Classroom Diversity

I had never heard the term cosmopolitanism before but I really liked how Hirsch described it as being a member of humanity as a whole. I think that we have been focused a lot lately on “multiculturalism” and what it means to respect other cultures. However, not everyone fits into one stereotype or cultural box. Each person is different. Therefore, I think it really just comes down to getting to know our students. Each and every student not just certain culturally groups of students. I also agree that just because we are respecting a culture does not mean that we have to allow intolerance if it is a part of their culture. We have laws for a reason and while being aware of what others believe is important it is not ok if their beliefs cause harm to other people living in this country. I think an important question came up in one of the readings about how other countries offer their children more equal educational opportunities. My question was, do they?
To be honest I don’t think that they do. Yes, our country may have a gap between low and high socioeconomic education mainly in comparison of test scores, but we also have the most diverse country in the world. I highly suggest reading, What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point by Rick Ayers http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html . Ayers says, “According to this piece in The Nation, ‘In the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are – gasp! – unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and health care, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results in school.’" Why does Finland have such high test scores? According to Wikipedia, “The country is ethnically homogeneous, the dominant ethnicity being Finnish people.” How can we compare our multicultural education system with a country that has no minorities or different ethnicities represented?

Now with that said, I do think that we can fill that gap we just have to understand what we are dealing with. We are dealing with students who all have different home lives, experiences, and learning environments. There is all this push to change curriculum in order to increase test scores. Has anyone thought that maybe we should change the test to match the curriculum and not vice versa? If you want to know more about the Core Knowledge Foundation and their curriculum ideas, check out http://www.coreknowledge.org/the-k-8-sequence .