The summer sun shone brilliantly on the ripe fruits and vegetables as the farmer's market vendors tended their stands. Business was brisk at every stand except one, although the farm family tending it industriously straightened the produce and adjusted umbrellas to keep it shaded. A shopper passed close enough to see that the prices were competitive, but kept going when her young daughter said, "Let's not stop here, Mommy. I'm afraid of those people."
"Those people" were a Hmong woman and her two small children, hardly threatening except to a child unfamiliar with their dress and language. In just a few moments of open conversation about "those people," the shopper could have allayed her daughter's fears and perhaps her future prejudice as well.
It is natural for children to notice physical differences among people. Studies have shown that it happens as early as infancy. According to Patricia G. Ramsey, in her book Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World,
By age three or four, most children have a rudimentary
concept of race, and are quite accurate in the application
of the socially conventional racial labels of 'black'
and 'white' to pictures, dolls, and people…. We have to let
go of the myth that children are color-blind and untouched
by prevailing social attitudes. As study after study has
shown, children's awareness, identification, preferences,
and assumptions do reflect the attitudes of the adult
world. Therefore, it is crucial that teachers help
children to articulate their ideas about race in order to
find effective ways of challenging their misperceptions and
expanding their understanding.
This theory has spawned a movement for multicultural education in the schools. "We advertise for input from the parents, but we know the kids don't always take the notes home," says Jennie Piper-Bichinho, a fifth-grade teacher who participates in the global-education program at Countryside Elementary School in Edina, Minnesota. The one-year-old program will be expanded to include more students and more time in the 1989-90 school year, at the children's request.
Last year the program consisted of a six-week study of the geography, language, music, and folk art of six countries. Visiting performers included a dance troupe from Ghana and a musical group from the Caribbean.
"We focus not so much on issues, but rather on raising the children's multicultural awareness," she says. "Next year, we hope to include school assembly programs with writers and scientists, especially concerning global environmental issues.
"From what I've read in the professional journals, there has been a growing interest in global or multicultural education since the seventies. But the programs in the schools, even
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