The culture influence on the beliefs about education, its value and participation style cannot be underestimated. For example, a lot of Asian students are usually quite in class and making eye contact with educators is considered incorrect for many of these students. In contrary, most European American students are taught to be active in classroom debates as a sign of engagement as well as competence and to look the educators direct in the eye as a symbol of respect. Another contrast comprises the part of the Hispanic culture that tends to regard teachers as experts and will leave all education decisions to them, while the European American are often more actively involved in their children's classroom activities. The differences in culture and value could cause the educators to make the wrong decisions regarding the significance non-European Americans put on education.
American schools are currently characterized by a variety of cultures, with student originating from various ethnic and racial backgrounds. Diversity has been brought about by the critical factor of immigration. Diversity is most evident in public schools as there are no strict requirements for enrollment. Because of the affiliation of private schools, they are more than not standardized which limits the admission to specific groups only. Religious groups found most of the private schools and offer specialized courses that make the admission more expensive. On the other hand, public schools are characterized by diversity due to the non-discriminating rules such as free and suitable education for all irrespective of religion, culture, gender, age or disability.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
At one point the American Education System had a strange policy that aimed at maintaining the existing school set-up and ignore the cultural backgrounds of the students. No effort was made then to help the minority students; thus their level of success was lower than the white students. Many of the minority learners were either put in remedial classes or on vocational learning programs. Presently the learning institutions intention is to understand various cultures where the students originate and integrate the features of the different cultures into the curriculum for the wider learning involvement (Fryberg, Covarrubias, & Burack, 2013). Teachers have been equipped with tools and strategies to help students who lag in handling the knowledge of the English language.
The introduction of multicultural education in schools was meant to address the up-surging diversity and to unify the multiplicity. Multicultural education refers to the instruction planned and projected for cultures of diverse races within an education arrangement. Multicultural education strategy is grounded on respect and cultivation of cultural diversity. The strategy combines positive cultural attributes into the classroom environment, with the curriculum comprising the histories and essential impacts of various cultures. Assistance in language, modification or transition is similarly included for students whose native language is not English. Through this approach, there is an encouragement of equal opportunity for learners to study and also give them opportunities to intermingle and share capabilities and practices through multicultural groupings.
The unification of students from various originalities helps in instilling the value of appreciating other individuals and the distinctiveness of their conditions. For appreciation to be attained awareness should be made first, so before the students can learn to accept and appreciate the differences of others. They should be made aware of what happens in particular cultures or groups of dissimilar student. Naturally, people reject or avoid things that they do not know about, and the same applies to the school environment. Students would probably reject or be hostile to those who they know nothing about or those who are very dissimilar from them that they are anxious to discover why there exists so much variance.
Although American schools today advocate unity in diversity in all features, there could be flaws in some areas as no system is perfect. However, the main aim is to encourage togetherness between the students of different backgrounds. An effective means to attain unity in diversity is multicultural education which develops awareness, understanding, and acceptance of different cultures, their beliefs, custom, language, and principles.
Reference
Fryberg, S. A., Covarrubias, R., & Burack, J. A. (2013). Cultural models of education and academic performance for Native American and European American students. School Psychology International, 34 (4), 439-452. Doi: 10.1177/0143034312446892.
