Multicultural Education…A Burden of Only White Educators?

This year was my first year in the education program at William and Mary. I took four courses total including one that discussed the philosophical and social foundations of education. Our professor gave us many articles to read, but only one truly sparked my interest. The article “How We Are White”, by Gary Howard, took me by surprise when I found out that there are some white instructors who are frustrated because they do not know how to reach all of their students, particularly the ones who are minority. The article discusses how teachers of one school have taken initiative to do something about what they assume to be ineffectiveness in their instruction—they have even gone as far as hiring someone to study under who heads the ‘team’s’ series of informative meetings. I applaud their efforts, but was sad to hear that the person leading the meeting was the only person of color involved in the effort. I hear so much about the need for multicultural information but haven’t too much about what the minority population is doing about it. I find it odd that if student success is truly of utmost importance and educators truly desire to reach all students, then they should take time out to reach that goal; and that means going beyond determining and appealing to the prevailing learning styles existent in your classroom. Personally, I do not believe that there physically needs to be an educator of color in the classroom, rather there should be some alterations to the curriculum and the way information is presented. By and large, I feel as if the issue of multicultural education still remains unscathed.