WHAT IS MULTI CULTURAL EDUCATION?
Multi cultural education is perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to education in this country. Like many ideas, it started with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, the end result has been illiterate minority children who are experts on Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez.
The multi cultural education movement is a product of minds that were developed in the free-love, hate-the-establishment 1960′s. You take a well-intentioned hippie who wants to save the world, have him destroy all of his logic through years of drug abuse, and multi cultural education is the end result.
Those who advocate multi cultural education live in a world of Utopian unreality. They believe that racial pride is more important than everything, including the ability to perform reading, writing and arithmetic at grade-level. If you look at under performing schools in America it is a case study in how not to teach children.
Look at bilingual education as an example. For years public schools in America have operated under the assumption that a native Spanish speaker must study and learn in his own language and culture to be truly whole. This tragedy has robbed an entire generation of an adequate public school education.
It has bred Spanish-speaking immigrants who, instead of taking pride in being American, are taught that the country is racist. This country is the least racist place on the planet and yet these students are taught to marinate in isolated incidents from the past that skew their world view and motivation to work hard. And, oh yeah, it’s more important that you go to a series of informational lectures on flamenco dancing than learn how to read in English.
Every reputable study shows that Spanish-speaking immigrants—mostly from Mexico—do better in school and life when they are immersed in regular English-only classes. When the multi cultural education nonsense comes into the picture, students fail on a large scale.
Many multi cultural education programs are so poorly run that Spanish-speaking students who are born in America simply fake their way through on the easy multi cultural education path. That is worth repeating: These students are born here and complete their whole academic careers in classes that teach them only in Spanish. They are NEVER mainstreamed into regular classes. This is a tragedy of epic proportions and it is happening every day in our schools.
What should be done about multi cultural education? It should be abolished immediately. It came, it failed miserably, and it is time to move on. Maybe even look into prosecuting the educators who have criminally perpetuated this myth in order to line their own pockets.
It is time to realize that if children need to be taught through the prism of their own race and culture then that is a flaw in their character that needs to be corrected. The school is not responsible for fixing this.
The best thing we can do for our children is give them the foundational education that helps them survive and thrive in the real world. Multi cultural education does not do this. In fact, it does quite the opposite—it sends them out into the world with an unrealistic chip on their shoulder and very little education.
Multi-cultural education merely convinces minority students that they should be bitter and not productive. Entire college departments have been created to perpetuate these myths. They are called African-American Studies and similarly misleading monikers.
We owe it to all of our children to dispense with the politically correct, multi cultural education. What they need—especially in minority and disadvantaged communities victimized by multi cultural education—is a classic education that teaches the basics and how to think for themselves. If they don’t get it they will be too ignorant to know the difference between a multi cultural education and a real education.