Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching For Equity And Justice
Volume 1
Taking Multicultural, Anti-racist Education Seriously
An Interview with Educator Enid Lee
Interviewed by Barbara Miner
Enid Lee was born and raised in the Caribbean. She is presently a consultant for anti-racist education and organizational change in Toronto, Canada. Lee has worked in the field of language, culture, and race for over 15 years in both Canada and the US.
Lee believes that a multicultural or anti-racist education is a perspective. She states, “It’s a point of view that cuts across all subject areas, and addresses the histories and experiences of people who have been left out of the curriculum”. She believes it is a way for us to understand why things are the way they are in terms of power and equality. When she speaks of anti-racist education (her preferred term) she is talking about equipping parents, teachers, and students with the tools needed to combat ethnic discrimination and racism, and to build a society where all people are equal.
Lee chooses to use the term anti-racist education because in Canada the term multicultural “has come to mean something that is quite superficial”. Another reason she prefers anti-racist education is because she believes multicultural education tends only to concentrate on celebrating similarities and differences across cultures without addressing discrimination. Lee believes we should examine how, within our culture, people’s differences are looked at as inadequacies. Lee thinks that anti-racist education can help move the “European perspective” out of the spotlight to allow room for other cultural perspectives to be considered and included in the curriculum.
When posed with the question of how anti-racist education can be integrated into a kindergarten curriculum, Lee states it can be as simple as the toys and books that are in the classroom. She says that the pictures on the walls, the festivals and holidays that are celebrated, and the language that is acceptable in the classroom all contribute to a multicultural, anti-racist environment.
Lee believes that multicultural education happens in stages. She speaks of many schools’ resistance to change, and how it would not be realistic to expect an overall transformation to happen overnight. She explains that it is difficult task to move from a monocultural school to a multiracial school. The stages that of which she speaks begin with what she calls the “surface stage”, where a few adjustments are made to the school environment, such as welcome signs in different languages, and a variety of foods and festivals being celebrated. She expresses that this is a good starting place for an anti-racist education, but most teachers start and stop here. Lee says that this is where teachers need to move quickly to transform their whole curriculum.
The second stage is where the educator creates units of study that include different cultures. For example, you could study the history, values, and cultures of Native American Indians or Native Africans. The only problem with these teaching units is that they are only a small portion of the curriculum and what remains is the old, monocultural curriculum. Lee states, when you are in the second stage of anti-racist education you generally have two to three week units on an ethnic group or region that is otherwise omitted from the curriculum. She says that you (the teacher) are moving towards the third stage when these units begin to be integrated into existing units of study.
The third stage is one of social change; one that helps lead to changes outside of the classroom. For example, students might be involved in how the media portrays people of color, and write letters to the news stations expressing how they feel about bias representations. Through these types of activities children come to understand that they have a responsibility to change the world.
All of these stages will be difficult to achieve without a teacher who understands multicultural, anti-racist education. So, what if a teacher knows nothing of other cultures? Lee believes, first and foremost, that the educator needs to be in touch with the fact that the current education system is culturally biased. She says, “You need to look at how the dominant culture and biases affect your view of non-dominant groups in society”. She believes that we, as white teachers, need to understand that our idea of normal is limited, reflecting only a personal experience. What we recognize as normal is often exclusionary. In the end, Lee says “To be really universal, you must begin to learn what Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, the aboriginal peoples and all silenced groups of Americans have had to say about the topic”.
This was an important article for me to read. It opened my eyes to a different form of multicultural education where we not only celebrate similarities and differences, but also examine discrimination and how it affects many people in our society. This article has given me a lot to think about and will enable me to think more critically about multicultural education as I study it further.