Banks and Banks (1995) defined “multicultural education as a field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates, for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic studies and women studies." (p. xii) Simply put, newcomer students from Afghanistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia, China or Russia that have now made Canada home should find our school curriculum suitable. They should find our school environment accommodating. They should find our pedagogy understandable. Their worldviews should reflect in the contents of our education.
Working with newcomer professionals from various backgrounds and helping them adjust to their new homeland continue to be interesting and challenging. Once, someone told me how his self-confidence had gone with the winds. Another explained to me how his worldview was challenged in a positive way by the Canadian openness to see women flourish. Yet, another lamented the recurring roadblocks on her way to getting back to her profession of over 12 years.
Meeting some of the children of newcomer families, and getting to know some of the subtle systemic problems they encounter open my eyes to the new dynamics of youth rebellion. A young man I interviewed while he was awaiting trial in detention had told me how schooling was made difficult for him by the taunting of bullies and the unfriendly school environment that minimized his concerns. To the young man, there seemed to be very little, if any information about, or knowledge of the rest of the world. “How could a grade 10 student not know that Africa is not a country”, the young man had asked me; and “how would they not realize that English is a universal language spoken by many countries around the world, particularly those colonized by Great Britain”? I had asked him why he came up with the question, and he had retorted, “It took me months of consistent repetition to tell them where and how I learnt my English language”. Another told me how speaking in a different accent could be perceived as speaking ‘bad English’. Where do we go from here? We have a lot of work to do.
Enlightening teachers and students in our various schools will go a long way in understanding, and by extension, in helping newcomer students better. Organizing cultural sensitivity workshops for employers and public service providers will also go a long way in bridging the gulf between reality of a multicultural community we now live and the age-old perceptions of newcomers’ (in)capabilities. Many newcomer students and workers are products of equally robust educational institutions from Asia, Africa, Europe, Central and South America as well as Australia and the Island.
The time has come when our curriculum contents, our workforce composition, our style of delivery, and our feedback assessments reflect our diverse community. Changes should not be revolutionary but incremental. But there must be willingness to try new ideas. Above all, there must be a deliberate effort to sensitize our community to the essence of enriching our schools and workplaces with the active involvement and participation of diverse people. This approach will reflect an accepting environment to learn and to work for the ultimate well-being of the citizenry, and by extension, our polity.
Reference:
Banks, C. A. M. & Banks, J. A. (1995). Equity pedagogy: An essential component of multicultural education. Theory into Practice, 34 (3), 151-158.
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