Classrooms without borders.

By the year 2020, one out of every two students in the United States will be a person of color (Banks, 1991). In order to reflect this change, the classroom should become a forum that permits students of all ethnic and cultural groups to fully develop their talents. Educators must help students understand their own cultures and help free them from any cultural boundaries in order to appreciate others' cultures. In order to do this, educators need to select literary works that reflect the perspectives, experiences and values of all ethnic and cultural groups. We should become students ourselves by re-examining the issues that animate history and interacting with cultural art on its own terms.

Multicultural education should not merely address literacy, but also should contribute to interethnic understanding. When multicultural literature becomes an integral part of the curriculum and teachers act as models and guides, classrooms will become arenas for open exchange. Literature and related discussions permit students to read, think and become actively engaged with the texts. As a consequence, it will be easier for students to cross cultural borders.

Crossing cultural borders may involve conflict, but we need to confront those conflicts. Gerald Graff (1990) suggests that although traditional education theory assumes that instructors have to resolve or avoid conflicts, students would benefit more from discovering what connections and contrasts emerge when controversies are brought out in the open and discussed. The point is not to delete the classics, but rather to teach them in relation to texts that challenge them. The result is a continuing dialogue that does not force a consensus. Change and conflict do not have to lead to divisiveness. Instead, diversity can enhance student involvement in the curriculum.

Students need guidance to help them seek this personal experience in literature. The greatest challenge the language arts teacher faces is finding ways to connect the realities of the classroom to the literature being read. According to Louise Rosenblatt (1976), traditional classes tend to insulate students from the impact of literature. The primary instruction emphasis has been on identifying literary elements such as plot, setting and character description. Students cannot truly experience literature when classroom discussions of literature exclude personal impact in favor of the intellectual response. In order to extract meaning from literature, students need to connect what is in the text to their life experiences.

Students are empowered through collaboration. Power should not be a fixed quantity parceled out by the teacher. In contrast to the traditional classroom, the collaborative classroom generates power that is shared by all the participants in the learning environment. Multicultural literature is a primary vehicle for power-generating dialogues. The literary work becomes the shared body of experience that allows students to respond from the perspectives of their individual cultural backgrounds. The teacher uses thought-provoking questions to enhance students' connections to literature and to establish a relationship of cultural equality between students and teacher.

Multicultural Literature in the Classroom

Teachers must first help students examine their own cultural backgrounds. Some students are very knowledgeable about their ethnic and cultural heritage, while others identify so strongly with mainstream culture that they fail to see how behaviors, attitudes and beliefs reflect their own cultures. All of us belong to many cultural groups simultaneously, whether consciously or unconsciously. In addition to membership in ethnic cultures, our cultural identities can also be linked to subcultures defined by religion, socioeconomic class, nationality, geographic region, age and gender. Multicultural literature offers opportunities for personal reflection and identification with many cultures. In Taking Sides (Soto, 1991), a Hispanic teenager, Lincoln Mendoza, struggles to cross socioeconomic and urban/suburban cultural borders when he moves to a new school. Students can learn to cope with their own cultural identity confusions by reading about characters facing similar issues.

When introducing literature to students, the teacher needs to find a balance between giving background information prior to reading the text and letting students make personal initial connections with the literature. Providing too much background information inhibits the student from seeking a personal response to the text. On the other hand, background information might be needed to entice the reader into the literary work's rich cultural world. Accurate background information prevents a student's prejudices and stereotypes from coloring the text and encourages him to sample texts that may be slightly beyond the borders of his current capabilities.

When students first enter an unfamiliar cultural milieu, the teacher can provide sensory input that creates a backdrop for the story. The sights, sounds and flavors of a culture can be experienced by calling upon community resources. A setting can be created using slides, videotapes, photographs and other visual media. Language, music and other performing arts help introduce students to a culture's people. Food-related experiences can forge links among cultures (e.g., Everybody Cooks Rice, Dooley, 1991), while simultaneously acknowledging subtle or not-so-subtle differences. Teachers should permit children to choose whether or not to taste new foods. It is more important for students to understand the role of food in a culture and to realize that all cultures see their own foods as "normal." A study of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (Coerr, 1977) offers students a view of Japanese culture, as well as an awareness of its peace theme. Amelia's Road (Altman, 1993) introduces students to the daily life of Mexican-American migrant families. Teachers can help students bridge the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar by carefully orchestrating the flow of background information.

The ability to look at one's own cultures objectively is a challenge for most students and adults because they tend to be insulated by family and communities. Jean Fritz's (1982) autobiographical children's novel, Homesick: My Own Story, documents her adjustment from her early childhood in China to living in rural Pennsylvania. As a daughter of Christian missionaries, she spent her formative years in China insisting that she was "American." At 12, she returned to the United States only to realize that some of her new classmates perceived her to be more Chinese than American. Like many bicultural students, Fritz found that she needed to resolve cultural conflicts, while valuing the richness of having lived in two cultures. After reading this work, classroom discussions could focus on identifying the differences between their own cultures and those of the literary characters. Objectively viewing one's culture from the perspective of another culture might be a second, more sophisticated, step. Novels such as In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Lord, 1984) and Children of the River (Crew, 1989) chronicle first-generation immigrants' perspectives of mainstream "American" culture.

Confronting prejudice indirectly through literature is often easier than asking students to reflect on their present-day prejudices. Upper elementary students reading Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) or younger students reading Taylor's Mississippi Bridge (1990) can learn about the injustice of the Deep South in the 1930s, allowing them to view their own situations from an historical perspective. Teacher-led discussions and activities can guide the students toward personal responses that illuminate their own beliefs and biases. Similarly, discussions of homelessness and illegal immigration can be enhanced by reading Fly Away Home (Bunting, 1991) and Lupita Manana (Beatty, 1981). Issues that may appear at first to be clear-cut and easily solved gain complexity when stereotypes are questioned through fiction.

One of the values of being able to see commonalities across cultures is the avenue this attitude creates for establishing lines of communication with people of diverse cultures. Knowing that one shares a common interest sets the stage for finding other areas of compatibility. Children across the nation and the world share similar physical and psychological characteristics that can become springboards for exploration and discussion. All children need shelter and food. Most children are nurtured in some type of family setting and participate in play. Books such as A Country Far Away (Gray, 1988) and Hopscotch Around the World (Lankford, 1992) illustrate the universality of play. How My Family Lives in America (Kuklin, 1992) gives young readers opportunities to compare home situations and activities among recent immigrant families. Bread, Bread, Bread (Morris, 1989) explains the role of bread as a cross-cultural staple of life, while illustrating the variety that is the richness of cultural diversity. Cultural differences can be valued within a framework of a shared cultural bond. Teachers should help students understand that while cultures do have representative attributes, not all people from a particular culture embrace all its attributes. More accurate stereotypes are still stereotypes.

Celebrating ethnic holidays as a strategy for learning about diverse cultures has been heavily criticized in recent years. Such token celebrations are justifiably criticized when they are used to perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes. Some teachers ask students to participate in the celebrations without explaining the historical and cultural significance of the event. Cinco de Mayo, for example, is frequently celebrated in schools in order to cover Mexican culture. Although the event may have become more of a Mexican-American holiday, many teachers erroneously equate it with the United States' Independence Day. For some teachers, it is also the only time that Mexican culture is introduced into the curriculum. Celebrations of ethnic holidays should not encompass the totality of multicultural education. To deny the importance of holiday observances for cultures and for children in particular, however, is also a disservice. Most children learn about their family customs and cultural heritage from celebrations and young children often perceive holidays as the most important days of the year. Children's literature selections such as Pablo Remembers: The Fiesta of the Day of the Dead (Ancona, 1993), Seven Candles for Kwanzaa (Pinkley, 1993) and Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year (Waters & Slovenz-Low, 1990) can support teacher efforts to attach meaning to the artifacts and tangible elements of culture.

Communication and Community Among Teachers of Literature

In order to effectively teach cultural diversity, teachers must be able to cultivate critical thinking skills and the ability to mediate the emotions associated with controversial subject matter. Because the teacher needs to present multicultural literature from a balanced perspective, she must think through her own responses to sensitive subjects prior to the class session. By doing so, she can promote student involvement, while simultaneously anticipating pitfalls.

As the most powerful influence in the classroom, the teacher provides the links to multicultural literature. Professional development programs where multicultural literature is read and discussed on an adult level can help teachers reexperience their own reactions and connections to diverse cultures

Relegating multicultural literature to the classroom deprives teachers of forming a personal bond with it. Literature programs provide teachers with opportunities to renew themselves, read adult texts and reflect on their personal response. Immersing oneself in text without looking for formal literary structures allows the reader to focus on reading's potential for pleasure and personal insight. Through collaborative exchanges, teacher-learners can anticipate barriers to crossing cultural borders and thus increase the likelihood of creating viable bridges within their own classrooms.

By sharing their own reading processes and teaching strategies, teachers as learners are able to see different perspectives. Often, teachers can be isolated from the view that all personal responses to literature are equally valid because in the classroom the teacher's perspective is often viewed as the only acceptable one.

Developing a personal philosophy of multicultural education does not happen in isolation. The process is enhanced by the stimulation and interaction available within a community of ethnically and culturally diverse teachers from various school districts and grade levels. School and district staff development sessions abound with informal opportunities to reflect on and confront cultural barriers. Literature circles among faculty members could readily be developed. Ultimately, what happens in individual classrooms is guided by the teaching philosophies of individual teachers. To be successful, institutional change must begin with the classroom teacher.

Teachers need to turn classrooms into lively forums of open multicultural exchange. They must select materials that help students not only understand another culture's point of view, but also see their own culture from an outsider's perspective. Faculty must be willing to use literary works from outside the canon in order to prepare students to live in their increasingly diverse society. They must challenge students to become engaged with, and reflect on, the material they read. Students will become multiculturally sensitive in these classrooms without borders. They will be able to participate vicariously in different ways of living and they will be liberated from the narrow confines of their particular circumstance.

References

Banks, J. (1991). Multicultural education: For freedom's sake. Educational Leadership, 49(4), 32-36.

Graff, G. (1990). Teach the conflicts. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 89:I, Winter.

Rosenblatt, L. (1976). Literature as exploration. New York: Modern Language Association.

For Further Reading:

Jay, G. S. (1991, March). The end of "American" literature: Toward a multicultural practice. College English, 53, 3.

Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. New York: Vintage Books.

Children's Literature Illustrated Books

Altman, L. (1993). Amelia's road. New York: Low & Low.

Ancona, G. (1993). Pablo remembers: The fiesta of the Day of the Dead. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard.

Bunting, E. (1991). Fly away home. New York: Clarion.

Dooley, N. (1991). Everybody cooks rice. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda.

Gray, N. (1988). A country far away. New York: Orchard.

Lankford, M. (1992). Hopscotch around the world. New York: Morrow & Company.

Morris, A. (1989). Bread, bread, bread. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard.

Pinkley, A. (1993). Seven candles for Kwanzaa. New York: Dial.

Waters, K., & Slovenz-Low, M. (1990). Lion dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year. New York: Scholastic.

Novels

Beatty, P. (1981). Lupita Manana. New York: Beech Tree Books.

Coerr, E. (1977). Sadako and the thousand paper cranes. New York: Dell.

Crew, L. (1989). Children of the river. New York: Dell.

Fritz, J. (1982). Homesick: My own story. New York: Dell.

Kuklin, S. (1992). How my family lives in America. New York: Bradbury.

Lord, B. B. (1984). In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. New York: Trumpet Club.

Soto, G. (1991). Taking sides. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.

Taylor, M. (1976). Roll of thunder, hear my cry. New York: Bantam.

Taylor, M. (1990). Mississippi bridge. New York: Bantam Skylark.

Kathleen Ralph is Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton.