Not Your Great-Great Grandfather’s Multiculturalism

As many of us look around our classrooms, we could claim to share a common challenge with our counterparts of 170 years ago: how to create common ground for all of the differing backgrounds and experiences we find merged into one room in front of us. While our predecessors did not have a standardized curriculum to the extent we do, they were charged with teaching a fixed set of skills, values, and body of knowledge to a group from a half dozen or more countries. Their job was to turn them all into Americans. Now, we are basically charged with the same task, but it is more about getting them to pass tests than it is about building patriotism and assimilating them into American culture.

Like then, some come willingly to take what we offer; some do not. Some want to learn the secrets of America and her promises; some do not or feel disappointed that life can be so hard even here. Many students bring with them a strong sense of where they are from and pride in their unique histories; sometimes so much so we seem to pale a little in comparison. While dissent and freedom of speech is what this country was founded on, sometimes the negativity of the rhetoric can be a little discouraging.

I struggle between wanting my students to appreciate American literature and wanting to offer more multicultural titles to reflect what my classroom really looks like. But American literature includes works by Hispanic Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans, doesn’t it? So by American literature do I mean white Americans? Male Americans? Americans like me? Today’s multiculturalism is not the same as post-Revolutionary War multiculturalism. Or is it?