Multicultural Education: An American Perspective

Students in the United States experience varying degrees of Multicultural Education. To my benefit, I was brought up in a learning environment that was culturally accepting and engaging. I was enrolled in the Franklin Pierce School District for my entire public education career and at Pierce College during my last two years of high school. Since the beginning of my academic career, I’ve been exposed to a learning environment filled with a rich amount of diversity among students which in turn produced well-roundedness in myself. In my experience as a FPSD student, I’ve shared experiences with fellow peers of different races, cultures, and socioeconomic standings. Pierce College boasts an even more specific type of diversity within the student

During the 2015-16 year, the percentage of white students in the Franklin Pierce School District was 36%, a drastic decrease. The diversity in the school district I attended allowed us to be exposed to different cultures and in turn, share learning experiences with the people who represented these cultures starting from a young age. This made interactions with people from different cultures more comfortable as we got progressed throughout our grades. In the 2015-2016 school year, 74% of students receive free or reduced lunch. As striking as this may sound, this in a sense created a sense of “belonging”. There was this mindset that if the majority of the cohort came from a rather “dystopic community”, it made it socially acceptable to come from a low-income or an unstable home. Alongside my schoolmates, it was never about being the person coming from an upscale background. It was well known among us students to refer to the people that were “Keeping up with the Joneses” as the people who went to Bellarmine Prep. We didn’t care if we were being politically correct. We just wanted to feel like we belonged and that what we were doing

In class, we would always explore how other countries celebrated their holidays such as Cinco De Mayo and Hanukkah, We also had the opportunity to take foreign language,s and the foreign language classes you took also taught about the countries that speak these languages. The information we learned about other cultures was reinforced by our peers who were from these respective cultures through discussion. As much as what the teachers did to integrate diversity in the classrooms, much of our multicultural experiences was done outside the classroom. It sort of felt like a shadow you didn’t really notice until for some reason or another you looked right at it. The multicultural experiences took place everywhere. It took place in the lunchroom, when we were debating what culture had the best food (which is still debated to this day, I’m sure). It took place suiting up in the locker room for a football game, reminiscing about what it was like to celebrate the holiday season the year before. It took place in our hearts, when someone was sharing their pain regardless of what culture we affiliated ourselves with because human culture is