Multicultural Education and Art

Before entering this class I really did not know a lot about multiculturalism, particularly about what strategies to use in the classroom that could promote the acceptance of different cultures. I had learned some about it in my first art education course last semester, but no more than knowing how art disciplines can support a multicultural education. Otherwise I thought that it was aimed towards teaching students about the cultural practices of a wide variety of people by studying “past” cultures or ethnicities of people; their religions, languages, values, clothing and so on. My definition was not wrong, but it is limiting and excludes a wide range other groups or “types” of people that should be studied within a “multicultural” education. In an article by James A. Banks, titled Multicultural Education: Goals, Possibilities and Challenges, he described multicultural education as a “meta-discipline,” and that the agreement “among specialists centers around a primary goal for multicultural education, which is to increase educational equality for both gender groups, for students from diverse ethnic, cultural, and language groups, and for exceptional students” (Diaz, 2001, 12). I had not considered these other characteristics of types of people as being part multiculturalism, but in fact they are. In order to fulfill the main goal of multicultural education and equality for ALL students, our school systems need to be totally “reconstructed” and the gaps between rich schools and “low-income schools” needs to be filled (Diaz, 2001, 12). Upon reading this article, I decided to refer back to one of my textbooks from my Introduction to Art Education class last semester. There are many similarities between the article by Banks and one of the introductory chapters of my art education book by Stephan Mark Dobbs, titled Learning In and Through Art; A guide to Discipline-Based Art Education. I have scanned in a couple quotes from this book by Dobbs that discuss the idea of multicultural curriculums and how one can incorporate them into art education, which I definitely plan to do once I have my own art classroom one day.