on talent and worth, or incapacity and weakness, but, instead, the idea that each individual and each ethnic group has worth and dignity. Students should be taught that persons from all ethnic groups have common characteristics and needs, although they are affected differently by certain social situations and may use different means to respond to their needs and to achieve their objectives. Furthermore, school personnel should remember that realistic comparative approaches to the study of different ethnic and cultural group experiences are descriptive and analytical, not normative or judgmental. Teachers should also be aware of their own biases and prejudices as they help students to use comparative approaches.

Social situations and events included in the curriculum should be analyzed from the perspectives of several ethnic and cultural groups instead of using a mono-perspective analysis. This approach allows students to see the subtle ways in which the lives of different ethnic group members are similar and interrelated, to study the concept of universality as it relates to ethnic groups, and to see how all ethnic groups are active participants in all aspects of society. Studying such issues as power and politics, ethnicity, and culture from comparative, multicultural perspectives will help students to develop more realistic, accurate understandings of how these issues affect everyone, and how the effects are both alike and different.

17.0 The multicultural curriculum should help students to view and interpret events, situations, and conflict from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives and points of view.

Historically, students have been taught to view events, situations, and our national history primarily from the perspectives of mainstream historians and social scientists sympathetic to the dominant groups within our society. The perspectives of other groups have been largely omitted in the school curriculum. The World War II Japanese-American internment and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, for example, are rarely studied from the points of view of interned Japanese Americans or the American Indians forced to leave their homes and move west.

To gain a more complete understanding of both our past and our present, students should look at events and situations from the perspectives of the mainstream and from the perspectives of marginalized groups. This approach to teaching is more likely to make our students less ethnocentric and more able to understand that almost any event or situation can be legitimately looked at from many perspectives. When using this approach in the classroom, the teacher should avoid, as much as possible, labeling any perspective "right" or "wrong." Rather, the teacher should try to help students understand how each group may view a situation differently and why. The emphasis should be on understanding and explanation and not on simplistic moralizing. For example, the perceptions many Jewish Americans have of political events in the United States have been shaped by memories of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in the United States.

Ethnicity and cultural diversity have strongly influenced the nature of intergroup relations in U.S. society. The way that individuals perceive events and situations occurring in the United States is often influenced by their ethnic and cultural experiences, especially when the events and situations are directly related to ethnic conflict and discrimination or to issues such as affirmative action and busing for school desegregation. When students view a historical or contemporary situation from the perspectives of one ethnic or cultural group only-whether majority or minority-they can acquire, at best, an incomplete understanding.

18.0 The multicultural curriculum should conceptualize and describe the development of the United States as a multidirectional society.

A basic structural concept in the study and teaching of U.S. society is the view that the United States has developed mainly from east to west. According to this concept, the United States is the product of the spread of civilization from Western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean to the east coast of what is today the United States and then west to the Pacific. Within this approach, ethnic groups appear almost always in two forms: as obstacles to the advancement of westward-moving Anglo civilization or as problems that must be corrected or, at least, kept under control.

The underlying rationale for this frame of reference is that the study of U.S. history is for the most part an account of processes within the national boundaries of the United States. In applying this frame of reference, however, educators have been inconsistent, including as part of the study of the United States such themes as pre-United States geography, the pre-United States British colonies, the Texas revolution, and the Lone Star Republic. In short, the study of the United States has traditionally included phenomena outside the boundaries of the political United States.

Yet, while including some non-United States themes as part of the traditional study of the United States, school programs have not adequately included study of the Native American, Hispanic, and Mexican societies that developed on land that ultimately became part of the United States. Nor has sufficient attention been devoted to the northwesterly flow of cultures from Africa to the United States, the northerly flow of cultures from Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the easterly flow of cultures from Asia, and the westerly flow of latter-day immigrants from Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe.

Multicultural education, from the early years of school onward, must redress these intellectually invalid and distorting imbalances by illuminating the variety of cultural experiences that compose the total U.S. experience. Multicultural education must consistently address the development of the entire geo-cultural United States-that area which, in time, was to become the United States and the peoples encompassed by that area. Moreover, the flow of cultures into the United States must be viewed multidirectionally.

19.0 Schools should provide opportunities for students to participate in the aesthetic experiences of various ethnic and cultural groups.

The study of ethnic and cultural groups should be based on more than the social sciences. Although incorporating statistical and analytical social science methodologies and concepts into the study of ethnic and cultural groups is valuable, an overreliance on these methods lacks an important part of the multicultural experience-participation in the experiences of ethnic and cultural groups.

A number of teaching materials can be used. Students should read and hear past and contemporary writings of members of various ethnic and cultural groups. Poetry, short stories, folklore, essays, plays, and novels should be used. Ethnic autobiographies offer special insight into what it means to be ethnic in the United States.

Ethnic music, art, architecture, and dance-past and contemporary-provide other avenues for experiential participation, interpreting the emotions and feelings of ethnic groups. The arts and humanities can serve as excellent vehicles for studying group experiences by focusing on these questions: What aspects of the experience of a particular ethnic group helped create these kinds of musical and artistic expressions? What do they reveal about these groups?

Studying multiethnic literature and arts, students should become acquainted with what has been created in local ethnic communities. In addition, members of local ethnic communities can provide dramatic "living autobiographies" for students; invite them to discuss their viewpoints and experiences with students. Students should also have opportunities for developing their own artistic, musical, and literary abilities, even to make them available to the local community.

Role playing of various ethnic and cultural experiences should be interspersed throughout the curriculum to encourage understanding of what it means to belong to various ethnic groups. The immersion of students in multiethnic experiences is an effective means for developing understanding of both self and others.

20.0 The multicultural curriculum should provide opportunities for students to study ethnic group languages as legitimate communication systems and help them develop full literacy in at least two languages.

A multicultural curriculum recognizes language diversity and promotes the attitude that all languages and dialects are valid communicating systems for some groups and for some purposes. The program requires a multidisciplinary focus on language and dialect.

Concepts about language and dialect derived from disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and political science expand students' perceptions of language and dialect as something more than correct grammar. For example, the nature and intent of language policies and laws in the United States can be compared to those in bilingual nations. Students can also be taught sociolinguistic concepts that provide a framework for understanding the verbal and nonverbal behavior of others and themselves. Critical listening, speaking, and reading habits should be nurtured with special attention to the uses of language.

Research indicates that a school's rejection of a student's home language affects the student's self-esteem, academic achievement, and social and occupational mobility. Conversely, a school's acceptance and use of a student's home language improves the student's self-esteem, academic achievement, and relationships among students in a school (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1975). In a multicultural curriculum, students are provided opportunities to study their own and others' dialects. They become increasingly receptive to the languages and dialects of their peers. Such an approach helps students develop concepts in their own vernaculars whenever necessary at the same time promoting appreciation of home language environments.

Literacy in U.S. English is a time-honored goal of schools and should be maintained. Another important goal of the multicultural curriculum, however, is to help all students acquire literacy in a second language. Second language literacy requires students to understand, speak, read, and write well enough to communicate effectively with native speakers of the second language. Equally important, students should study the cultures of the people who use the second language. Ultimately, effective communication in the second language requires an understanding of its people and their culture.

Some students come to school speaking two languages. These students should be provided the opportunity to develop full literacy in their native language. In turn, these students and their parents can be used as resources for helping other students acquire a second language proficiency.

Second language literacy complements other areas of the multicultural curriculum. For example, approaches for studying the culture of other people are described in several of the above guidelines. As students are learning a second language, they can learn skills in interpersonal and intercultural communications. Further, because these guidelines encourage multidisciplinary approaches, second language literacy can be achieved while other areas of the language arts and the social studies are taught.

21.0 The multicultural curriculum should make maximum use of experiential learning, especially local community resources.

An effective multicultural curriculum includes a study of ethnic and cultural groups not only nationally, but locally as well. An effective multicultural curriculum must expand beyond classroom walls. Teachers should use the local community as a "laboratory" in which students can develop and use intellectual, social, and political action skills. Planned field trips and individual or group research projects are helpful. Continuous investigation of the local community can provide insights into the dynamics of ethnic and cultural groups. It can create greater respect for what has been accomplished. It can promote awareness of and commitment to what still needs to be done to improve the lives and opportunities of all local residents.

Every member of the local community, including students' family members, is a valuable source of knowledge. There are no class, educational, or linguistic qualifications for participating in the U.S. experience, for having a culture or society, for having family or neighborhood traditions, for perceiving the surrounding community, or for relating experiences. Teachers should invite local residents of various ethnic backgrounds to the classroom to share their experiences and views with students, relate their oral traditions, answer questions, offer new outlooks on society and history, and open doors of investigation for students. Special efforts should be made to involve senior citizens in school multicultural programs both to help them develop a higher sense of self-worth and to benefit the students and the school community.

It is important that students develop a sensitivity to ethnic differences and a conceptual framework for viewing ethnic differences before interacting with ethnic classroom guests or studying the local ethnic communities. Otherwise, these promising opportunities may reinforce, rather than reduce, ethnic stereotypes and prejudices.

In study projects, students can consider such topics as local population distribution, housing, school assignments, political representation, and ethnic community activities. Older students can take advantage of accessible public documents, such as city council and school board minutes, minutes of local organizations, and church records for insight into the community. To separate the local community from the school is to ignore the everyday world in which students live.

22.0 The assessment procedures used with students should reflect their ethnic and cultural experiences.

To make the school a truly multicultural institution, major changes must be made in the ways in which we test and ascertain student abilities. Most of the intelligence tests administered in the public schools are based upon a mainstream conformity, mono-ethnic model. Because many students socialized within other ethnic and cultural groups find the tests and other aspects of the school alien and intimidating, they perform poorly and are placed in low academic tracks, special education classes, or low-ability reading groups (Oakes 1985). Research indicates that teachers in these kinds of situations tend to have low expectations for their students and often fail to create the kinds of learning environments that promote proficiency in the skills and abilities necessary to function effectively in society (Oakes 1985).

In the final analysis, standardized intelligence testing frequently serves to deny some youths equal educational opportunities. The results of these tests are often used to justify the noneducation of students of color and low-income students and to relieve teachers and other school personnel from accountability (Deyhle 1986; Mercer 1989). Novel assessment devices that reflect the cultures of ethnic youths need to be developed and used. Moreover, teacher-generated tests and other routine classroom assessment techniques should reflect the cultures of ethnic youths. It will, however, do little good for educators to create improved assessment procedures for ethnic youths unless they also implement multicultural curricular and instructional practices.

23.0 Schools should conduct ongoing, systematic evaluations of the goals, methods, and instructional materials used in teaching about ethnic and cultural diversity.

Schools should formulate attainable goals and objectives for multicultural education. To evaluate the extent to which these goals and objectives are accomplished, school personnel must judge-with evidence-what occurs in their schools in three broad areas: (1) school policies and governance procedures; (2) everyday practices of staff and teachers; and (3) curricular programs and offerings, academic and nonacademic, preschool through 12th grade. These guidelines and the checklist that follows in part 3 will help schools' evaluation programs.

Many sources of evidence should be used. Teachers, administrators, support staff, parents, students, and others in the school community ought to participate in providing and evaluating evidence.

Evaluation should be construed as a means by which a school, its staff, and students can improve multiethnic and multicultural relations, experiences, and understandings. Evaluation should be oriented toward analyzing and improving, not castigating or applauding, multicultural programs.

Part 3: The Multicultural Education Program Evaluation Checklist

1.0 Does ethnic and cultural diversity permeate the total school environment?

1.1 Are ethnic content and perspectives incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum, preschool through 12th grade and beyond?

1.2 Do instructional materials treat racial and ethnic differences and groups honestly, realistically, and sensitively?

1.3 Do school libraries and resource centers offer a variety of materials on the histories, experiences, and cultures of many racial, ethnic, and cultural groups?

1.4 Do school assemblies, decorations, speakers, holidays, and heroes reflect racial, ethnic, and cultural group differences?

1.5 Are extracurricular activities multiethnic and multicultural?

2.0 Do school policies and procedures foster positive interactions among the various racial, ethnic, and cultural group members of the school?

2.1 Do school policies accommodate the behavioral patterns, learning styles, and orientations of those ethnic and cultural group members actually in the school?

2.2 Does the school provide a variety of instruments and techniques for teaching and counseling students of various ethnic and cultural groups?

2.3 Do school policies recognize the holidays and festivities of various ethnic groups?

2.4 Do school policies avoid instructional and guidance practices based on stereotyped and ethnocentric perceptions?

2.5 Do school policies respect the dignity and worth of students as individuals and as members of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups?

3.0 Is the school staff (administrators, instructors, counselors, and support staff) multiethnic and multiracial?

3.1 Has the school established and enforced policies for recruiting and maintaining a staff made up of individuals from various racial and ethnic groups?

4.0 Does the school have systematic, comprehensive, mandatory, and continuing multicultural staff development programs?

4.1 Are teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, and support staff included in the staff development programs?

4.2 Do the staff development programs include a variety of experiences (such as lectures, field experiences, and curriculum projects)?

4.3 Do the staff development programs provide opportunities to gain knowledge and understanding about various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups?

4.4 Do the staff development programs provide opportunities for participants to explore their attitudes and feelings about their own ethnicity and others'?

4.5 Do the staff development programs examine the verbal and nonverbal patterns of interethnic group interactions?

4.6 Do the staff development programs provide opportunities for learning how to create and select multiethnic instructional materials and how to incorporate multicultural content into curriculum materials?

5.0 Does the curriculum reflect the ethnic learning styles of students within the school?

5.1 Is the curriculum designed to help students learn how to function effectively in various cultural environments and learn more than one cognitive style?

5.2 Do the objectives, instructional strategies, and learning materials reflect the cultures and cognitive styles of the various ethnic and cultural groups within the school?

6.0 Does the curriculum provide continuous opportunities for students to develop a better sense of self?

6.1 Does the curriculum help students strengthen their self-identities?

6.2 Is the curriculum designed to help students develop greater self-understanding?

6.3 Does the curriculum help students improve their self-concepts?

6.4 Does the curriculum help students to better understand themselves in light of their ethnic and cultural heritages?

7.0 Does the curriculum help students understand the wholeness of the experiences of ethnic and cultural groups?

7.1 Does the curriculum include the study of societal problems some ethnic and cultural group members experience, such as racism, prejudice, discrimination, and exploitation?

7.2 Does the curriculum include the study of historical experiences, cultural patterns, and social problems of various ethnic and cultural groups?

7.3 Does the curriculum include both positive and negative aspects of ethnic and cultural group experiences?

7.4 Does the curriculum present people of color both as active participants in society and as subjects of oppression and exploitation?

7.5 Does the curriculum examine the diversity within each group's experience?

7.6 Does the curriculum present group experiences as dynamic and continuously changing?

7.7 Does the curriculum examine the total experiences of groups instead of focusing exclusively on the "heroes"?

8.0 Does the curriculum help students identify and understand the ever-

present conflict between ideals and realities in human societies?

8.1 Does the curriculum help students identify and understand the value conflicts inherent in a multicultural society?

8.2 Does the curriculum examine differing views of ideals and realities among ethnic and cultural groups?

9.0 Does the curriculum explore and clarify ethnic alternatives and options within U.S. society?

9.1 Does the teacher create a classroom atmosphere reflecting an acceptance of and respect for ethnic and cultural differences?

9.2 Does the teacher create a classroom atmosphere allowing realistic consideration of alternatives and options for members of ethnic and cultural groups?

10.0 Does the curriculum promote values, attitudes, and behaviors that support ethnic and cultural diversity?

10.1 Does the curriculum help students examine differences within and among ethnic and cultural groups?

10.2 Does the curriculum foster attitudes supportive of cultural democracy and other unifying democratic ideals and values?

10.3 Does the curriculum reflect ethnic and cultural diversity?

10.4 Does the curriculum present diversity as a vital societal force that encompasses both potential strength and potential conflict?

11.0 Does the curriculum help students develop decision-making abilities, social participation skills, and a sense of political efficacy necessary for effective citizenship?

11.1 Does the curriculum help students develop the ability to distinguish facts from interpretations and opinions?

11.2 Does the curriculum help students develop skills in finding and processing information?

11.3 Does the curriculum help students develop sound knowledge, concepts, generalizations, and theories about issues related to ethnicity and cultural identity?

11.4 Does the curriculum help students develop sound methods of thinking about issues related to ethnic and cultural groups?

11.5 Does the curriculum help students develop skills in clarifying and reconsidering their values and relating them to their understanding of ethnicity and cultural identity?

11.6 Does the curriculum include opportunities to use knowledge, valuing, and thinking in decision making on issues related to race, ethnicity, and culture?

11.7 Does the curriculum provide opportunities for students to take action on social problems affecting racial, ethnic, and cultural groups?

11.8 Does the curriculum help students develop a sense of efficacy?

12.0 Does the curriculum help students develop skills necessary for effective interpersonal and intercultural group interactions?

12.1 Does the curriculum help students understand ethnic and cultural reference points that influence communication?

12.2 Does the curriculum help students participate in cross-ethnic and cross-cultural experiences and reflect upon them?

13.0 Is the multicultural curriculum comprehensive in scope and sequence, presenting holistic views of ethnic and cultural groups, and an integral part of the total school curriculum?

13.1 Does the curriculum introduce students to the experiences of persons of widely varying backgrounds in the study of each ethnic and cultural group?

13.2 Does the curriculum discuss the successes and contributions of group members within the context of that group's values?

13.3 Does the curriculum include the role of ethnicity and culture in the local community as well as in the nation?

13.4 Does content related to ethnic and cultural groups extend beyond special units, courses, occasions, and holidays?

13.5 Are materials written by and about ethnic and cultural groups used in teaching fundamental skills?

13.6 Does the curriculum provide for the development of progressively more complex concepts, abilities, and values?

13.7 Is the study of ethnicity and culture incorporated into instructional plans rather than being supplementary or additive?

14.0 Does the curriculum include the continuous study of the cultures, historical experiences, social realities, and existential conditions of ethnic groups with a variety of racial compositions?

14.1 Does the curriculum include study of several ethnic and cultural groups?

14.2 Does the curriculum include studies of both white ethnic groups and ethnic groups of color?

14.3 Does the curriculum provide for continuity in the examination of aspects of experience affected by race?

15.0 Are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches used in designing and implementing the curriculum?

15.1 Are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives used in the study of ethnic and cultural groups and related issues?

15.2 Are approaches used authentic and comprehensive explanations of ethnic and cultural issues, events, and problems?

16.0 Does the curriculum use comparative approaches in the study of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups?

16.1 Does the curriculum focus on the similarities and differences among and between ethnic and cultural groups?

16.2 Are matters examined from comparative perspectives with fairness

to all?

17.0 Does the curriculum help students view and interpret events, situations, and conflict from diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives and points of view?

17.1 Are the perspectives of various ethnic and cultural groups represented in the instructional program?

17.2 Are students taught why different ethnic and cultural groups often perceive the same historical event or contemporary situation differently?

17.3 Are the pe

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