Editors' Note: When this article was posted in Reading Online in July 1998, readers were invited to comment on it through a bulletin board feature that was discontinued when the journal was redesigned in July 2000. Following are the comments posted to that bulletin board.

Readers who would like the opportunity to comment on this or other articles in the journal are invited to contact the author directly (e-mail address is available on the opening page) or to post messages through ROL Communities.

Post 1

Author: Angela_Fanelli
Date: 07-07-1999 21:59

Multiculturism in literacy is a new field. More ethnitcities and groups of people who share a common geography are more and more vocal. They are being given the voice to express their views. This includes their views on education and curriculum. When we develop curriculum, who is making the decisions and who are not? Recently, this has become a hot topic. This in turn has raised the awareness that the dominant culture is not the only one. Who does dominant culture represent? Many people are being marginalized. I think it is good this issue is being discussed. America is not a melting pot. It is a salad bowl.

Reply 1a

Author: Diane_Hartwig
Date: 07-11-1999 13:07

Multiculturalism is definitely a hot topic in today's schools. I too have to wonder whose culture will we teach?? I try a variety of different novels to teach students that there are many people out there who are different from ourselves. We can not live or teach in a glass bubble anymore. Fun with Dick and Jane books are no longer appropriate in our schools because it shows the old idea of a "typical family" . I'm not sure we can ever feel totally confident in what we are teaching our children, but teaching them that there is a world beyond where they currently live is important.

Reply 1b

Author: joanne_lalk
Date: 07-18-1999 14:49

I was impressed by the organization and important issues brought to Wallace's elementary classroom. I think the project is definitely worthwhile, and wonderfully crafted, and should be used even with older students, as I believe those students now know more about Japan than myself! However, I am concerned with the concept of students asking parents for information. While interviewing skills are integrated nicely into this project, communication lines are opened between the student, parent, and teacher, I would emphasize Wallace's concern for negative information received by young interviewers. I understand her willingness to detour any negative stereotypes mentioned by family, but that is confusing for a youngster who has just had a quality experience with a parent/guardian via the interview for more information, only to be corrected upon their return to school. I know that stereotypes should be detoured at any cost, but I feel that this method could be damaging to the student, and affect the relationship between the parent and the teacher negatively. Another issue here is environment. While Wallace has an excellent environment for this type of process, other teachers may not. Students may not have the resources at home (family willing to participate) for interviews. The results may be equally or more disturbing than those in her class, and I would hate to see such a worthwhile project go up in flames. Some ideas for other classrooms: let parents know what's going on, inform an administrator just in case, use the interview portion for older students, subsitute interviewing for web search (kids love that, especially if they have no computer access at home).

Reply 1c

Author: Laura Mould
Date: 11-12-1999 01:49

In reading the article, Teaching Multiculturalism, I too was impressed with the depth or the author's multicultural classroom activities. The author went the extra mile to enhance the students learning when she could have very well assumed that the basic social studies curriculum would be enough for her homogeneous group. I believe that her concept, of preparing for and brining visitors into the classroom, has great promise in not only educating students on various cultures, ethnic groups, and races but also in raising awareness and generating accepting attitudes in her student. Through interaction with people of different cultures, students gain new insight into interpreting there multicultural world.

In rebuttal to Joanne's response, I disagree with her statement, regarding the potential risk that children are under in hearing conflicting stories from teachers and parents. From my perspective, the potential benefit of helping children form educated beliefs pertaining to different societal groups is far more important that the disappointment they might feel from hearing conflicting stories. Children will at sometime in their life encounter their parents opinions. Should students hear their parents negative comments, at a time when they have just had a very positive experience with someone from another culture, I believe that they will have already received the tools for interpreting their parents uneducated opinions for what they are. Many people will likely disagree with me, seeing parent's rights over teachers in educating their children, but if we as teacher do not confront the societal stereotypes and prejudices who will?

Reply 1d

Author: Brian_Martin
Date: 12-03-1999 15:53

As with Laura, I was fascinated with this article on multiculturalism. I am an English Education student at Miami University (Ohio), and in all our class discussions about multiculturalism, I never heard about a classroom activities that I think would be as effective as those described in this article. Of course, people should be our focus in multicultural education. It's so simple, yet, bringing a group of ethnically diverse people into my classroom never stuck out in my mind in educating my students about the world around them. How have I learned about other cultures? By talking to other people, both from my own culture who have experience with others and those from cultures other than my own. For someone to come into a classroom and tell stories and bring to life specific details about their culture -- that would be wonderful! I also thought the activities preparing for the visitor and bringing closure to the visit were appropriate and exciting.

Thank you for bringing the focus of learning about other cultures back to where it belongs - people. Great article!

Reply 1e

Author: Rebecca_Wangenheim
Date: 12-06-1999 08:20

As someone who will soon be able to teach both English and a foreign language, German, I think that it's awesome to note that others are trying to focus on multiculturalism and the teaching of culture in other subject areas, outside of foreign languages. I'm going through my Methods Block this semester and next semester and I'm focusing on foreign language. One of the most important things we're learning is how to teach and incorporate culture into our classroom. To me, one of the most important reasons for teaching about culture is to show students that people from different places aren't "strange, bad or different" in the bad sense, but it's their cultural that makes them unique. To them, we're strange and different. I think that by incorporating the teaching of cultures (not just in the foreign language classroom) that it will help our students to learn to embrace differences, and find commonalities with each other. With the onslaught of the internet and a variety of other new media, the world is becoming a much smaller place. I think as teachers, it's our responsibility to the students to show them that, through the teaching of culture.

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