WebLog VII: Education in a Multiculture Society

Article "Education in a Multicutlural Society: Our Father's Greatest Challenge" by Lisa D. Delpit

Lisa Delpit’s article and her five aspects of Multicultural Education relate to Landson-Billings models of Academic Achievement, Cultural Competence, and Sociopolitical Consciousness.

I think how Delpit claims African American children respond better to explicit directive instructions better than implied directive seems to be a big generalization. Maybe she is right but I’m not sure, she did not report any studies done on this topic, only two students’ statements supporting her claim. I just think it’s hard to generalize how a complete race responds to implied or explicit instructions.

Delpit expresses, “Educators must have knowledge of children’s lives outside of school so as to recognize their strengths.” This definitely relates to Ladson-Billing’s statement “Cultural competent teachers take responsibility for learning about students’ culture and community.”
I also like how Delpit used the word “atrophy”. She said student’s intellect will suffer from atrophy if the focus of instruction is on low-level thinking because teachers believe African Americans cannot think abstractly. This relates to some of my work and discussions with teachers. I have heard many teachers tell me “I only teach what they are tested on, any other information will just confuse them.” And other teachers said “These kids can’t read out loud in class, because it will take to long, and they cannot be expected to do any homework because they just won’t.” Like Delpit I think this is terrible because how are you ever going to know what students can do if we/teachers never challenge them.