[EDLING:1379] Multicultural education for the disadvantaged

[Francis M. Hult]

The Jakarta Post

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20060325.E02&irec=2

Multicultural education for the disadvantaged 
Setiono Sugiharto, Jakarta

Indonesian schools contain a pretty heterogeneous mix of students, coming from 
a wide variety of cultures, ethnic backgrounds and races. With this 
heterogeneity, they are assumed to have different cognitive and affective 
factors, self-esteem, curiosity, language facility and motivation for 
achievement.

It is those who come from minority cultures and languages that are often put 
at a disadvantage. Arguably, the imposition of a uniform language and culture, 
personal peculiarities, and the ideology of underlying political motives is no 
longer germane in this post-modernist era. With this in mind, developing 
multicultural educational programs for those who are disadvantaged culturally 
is imperative. 

It is often the case that culturally disadvantaged children are blamed for the 
peculiarities and irregularities that they bring to the classroom. For 
example, in a language class, teachers feel irritated with learners (coming 
from certain cultural backgrounds like Javanese and Sundanese) who 
mispronounce English words, use incorrect grammatical elements when speaking 
and are disorganized in their writing. 

This being the case, teachers erroneously develop the attitude that the 
phonological and grammatical errors produced by the students are the result of 
their cognitive deficiencies, at best, or a reflection of inadequate cognitive 
development, at worst. This attitude disadvantages learners in experiencing 
the new language they are learning. 

A learner's erroneous use of language, which is often heavily influenced by 
his language and culture, is often assumed to be a sign of the impairment of 
his cognitive development. The crux of this point of view is that the new 
language (target language) being learned is different from the learner's 
native language, which must be inferior to the target language, and since 
language is essential to cognition, an inferior language must impair the 
cognitive development of those of speak it. This is, of course, a fallacious 
assumption. 

Interference is a natural phenomenon in language learning that refers to one 
language interfering with another language. That is, when a learner attempts 
to learn another language, his native language imposes on the language he is 
learning. The same phenomenon occurs when a speaker of one dialect attempts to 
learn another dialect of the same language. 

Now, it is likely that the cognitive needs of learners from different cultures 
are considerably different. Clearly, the errors produced by those learning 
English, for example, can be a reflection of the way they use their own 
language, not a sign of inadequate cognitive development. The point is, 
difference does not equal cognitive impairment. 

It is time to introduce what is called multicultural education, a type of 
education program that attempts to compensate for the lack of understanding 
between two learners coming from different cultural backgrounds. 

The urge to promote multicultural education in the country should be taken as 
a manifestation or realization of the national education curriculum, the 
objective of which is to respect diverse cultural identities, traditions and 
pluralism. 

The categories of multicultural education programs can take many forms. 

First, programs to provide supplementary experience based on the assumption 
that differences between culturally disadvantaged children and middle-class 
children are matters of degree. 

Second, programs to provide academic preparatory experience based on the 
assumption that what culturally deprived children mainly lack is familiarity 
with the academic activities surrounding them. 

Third, programs to provide compensatory experience sufficient to modify 
environmental effects based on the assumption that culturally deprived 
children differ fundamentally from middle-class children in self-concept, 
language, values and perceptual processes. 

The programs are of a great benefit and can help disadvantaged children learn 
to know themselves through real-life activities surrounding them, develop a 
positive self-image, develop problem-solving and concept-formation ability, 
and enhance the development of language skills. Maybe we must learn from the 
Western education model that applies these kind of multicultural education 
programs. 

The success of applying these program was proved by the Speech Improvement 
Project of the Curriculum Office of the Philadelphia Board of Education in the 
U.S. Applying the programs at all levels of Philadelphia's inner-city schools, 
this project undertook a careful review of curriculum materials covering 
speech activities or oral language development and learning for the 
disadvantaged. 

Using the curriculum formulated by the curriculum and special education 
offices, the Philadelphia Board of Education incorporated several phases or 
approaches to speech improvement in elementary grades, such as the technique 
of teaching choral speaking to elementary school personnel, presenting a 
speech program for the early elementary grades, developing lesson plans, 
training teachers and appointing teachers of English as a second language for 
children who spoke little or no English. 

The employment of this approach indeed yielded a satisfactory result after 
three years of testing and modification by the Philadelphia schools. Since 
then it has served as a model program for other school systems, and has 
enabled the program to be a strong leader in the field of language arts 
curriculum for the culturally disadvantaged. 

Due to its effectiveness in assisting the culturally disadvantaged in the 
Philadelphia schools, it is worth trying this multicultural language program 
here. 

The writer is a lecturer in the School of Education at Atma Jaya University in 
Jakarta. His published works can be viewed at 
http://www.geocities.com/eltindonesia/whoiswho.html.