Schools and 'Multiculturalism'

Our schools are going to have a tough time instilling true multicultural curriculums and teaching practices for several reasons which include societal restrictions, No Child Left Behind and standardized testing, lack of adequate funding, and too many cultural differences in teaching staffs and styles of teaching. What I mean by societal restrictions is the fact that schools cannot and will not change until society has become more multicultural tolerant. Laws such as No child Left Behind and high stakes testing have basically taken the teaching out of teaching. Teaching has instead become about ‘the test’, instead of helping students to find their interest and passions and allowing them the opportunity to explore those paths. The lack of funding for public schools is beyond ridiculous. Education should be at the top of the list in terms of funding, but it is most often overlooked. Each year teachers in public schools must do more and more with less and less. With each of these things working against public schools becoming more diversity friendly, it appears it will be a long time before anything of significance occurs in terms of a truer sense of multicultural acceptance. I think that the best we can hope for at this point is that individual teachers make the choice within their classrooms to better facilitate multicultural learning environments. The change needed will not likely come from the federal level and work its way down, instead the change must begin within the classroom and work its way up.