My Reaction to Multicultural Education

Coming from a public school system in Naperville, I know little about diversity in the classroom, so I was excited to read Sonia Nieto's "Affirming Diversity." I had put little thought into the effects the culture and language have on a person's education. My experience with diversity in the classroom is only from students who just arrived in the United States and then were put into the ESL program at my school. As described in Neito's introduction, many of my classmates had family members that arrived in America long ago and had little connection or knowledge of their heritage. Needless to say, we learned little about other cultures throughout school. The class that I am observing at the moment is a geography class that also focuses on the culture of whatever region they are learning about. Looking back on when I took geography in seventh grade, I feel as though we learned very little about any culture during that class. The teacher I am working with for my observation said that if I ever wanted to share some of my knowledge or experience with another culture in a region of the world that they are studying. It was then that I realized that I knew very little about any culture other than than my American culture. Not only is multicultural important for ethnic groups, but also vital for the complete education of all students. As we have been reading, it is important for students to learn and question to society, and in order to do so, they must know about all of the cultures involved in their society. I'm very excited to continue to read about Nieto's feelings about multicultural education. One of my favorite quotes about the importance of this type of education is when she writes, "Abandoning one's cuture and language is too high a price to pay for academic success and social acceptance." (xxvvii). I hope that as I continue to read this text, I will learn how to create a classroom that opens students' eyes to the many different cultures in the world.