A good education requires balance. Students should learn to appreciate a variety of cultures, sure, but they also need to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Judging from the courses that the nation’s leading education colleges offer, however, balance isn’t a goal. The schools place far more emphasis on the political and social ends of education than on the fundamentals.
To determine just how unbalanced teacher preparation is at ed schools, we counted the number of course titles and descriptions that contained the words “multiculturalism,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and variants thereof, and then compared those with the number that used variants of the word “math.” We then computed a “multiculturalism-to-math ratio”—a rough indicator of the relative importance of social goals to academic skills in ed schools. A ratio of greater than 1 indicates a greater emphasis on multiculturalism; a ratio of less than 1 means that math courses predominate. Our survey covered the nation’s top 50 education programs as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, as well as programs at flagship state universities that weren’t among the top 50—a total of 71 education schools.
The average ed school, we found, has a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82 percent more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: almost twice as many courses are social as mathematical. At the University of Minnesota, the ratio is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and descriptions contain the word “multiculturalism” or “diversity,” while only three contain the word “math,” giving it a ratio of almost 16.
This article is certainly correct where MMSD is concerned. At Rafael Gomez’s January 8th forum on K-12 School Models, Superintendent Rainwater very clearly expressed that diversity in the classroom outranked all else.
When Jim Z is able to upload the video of this forum, you will be able to listen to Art’s rationale and judge for yourself.
I think it is ironic how MMSD talks about promoting and celebrating diversity, yet its classroom practices do just the opposite! The classrooms are being homogenized. Advanced classes are being cut. The Tag program receives little funding. The students with special learning needs are mainstreamed. I think that we have a District that DOESN”T celebrate diversity.
The diversity the article and Rainwater was referring to is multiculturalism, at least. The classrooms are not being homogenized — just the opposite. What is being homogenized is the curriculum with a lot of fat content.
However, my vision of equity and successful diversity is looking in at any class and any school and seeing kids of all ethnicities and SES in equal proportion to their population.
Given the current inequality of opportunities in our society, that vision is impossible to attain in elementary school, more likely in middle school, and certainly doable through high school. But, it cannot happen if the focus is on everything but education.
That is what we have now, throughout the US, not just here in Madison.
The audio / video Larry referenced should be up later this week – I’m waiting for a complete transcript.
A 41MB mp3 audio file is available here:
http://www.zmetro.com/video/2008/01/HOPE_SIS_Rainwater182008_56.mp3
Larry is correct, it is the curriculum that is being homogenized. That was the point I was trying to make. Too often the focus, in our schools, is not education. This is the most apparent at the elementary level. Our middle and high schools seem to concentrate more on education. Too often, the students aren’t prepared for the education they receive in middle school, unfortunately!
Below is part of the transcript that Jim provided of the Hope SIS forum with Art Rainwater and Rafael Gomez. The exchange below between Art and an audience member concerned creating charter/magnet schools and his belief that educational inequities can occur in such cases.
The key part to notice is that Rainwater, like the original article indicates is the case nationwide, places diversity in each classroom above all else. — LJW
http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2008/01/a_discussion_on.php
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Art: [01:25:03] Well, what I’m saying is it’s my belief about what’s best. That’s just my belief, that doesn’t make it right or wrong or whatever, it’s just my belief. I think what you just said is exactly what happens. It is self-select. There are kids who stay where they are.
[01:25:18] They may not necessarily want to stay where they are. They have to stay where they are because they don’t have the opportunity to go to the other place. That’s a problem. To me one of the major issues that we have to deal with — the purpose of K-12 education is to prepare kids to be successful adults.
[01:25:37] That’s the purpose. Right now our present governor thinks the purpose is to take a test, but they’re confused. The ultimate purpose is to prepare kids to be adults. The world that our kids — first of all, think about the fact that our kindergartners will be in the workforce 60 years from now.
[01:25:59] We ain’t got a clue what it’s going to be like. The one thing that I can tell you for sure it’s going to be like is it’s going to really be diverse. They are going to have to work with — both as peers, as superiors, and subordinates — they are going to have to work with kids who speak a different language than they do, who look differently than they do, who come from a completely different culture than they do.
[01:26:25] Their ability to do that is going to determine their success, regardless of how much skill they have. That’s going to be what is the most important thing. Every day, in my view, that we do not create an environment in which they learn how to do that, we are short-changing that child and decreasing their chances to be successful.
[01:26:53] To me it’s one of the biggest strengths of the Madison Metropolitan School District, that we have that devotion. That diversity isn’t just about race. It’s about disability, it’s about ability to communicate, not just the language — it’s all those kinds of things.
[01:27:11] And any time we create a public school environment in which we create situations in which children and parents can self-segregate based on race, based on language, based on intellect, based on any of those kinds of things, I believe is not what our country needs.
[01:27:34] That’s my belief. You believe completely differently. That’s one of the great things about being an American. That’s what I believe.
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