Multicultural Education
by Jay Dubya 
I had been named into “Who’s Who Among American Teachers!” three times and two of those nominations have been by minority students (now Dean’s List college achievers), one black and one Hispanic. Those minority students realized that my classroom standards were just as tough on them as they were on the majority Caucasian students and that I gave them no favoritism, slack or handicap for their minority-status ethnicity. I had always refused to “dumb down” the English curriculum (Grammar, Vocabulary, Literature, Writing Skills) to accommodate Accelerated English students that lacked motivation, desire, curiosity, cooperation, respect for teacher authority and a willingness to learn.
A year before I retired in 1999 my Middle School’s English Department had a special curriculum meeting and the Administration and my Supervisor wanted to change and “modernize” the literature textbook program. The choice eventually narrowed down to two distinct textbook series (grades six-to-eight) and my school’s nine English teachers voted on which company’s series to incorporate into the school’s English curriculum. Obviously administrative fiat (and pressure and trends from the State Department of Education) was more important than teacher democratic input and the English Department’s overwhelmingly selected first choice was abruptly discarded because the other more “politically correct” literature textbook series from the administratively preferred company happened to have “more cultural diversity” and subsequently was more “multicultural.”
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Copyright-The Hammonton (New Jersey) Gazette
5/30 & 6/27, 2001 editions
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