Multicultural education

1.0     Introduction

 Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process (Banks, 1997). The purpose of multicultural education is to seek and create education opportunity to all students, despite race, genders, ethnics and minority groups. Malaysia is a developing country and comprises of multi-races society. We want our children to have good perspective of other culture and races in order for them to respect and acknowledge. The educational system should not imply prejudice in schools. Multiracial education is seen as an opening of offering to the students for an equitable educational opportunity.  If we are to dismiss multiracial,  we are dismissing the ideals of equity and social justice for our multicultural country. Therefore our government had created a philosophy based on policy documents and our ideology with accordance to our multi – ethnic society.

The government came up with the National Education Philosophy. The philosophy is created with the combination and integration of our Rukun Negara, National Economic Policy and National Education Policy and taking into account the cultures of the Malaysian society.

It has been a continuous process since our independence, in line with our country’s development. After several careful studies, the government came up with the Rahman Talib Statement 1960. Due to the vast growth of our country and to meet the era of science and technology together with the National Economic Policy, another committee was formed with their main objectives are to achieve the national unity in our multi-ethnic society and also to increase the sense of patriotism, producing skilled manpower for the nation development. And on 7^th November 1979, the Cabinet Committee issued a report that was known as Review of the Implementation of the Education Policy. With that, is the beginning of the formation of our National Education Philosophy. And on 1988, was introduced in writing by the Education Ministry.

The National Education Philosophy : -

"Education in Malaysia is an on-going effort towards further developing the potential of individuals in a holistic and integrated manner, so as to produce individuals who are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced and harmonic, based on a firm belief in and devotion to God. Such an effort is designed to produce Malaysian citizens who are knowledgeable and competent, who possess high moral standards and who are responsible and capable of achieving high level of personal well-being as well as being able to contribute to the harmony and betterment of the family, the society and the nation at large"

The interpretation of the philosophy and it is quote “produce individuals who are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced and harmonious, based on a firm belief and devotion to God…”. Malaysia is multiracial, we have Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and many more, are freely worshipped and embraced even though with Islam being the official religion of Malaysia. The main objective of NEP is  “to produce Malaysian citizen that are capable of achieving a high level of personality wellbeing to contribute to the betterment of the nation, family and society” A holistic development must be apply to integrate all of the individual’s potential through education, where as a medium, to bring out the most out of an individual’s positive attitudes to enjoy peace spiritually and are always ready to face life challenges.

NEP says, “Such an effort is designed to produce Malaysian citizens’, who are knowledgeable and competent...” from the phrase above we can understand on what the government wanted to strive and to give out in education for its citizens.

“….. but what makes education a reality is a personal relationship between teacher and pupil, and with personal relationships no questions of equality can arise.” [40]

Bryan Wilson, (1975, pp.39-61)

Educators must not be influenced by prejudice, biases and racism while maintaining respect to the student’s cultural beliefs. Educators have to practice equality which is providing the same amount of educations to all of the student despites the race and culture. Educators also must practice equity whereby each student might not have the same acceptance level as the others. Despite the equal level of education through the classroom, educators must also make sure that the slow learners also get what they were teaching.

2.0     Challenges faced in teaching in a multiracial classroom/school

2.1       Cultural Differences

Malaysia has multiple races and culture. These differences might cause misunderstanding and poor social adaptations among students. Chinese are most likely to mingle with just Chinese due to their culture that embeds individual growth rather than collective growth. Malay will always play with Malay during recess because most of the leisure time games such as Congkak and Batu Seremban are Malay’s game. Indian are more on personal orientations to project social harmony within its culture. These beriers will eventually effect classroom integrations that might cause challenges to the educators.

2.2       Language Barrier

Currently, our educational system utilises the national language as the medium of instruction and unfortunately most of our students are still comfortable with their mother tongue. Language barriers often go hand-in hand with cultural differences, posing additional problems and misunderstandings in educational institutions. When a person speaks little of the national language or English, they might or can be intimidated and frustrated when trying to communicate with other races.  Students may act like they know what is being said, but in fact, may not know what is actually being discussed. We need to realise that it contributes to the lack of productivity, mistakes being made or general lack of trust between the students and with the educators. Mostly, we are used to using lingo, slang or jargon that is then, without us realising it would create difficulties for other students from other races. For example, someone not familiar with an expression could easily misinterpret the term that actually doesn’t really mean as what is said. Also some Malay sayings are not interpreted by other races correctly. As when asked to one high school student from Sekolah Menengah Puteri Ampang, Sophia Fatimah, 15, she stated :

“One of my Chinese friends does not understand the Malay saying ‘curi tulang’. She taught that it literally means someone stealing a bone.”

She also states that when her Chinese friend told her that she is her ‘Puhng yao’, she thought that it meant that she was her ‘penyu’, means turtle in Malay. Which is correctly when translated ‘puhng yao’ means friend in Cantonese.

Turning to another pupil from primary school, SK Puteri Pandan (1), Shana Norhazian, 11, she said that :

“I was jokingly telling my Indian friend to ‘berambus’. She asked me back what is the meaning of ‘berambus’? I told her it is like saying to go away. In which she thought, that it means broom or ‘penyapu’ in Malay.”

The case study shows that even now, the problems faced are still the same as it is in the past. Be it in high school or primary. It is not saying that they do not want to learn, but they are not given the needed exposure to do so.

2.3       Religion Differences

“The Prophet (S.A.W) said, ‘No baby is born but was born in a state of pure and clean nature of sin.  Then the parents who will make them Jews or Christians or Magian’
[Hadith Riwayat Bukhari]”

Muslims parents always concern about who their kids mingle with. They afraid that if the kids mingle with Christians, they might be Christianised by their friends. So does other religion. This misconceptions always leads to conflict in classroom. Parents are preventing their kids to study together which then leads to uncooperative lifestyle.

Children came to school with many negative attitudes toward and misconceptions about other races ethnic groups and beliefs. (Aboud, 2009; Stephen & Vogt, 2004). Henceforth, if it is not properly managed, religious differences can become a source of conflict and tension for the students in one community or school.

2.4       Curriculum Pedagogy Implementations

Multicultural education emerged from the diverse courses, programs, and practices that educational institutions devised to respond to the demands, needs, and aspirations of the various groups. (Banks, McGee. C, 2010).  Multicultural educations is always to be misunderstood as a “Subject” rather than a process to be embedded into the curriculum pedagogy

2.5       Conflict of Interest within The Education Staff

Speaking of the truth, how many of us don’t want our race to be much superior then the others. These views always sometime create a conflict of interest within the educational system including the staff. Human Resources will hire only their “kind” to be the educator. Student Recruitment will allow more of their race into the institutions instead of giving the equal chances to the eligible candidates.

 How do we recruit or train our educators when they are faced with these kind of problems or conflict?  Are they sincere in admitting the equality of everyone is as the same? Or just being hypocritical just for the sake of upholding the philosophy? Educators are dealing with all of the perspectives, basics cultural assumptions and references of the cultural frame. How are these to be done?

3.0     Suggestions / Solutions

3.1       Overcoming Cultural Barriers

The idea is to implement, in school, the teaching on understanding the other cultures that is out there, as a cross-cultural experience. This is not only for the students but for fellow educators as well. In order for students to understand the social living conditions of other groups or races, they will need to learn about the culture and beliefs of the other groups or races. Therefore it can be implemented by organizing different activities and program with the cooperation of the PTA’s. Not only depending solely on history subject taught in school.

Activities that are conducted needs to create more opportunities and rooms for our children to mingle and socialize with their friends from different race and religion. As the words of our Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, our current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, ‘all school’s need to take their own initiative in conducting certain programmes in fostering coherency, tolerance and diversity between their students’.

It should be done duly in all school activities and at all times and not just half way in order for the culture and practice to be adopted and continue. Be it in sports activities or academically, interjections must be based on the elements of coherence and diversity within the composition of the participants.

3.2       Removing the Language Barriers

Language barriers are a common challenge in multicultural education. It is nevertheless a two way process. As stated in the NEP, the goals are to produce individuals that are able to contribute to harmony socially and for the nation. Therefore having to understand what are being conveyed is important for good communication and to build up self-confidence in students. Educators need to have an approach to make these students understand what they are teaching so that they won’t be left out from education and won’t shy away from asking questions should they do not understand what is being taught. Educators need to be more sensitive to what they are saying and to enunciate clearly. Avoiding idioms is best. But if idioms are used, be sure to explain back to the students the actual meaning, so that they won’t be interpreting it wrongly. Constantly ask for clarifications should the students understand what educators are conveying rather than going on with the topic and assuming that all of them understands. This is important, for students to catch up on their education and understand on what they are learning. Always or try to be specific on topics taught, so that it won’t be confused by the students. Most importantly, be patient. We must not expect that the students understand you at the same ease when we are communicating with our own race. Educational institute must provide courses for educators to learn a second language that is specified for the needs of teaching multicultural students. Because, language is the main core in any education and itself depends on communication and on verbal coding of human knowledge.

3.3       Apprehending Religion Differences

Being the main religion and beliefs in Malaysia, Islam is also used as guidelines in upholding norms and or regulations in the country. But even if Islam is the main religion, still our respected government are not discriminating or belittling other religions that are practiced by its citizens. Therefore as stated in the NEP, “based on a firm belief in and devotion to God”. It is normal when students in one educational institute came in with fixed ideas on their own beliefs and how they see other religions. The way to tackle this is to engage in a dialogue. This is necessary although difficult, because we need the students to open up and to accept the positive side of other religions. It takes a lot of courage to do this but, when we see the students open up their thoughts, it means or demonstrate a shift of attitude. Another way is demonstrating the common values among all the religion so that the students will learn to appreciate it. For an example, made by Fr. Jamal Khader, Chairperson of the Department of Religious Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Bethlehem University when he wrote an article for Common Ground News Service (CGNews) on “Overcoming Religious Prejudices Through Education” in 13 December 2011.

“When I ask my students, for example, to tell me what they like in the Gospel (which they read in the first week), some find it difficult to answer. So I rephrase my question: what do you find in the Gospel that will make you a better Muslim? This allows them to feel more relaxed and seek out elements of the Gospel that they like.”

(paragraph 6, line 6)

“Although, the section on Judaism is limited, we feel that the course tries to promote the common values of all three religions and that the students learn to appreciate Judaism as the first monotheistic religion or as the Muslim students put it: the first heavenly religion”

(paragraph 9, line 4)

Also as said by (Hackman 2005; Oakes & Lipton 2003; Sleeter 2001)

“Critical reflection and dialogue encourages self-interrogation and questioning of institutional practices that continue to suppress human potential”

So, even though a student might still believe that their own culture is still superior, but still there will be an understanding that other students will have the same thoughts in thinking that their own believes are superior as well. It is important that educators knows the positive way to tackle these problems and not being prejudice on either sides so that students can be more relax when dealing with issues of religion and they will want to take it positively.

3.5       Assimilate Multicultural Education in the Curriculum Pedagogy

Multicultural education has incorrectly been viewed as merely curriculum reform that involves the addition of content regarding diverse groups. It is, in fact, more comprehensive than this limited conception and is characterized by five dimensions: (Banks, 2004).

1)     Content integration

It is the way on how the educators use content and examples from different cultures to show the concepts principle and theories in accordance to the subject that they are trying to teach. The content must be complete and accurate and also acknowledging the perspective of all ethnics or races. Most importantly the content that are to be delivered must be free of prejudices, biases.

2)     Knowledge construction process

This is a way of educating the students by having them giving their own opportunities in forming their own opinion or interpretations of one subject with a different perspective from the usual literature. 

The first process is contribution approach. In this approach the focus is on inserting ethnic heroes, holidays and other discrete cultural artifacts into the curriculum (Banks, 1988). At this stage, educators will go beyond heroes, holidays or other cultural activities by adding substantial material and knowledge about what are being raised. This is the easiest step and commonly used in schools. This can lead into forming a surface of basic information into understanding of other cultures. The second approach is the additive approach. This approach is to add in the all of information’s on ethnic contents, themes and perspective into the curriculum but still having the basic structures of the curriculum unchanged. Educators may have a reading session on classical books on other ethnicity or races, but not only merely reading the content, but having them discussing on the topic or book that they are reading. The next one is the social action approach. This approach deals with important social issues, such as racism and sexism. It is to be addressed as part of the curriculum. All ideas and perspective from the students are brought forward as for their learning experience. It is not only limited to text books but also alongside with the media are given to the students to explore and discussed. The next step is the transformation approach. Transformation approach will have to be in restructuring or changing all that are in the curriculum, the perspective and the goals. By doing this, educators will be able to provide the students on viewing concepts, issues and also outcome from the eyes of the ‘other’ group of people. The educators will put in new material with the current framework of knowledge in order to provide the students new levels of comprehension based from a much more accurate and complete curriculum.

3)     Reduction of Prejudice

How to reduce prejudice for the ultimate aim of helping the students develop democratic attitudes, values and behaviours are by intercultural curriculum. Having them have positive contact with members of other race can reduce prejudice.

4)     Equity Pedagogy

This involves strategies and environment to help students from diverse ethnic, cultural groups and race to attain need knowledge and skills for them to create a democratic humane society. Equity pedagogy is abandoning the traditional environment of a classroom and also teaching strategies. By giving way to the students, the teachers are to eliminate the authority that they have. In this new environment, the student produces the knowledge. Implementation of this pedagogy, the students will learn on constructing their own knowledge on how they understand of the world around them and not only memorizing facts.

5)     Empowerment of School and Social Structure.

Occurrence of when the transformation of the school structure to enable or allow students from all diversity to experience the sense of empowerment and equality.

For the students to feel empowered, school must be reformed through change in the curriculum and testing procedures, as well as change in the actions and attitudes of teachers and administrators (Banks, 1993b).

From the above, henceforth, teaching and training techniques are and must be designed to help learners have multicultural competence and preparing them to have the ability of facing the multiple facets of multiculturalism. Honouring diversity must be included in the curriculum. The goal of it is to not see diversity as an expected uniformity but also desirable.

3.6       Removing the Conflict of Interest within the Educational Staff.

Educational staffs are the pillars in realising multicultural education. For that matter, it is important that they undergo appropriate training for further development of teaching, knowledge skills and attitudes when they are put to the task of educating multicultural students.

“Education courses for early childhood personnel should have elements in both content and delivery that address diversity of cultures” (Verma 2003).

 Educators must take a responsive approach in teaching these children. To help them understand how their actions might later may it be consciously or not on social inequalities in the society. This approach will help develop children self-conscious awareness in relation to society their surroundings. It is also vital that educators have the values of understanding ann to appreciate humanity, cultures and the natural environment interdependence. They must always practice mutual respect on whatever differences or qualities of other races besides their own. They must always acknowledge diversity as way of knowing not only ways of being.

4.0     Conclusion

Multicultural education should be given an in depth research in order for it to make it in the Malaysian market. Lots need to be done. The Ministry of Education should be taking on initiative in ensuring that the school through the teachers and also the PTA’s is out there carrying out their role. In realising the goals to continue using educational institute as the best platform to encourage the spirit of coherence amongst our children’s, the role of primary and secondary school will need to be refine. Shortly there must be continuity between primary school to high school in order for the education to be carried on and not be abandoned half way. Primary school for example, need to focus more on the basics because primary school are the first place that our children go to when they are put out into the unfamiliar world besides their home and these are the place where they mingle with other races other than theirs. Therefore this opportunity needs to be benefited fully by the schools through programmes or activities that can build up their spirit of coherence between each other. So, it is important that fellow educators have the elements of creativity that can transform the way to respect one another and to accept other friends from different race or religion  as an exciting activity during class. If this is successful, then the continuance towards high school, empowering the understanding about way of respect and toleration between race and religion would be assisted. Children's nowadays are smart. Therefore educators will need to create a refine way for them to continue understanding and appreciate the spirit of national coherence.

The truth is Malaysia has been experiencing great achievement with the reason of the unity between all of its citizens from all races. It is with our biggest hope that it shall be continued on by our future leaders.

5.0     References

1)     Banks, J.A. (1984). Multicultural education and its critics: Britain and the United States. (In J.A. Banks (Ed.), Race, culture, and education: The selected works of James A.Banks (pp. 181-190). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.)

2)     Banks, J. (1993). Approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. In J. Banks and C. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

3)     Aldridge, J., Calhoun, C. & Aman, R. (2000). 15 Misconceptions About Multicultural Education. Reprinted from Focus on Elementary, 12(3).

4)     McIntosh, P. (2000). Interactive phases of personal and curricular re-vision with regard to race. In G. Shin and P. Gorski (Eds.), Multicultural resource series: Professional development for educators. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association

5)     Banks, J. (1994). An introduction to multicultural education. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

6)     Verma, G. K. (2003). Ethnic Diversity and Multicultural Education: Cross-cutting issues and concepts. Proceedings of The International Conference on Globalization and Multicultural Perspectives in Education, Penang, Malaysia, 3-4 Dec. 2003

7)     Ch.2 of Bryan Wilson, ed., Education, Equality and Society, London, 1975

8)     Banks, J. A. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. In J. A. Banks, & et al. (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (2^nd ed. , pp. 3-29). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

9)     Banks, James. A. and Cherry A. McGee Banks (Eds.). Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (1995).

 10)  Pastor Richard Bucher, Th.D. Why we baptize babies? (The case for infant baptism)   [http://www.orlutheran.com/trinfbap.html]

11)  Jayaram, V. Hinduism and the belief in rebirth, 2010. [http://www.hinduwebsite.com/reincarnation.asp]

12) Noor Mohamed S.M; Harian Metro, Article on ‘Sekolah semai benih Perpaduan’. 8^th March, 2012 issue