Cultural complexity in early childhood: images of contemporary young children from a critical perspective.

A teacher candidate, Lisa Multian, was assigned to an inner-city kindergarten for her internship. When Lisa initially met Mary White, her cooperating teacher, Mrs. White was busy preparing for her second (spring) semester curriculum for 23 kindergartners.

Lisa asked Mrs. White, "How diverse is your classroom?"

Mrs. White answered, "This year, I have 12 boys and 11 girls, among them 8 blacks, 7 Hispanics, 6 whites, and 2 Chinese. Oh, no. I mean two Asians. One of the Asian kids is a Korean, not Chinese. They [the two Asian kids] are usually the same; they are ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) learners. All of my Hispanic kids are also ESOL learners. All of my kids come from very poor family backgrounds; after all, it is a typical inner-city school. Most of the time, you will have difficulties in dealing with black kids or Hispanic kids, particularly boys, in terms of their learning and guiding their behaviors. Two of the boys are in the process of being identified as either ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Don't worry. I will help you handle difficult situations. You really need to pay attention to how to help them learn the content."

Lisa was puzzled, as she had expected a different perspective on classroom diversity from the cooperating teacher. Size wrote in her internship log: "It sounds like a typical grouping of the children, mostly based on race, language, or disability, nothing to do with real learner diversity in the classroom." During Lisa's internship, Willy, a 5-year-old African American boy, taught Lisa that "1 + 1 = 2," but it also can be "a bigger 1." Willy showed Lisa that 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples, and 1 small ball of clay + 1 small ball of clay = a bigger ball of clay. From Willy, Lisa was able to learn about the powerful intellectual diversity among her learners. Willy was the teacher at that moment. Yet by the end of kindergarten, an IEP (Individual Education Plan) developed for Willy identified him as having ADHD. (North Fort Myers, FL, 2001)

One of the most profound aspects of education in the United States today is its cultural complexity. A massive body of literature and numerous programs dealing with education that is multicultural (ETM) has emerged since the late 1970s. Most related materials and practices designed toward this end, however, are based on conventional multicultural education, typically derived from an orientation toward human "grouping" (Giroux, 1997).

Group orientation usually results from a view of pluralistic human society that is based on unequal positions of power. People's thinking and visual images of "multiculturalism" are typically shaped by classification in terms of "at-risk status," ethnicity, race, language, gender, social class, disability and exceptionality, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. In addition, when materials and programs represent education that is multicultural from a social meliorist or a social reconstructionist perspective (Kliebard, 1995), the traditional orientation pertains to notions of power, struggle, and equal opportunity (Sleeter & Grant, 1994, 1999). School reform efforts often are influenced by this tradition and represented through such actions as desegregation, affirmative action, racially balanced cooperating groups, mainstreaming and inclusion, exceptional students education (ESE) classes, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) programs, and bilingual education, to name a few.

As a result of these reforms, we have acknowledged human diversity by identifying individual disabilities, differences, ethnic identities, and unique characteristics, and revisited our democratic ideal of equity and cultural pluralism through schooling. Gollnick and Chinn (1998) offer a typical quotation representing this group-oriented position regarding pluralistic multiculturalism: "For cultural pluralism to be a reality, the nation would recognize many ethnic, religious, [and other groups] that could coexist. It would require that power and resources be shared somewhat equitably across those groups" (p. 17).

Acknowledging pluralism in schooling from this perspective, however, always reflects a dominant power-holder's perspective, which often focuses on the need for compensatory help from the dominant society--such as, "We need to respect other groups' right to coexist with us and do this (whatever 'this' happens to be at the moment) for them so that we can live together more equitably." In this regard, Giroux (1997) advocated schooling to avoid the superficial pluralism that results from a notion of multiculturalism structured around dominance.

Multiculturalism doesn't simply mean numerical plurality of different cultures, but rather a community which is creating, guaranteeing, encouraging spaces within which different communities are able to grow at their own pace. At the same time[,] it means creating a public space in which these communities are able to interact, enrich the existing culture and create a new consensual culture in which they recognize reflections of their own identity. (Bhabha & Parekh, 1989, cited in Giroux, 1997, p. 247)

Giroux believed that teacher education programs should nurture future teachers' pedagogical practices, thereby allowing

schools to become places where students and teachers can become border crossers engaged in critical and ethical reflection about what it means to bring a wider variety of cultures into dialogue with each other, to theorize about cultures in the plural, within rather than outside antagonistic relations of domination and subordination. (Giroux, 1997, p. 247)

This pluralistic orientation works to unsettle many overly simplistic practices of schooling, such as "one-size-fits-all" curriculum packages, the one-shot "traveler approach" to teachers' professional development, and the celebratory subject approach to diversity (e.g., Black History Month, Women's History Month, Study of China, Study of Native Americans). In their place, pluralism requires teachers to search for multiple forms of "good" practice (Gardner, 1983, 1999) and culturally appropriate, thus culturally responsive, curricula (see, e.g., Bowman, 1992, 1994; Delpit, 1995; Hyun, 2006a; Ladson-Billings, 1992). Within this orientation, developmentally appropriate practice (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997) is no longer viewed as the single best approach to educating young children (Cannella, 1997; Delpit, 1988, 1995; Derman-Sparks, 1992; Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force, 1989; Hyun, 1998; Jipson, 1991; Mallory & New, 1994; Swadener & Miller-Marsh, 1993).

No matter how well these group-oriented practices have succeeded in moving us toward schooling that serves a multicultural, pluralistic society, we still face almost the same struggles in maintaining equal, fair, developmentally meaningful, and culturally congruent schooling environments for all students. We still count the number of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians in each classroom, the number of children identified as ESOL learners, children with special needs, children who receive free lunch, and so on. Although a good deal of this counting helps institutions provide various forms of support for students and teachers, it also creates and maintains the grouping orientation. Even worse, it helps to reinforce group stereotyping, because it promotes a kind of institutionalized patronization that maintains the very power differential struggles (i.e., dominance over students in general and certain groups of students in particular).

This grouping framework seldom allows teachers or schools to see and acknowledge diverse children's unique capabilities and differences, nor can it accommodate the individual ways that children share and learn from one another, building self-identity while learning to appreciate and experiment with the identities of others. Group orientation is limited in terms of helping children develop an intellectual framework for realizing positive self-identity and developing a repertoire of other identities.

Cultural Complexity in Early Childhood

In contemporary U.S. culture, young children are not only oriented by their own multiple cultures (racial, ethnic, age, gender, and family, to name several), but also by living and learning within a socioculturally conditioned world filled with many different conditions of cultural difference. The following vignettes serve to illustrate these points. (1)

Story of Yoko

Eight-month-old Yoko wears cotton diapers at home. When she goes to child care, she wears disposable diapers. Yoko appears to sense the different diapers and has learned that she can use both kinds. At home, Yoko's Japanese American mother holds Yoko on her back and speaks to her in both Japanese and English. Her Spanish-speaking Native American grandmother holds Yoko on her sides as well as on her back. At child care, Yoko's English-speaking Mexican American teacher holds Yoko on her stomach. (Los Angeles, CA, 1998)

The world of young Yoko is an already complex one that permits her to feel differently in different places, see things from different vantage points, interact with others in various modes, and listen to at least three different linguistic patterns as she grows.

Story of Tony and Jane

Five-year-old Jane visited Tony's home, where she watched Tony use chopsticks to eat chicken nuggets and carrots. Tony's mom gave Jane a fork as well as a set of chopsticks, but Jane used her fingers when she ate her chicken nuggets. Tony said to Jane, "At my home, I use chopsticks for food. I don't use my fingers. But at school, I use a fork or my fingers." Tony showed Jane how to use chopsticks, and later she asked Tony's mom if she could take the chopsticks home. "They are hard to use, but they are fun to use, too," Jane says. "And, I know how to use them now. I like to use them." At their full-day kindergarten class, Tony and Jane asked the teacher whether they could use chopsticks when they ate lunch. Tony's mother brought a box of plastic chopsticks as well as a box of bamboo chopsticks for the children to use. Tony and Jane demonstrated for the other children how to use chopsticks. Afterward, the children could use chopsticks, silverware, and their fingers when having their meals at school. (State College, PA, 1994)

When young children discover and acquire new knowledge, they tend to gather information without making value judgments (e.g., chopsticks are not funny or strange things, but simply different tools with which to eat food). Their expression of new knowledge at school enriches the "schooling" environment.

Story of Syler

When Syler, who is African American, was 5 years old, he and his two fathers attended story time every Saturday at their local library. One day, a storyteller read a book titled Between Earth and Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places (Bruchac & Locker, 1996). Syler loved the story so much that after hearing it, he preferred to be called Little Bear, just like the main character in the story. From this story, Syler and his fathers learned about the seven directions: north, south, east, west, earth, sky, and the seventh direction within us all, the place where we distinguish right from wrong, and maintain balance in life by choosing to live in a good way. Two years later, when Syler was in the 2nd grade, his class learned about directions. When the teacher and the textbook referred only to the four directions, as described in the state curriculum (north, south, east, and west), Syler disagreed, explaining to his teacher and classmates that he knew about three other directions: earth, sky, and the judging of right and wrong. The teacher answered, "Syler, we are learning about north, south, east, and west. These are the main directions we need to learn." Puzzled, Syler went home at the end of the day and explained what had happened at school. He and his father Jeffray returned to the local library and checked out the book they remembered so well.

The next day, Syler took the book to school and asked the teacher whether he and his father Jeffray could read the book together to the class. Because there were some big words in the book that Syler couldn't yet read by himself, he needed his father's help. The teacher agreed, not to change the content but to support parental involvement in the classroom. She did want to read the book first before making a final decision about letting Syler and his father read the book. The following day, Syler and his father read the book together to the class. Syler's classmates and teacher listened to the story and learned of the seven directions. When Syler and his father finished reading the book, the teacher recognized a teachable moment and asked the children to tell what they knew about the new directions, how they were different from the first four directions, and what they thought about the other three directions. The children asked their teacher to change the bulletin board to reflect the three new directions, along with the previous four. Later, the children talked not only about which directions Christopher Columbus used in reaching North America, but also about which direction they should take to make good decisions for building (not "keeping") peace on earth and in their classroom. (Fort Myers, FL, 1997)

In this vignette, a child's personally compelling inquiry led him and his father to be socially proactive about bringing new knowledge into a classroom's learning process. The children and the teacher had an unexpected but powerful learning experience in which the learning community of school extended beyond a single perspective of knowledge.

Story of Newly

Newly's Haitian family lives in a migrant farm workers' community. Because of their extremely limited income, two other families (12 people in all) live in Newly's very old mobile home, which has one toilet, a sink, a stove, two small rooms, and a television. Five-year-old Newly attends a nonprofit community child care center each day from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. There, some of her friends who have lighter-colored skin than hers speak English, with which she is familiar because of her favorite television program, Barney; her other friends, however, whose skin color is closer to hers, speak Spanish; Creole, the Haitian language; or Ebonics (African American Vernacular English). Newly's teachers at the center all speak English and Spanish or Creole. Newly and her friends have learned, for example, that thank you, gracias, and mesi have the same meaning. Newly and most of her friends have also learned what kinds of languages and words to use and when, and they count numbers in the three different languages. Watching a television program on the Learning Channel, they observe many different-looking children on the television screen count numbers in other unfamiliar languages. After viewing the show, they are able to count numbers in Swahili and Japanese.

One day, Newly listened to her parents and teacher talking about her next year at kindergarten in the public school. Suddenly, Newly asked her teacher, "Why do I have to use only English at the big school? Why does the big school teach only English? I know more than English. I also see many people speak differently on television, and I know what they are saying. We can say and write words in many ways. Look at this book! The Iguana Brothers speak in English and Spanish in this book (The Iguana Brothers, written by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Mark Trague, 1995). It's my favorite! In the computer center, I also play games with English and Spanish words when I read stories. I know them." (Immokalee, FL, 1999)

The child lives in an environment filled with multiple linguistic resources, which have led her to question the limits that schooling holds for her and other children. Newly may have perceived these limits more deeply than adults have. The young child exhibits a powerful and critical capability to consider knowledge through a particular cultural lens and alter that knowledge in a way that makes sense to her.

Story of Jake

Eight-year-old Jake likes to play with computers. Recently, his family purchased a new computer and, under his parents' supervision, Jake has learned how to find certain Web sites. One Saturday morning, he watched a television cartoon called Pokemon, which he liked very much. He remembered that many of his school friends play Pokemon with their Game Boys and play with Pokemon cards. Later that day, Jake turned on the computer, searching for information about Pokemon. He learned that a Pokemon League gathers every Saturday in a local bookstore to play with Pokemon cards. When Jake went there with his parents, he played with many other kids--some younger, some older, and some the same age as he; some using wheelchairs or wearing aids; some African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American kids; he even sees, to his surprise, a girl with two moms. "I am going to attend every Saturday for the league," he announced later. "It's a cool game. I thought those kids were different from me. I see them at my school, but I don't play with them much. I thought I could never be friends with any of them. But they are all same as me. I played with most of them! I also thought girls didn't like to play Pokemon, but the girl I played with and her mom knew almost every Pokemon name. They are cool, too." Later, Jake said to his parents, "I think she has two moms. I noticed that she was calling them 'Mom Jenny' and 'Mom Susan.' I also saw Pokemon cards written in other languages [Chinese, Japanese, and Korean] that I did not know about before, but we still played with those. Somehow we learned about each card's information when we played together. It was like magic. I am going back next week." (Fort Myers, FL, 1998)

The commercialization of the contemporary culture of children's play and their personal interests have motivated greater and inclusive friendship-making experiences. In the foregoing example, neither Jake's schooling nor family culture influenced him to build it voluntarily.

Multicultural and multiethnic are the words we now use to describe young children's identities in contemporary U.S. society, yet young children can no longer be seen as having a single ethnic identity (e.g., Hispanic-only). Our predominant, group-oriented view of multiculturalism, wherein an everlasting power struggle exists, no longer provides us with a congruent intellectual framework for appreciating young children's current and future living and learning situations. As illustrated in the previous vignettes, if we carefully observe young children's lives, we realize that they do not naturally struggle with power issues. Even when a power struggle exists, children's meaningful social interactions tend to undo or prevent further power struggles. Young children construct fairly equal perceptions of one another. When they learn new knowledge, they tend to gather information without a value judgment (e.g., chopsticks are not funny or strange things but simply different tools for the same purpose of eating food. They do not tend to say such things as, "We don't play with sticks at school."). Even when children seem to hold unfair social perceptions of others (e.g., in Jake's case: "They look different and I don't know about them; therefore, I don't play with them"), they have the intellectual capacity to undo their preexisting unfair perceptions through personally meaningful experiences with others. Early childhood teachers must recognize that many contemporary young children:

* Experience multidirectional, multidimensional, multilingual, and multiethnic developmental growth and change

* Construct unique ways of knowing, based on the ways they perceive the world within the cultures they encounter

* Face continuous, new sociocultural changes as they grow

* Live in dynamic and changeable family structures, cycles, and environments.

From this vantage point, teachers see that classrooms are always filled with students representing multiple/ multiethnic perspectives and realities reflecting their individual dynamic ecological and biological changes as well as their unique multiethnic daily experiences. In order to provide an equal, fair, developmentally meaningful, and culturally congruent learning environment for these students, teachers should be fluent in multiple perspective-taking (Hyun & Marshall, 1997), and early childhood curriculum must become multidimensional in responding to the multiple forms of realities that keep evolving (Hyun, 2006a, 2006b; Hyun & Marshall, 2003a, 2003b).

Implications and Conclusion

In observing these young children's multi-identity learning experiences, we see that we have created complex conflicts and sociocultural discomfort for them by excessively and inappropriately imposing narrow child development theory, social rules, and sociocultural values, wrapped within a kind of ethnically singular multiculturalism in schools. In the name of education, we limit and perhaps damage their human potential. Thus, how we come to understand multiculturalism becomes an ethical issue when we talk about schooling for all young children.

Teachers should consider the following:

* Honest, humble, and self-reflective critical thinking and questioning (e.g., Whose appropriateness am I imposing upon? Was my presumption of "what a 3-year-old child can and cannot do" developmentally meaningful (thus, fair) to, and culturally congruent for, that particular child? What is the limitation of my teacher knowledge in searching for "what the child can do, not cannot do"? In order to be an effective and thoughtful teacher, how can I remain continuously conscious and honest about the limitations of my professional knowledge and overcome them?).

* Inner dialogue with oneself (e.g., What makes the child see the learning materials differently from the way I do? What does the child know that I do not know?) and outer dialogue with the learner and the parent (e.g., direct, open, and honest communication with others in the context of What and how the parents and the community members know about what the child(ren) can do that I do not know).

* Multiple/multiethnic perspective-taking (e.g., If I were the child, why would I have done the task differently from the way my teacher imagined or expected, but in a way that made more sense and had more meaning for me? If I were the child, how could I have expressed my perspectives to my teacher and classmates?) (for further, in-depth discussions, see Hyun, 2006a).

Although we have no simple antidote to solving or overcoming the fundamental limitation of the current grouping-oriented educational practice, the individual teacher can certainly de-construct, re-construct, and newly construct her or his everyday practice to make it more ethically honest, developmentally meaningful and culturally respectful to support individual learners' learning, growth, and change. Whether or not the teacher attempts to do so depends on who is the teacher, and on what she or he hopes to become. It's up to each individual teacher.

The time has come to push beyond the popular group orientation to education that is multicultural, and to search for what is critically missing in our ever-changing, multiple understandings of human dynamics within the self (individual) as an ecological organism (see, for example, Diamond & Hopson, 1998; Gardner, 1999; Pearce, 1977; Shore, 1996, 1997). We need to respond to the multicultural/multiethnic perspectives and realities that exist in every moment in every classroom when it comes to young individual children's developmental growth and change. We need to recognize the numerous cultural identities that are shaped by everything from broad, sociocultural influences to unique family influences.

Researchers and educators have discussed that the human brain changes physiologically as a result of experiences (Diamond & Hopson, 1998; Shore, 1996, 1997; Wolfe & Brandt, 1998). Shore (1996) discussed this phenomenon as an evolution that equips human species with an "ecological brain" dependent throughout its life on sociocultural environmental input. Because of its plasticity, the brain constantly changes its structure and function in response to external experiences. This natural human condition allows both micro and macro sociocultural environments to affect individuals' multidirectional growth and developmental change, equipping people with diversified sense-making capabilities in terms of living, learning, and constructing knowledge during their entire life span (e.g., Hyun, 2005a). Especially during the early childhood period, this ecological human brain is more responsive to sociocultural influences than in later years (Hyun, 2005b; Pearce, 1977; Shore, 1997). As illustrated in the previous vignettes, diverse sociocultural environments make the nature of young children's developmental growth, change, and learning multidirectional, multidimensional, multiethnic, multilingual, and everlasting. In order to move closer to significantly equal (not just "equal"), fair, developmentally meaningful, and culturally congruent curriculum construction for young children's learning experiences, educators must realize contemporary cultural complexities in young children's lives, starting at their personal level. And educators ought to strive to understand how individuals' personal-level cultural complexities affect the collective wisdom of young children in their learning processes.

References

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Note: (1) From 1988 to 2002, the author collected people's stories (vignettes) from naturalistic observations at a variety of settings in different states (California, Nevada, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Florida). The settings include pre-K through 3rd-grade classrooms, people's homes, public libraries, buses, trains, airplanes, restaurants, bookstores, post offices, malls, parks, movie theaters, museums, streets, child care centers, playgrounds, public schools, a gas station, college classes, and so on. Pseudonyms are used in each vignette. Further discussions regarding the vignettes are available in Hyun, E. (2006). Teachable moments: Re-conceptualizing curricula understandings. New York: Peter Lang.

Eunsook Hyun is Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Massachusetts-Boston.