Review Notation: Mixing It Up...
ACHIEVING EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY:
ASSURING ALL STUDENTS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN SCHOOL
by Herbert Grossman
Published by Charles C. Thomas, Ltd.
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Over the years, many events contributed to a change in the status quo. Immigration from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other Latin American countries, China, Japan, the Phillipines, and Eastern Europe increased the number of persons who were not prepared for or able to adapt easily to the established educational system. Segregation was ended in most areas of American life, including education. The American working class unionized and gained political power. Large numbers of African Americans and Hispanic Americans gained the right to vote. With all of these developments, the demand for educational reform/equal educational opportunity grew louder and louder. One of the reformers' demands was to stop insisting that non-European Americans act and function like students from the dominant culture. This demand has not been met. Their second demand was to make education culturally relevant to all students. They insisted that school personnel should be sensitized to the importance of educationally relevant ethnic and socioeconomic class cultural differences and the special challenges and problems poor students have to deal with because of their economic situations. These reformers wanted educators to be trained to take such differences into consideration, when planning school programs and selecting instructional, classroom management, counseling, and assessment techniques. This demand has never been met. American schools have not adapted their pedagogical approaches to the cultural needs of their non-European American and poor students. There are some excellent multicultural education programs. However, by and large, teachers still expect non-European American and poor students to assimilate to prevailing middle-class European American culture. As a result, many millions of students are offered culturally-inappropriate instruction, classroom management, counseling, and assessment services that do not suit their educational and psychological needs. —Herbert Grossman, from the chapter "Culturally Inappropriate Education" |
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We were not, in truth, eager to read this book. So many titles on "achieving educational equality" come our way, there was a suspicion in our offices that this may be just another publisher's ploy to have one more bombastic educator's mis-information tract reviewed. How pleasantly surprised (and relieved) we are to have had the pleasure of finding Mr. Grossman's new work. And Grossman is a bit on the bombastic side, certainly. His writing style, like the pedagogy he critiques in many countries, relies a great deal on repetition. There is the issue, too, of the use of the government term "Hispanic," untidy nomenclature invented by the Nixon administration for the 1970 census, and often offensive to many Latinos. Finally, if cultural studies and multicultural education is in-field for readers, this book will offer only the obvious insights, and nothing more. Having said that, we acknowledge that Grossman is writing for an audience distinctly unlike those of us who have been struggling to change the face and ministrations of public education, like his "reformists," for many years. Grossman is writing, instead, for the vast majority of educators, administrators, and involved parents who have not yet fully realized the impact of multiculturalism in the classroom and throughout the networks of school districts. For these folks, Achieving Educational Equality is a necessary, comprehensive history of the struggle for equal opportunity, with the plain reasoning and statistics that shore up the author's fervent charge for change. If you're not an educator who has been inundated with this history and its attendant stats and figures for the entirety of your career, if you're not already embittered to the point of distraction, this book is an excellent source for understanding your colleagues who have grown rageful or simply gone silent. It should be remembered that, while Grossman does make the distinction between a cultural power base within a "majority," people of color are the combined major demographic within the United States and, within the very new future, census-takers have acknowledged that Latinos will be the dominant ethnic group in every major city. Yet, Latino children have one of the highest drop-out rates across the United States, with Native Americans being the only group with a higher count of leaving the traditional public school setting. For yourself, for your students, if this is information you need to explore further, get a copy of Grossman's Achieving Educational Equality. And get it soon. |
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