Charting New Maps: Multicultural Education in Rural Schools. ERIC Digest.

Overview & Synopsis

This digest reviews the concepts of "culture" and "multicultural education" and advocates multicultural education for rural schools. Culture applies to any group with coherent norms and traditions that help members engage the world around them. Multicultural education seeks to create an environment in which students can understand, respect, and ultimately value cultural diversity. Multicultural education in rural schools merits attention for several reasons, including the changing character of rural life and educational needs and the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of American society. Three considerations bear on making multicultural education work in rural schools: (1) to reduce cultural isolation and to gain a multicultural perspective, students should first learn about their own culture in order for them to understand and respect other cultures; (2) school practices to address cultural diversity are varied, but attention to the following areas are critical for success--mission, staffing, curriculum and instruction, home and community linkages, extracurricular activities, and student characteristics; and (3) evidence exists that multicultural education is important in making schooling more relevant, decreasing racial stereotyping, and increasing the self-confidence of ethnic minority students. Multicultural education can help individuals and communities value and preserve their own cultural uniqueness and can also serve the same function more generally so that the American multiculutural society values and preserves itself. (LP)