Constructing Mu lticuItu ral Education in a Diverse Society ILGHIZM. SINAGATULLIN A ScarecrowEducation Book The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanharn, Maryland, and London 2003 Published in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators A SCARECROWEDUCATIONBOOK Published in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecroweducation.com 4 Pleydell Gardens, Folkestone Kent CT20 2DN, England Copyright 0 2003 by Ilghiz M. Sinagatullin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Sinagatullin, Ilghiz M., 1954- Constructing multicultural education in a diverse society I Ilghiz M. Sinagatullin. p. cm. “A Scarecrow Education Book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8108-4341-2 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8108-4340-4 (pbk.) 1. Multicultural education. 2. Educational anthropology. 3. Pluralism (Social sciences) I. Title. LC1099 .S55 2003 370.1174~21 2002003075 Printed in the United States of America @ TMThepaper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSVNISO 239.48-1992. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Diversity and Change Racial, Ethnic, and Linguistic Diversity 7 Diversity on the Societal Level 13 Diversity of Information and Individual Diversity 24 Summary 37 2 Culture and Cultural Differences 39 Culture as a Multidimensional Phenomenon 39 A Glimpse of Ethniccultures 50 Summary 76 3 The Nature of Multiculural Education 79 History and Some Underlying Principles 79 Fundamentals of Multicultural Education 87 Diversity of School Environments and General Strategies of Multicultural Education 96 General Strategies 100 Summary 110 4 Bilingual Education with a Multicultural Perspective 113 Bilingualism as a Sociolinguistic Phenomenon 113 The Politics and Models of Bilingual Education 121 A Glance at Russia: A Language Policy for Studentsfrom Non-Russian Ethnic Backgrounds 128 Professional Competency of the Teacher 134 Summary 138 5 Making the Curriculum Multicultural 141 Multicultural Concerns in Social Studies Education 141 Pluralistic Approaches in Health Education 160 Pluralistic Approaches in Music Education 171 Summary 183 6 Multicultural Competency of the Teacher 185 Attitude 185 Knowledge Base 191 Pedagogical Skills 219 Summary 236 iii iv Contents Conclusion 239 References 241 Index 255 About the Author 263 Acknowledgments This project could not have proceeded successfully without help from many educators, students, and librarians on both sides of the Atlantic. I thank the many scholars and educators across the world who influenced my thinking and helped generate valuable ideas. I am especially indebt- ed to Leroy Ortiz, Joseph Suina, Liz Rothlein, Barbara Pearson, Penelope Lisi, Tonya Huber, William Howe, Larry Kaplan, Julia Capuano, Gerald Larson, and David Keller (the United States); Galina Rogova, Vitaly Slas- tenin, Gennady Volkov, Kamil Akhiyarov, Alexey Leontiev, Galina Su- vorova, Vladimir Gak, Svetlana Romashina, Michael Shvetsov, Rashyd Latypov, and Raisa Ignatyeva (Russia); Ludmila Cravchenco (Moldova); Egle Perkumaite (Lithuania);Adrilla Wallace and Deborah Campbell (the Bahamas); Ian Falk and Allan Luke (Australia);Klaas van der Meulen and Bert de Grijs (the Netherlands); Petr Smolik (Czech Republic); Ludmila Dziewiecka-Bokun and Yolanta Dumicz (Poland); Ibrahim Tugrul and Melek Cakmak (Turkey); Zhenni Lieu (China); Pooja Agarwal and Moni- ca Singh (India); Raphael Kelani and Issaou Gad0 (Benin); and Babacar Diop (Senegal). This study would not have been possible without the following grants sponsored by the United States: the International Research and Exchange Board Open Competition Program grant, sponsored by the U.S. Informa- tion Agency (USIA) (1994); the Fulbright Program grant (1996-1997), sponsored by USIA and administered by the Council for International Ex- change of Scholars; and the Regional Scholar Exchange Program grant, a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. De- partment of State, administered by the American Councils for Interna- tional Education, ACTR/ACCELS, in conjunction with the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (2001). These helped me enormously to get acquainted with a multicultural America and the American system of education. V vi Acknowledgments I extend my hearty gratitude to Professor Kenneth Cushner, associate dean for student life and intercultural affairs at Kent State University’s College and Graduate School of Education, for providing me with ideas and helpful comments. Also, I express my gratitude to Linda Robertson, Marion Korllos, Thomas Welsh, staff members of the Gerald H. Read Cen- ter for International and Intercultural Education at the College and Grad- uate School of Education, who welcomed me as an international scholar in the fall of 2001 and provided me with office space and support. I am especially grateful to Milton and Sharon Bailey, husband and wife, who took me on extensive trips, introducing me to the American land, its people and culture. I extend my exceeding gratitude to Scarecrow Education; its editorial director, Thomas Koerner; and its editors, Cindy Tursman, Amos Guinan, Lynn Weber, Cheryl Hoffman, and Lawrence Paulson, for their patience and support and for helping bring the project to completion. Introduction The twenty-first century and the third millennium impose novel and un- precedented challenges as well as opportunities for teachers, teacher edu- cators, and education policy makers to further conceptualize, design, and implement the ideas of multicultural and global education. On the nation- al and global levels, this new epoch is characterized by increasing diversi- ty of race, ethnicity, language, social class, exceptionality, gender, religion, age, urban and rural culture, and knowledge and information dissemina- tion. While considerable progress is being made in many spheres, we are at the same time witnessing regression in other aspects of life: interethnic and interreligious misunderstandings and conflicts; socioeconomic polar- ization; environmental degradation; malnutrition and the spread of dead- ly diseases, such as HIV/AIDS; growing numbers of children with mental and physical disabilities; military buildups; propaganda and counterpro- paganda; and the spread of terrorism and bioterrorism. This book promotes multicultural education, an education that is very timely today when ethnocentrism, religious chauvinism, and other nega- tive processes are growing around the world. Through multicultural edu- cation the teacher can reduce racial, ethnic, religious, social class, and gen- der prejudices and provide students with equal opportunities for school success, regardless of their backgrounds. Guided by fundamental ideas of democracy, freedom, and human rights, a major methodological principle of multicultural education rests on the premise that such an education should be aimed, especially in this new epoch, at promoting one important goal: to resolve the contradiction between the growing attempts of cultural groups to preserve and sustain their identities and their attempts to strive for mutual understanding and common aims within the global society. Excessive ethnocentrism and complete loss of ethnic and cultural identity are equally incompatible with the true principles of multicultural education. 1 2 Introduction The multicultural and the global must be incorporated within the over- arching continuum of multicultural education. It is of little benefit to mul- ticulturalize the educational process without providing a global context; it is equally useless to globalize education while ignoring a multicultural context. As an ideal harmony between the multicultural and the global will never be fully attained in the contemporary, changing world, the goals of multicultural education must be flexible enough to accommodate changes in society. The multicultural teacher will always be confronted with the objective of integrating the multicultural and the global. With each succeeding generation, we and our descendants will be required to work continually to address issues of diversity. This pleasant and difficult objective embodies great challenges and opportunities for curriculum makers and educators committed to multicultural, intercultural, interna- tional, and cross-cultural education. This book focuses on a wide range of issues of human diversity, multi- culturalism, and multicultural education in the United States and some other countries, with a special emphasis on multicultural educational practices of Russian educators, whose work may not be well known to teachers and educators in the United States and elsewhere. Despite cur- rent socioeconomic difficulties, Russia, boasting over 130 ethnic groups, each with its own language, has a long history of public education that places the nation in the ranks of educational leadership on the planetary scale. In addition to the material related to the United States