This respected text for courses in Multicultural or Multiethnic Education provides students the tools necessary to teach effectively in today’s diverse classrooms. “Pluralistic” is defined as having multiple aspects or parts. The classroom of today has students from multiple backgrounds, cultures, and races. Within those differing groups students have their own individual differences. Their home situations may be very different. They may be from a di… More >>
#1 by Anonymous on July 2, 2010 - 5:28 pm
Certainly, the assignment of this book in a graduate level course must be covered under the Geneva Convention. Not only is it poorly written, but it is intellectually shallow — nothing but an assemblage of hackneyed cliches about how horrible the “dominant culture” in America is. I cannot believe that I have been assigned this trite tome as the sole text in a GRADUATE level course. What’s even worse, it provides virtually no guidance for current or prospective educators about how to effectively teach a classroom full of students of disparate races, cultures, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. What a shame that is, since this is such a very real need in education today. Thank goodness this is only for a 4-week summer intersession. That this book is in its 5TH EDITION is simply beyond comprehension.
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by S. Paltrineri on July 2, 2010 - 6:58 pm
While I can’t imagine anybody buying this book unless required to for a class, let me warn you away just in case. It’s bad. I mean really bad. The writing is completely without any sort of character or flair. It’s only point seems to be that white men are all super lucky and they suck. Personal agenda by the authors, perhaps? Anyway, if it is a required text for a class, complain to the instructor. I wish I had.
Rating: 1 / 5
#3 by Abba Poemon the Ubermensch on July 2, 2010 - 8:48 pm
I am an undergrad, and I was ready to compose a lament upon reading this work. I can’t imagine why grad students would be exposed to this book, it’s not very good. The authors are tackling a very real problem – given the pluralism prevalent in most public (and many private) classrooms, how does an educator go about maneuvring within that classroom to successfully engage and instruct all it’s members?
Good question.
The book attempts to tackle the areas of class, race, gender, exceptionality, religion, language, and age; they want to illuminate the nature of these topics and explore the issues involved in approaching and including them in a multicultural classroom. Unfortunately, even though they divide the various demographics represented in our American pluralistic classrooms well, they rarely get into dealing with this problem very effectively.
The prolegomena they have (the first chapter) was supposed to explore what we mean by “culture”. They co-opt Goodenough’s definition, “a way of perceiving, believing, evaluating, and behaving,” and that’s, ironically, good enough as a starting point for trying to wrap your mind around these issues. Unfortunately, they immediately endorse a hyper-relativist perspective regarding the legitemacy of various ways of “perceiving, believing, evaluating, and behaving,” which doesn’t really set them up to grapple with this problem. Basically, they never provide a foundation of unity from which various groups can be included in a pluralistic classroom other than via their notion of democracy, defined through “cultural relativism”, “social justice” and “equality”. Though they try, there are no satisfactory explanations given to legitemate these ideas. They should have stuck to discussing how educators can effectively teach in classrooms where the students have a variety of worldviews/cultures than dabbling as amateurs in philosophy, anthropology, and politics. This book is, practically speaking, worthless.
Because their epistemological, anthropological and political assumptions color _everything_ that they say for the rest of the book, if you’re not familiar with these areas, you’ll never be able to meaningfully engage with this book, whether you agree or disagree. These assumptions of the authors guide the portraits they paint and evaluations they make of culture and the present pluralism, as well as informing their advice on how we ought to navigate a pluralist classroom as educators.
I suggest reading a bit in philosophy before trying to tackle this problem. Routledge has a great series to familiarize yourself with philosophical problems, I especially suggest their book on _Ethics_ by Harry Gensler. It is simply written, and very practical. That is a _perfect_ place to start figuring out how to deal with these practical (and partly theoretical) problems without introducing a “solution” that only brings more bad weather in the future.
Rating: 2 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on July 2, 2010 - 11:22 pm
It is bad enough that this is a poor book with no balance, but to require it as a text in post-graduate studies in education almost brings on apoplexy. It is a secular humanist apoligia for multiculturalism in education. It is singular in point of view, never straying from the thesis that multiculturalism is good and schools must support it; hardly the sort of reference work for a university level discussion of the issues. The philosophy behind the book is that people are hardly more or less than those cultural elements which have been socialized into them with little responsibility for their beliefs or actions. The main text is that every culture is equally valuable in society, forgetting that “society” is essentially American culture with its own priorities. They go into great detail on the virtues of immigrant cultures and the vices of the American culture, hardly accepting that it has a right to exist as well. The most difficult aspect of this is the authors’ almost laughable inability to get outside of their point of view and treat the issues with something approaching objectivity. The book is unbearable in its “holier than thou” attitude. I don’t know if this is typical of the ilk but if so, it is hardly a wonder that the multicultural mavens have difficulty selling their point of view
Rating: 1 / 5
#5 by D. Springer on July 3, 2010 - 12:37 am
While this book may contain some good information on multicultrual education I find it difficult to get past the bias presented in it. Based on statements like
“A crucial fact in understanding racism is that whites see themselves as superior to persons and groups of color, and as a result exercise their power to prevent people of color from securing the prestige, power, and privilege held by whites.”
and
“Whites go through a developmental stages as they develop their racial identity and abandon racism.”
The authors seem to presume that all whites are racist, power hungry, pigs. Knowing that such a generalization is patently false how can I trust the content describing peoples of other cultural backgrounds.
Rating: 2 / 5