Social and Political Context of Diversity Term Paper

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Changing Social and Political Education System

The social and political context of diversity as it applies to education seems to be in a point of confusion. The conservative movement in favor of the English only classroom in publicly funded schools has been fueled by the terrorist events that occurred in September of 2001. Those same events also fuel the cause of diversity in education in both a social and a historical sense. Though these two issues are not by any means the same they do reflect attention in very separate areas of educational trend setting. Even before the September 11th events occurred the backlash toward multicultural education had taken a strong hold on the political perspective.

Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who in 1998 helped push forward California Proposition 227 mandating English-only instruction, for example, has broadened his horizon. Unz's new target: the broader "multicultural agenda." He is quoted, for instance, in an August editorial in the Orange County Register in California, as saying that developments in California "will destroy the credibility of a lot of these activists who support the full multicultural agenda." (Pardini 2000)

The perspectives of each camp reflect ideas that may have already been employed before a national attach changed our cultural world-view. On the conservative side, those advocating renewed vigilance of patriotism and Americanism, can be seen in the xenophobic ideal of requiring an English-only learning environment, almost regardless of immigration rates and societal needs. In the other camp the recognition of September 11th as a wake up call for the American education system to embark on the teaching of a more multicultural nature, clearly not an old ideal.

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The world has more global communication than ever before and both perspectives reflect a fear of the effect this might have on the American culture.

Although there might be renewed xenophobic currents in the country, educators say it is more important than ever to teach how the United States is viewed in other countries, because the world has never been more tied together by economic, cultural and other forces. The changes must be long-term, they say, unlike past bursts of interest in countries where the United States had relatively short-term involvements (Strauss 2001).

Though emotionally compelling and even statistically forthright the "English For the Children" site and movement seems to have been politically reinforced by the current national feeling of fear. Isolationism is a natural response to such a public display of our open nature making us an easy target. The rejection of native language education may be statistically realistic and even debatably fair by some standards. The Perspective of Diane Ravitch in "Now is the Time to Teach Democracy," though well spoken and very educated seem to be using the emotion of the September 11th events to charge "multicultural" education as a bad idea, claiming that world history is somehow not part of what is meant by the use of "multicultural" in the education system.

If curriculum reformers agreed on more time for the study of world history, that would be a major improvement in all of our schools. However, what they have in mind is not more world history but more "multiculturalism," more attention to our own racial and ethnic differences (Ravitch 2001).

Teaching….....

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