ABSTRACT

The cultural literacy movement is grounded in a traditional Eurocentric curriculum that neglects the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the students. In contrast, the multicultural literacy movement openly advocates a curriculum liberated from the dominance of Eurocentric culture in the United States and incorporates the cultural experiences, languages, and histories of all students in the school system. In U.S. public schools these two movements are often pitted against each other, especially in the context of affirmative action and bilingual, bicultural debates. These two complex reformative movements confront administrators and teachers at a time when they are being attacked by political and religious ideologues as well as experiencing a decline in financial resources with which to meet their usual challenges. Together with the various cultural communities they serve, school administrators and teachers must develop plans and programs that go well beyond affirmative action to the core of the student's educational experience. Two minority groups that would greatly benefit from a multicultural curriculum are Hispanics and Native Americans. Although the multicultural literacy movement has been discussed before in the literature it remains to be implemented into the public school system. We are once again bringing this debate to the teachers, administrators, and publics attention in hopes that it will finally be implemented.

INTRODUCTION

Public education in the United States is in a critical period of change. While there are increasing demands for reforms, resources with which to finance them have decreased. In many respects United States public schools have become a battleground for contending educational and social philosophies. One school of thought rejects the emerging multicultural curriculum and advocates a reinvigoration of the traditional and largely Eurocentric model of cultural literacy, while the other argues for greater recognition of the diverse non-European cultures that are increasingly represented in our rapidly expanding population. In point of fact, very little has been done over the past several decades to implement any of these reforms. Despite frequent, volatile debates, we have seen little programmatic change. The necessary legislative and administrative initiatives are lacking despite continuing demands from cultural minorities.

The multicultural literacy movement originated in the university. Beckwith and Bauman (1993:133-134) observe that at this level, the conflict becomes "What should be taught in the humanities and social sciences, especially introductory courses," and "What is the place of the classics?" Such questions have been raised by professors who attack Eurocentrism in all of its curricular forms. On one side of this dispute are the cultural traditionalists, who may range politically across the entire spectrum. Opposing such traditionalists is a diverse assemblage of mostly younger academics, many of whom are veterans of the 1960s, including feminists, ethnic activists, Marxists, deconstructionists, plus various combinations of these groups. Because of these new academics' influence in some universities, a sampling of traditional survey courses of Eurocentric and English literature and social thought have already been scrapped or diluted. In place, new choices of various multicultural and gender courses that introduce material from third and fourth world cultures have appeared.

The intellectual struggle between cultural literacy and multicultural literacy has now surfaced in many public schools, and we wish to explore some of the options open to administrators and teachers. We turn first to the alleged failure of public schools to properly educate their graduates, a failure for which critics often blame the school curriculum. We note that many of these arguments have been discussed before, but the implementation of multicultural curriculum has yet to become a reality, and therefore needs addressing anew. Similarly, we have concluded that to help many of the Native American tribes and other minority groups that make up a large component of the Northwest population, a multicultural curriculum is essential.

THE FAILURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN ADDRESSING MULTICULTURALISM

Although the United States is traditionally represented as democratic, with equal opportunity for all, even a brief review of our history indicates that this has been only a dream for many of our citizens. Slavery, extermination and confinement of Native Americans, and exploitation of immigrants (especially Mexican immigrants) reflect a social system of profound inequalities that continue to permeate most aspects of our society.

Educational efforts by federal and state governments have failed to assimilate all immigrants into a common culture. Although widely recognized as a barrier to equal educational opportunity, racism is only one factor continuing to obstruct the reformative efforts of administrators, teachers, and others. A more profound barrier is the hierarchical social structure of the United States into upper, middle, and lower classes. This structure promotes an inevitable inequality that few can challenge. Despite these factors, most people continue to believe that the opportunity to rise within this framework is open to all.

Multiculturalists have identified education as a major culprit in the failure of certain groups to reach the higher social-economic levels. Some argue that there has been a historical conspiracy to deny educational opportunity to certain groups, and point to the failure of school administrators and teachers to adequately compensate for differences of cultural and social class origins in overcoming the educational underachievement of many students. For example, Perez (1993:274-275) argues that historical circumstances and current demographics of Chicanos in western North America have combined to cause their problems with the modern educational system. She asserts that current problems stem from early discrimination and colonization practices toward Mexicans following Texas' declaration of independence from Mexico in 1836 and the United States-Mexico War of 1846-48. In support, she cites Kenneth J. Meier and Joseph Stewart Jr. (1991:60) who, in The Politics of Hispanic Education: Un paso pa'lante y dos pa'tras, make the following observation, which, despite regional and historical differences, continues to hold in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, and is increasingly apparent in the Northwest, especially in Washington and Idaho:

Given the Anglo efforts to dominate Mexican Americans politically and economically, we should not be surprised that education was used for similar purposes. Economic and political domination is enhanced when the educational system reproduces and reinforces the inequities in society. Policies of denying equal access of Mexican Americans to educational opportunities, therefore, were consistent with the overall relationship between Mexican Americans and Anglos in the United States. Mexican Americans, while not subject to "separate, but equal" laws in quite the same form that blacks were, were routinely denied access to education or were provided with only inferior segregated education.

Perez (1993:274-275) further states that of all Hispanic subgroups, Mexican Americans have the lowest levels of educational attainment. Despite the fact that the Hispanic population in the United States is growing five times as fast as the non-Hispanic population, the educational gap between these groups continues to widen. By ages 18-19 almost one in three of Hispanics (31.3 %) are high school dropouts, compared to about one in six blacks (17.9 %) and one in seven whites (14.3 %). At the college level, in 1986, only four percent of Latinos were enrolled in institutions, and fifteen percent of those at less-than two-year institutions. In 1987 only 2.7 % of all Bachelor's degrees were earned by Hispanics. In 1988 Latinos aged eighteen to nineteen years made up only 6.7 % of total college enrollment, compared to 9.2 % for blacks and 86.6 % for whites. Furthermore, Hispanic students comprised about 3.2 % of graduate school enrollment in 1986, yet earned only 2.4 % of the Masters and only 1.9 % of Doctoral degrees awarded in 1987. Overall, between 1976 and 1987, the percent of Hispanic-earned Bachelors degrees did not change significantly.

Chicanos are, by far, the largest of the diverse Latino subgroups that together are estimated at 21.9 million people; about 8.8 % of the total legal U.S. mainland population according to 1990 Census Bureau figures. Documented (legal) Mexican Americans comprise 13.3 million (62.6 %) of all Latinos in the U.S., yet their income, employment status, and educational attainment levels are among the lowest in the U.S. at large. For example, the per capita income of Chicano families is $8,400, compared to $30,056 for whites. As well, 37 % of the Chicano population lives below the poverty level, and of the 17 % of Chicano families that are headed by women, 84 % live below the poverty level. Meier and Stewart (1991) confirm that Chicano primary and secondary students are, in significant disproportion, held back grades or tracked into programs for slow learners or the mentally retarded, or they are placed in various special inferior academic or vocational tracks. Likewise, they are excluded from gifted and college preparatory programs. Meier and Stewart term these and other segregatory practices second-generation educational discrimination.

Hispanics are not the only group of the west and Northwest who would benefit from a multicultural curriculum. Further evidence for the need of a multicultural curriculum in the school system can be seen by looking at Northwest Native American dropout rates. In 1990 the U.S. Census reports that no tribe in the state of Washington had a lower dropout rate than 20 %. For example, the Lower Elwha had the highest dropout rate at 57 %, followed by the Yakama (46%), the Squaxin Island (32%), the Nooksack (30%), the Muckleshoot (22%), and both the Jamestown Klallam and the Puyallup (20%). This can be compared to the overall dropout rate for the state of Washington that in 1980 was 13 %, and it has slowly decreased. In general, national Native American dropout rates are similar to those for Native Americans in the Northwest. Causes for Native American dropouts in the Northwest has been addressed by Walker (1967).

A DECLINE IN CULTURAL LITERACY

McCarthy (1993:294) states that within the past few years, contemporary conservative educators such as Allan Bloom (1987), Dinesh D'Souza (1991), E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (1988), and Dianne Ravitch (1990) have sought to gain the upper hand in the debate between culturalists and multiculturalists over curriculum reform by reasserting the role of Europe in the origin and development of United States institutions and culture. For example, George Will (1989:3) states:

Our country is a branch of European civilization. "Eurocentricity" is right, in American curricula and consciousness, because it accords with the facts of our history, and we-and Europe-are fortunate for that. The political and moral legacy of Europe has made the most happy and admirable of nations. Saying that may be indelicate, but it has the merit of being true and the truth should be the core of the curriculum.

In his influential book, Cultural Literacy, Hirsch (1988:1-2) argues against multicultural educational innovations from the stance that they will lower the general literacy, which he believes has been in decline for some time. He states:

The standard of literacy required by modern society has been rising throughout the developed world, but American literacy rates have not risen to meet this standard. What seemed an acceptable level in the 1950s is no longer acceptable in the late 1980s, when only highly literate societies can prosper economically. Much of Japan's industrial efficiency has been credited to its almost universally high level of literacy. But in the United States, only two thirds of our citizens are literate, and even among those the average level is too low and should be raised. The remaining third of our citizens need to be brought as close to true literacy as possible. Ultimately our aim should be to attain universal literacy at a very high level, to achieve not only greater economic prosperity but also greater social justice and more effective democracy. We Americans have long accepted literacy as a paramount aim of schooling, but only recently have some of us who have done research in the field begun to realize that literacy is far more than a skill and that it requires large amounts of specific information.

Hirsch (1988:7-8) states further that evidence for a decline in shared knowledge is prolific, and that various studies have quantitatively documented this decline. For example, between 1969 and 1976, the performance of thirteen-year-olds dropped an alarming 11 percentage points on standardized tests. That the drop has continued since 1976 was confirmed by preliminary results from a NAEP study conducted in late 1985 undertaken both because of concern about declining knowledge, and because of the growing evidence of a casual connection between the drop in shared information and literacy. An ongoing Foundations of Literacy project is measuring some of the specific information about history and literature that American seventeen-year-olds possess. The results indicate that two-thirds of our seventeen-year-olds do not know that the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900. Half do not know the meaning of "the Brown Decision," and cannot identify either Stalin nor Churchill. Three-quarters are unfamiliar with the names of standard American and British authors, nor do they know what reconstruction means. Moreover, our seventeen-year-olds have little sense of geography or the relative chronology of major events. Reports of youthful ignorance can no longer be considered merely impressionistic when only fifty percent of Dallas High School students know what country lies immediately south of the state of Texas.

Hirsch (1988:10-11) argues that this decline in shared knowledge caries implications that go far beyond the shortcomings of business and government executives, and extend to larger questions of educational policy and social justice in our country. He quotes Orlando Patterson (1980:72-73) as follows:

Industrialized civilization [imposes] a growing cultural and structural complexity which requires persons to have a broad grasp of what Professor Hirsch has called cultural literacy: a deep understanding of mainstream culture, which no longer has much to do with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, but with the imperatives of industrial civilization. It is the need for cultural literacy, a profound conception of the whole civilization, which is often neglected in talk about literacy.

Patterson continues by drawing a connection between background information possessed by students and their ability to hold positions of responsibility and power. He is convinced that minority students must possess this information in order to improve their social and economic status. According to Hirsch, Patterson, and others, it is difficult to enervate the importance of basic literacy or the relevance of cultural literacy to later social achievement as adults. Without cultural literacy, students are condemned in perpetuity to oversimplified, low-level tasks, essentially leading lower class lives for all but a fortunate few who make it into the middle class.

Hirsch (1988:20) argues that we should begin reform first by restructuring the typical public school curriculum which he believes has become unduly fragmented. He describes the present public school course offerings as including not only academic courses of great diversity, but also courses in sports as well as hobbies, plus a services curriculum that addresses emotional and social problems. Typically, such courses are deemed educationally valid and carry course credit. Likewise, among academic offerings there are numerous versions of each subject, which correspond to different levels of student interest and ability. He correctly observes that this curriculum cannot produce or maintain a common core of cultural knowledge.

According to Hirsch (1988:28), the second step in reform begins with the earliest grades, in which each improvement made teaching the very young children background information will have a multiplier effect on later learning. This will not only stem from the information they will gain, but also from the greater motivation for reading and learning they will feel when they actually understand what they have read. Hirsch argues that many students currently fail to understand most of what they read, and that the single most effective step in improving literacy would be to change the reading materials used in kindergarten through the eighth grade to contain a stronger base of factual information. Hirsch (1988:140) states that:

What is needed are reading texts that deliberately convey what children need to know and include a substantially higher proportion of factual narratives.

This will not be a simple change to make. What is called for is an alteration in the convictions of educational administrators [emphasis added]. Most of the teachers I have talked with would welcome the change, and they have indeed urged me to try to bring it about. In making this recommendation, I focus on reading instructions, because reading is the principle subject in elementary schools and retains a high importance in middle school and junior high.

In order to demonstrate the knowledge necessary for this achievement, Hirsch (1993) has summarized it conveniently for us in his The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.

THE CHALLENGE OF MULTICULTURAL LITERACY

Multicultural advocates have criticized Hirsch and others of what they believe to be naïve, Eurocentric conceptions of cultural literacy. Beckwith and Bauman (1993:205) argue that a typical manifestation of such naïve Eurocentrism is the statement that Columbus discovered America. This statement, which most children in the United States might have learned as their very first fact of history, is now openly rejected by most scholars. Indeed, it is held to be positively offensive, because it implies that there were no other people on the continent before Columbus arrived. We know that Native Americans had occupied parts of the continent for at least 15,000 years prior to Columbus's arrival. Likewise, traditional education in the United States is denounced by multiculturalists for seeing non-Western cultures only through a Eurocentric lens. The various arguments raised against Hirsch and his followers concerning his conception of the culturally literate curriculum may be summarized as follows:

1. Requiring students to read what Hirsch and others call "the classics" in introductory courses imposes upon them a limited world view serving primarily the needs of the Eurocentric upper class.

2. Hirsch's list of classics includes only dead, white males whose ideas tie into values of Western hegemony that reinforce sexism, racism, and ethnocentrism.

3. To isolate any particular group of texts as the canon (academic standard) is to establish a hierarchy of bias about which there can be no certainty of judgment.

4. To claim that there can be value-free teaching is deceptive and misleading, as is the claim that there can be texts untouched by social and political bias. Politics and ideology permeate any curriculum.

5. Purposely or not, the traditional literary and intellectual canon has been based on elitist ideologies, including the values of Western imperialism, racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism. Teaching of the humanities has been marked by corresponding biases.

Various definitions have been advanced for multiculturalism and multicultural literacy. For example, Diamond and Moore (1995:7) state that multicultural literacy may be defined as the process of linking the cultural experiences, histories, and languages that all children bring to school with other academic learning taking place in the school. Multiculturalists argue that it is now necessary to enlarge the literary canon so that voices from Africa, Asia, Native America, and Latin America can be heard. This is especially important for minority students so that they may learn about their origins and thereby gain self-esteem. Such efforts serve to amplify silent voices, open closed minds, promote academic achievement, and enable students to think and act critically in a pluralistic, democratic society. Giroux (1992:16) asserts that teachers must learn to confirm student experiences so that they are legitimated and supported as people who matter, who can participate in their learning, and who in so doing can speak with a voice that is rooted in their own sense of history and place.

Because of the complex cultural composition of the United States the authors believe it is necessary for multicultural literacy to be achieved and defined on the local level. It cannot be dictated for all citizens as Hirsch has attempted to do in defining a common core of cultural literacy. Each community, each school district, and each administrator and teacher must assess the cultural backgrounds of their students and prepare a curriculum appropriate for their local school populations. This is perhaps the greatest challenge faced by advocates of multicultural literacy. Nevertheless, despite great local variation in cultural orientations, there are a number of goals and programmatic recommendations described by McCarthy (1993:291-292) that the authors believe are necessary.

A first goal of multicultural curriculum is to improve cultural communication among all groups represented in the school population. A second goal, that of cultural competence, assumes that values of cultural pluralism should have a central place in all school curricula. Educators such as James Banks (1988) contend that there is a general lack of cross-cultural competencies, especially in the area of language, among minority and majority groups in the school systems of the United States. The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), in their often-cited "No One American Model," makes a particularly strong case for cultural pluralism in education. They (AACTE 1973:264) state that:

Multicultural education is education that values cultural pluralism. Multicultural education rejects the view that schools should merely tolerate cultural pluralism. Instead, multicultural education affirms that schools should be oriented toward the cultural enrichment of all children and youth through programs rooted to the preservation and extension of cultural alternatives [emphasis added]. Multicultural education recognizes cultural diversity as a fact of life in American society, and it affirms that this cultural diversity is a valuable resource that should be preserved and extended.

Educators who promote the goal of cultural competence through a multicultural curriculum typically advocate various forms of bilingual and ethnic studies programs based on pluralist values, which are designed to build bridges among various United States ethnic groups (Sleeter and Grant 1988). Contrary to traditional educational programs of cultural assimilation through public education, multicultural programs aim at preserving cultural diversity in the United States, particularly the language and identity of minority groups such as Native Americans and Hispanics. Such programs assume that white students will also acquire at least a general knowledge and familiarity with the languages and cultures of minority groups. According to its advocates, such cross-cultural interaction will contribute to reduced racial antagonism between majority and minority students.

A third goal of multicultural curricular reform postulated by McCarthy is cultural emancipation, which suggests that a reformist multicultural curriculum can boost the success of schools and improve the economic future of minority youth. Theorists such as James Rushton (1981) and Jim Cummins (1986) argue that a reform-oriented curriculum that includes knowledge about minority history and cultural achievements will reduce the alienation from academic success that often plagues minority students. According to Rushton, Cummins, and other multiculturalists, research suggests that for minorities the extent to which the students' language and culture are incorporated into the school curriculum, it is expected to proportionally enhance minority opportunities for academic success and to guarantee better futures in the labor market. Rushton (1981:169) argues further that:

The curriculum in the multicultural school should encourage each pupil to succeed wherever he or she can and strive for competence in what he or she tries. Cultural taboos should be lessened by mutual experience and understandings. The curriculum in the multicultural school should allow these things to happen. If it does, it need have no fear about the future career of its pupils.

McCarthy states that multicultural educators who promote the goal of cultural emancipation hold a great deal of faith in the redemptive qualities of the educational system and its capacities to influence positive changes in our job market and in our society. With this we agree, and believe that it is our last line of defense against poverty, alienation, and wasted lives for many minority students.

In order to implement the multicultural goals of cultural communication, cultural competence, and cultural emancipation, McCarthy and others offer a number of programmatic recommendations and guidelines including the following:

1. Provide a strong alignment between the written text and the cultural background, language, and experiences of students of diverse cultures, racial groups, and linguistic backgrounds in each public school. All must be carefully integrated with the students' cultural background.

2. Develop understanding and appreciation of each student's culture and its relationships with the culture of other students. Unless this is done, students tend to create cultural turf wars that lead to further fragmentation.

3. Multicultural literacy must be beneficial for all students, not just students of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. A commonly held misconception is that students who are in monocultural settings, particularly European American students, do not need a multicultural emphasis in the process of becoming literate. Multicultural literacy can renew and affirm the culture of all students by emphasizing cultural equality and respect. Multicultural literacy simultaneously enhances the self-concepts of students as well as teaches respect for various cultures along with basic skills.

4. Schools and teachers must embrace the cultural diversity of students and affirm the cultural beliefs, views, and personal experiences they bring to the classroom. Teachers become powerful facilitators of learning when they draw on their students' cultural capital and diversity to make learning exciting and dynamic. A teaching environment that includes all cultures and celebrates all voices, creates a richer classroom community.

5. Teachers must understand that their positive attitudes and expectations of how students perform in school have a marked effect on the students' ability to achieve success. Many minority students come to school with positive expectations of their ability to be successful, regardless of their cultural, linguistic, or economic background. It is critical for teachers to become aware of and discard any misconceptions or stereotypes about children of diverse cultural, linguistic, or low socioeconomic backgrounds being unable to succeed. Teachers need to be positive, affirming and to maintain high expectations for all students.

6. Teachers must empower students to be individuals and learners so that they receive validation for who they are. To foster a sense of efficacy and competence, teachers need to design learning experiences that encourage students to explore their own desires, ideas, and perceptions of the world. They must help them identify their areas of strength, reinforce their cultural heritage, and foster positive expectations for academic achievement.

7. Students must take an active role in the acquisition of culturally relevant knowledge and skills. Students who are active learners take on the responsibility for their own learning; they often go beyond the established academic curriculum, both in content and process. They probe, explore, and ultimately construct their own meaning. Because they are actively involved in a culturally relevant curriculum, they are more likely to apply their learning to their lives in and out of school.

8. Students must be encouraged to cooperate and collaborate in sharing and exchanging ideas, concepts, and understandings with others drawn from their own cultural heritage. In classrooms that foster such learning, all students have equal access to learning opportunities and resources. Students of diverse cultures, ideas, and abilities engage in productive learning activities while they learn to respect each others' cultural background (Diamond and Moore 1995:5-7).

This perspective on multicultural literacy does not emphasize add-ons to existing curricula. According to multiculturalism, culturally sensitive teaching practices and strategies should permeate all aspects of the curriculum, integrating content through a thematic and holistic approach to learning.

A MULTICULTURAL PLAN OF ACTION

In 1990 the "President's Task Force on Multicultural Education and Campus Diversity" was formed to help establish a truly multicultural educational system that "cherishes, builds on, and celebrates its diversity" (Beckwith and Bauman 1993:74). Because of their comprehensiveness, we believe these guidelines provide both specific steps and general guidance for public school administrators and teachers interested in developing multicultural curricula and we highly recommend it.

A. Actions by Administrators

1. Faculty development.

Developmental activities need to provide assistance to new and continuing faculty members, both full and part-time, to enable them to meet the needs of the twenty-first century:

a. include information on the importance of multiculturalism in new faculty orientation;

b. offer workshops in developing teaching strategies that are effective for students with a variety of learning styles reflective of gender and ethnic diversity;

c. offer, in workshops and various other forums such as school faculty meetings, suggestions on sensitivity to classroom language, interactions, and instructional tools that make all students feel included;

d. assist newly hired faculty members, both full and part-time, in understanding public school functioning. Understanding the expectations of faculty members in instruction and planning one's work both during the academic year and during summer to accomplish the tasks;

e. employ peer teachers who work with other district teachers to heighten cultural sensitivity and to introduce appropriate multicultural curricula and other practices.

2. Staff development.

A school that embraces diversity, that conveys a sense of inclusion and respect for all people, must have diversity in the staff and administration as well as in students and faculty. All administrative offices, at all levels, need to continue to make a conscious effort to include diversity such as:

a. Assuring that affirmative action guidelines are followed in recruiting and hiring, and that women and members of diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic groups have equitable opportunities for advancement.

b. There should be a handbook on recruiting, to be used by all search committees, that includes hiring criteria and procedures, policy on affirmative action, and guidelines for effective recruiting of women and members of various ethnic groups.

c. Offering to all people who interact with students suggestions and training on sensitivity to language and behavior that demonstrates respect for all individuals.

3. Dissemination of information on multiculturalism.

One of the most limiting factors for many teachers is the unavailability of appropriate curricular materials for the students with whom they interact. Every effort should be made to overcome this limitation by:

a. Identifying a location as a central repository for materials on diversity issues, especially for materials and references that can be used by faculty members seeking to modify courses to fit local circumstances.

b. Gathering and publicizing information on projects and activities at other schools that have been effective in helping students succeed in their education, with special attention to the needs of women and students from diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic groups.

c. Considering distributing a periodic newsletter on diversity issues and on projects intended to improve diversity and multicultural education.

4. Program Review.

All program reviews should be revised to include specific questions on the continuing progress of multiculturalism in the curriculum. These questions should include at least the following:

a. the program's hiring plan to achieve diversity in faculty and staff composition;

b. an evaluation of the program's success in achieving multicultural education.

5. Work with the Surrounding Community.

Public school administrators should develop links between the school and all of its service and ethnic communities in such a way that would include:

a. Promoting interactions in which the school assists the communities in the maintenance, articulation, and development of their respective cultures.

b. Employing the skills of local historians and cultural authorities from each ethnic community in curriculum development, classroom teaching, and in new faculty orientation to the various communities served by the schools.

B. Actions at the School Level.

School administrators should be held responsible for fostering diversity by assuring that schools carry out activities leading to inclusion of students and faculty from all local cultural groups. These activities should include:

1. Recruiting and hiring practices that assure the largest possible pool of qualified candidates who are members of ethnic groups represented in the school population.

2. Reward, tenure, promotion procedures, and standards that reward faculty activities which promote diversity and multicultural education as an essential aspect of educational excellence.

3. Encouragement and support efforts of faculty to include multicultural content and viewpoints in their teaching.

4. Fostering classroom atmospheres that help all students succeed in meeting the goals of the course, including developing teaching strategies that recognize diverse learning styles and cultural sensitivities.

C. Ongoing Projects by Teachers.

The school should encourage all teachers to make conscious efforts to include culturally appropriate gender and diversity issues in curriculum planning, course content, and teaching styles which should include:

1. Examination of existing courses, and where appropriate, develop new courses to include multicultural viewpoints such as:

a. incorporating considerations of racial, ethnic, gender, class, and language issues in course materials and discussions;

b. recognizing and using student cultural diversity in the classroom; using teaching strategies that promote active participation by students from diverse backgrounds and cultures; encouraging students to interact with those of different cultural backgrounds in group activities, study sessions, and activities appropriate to the course.

2. The encouragement of students to develop skills in cooperative work that are essential for effective performance in employment, in social interactions, in participatory democracy, in local communities, and in the nation.

3. The recognition that education of teachers is a responsibility of the entire school system. All schools should be especially attentive to the need to prepare future teachers to work with students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures.

4. The sharing of resource materials, teaching materials, and information relative to diversity issues with other faculty members by contributing copies of materials to a central repository, participating in workshops, and assisting faculty members who are trying to modify courses.

5. The incorporation of information on student retention in policy decisions:

a. collect student data in ways that permit evaluation of the effects of multicultural programs and policies on student retention;

b. establish an orientation and advisement program that can identify and satisfy the needs of students from diverse backgrounds.

CONCLUSION

Because it is part of the debate concerning multicultural literacy, we have first described the movement to halt a perceptible, general decline among students in what Hirsch and others have termed cultural literacy. Cultural literacy consists largely of a shared core of knowledge about the history and culture of the United States from a Eurocentric perspective. While advocates of cultural literacy have made telling points concerning a decline in certain types of shared knowledge among students, multiculturalists argue that this is not the most important problem in public school curricula. They argue that both the existing curriculum as well as that advocated by Hirsch are alien for many students, and that curricular recognition of the cultural diversity of the United States is long overdue.

The reforms proposed by advocates of multicultural literacy emphasize a curriculum that promotes cultural understanding, cultural competence, and cultural emancipation for all students, regardless of cultural background. The 1990 President's Task Force recommendations on multicultural education constitute a possible plan of action that can be implemented by district administrators as well as in local schools. With support and protection from school administrators, teachers must ultimately make multiculturalism work in order to overcome the learning obstacles faced by a growing number of our students. Rather than the generalized cultural literacy advocated by Hirsch for all citizens, multicultural literacy must be achieved in local terms. Because the cultural composition of the communities served by our schools varies widely, approaches will vary substantially from one school setting to another.

Unless multicultural literacy is adopted as a primary goal in our increasingly diverse public schools, multicultrualists argue that a growing proportion of students will not receive the training essential for the increasingly complex world they must face and in which they must survive. The need for a multicultural curriculum in the Northwest is clearly evident. The diverse nature of the region, including several Native American tribes, Asians, Hispanics, and other ethnic groups requires the implementation of a multicultural curriculum in order to prepare students for the complex social structure of the area. For the students of the Northwest, and the United States in general, multicultural challenges must be solved before the challenge of a more generalized cultural literacy can be addressed. Responses to the demand by Hirsch and others for a common, Eurocentric cultural literacy must be deferred until this more fundamental problem is solved. In fact, it is apparent that all students must become multiculturally literate in order to participate in the emerging social system of the United States.

NOTES:

1. An earlier version of this paper appeared in Northwest Anthropological Research Notes 32(2): 221-234.

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Will, George 1989. Eurocentricity and the School Curriculum. Morning Advocate, December 18, Baton Rouge.

Woods, Peter, and Martyn Hammersley, editors 1993. Gender and Ethnicity in Schools: Ethnographic Accounts. New York: Routledge.

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