The Intersection of Cultures

Multicultural Education in the United States and the Global Economy

Joel Spring

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351226288
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Intersection of Cultures: Multicultural Education in the United States and the Global Economy, Fourth Edition offers a unique, problem-solving approach to the complex issues involved in educating culturally and linguistically diverse students. Perfect for any course devoted wholly or in part to the study of multicultural education, this text addresses a wealth of topics. A particular focus in this edition is the current global migration of peoples, and the tension between local and global cultures.

Part One, Multiculturalism, includes chapters on cultural differences and schooling, dominated cultures, and immigrant cultures. Chapters in Part Two, Cultural Frames of Reference, address monoculturalism, biculturalism, and ethnic identity; multicultural minds; history, gender, and social class; and the intersection of school culture with dominated and immigrant cultures. Part Three, Perspectives on Teaching Multicultural Education, includes chapters on teaching about racism; teaching about sexism; and teaching to protect and preserve cultures.

All chapters include model multicultural lessons for elementary through college classes. These lessons serve a dual function—first, they can be used to help teach the content of the chapter, and second, elementary, middle school, and high school teachers can use these lessons in their own classes. Each chapter concludes with a "Personal Frames of References" section designed to engage students in relating multiculturalism to their own lives.

New in the Fourth Edition:
*cultural differences in ways of seeing, knowing, and interrelating with the world;
*recent research findings from cross cultural psychology and the psychology of immigration; and
*methods for educating "multicultural minds".

Part One
Multiculturalism

Chapter 1
Cultural Differences and Schooling

In the United States and other countries, classrooms are populated by students from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Students from different cultures have differing ways of seeing, knowing, and interrelating with knowledge and classroom activities. Teachers and other educational workers can also have cultural backgrounds different from their students’. As Tyrone Howard asserts, “Teachers must face the reality that they will continue to come into contact with students whose cultural, ethnic, linguistic, racial, and social class backgrounds differ from their own.”¹

“Culture” here refers to socially transmitted behavior patterns, ways of thinking and perceiving the world, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. Besides requiring teachers to adjust instruction to differing learning styles, multiculturalism can result in social conflict and inequalities. Consequently, the three major goals for educators of multicultural education are

• To recognize in planning lessons and other classroom activities the cultural differences in how students see, know, and interrelate with knowledge and the classroom environment;
• To understand how their own culture might differ from that of their students; and
• To plan activities that will help students to understand cultural differences, the causes of cultural conflict, and the relationship between cultural differences and social inequalities.

School systems and teachers throughout the world are grappling with the problems caused by multicultural and multilinguistic populations. In Empire, a study of globalization, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri dramatically assert, “A specter haunts the world and it is the specter of migration.” The authors maintain, “Today the mobility of labor power and migratory movements is extraordinarily diffuse and difficult to grasp. Even the most significant population movements of modernity (including the black and white Atlantic migrations) constitute… [minor] events with respect to the enormous population transfers of our times.”²

While global schools are facing increasing multicultural student populations, media, travel, migration, and interdependent economic systems are creating a global culture based on the production and consumption of brand-name manufactured products. Calling them the “new world teens,” market researcher Elissa Moses argues, “Teens who speak different languages all speak the same language of global brand consumption.… Teens love brands.… Brands are passports to global culture.” Asking teens worldwide to identify 75 brand icons, she finds the five most popular, in order, are Coca-Cola, Sony, Adidas, Nike, and Kodak.³ Brand names and consumer desires now define the behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, and institutions of a common global culture.

Therefore, teachers, students, and all citizens now face a world of intersecting cultures. Even isolated cultures with little contact with others are penetrated by popular media and global-consumer culture. Some people are bicultural and multicultural in their ways of knowing and interacting with world. A group of social psychologists refer to this modern phenomenon as the construction of “Multicultural Minds.”⁴

Chapter Plan

This chapter will discuss the complexities of defining American culture in a multicultural nation and world. First I discuss American multicultural society in the context of the first goal of multicultural education, which is understanding the cultural differences in how students see, know, and interrelate with knowledge and society. This is done by comparing individualist and collectivist cultures. America is often labeled an individualistic culture in its approaches to learning. However, not all cultures in the United States are individualistic, which means that American teachers have to adapt their instruction to differing cultural styles.

I developed a model lesson that will help readers understand their own cultural values and how they might differ from the cultural values of others. This model lesson addresses the second goal of multicultural, which is to help teachers understand how their cultures might differ from that of their students.

Following the discussion of American ways of knowing and relating to knowledge, I explore other aspects of American culture including beliefs, values, and institutions, and cultural conflicts. This discussion introduces the reader to the third goal of multicultural education, which is to understand cultural differences, the causes of cultural conflict, and how cultural differences might result in social inequalities.

Individualist and Collectivist Cultures:Basic Character Traits

People in individualist and collectivist cultures have differing character traits that directly affect classroom behavior. (It is important to understand that the following are generalizations and that character traits discussed might not apply to all students from the same culture.) Students from individualist cultures often prefer to work alone; they goof off when working in groups; they are primarily concerned about their own feelings and not the feelings of others; and they are less modest and less likely to feel embarrassed than students from collectivist cultures. In contrast, students from collectivist cultures work well in groups; they are attentive to the needs and emotions of others; they are concerned with group success; and they tend to be shy and less outspoken in class.

Social psychologists have identified nations that are primarily individualist and collectivist. However, many nations, including the United States, contain both individualist and collectivist cultures. Overall, the United States is ranked as the most individualist nation in the world. Following is a global ranking of nations of the most individualist and collectivist nations.

The Ten Most Individualist Nations in Rank Order Beginning with the Most Individualist

1. United States
2. Australia
3. Denmark
4. Germany
5. Finland
6. Norway
7. Italy
8. Austria
9. Hungary
10. South Africa⁵

The Ten Most Collectivist Nations in Rank Order Beginning with the Most Collectivist

1. China
2. Columbia
3. Indonesia
4. Pakistan
5. Korea
6. Peru
7. Ghana
8. Nepal
9. Nigeria
10. Tanzania⁶

Table 1.1 Basic CharacterTraits in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures^a

INDIVIDUALIST	COLLECTIVIST
Hedonism, stimulation, self-direction	Tradition and conformity
Good opinion of self (self-enhancing)	Modest
Goals fit personal needs	Goals show concern with needs of others
Desires individual distinction	Desires to blend harmoniously with the group
Values success and achievement because it makes the individual look good	Values success and achievement because it reflects well on the group
More concerned with knowing one’s own feelings	Attuned to feelings of others and strives for interpersonal harmony
Exhibits “social loafing” or “gold-bricking”–trying to minimize work in group efforts	No social loafing in group efforts
Less sensitive to social rejection	More sensitive to social rejection
Less modest in social situations	More modest in social situations
Less likely to feel embarrassed	More likely to feel embarrassed

a Fora summary of character traits in individualist and collectivist societies see Harry C. Triandis, “Individualism and Collectivism: Past, Present, and Future” in The Handbook of Culture and Psychology edited by David Matsumoto (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 35-50.

What distinguishes individualist and collectivist cultures? Table 1.1 provides a summary of some of the basic differences in character traits. Identifying the United States as an individualist society is not surprising with its competitive economy and striving for individual wealth and/or fame. The focus is on the individual. In general, individualist cultures place more emphasis individual achievement and self-direction in contrast to collectivist societies in which the emphasis is on group achievement and conformity to tradition and group values.

Despite the overall individualist nature of U.S. society, there do exist collectivist cultures within the nation. A collectivist culture with its concern about the needs of others and willingness to participate in group work is illustrated in a research study of Latino students in an English as a second language (ESL) class in a small town in New England. The title of the research is both descriptive and indicative of important multi-cultural issues: “Struggling Toward Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in the Latino Diaspora.”⁷ In general, but not in all cases, students from Central and South America, particularly Mexico, are from collectivist cultures.

In this study, Latino workers and their families moved to this rural New England town to work in the local meat packing plant. The ESL teacher created a communal classroom, or what the researchers referred to as a “quasi-familial support group.” The researcher asserts: “Latino families are particularly close and highly value mutual support.”⁸ The sense of sharing and participation in group work and helping others became the cultural characteristics of the classroom. The ESL class reflected the values of a collectivist culture:

Most Latino students were interested in each others’ lives and were willing to support each other academically and personally. More than half the Latino in the high school would regularly gather in the ESL room during home-room period, in the 15 min[utes] before school, to chat or help each other with homework. Once, a newcomer from Mexico, a young woman named Carmen who knew little English, dove right in and helped another Latino with his English-language science homework when she recognized the concepts from her schooling Mexico.⁹

Individualist and Collectivist Cultures: Seeing, Knowing, and Interrelating with the World

Table 1.2 Seeing, Knowing, and Interrelating with the World in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures^a

INDIVIDUALIST	COLLECTIVIST
Regard the world as divide into discrete and separate parts	Holistic view of a world that is complex, interrelated, and constantly changing
See the world as composed of categories	See the world as composed of relationships
See the world as rational and linear	See the world as complex, interrelated, and constantly changing
Change the environment	Adapt to the environment
Preference for judging behavior according universal rules	Preference for judging behavior according to the holistic context
Preference for judging behavior according to internal factors	Preference for judging behavior by external causality
Preference for societies governed by the rule of law	Preference for societies governed by social obligations

a Summary of findings in Richard Nisbett, The Geography ofThought How Asians and Westerns Think Differently … and Why (New York: Free Press, 2003).

Differences in character traits are accompanied by contrasting styles of seeing, knowing and interrelating with the world, which all affect learning and classroom interactions. Most of the studies on cultural differences compare students in collectivist societies, such as Japan, China, and Korea, with their counterparts in the United States. However, other studies have found similar patterns in other collectivist cultures, particularly those of indigenous peoples. As noted in table 1.2, students in collectivist societies see the world in holistic terms as a system of interrelated parts. Several experiments conducted by social psychologists asked students in Japan, China, Korea, and the United States to look at videos of fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• About the Author
• PART ONE Multiculturalism
• PART TWO Cultural Frames of Reference
• PART THREE Perspectives on Teaching Multicultural Education
• Author Index
• Subject Index