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Multicultural Literature as Curriculum
Like whole language, multicultural literature is a charged term that can raise seemingly routine discussions of teaching and learning to passionate
heights. Whose stories and encounters with the world are to be told? When?
How? Do we need to make up for past omissions by spending more time on the stories of people who have been routinely excluded? Are some stories simply too awful to tell to young children because they deal with cruelty, injustice, and even immoral acts? These issues force teachers to make far-reaching decisions, even when we don't want to make the classroom a politically charged place.
As decision-makers, teachers are by and large a pragmatic bunch.
We have much to do and little time to do it. Multicultural literature is often the literature of choice because it serves our needs. It allows us to explore and discuss with our students the variety of cultures in our midst--and in New York City that is a considerable variety--and it extends our students' understanding of the world that is not immediately observable. Isn't that social studies? Isn't that knowledge seeking? Isn't that building conceptual understanding? Isn't that reading in its truest sense?
Then, too, we teachers are charged with the responsibility of promoting reading as a thoughtful activity, an activity of choice that stimulates the intellect and nurtures the emotions.
Our goals reach beyond the considerable pressures of skills assessments and the noisy wars over the status of phonics vis-à-vis whole language. As a teacher, I am more and more convinced that the everyday intellectual habits of thoughtful readers can be introduced in the early grades. Through literature circles, book clubs, and response groups, we can show children that ideas count. The ideas within books are meant to be envisioned and entertained, not swallowed. Ideas are meant to be mulled over, talked about, and questioned. Multicultural literature is an essential source of provocative ideas. How can readers be critical, engage in so-called "higher level thinking" (as opposed to the robotic recall of facts) without interesting, challenging, and novel material to think about? We need material that challenges our current perceptions. Multicultural literature with its mix of perspectives is the foundation for thinking about a world beyond our immediate neighborhood.
Certainly not every book dealing with multicultural issues is a good one. And when it comes to critically evaluating books, we teachers need the help of librarians, publishers, and reviewers. We need to know
when books are authentic representations of a culture; we want your help in thinking about issues of literary quality since we have little time for second-best material; and we want you to sift through the thousands of books
available to alert us to those books that will help us engage in thoughtful dialogue with our students.
Having asked for this assistance, I want to qualify it by telling one true story about the excess of over reliance
on critical reviews. Recently, in a graduate class at Queens College, a student learned that a book that she had been teaching with for years was considered by many critics to have inaccurate and stereotyped portrayals of
an ethnic group.
Other books in her collection had been similarly questioned. "I guess I should dump my library in the garbage can," she remarked. I'm not so sure. If teachers select multicultural literature as the basis of curriculum, then engaging in discussions of why one book more accurately represents a culture than another could very well be the most important reading lesson we ever teach.
Myra Zarnowski is a professor in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Queens College, CUNY. Before coming to Queens College, she taught elementary school in Newton, Massachusetts, and at the Little Red School House in New York City.
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