Throughout America, school districts,
in their annual search for new teachers, promote
themselves as "multicultural" school districts.
This is a myth. A multicultural school system would
be one with diversity throughout the system: Administration,
teaching, staff, and students. The vast whiteness
of the administrators and teachers in these so-called
"multicultural" school districts are totally
in control. These school districts are systems where
the Pedagogy of Colonialism is firmly rooted. These
colonial systems are not in the tradition of the
British Empire where the indigenous population is
trained to eventually govern their own country,
but in the dreaded colonial traditions of exploitation
and mastery of the colonial powers. The colonists
know best, local language, culture, traditions,
and norms not withstanding, and the locals are incapable
of making the "right" choices. These bastions
of colonial domination and subjugation are the colonies
of the whites in another way also: Most administrators,
teachers, and staff do not live in the local school
district, perhaps not even in the same city, nor
even in the same State: Traveling daily to the far
flung colonies to exploit the minorities and aren't
the folks on the plantation just so happy to see
them every day? Perhaps ...... perhaps not. If this
principle was not in vogue, how else to explain
the vast majority of school districts serving Native
Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and sadly,
increasingly, African American children are administered,
taught, and staffed by whites only. There should
be a large sign on the front of each school: Whites
only need apply for positions here. The drastic
and catastrophic damage to the personality development
of minority children, who year-after -year, never
see a adult of their own race in a position of power,
prestige, and privilege, and instead, always see
the adult of their own race, if any, in a position
of low power, low prestige, and low privilege kills
their motivation to learn and their need for achievement.
The opposite of the Pedagogy of Colonialism is
the Pedagogy of Multiculturalism. In the Pedagogy
of Multiculturalism, the administrative, teaching,
and other staff is diversified and in proportionate
to the student body. The Supreme Court in Brown
V. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) Brown,
1954) recognized this psychological damage in its
decision-yet fifty years after Brown, the remarkable
segregation of America's schools continues unabated
but more insidious: Colonial patterns of control
by whites of minorities and their educational achievement,
and therefore, their subsequent rise, or lack thereof,
into positions of power, prestige, and privilege
in society. The Pedagogy of Multiculturalism is
democratic, bilingual, diversified, fair, and offers
hope and role models for minority children. These
schools are at best at mirage in present-day America,
a pearl in a ocean of oysters, a phenomenon so rare
that if any exist they would be on the endangered
species list. Hope...however... springs eternal.
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