Cultural Awareness at American River College

How does it feel to live in a diverse and divided world? The fastest answer one can give is that it feels weird. Undoubtedly, culture plays a role in creating diversity and a different world. Culture has a lot to do with hybridization and shifting power dynamics. For example, in the American River College, students and employees often experience culture shock and negative stereotypical behaviors. Due to the culture clashes and negative stereotypical behavior, cultural education is necessary. Cultural awareness class and inclusion for all should be mandatory in ARC because it will prepare students and employees to thrive in a diverse world and encourage acceptance.

Critics of multicultural education and inclusion for all have often been skeptical. According to them, they perceive it as a supplement brought about by a crisis in the lack of diversity. As Gay (2) stated, "Multicultural education has not yet become a central part of the curriculum regularly offered to all students; instead, educators have relegated it primarily to social studies, language arts, and the fine arts and have generally targeted instruction for students of color." Besides that, critics of multicultural education often say that is a luxury that will not bring a difference is incorporated in a school curriculum (Gay 2). As Gay (2) affirmed, such attitudes to multicultural education misrepresent the dynamics of multicultural education, which is meant to improve the quality of education and bring inclusion for all students. Furthermore, employees play an integral part in ensuring that multicultural education exists within the school campus. Gay (2) indicated that teachers are the greatest obstacle to providing multicultural content because many of them are unconvinced of the value it brings to education. In ARC, employees are notably skeptical about the feasibility multicultural awareness brings to the school. Gay (2) has pointed out that teachers often say that the school curriculum is already overburdened and incorporating multicultural education to it is valueless. Well, the argument by critics is erroneous because multicultural education is comprehensive. Educators can append multicultural education in the curriculum to avoid overburden. Besides, multicultural education is not an addendum, instead, it is an integral part of improving the academic success of students.

Incorporating a cultural awareness class at ARC would enable students and employees to thrive in a diverse world. Due to the rise of globalization, students can manage to flourish in the workplace because they will manage to work with people from different cultures and social groups. Kluckhohn (18) indicated, "A good deal of human behavior can be understood, and indeed predicted if we know a people's design for living." Arguably, when multicultural awareness class is introduced in the classroom, students and employees can understand the behaviors and lifestyles of different cultures. Based on that argument, now the question would be, what are some of the topics that the multicultural class would cover? Gay (3) weaves this discussion in his article. According to him, some of the topics that should be covered in a multicultural classroom include teaching about the causes, expressions, and consequences of racism, how to combat racism (Gay 4). As the author added, such topics require teachers to apply information and techniques from disciplines such as healthcare, literature, mathematics, history, economics, psychology, sociology, science, art, politics, and music (Gay 4). In incorporating multicultural education into the curriculum, teachers out to use reality and relevance. Gay (4) indicated that educators have to make students understand the realities of social conditions. Besides, he indicated that educators have to apply relevance in their teaching by practicing cultural similarity and approachability (Gay 5).

Cultural awareness class should be mandatory because it would enable students and employees to succeed and accept other cultures. Through multicultural education, students can learn to be open-minded with people from different cultures and also. Students would gain a better understanding of different cultures. For example, in the book Funny in Farsi, when in France Firoozeh took impromptu French-speaking classes, whose award was a two-month stay at the Alliance Francaise in France (Dumas 130). The qualifications for the contests were to state that neither parents were a French native speaker and no participant has ever lived more than 2 weeks in a French-speaking country (Dumas 130). Few days later, Firoozeh received a call that she won the competition and was invited to stay at Alliance Francaise (Dumas 132). After her win, Firoozeh stated that she began receiving calls from Alliance Francaise stating, "I would like to verify the spelling of your last name. I would like to congratulate you personally. Have you read anything by Camus? He's quite good." Undoubtedly, Firoozeh's desire to learn a new language made her succeed and was invited to stay in France for two months. With the incorporation of multicultural education at ARC, there is no doubt that students and employees might learn different languages, which might bring positivity in their future endeavors.

Conclusion

Overall, incorporating multicultural education in ARC should be mandatory because it would promote diversity and success in life. Educators within the campus have to be participative and open-minded to the inclusion of multicultural awareness classes in the curriculum. As emphasized above, multicultural education should be an integral part of the school system because it would enable both employees and teachers to be competent in the global workforce.

Works Cited

Dumas, Firoozeh. "Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America." New York:

Villard, 2003. Accessible at https://pebblebrookhigh.typepad.com/files/funny-in-farsi-book.pdf

Gay, Geneva. "The Importance of Multicultural Education." PD Online. Accessible at https://pdo.ascd.org/lmscourses/PD11OC123/media/Diversity_Eff_Teaching_M1_Reading_Importance_of_Multicultural_Ed.pdf

Kluckhohn, Clyde. "Mirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modern Life." New York:Whittlesey House, 1959. Print.