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When I arrived in Canada more than 30 years ago, I brought, besides my physical baggage, many assumptions about life in my new country. One of my more egregious misapprehensions was that, in a country with two official languages, education would necessarily be bilingual at all levels. I was excited at the prospect of my young children emerging from 12 years in the Canadian school system perfectly bilingual and biliterate in English and French. I hadn't realized that since I was moving to a small town in western Canada, my children would end up with the same smattering of French available to students in any country where it is part of a "foreign" language curriculum. The nominal offer of education in two languages was part of a system of political and language rights, not a vision of bilingual competence for all Canadian people.

Canada's multicultural policy supports, albeit in a limited way, cultural and language diversity. To be fair, if my family had moved to a city, chances are that my children could have enrolled in French immersion programs and become competent users of a second language. As it is, they get by in their extensive travels as I do -- by relying on others' good will and knowledge of English, that self-styled world language.

Through serendipity, much of my educational career has played out in cross-cultural settings, so I have witnessed and participated in many trends in our understanding of issues of multiculturalism. As I was reviewing these trends in preparation for writing this commentary, I came to realize that the concept of multicultural literacy is even today being constructed as a solution to the perceived educational problems of non-English speakers within predominantly English-speaking societies.

In my discussion below, I take a conventional approach toward trends in educational approaches to literacy in multicultural settings and examine changes in the ways educational research has defined "multicultural literacy." However, I'd first like to suggest another way of conceptualizing multicultural literacy, one that views knowledge of several languages and cultures as a distinguishing mark of the educated person. Our North American way has been to regard students who speak languages other than English as a liability to the system. More people in the world are multilingual than monolingual, yet we persist in worrying about students who are bilingual rather than lamenting those students who speak only English. As we move toward globalization, is it reasonable to assume that speaking and writing one language will be enough?

I expect that many readers have had the experience of meeting people in Europe who switch between two or three languages in order to communicate with visitors. I'd like to believe that we in North America are capable of educating people to have deeper knowledge of more than one language and culture. One important offshoot of this would be increased respect and understanding for those who live and work in North America using several languages.

Social justice requires that we find ways to educate our children as seekers after a just and inclusive society. As someone with liberal views, I take the optimistic position that the school can be transformed beyond activities that focus on the foods, dress, and dances of other cultures to build a community of caring. Encouraging all our students to engage more fully in learning several languages might support cross-cultural understanding in the most positive way possible.

Theories of verbal deficit were once used to explain the problems encountered by minority students in North American schools. Such explanations commonly held that children entered elementary school significantly different in their capacity to be educated because their language was deficient in some way.

This deficit notion gave way, at least in academic circles, to the idea that difficulties in school might be related to language differences rather than "educability." From this perspective, differences in language and dialect are seen as limiting minority students from participating fully in classroom discussions. The imbalance manifested in communicative inequality results from shifts in the power and prestige of the groups attempting to communicate with one another. Delpit's (1995) response to this imbalance is to insist that knowledge be explicitly shared "in the context of meaningful communicative endeavors" (p. 45).

In my professional travels to Baffin Island and Kazakhstan, I have been asked a number of questions generated by divergent approaches to the study of multicultural literacy. Au (1995) describes four major analytic approaches used to research cross-cultural environments: critical analyses, cultural-difference analyses, bilingual analyses, and literary analyses. Teachers, parents, and school board members in places far from centers of power have questioned me in ways that reflect each of Au's stances. For example, in Kazakhstan I engaged in a discussion prompted by the question, "What might be the role of a school system in revitalizing Kazak culture?"

Versions of the same question arise in my home province of Saskatchewan, where Aboriginal peoples are considering the role of indigenous cultures in school language and literacy programs. Their questions assume a critical stance toward multicultural literacy that would demand significant changes in mainstream and Aboriginal cultures. This view sees literacy as part of the broader issue of how power is distributed in society as a whole.

Au's category of cultural-difference analysis is reflected in the question, "Do you notice any differences in the ways teachers in Canada and Kazakhstan carry out cooperative learning activities?"

The assumption behind this question is that ethnicity will be obvious in responses to school tasks. I did notice significant differences between Kazak and Canadian teachers' responses to cooperative activities. The Kazak teachers with whom I worked were enthusiastic and task oriented, but were confused by activities whose outcomes varied from group to group. The teachers were puzzled by my acceptance of a broad range of answers and seemed annoyed by the way rules could change from activity to activity. Canadian teachers, on the other hand, are usually comfortable with some degree of ambiguity. (Of course, this distinction did not hold true in all cases. Within the Kazak group there were those who were exhilarated by the prospect of choice, and I know many Canadian teachers who prefer consistency to novelty.) I suspect primary cultural differences play some part in the general difference in response, but there may also be a secondary influence (Ogbu, 1995) resulting from Kazak experiences during Soviet times. Similarly, in North America, cultural differences ascribed to minority groups such as African Americans may have developed as secondary cultural responses to exclusion from mainstream society.

How does the reading process transfer between Inuktitut and English? I was asked this question by teachers in a fully functioning bilingual program in a school on Baffin Island. Here, Au's category of bilingual analyses could be brought into play. Students in this program begin their school lives completely in their mother tongue, Inuktitut. At around Grade 3 or 4, the program begins to include more English.

There have been problems with this program transition. Almost all primary grade teachers are Inuit, and most of the upper grades are taught by English monolingual "southerners." Although teaching students in their own language first is an excellent idea, there seem to be few ideas of how a transition between first-language instruction and a bilingual program should occur. In effect, these Inuit students have been thrown back into what Skutnabb-Kangas and Cummins (1988) describe as "submersion" in English. The ideal would be to have teachers who are fully bilingual in English and Inuktitut for the middle years, but such teachers are rare. Many Inuit teachers are partly bilingual, but they are needed for the intense Inuktitut language and literacy efforts of students' early years. Most English-speaking teachers I met spoke only a few words of Inuktitut.

Au's last category of research in multicultural settings is literary analysis. How can we use multicultural books in our classrooms? This question was asked by teachers in a school in my home city, where students from diverse backgrounds attend. The answer has been to suggest that they move beyond looking for brown faces in the text to finding books that deal with important human values and dilemmas. Issue-centered literature works at two levels, first by enabling students to see themselves and then by transcending cultural specifics to the exploration of core human values. This is not to say that it isn't important to use books with stories and illustrations that reflect diversity of all kinds, but that isn't enough in itself.

In my next commentary in Reading Online I would like to include readers' experiences of literacy in multicultural settings -- the more exotic and diverse the better! Please visit the online discussion forum to share your ideas.

Canada's multicultural policy: Canada is both a "multination" and polyethnic state (Kymlicka, 1995). Like the United States, Canada has throughout its history accepted immigrants from many different countries, and allows them access to education and other services. Unlike the United States, however, Canada has two national minorities -- French and Aboriginal -- with specific rights beyond those accorded to immigrant groups. The French are descendants primarily of settlers from one of Canada's "founding nations" (the other nation being England), and members of the French community today have certain rights to education and other "services" in the French language. Within the federation of Canada, the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec has more rights than other provinces over health care, education, language, culture, and immigration policies. The Aboriginal peoples, who signed various treaties with the European colonizers, have a limited right to self-determination within Canada, and specific rights in such areas as education, health care, and taxation.

Antiracism policies are also considered to be part of multicultural policy in Canada. The speaking of "heritage languages" other than French or English is encouraged. In the city where I live, there is a Ukrainian immersion program and a multicultural school funded by the provincial government. Funding for such initiatives tends to be less stable than for French-language programs. Furthermore, unlike the rights of national minorities, polyethnic rights are "usually intended to promote integration into the larger society, not self-government" (Kymlicka, 1995, p. 31).

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Baffin Island: Baffin Island is part of Canada's Northwest Territories, where the mostly Inuit population live and often work in Inuktitut, their mother tongue.

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Kazakhstan: I have been fortunate to work in Kazakhstan with the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project, sponsored by the International Reading Association and the Open Society Institute, and funded by the Soros Foundation. Kazak culture and language had minority status in the former USSR.

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Ethnicity: Used here to describe groups with shared cultures.

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Ward (e-mail angela.ward@usask.ca) is graduate coordinator and teaches in the Department of Curriculum Studies, School of Education, University of Saskatchewan. She holds dual Canadian-British citizenship, and takes every opportunity to travel to "cool and unusual locations." Her research interests are in language and literacy in intercultural educational settings, and in preparing teachers for increasingly stimulating and diverse school populations.

Au, K. (1995). Multicultural perspectives on literacy research. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27(1), 85-100.
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Delpit. L. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press.
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Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Ogbu, J. (1995). Understanding cultural diversity and learning. In J.A. Banks & C. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 582-593). New York: Macmillan.
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Skutnabb-Kangas T., & Cummins, J. (1988). Minority education: From shame to struggle. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
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Editors' Note: When this article was posted in Reading Online in May 1999, 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 or to post messages through Online Communities.

Post 1

Author: Brennan Thomas
Date: 07-07-1999 17:18

I can empathize with the author's claim. Bilingual and biliteral programs in most school settings are undernourished and, therefore, ineffective at teaching children multicultural perspectives. But something was left unsaid about this issue, something that the author only danced around. Why do non-dominant speakers get the shaft in school systems where the predominant language is English? NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE MINORITY (excepting advocates of "political correctness"). This is not a case of language difference. It's an issue of ethnicity. English-speaking countries are pushing the rest of the world toward globalization, a mergence which will eventually cause the cessation of non-conforming cultures (and their languages). And why not? To us, Americans, other cultures which do not fit our perception of efficient societies are seen as failures, charity cases. A narrow-minded view, yes, but not one that cannot be overcome. We must instead introduce our children to multicultural literature, as the author has suggested, in order to teach them that English-speaking cultures are neither alone on this planet nor the center of the universe.

Reply 1a

Author: Mark_Agius
Date: 11-07-1999 19:43

It is an interesting observation on the author's part to note that in Canada, the notion of a bilingual educative experience is a reality only in theory. As one who grew up taking french studies because "I had to", the idea that was pushed on me was that French was a necessary part of my studies because my country was, to some extent, built on French settlers. One really go the sense that French was really inlcuded in the curricula as a token gesture to one part of our heritage. It was never given any credence as a language of the world, or one that might aid us in the future, and I am sorry that I didn't take more advantage of this golden opportinity that passed me by. I agree that there is a great opportunity in North American schools to take advantage of the linguistic opportunities that lie in front of us. Not solely for the sake of learning another language either. Learning through the children that occupy our classrooms, as to their heritage and culture, can facilitate better cross-cultural understanding from an early age, that will only develop in time. Perhaps, the one notion of the English langauge asserting itself on the rest of the world as the dominant means of communicating, and the one by which other cultures are judged, might not be so prevalent today had cultural awareness been more an issue 50 years ago. Again, as others have noted, no time like the present to get started on that now.

Reply 1b

Author: Jorlyn Dunlap
Date: 11-11-1999 19:22

Canada's official policy states that we are a bilingual country with two official languages; English and French. However, as stated in the article not all children have accessibility to a bilingual education as French id not available in all schools. Even when French is available it is often taught by a unqualified teacher who may not fully understand the language themself. This fact makes a strong statement about the priorities that have been placed not only on language education but also on education in general. It is clear that that although "two languages and two cultures" is a national policy often only the dominant Anglo-saxon culture is being taught in schools omitting not only our second official language and culture but also that of the numerous other peoples who live in this country. It really upsets that me as stated in the article children who do not speak English are seen as a "liability" and a strain on the education system. Rather than seeing these children as having a disadvantage because they do not understnad English we should look at them as having aa advantage because they also have a whole other culture they have experienced. We should draw upon these children and their experiences to help enrich the lives of other students in the class. Far too often we underestimate children who are learning a second language and do not take the time to consider that they may already know how to perform a certain task in their native culture ie:math but the language barrier is preventing them from explaining thier knowledge. We need to rely less on the standard reading and writing and allow children different forms of expression such as hands on manipulation, drawing and acting. The education system of the Inktitut is unique as it offers children a bilingual upbringing within the eduaction system. The transfer from Inktitut to nglish begins at a very early age and I wonder how much the Inktitut continue to speak their own language once English is introduced as we need to continually use a language or else we will lose our profiency with it.

Reply 1c

Author: Beth_Dol
Date: 11-18-1999 07:26

I agree with Angela Ward's assertion that North American's need to broaden their global perspectives, especially with regard to language. Because English is so widely used, many North Americans do not seem to place value on learning another language. I have great respect for people who know additional languages because my language skills outside English are so limited. Most of my friends from other countries who can speak more than one language because in most countries bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception. One of my friends learned English as his fifth language when he immigrated to Canada and he has an extremely well rounded education in other areas as well.

Where I live there are many people whose first language is not English. In schools this is treated as a problem to be overcome instead of the tremendous asset that it is. As educators, we need to recognize the value of additional languages so we can help our students build upon their existing knowledge base rather than trying to replace it. We can also teach our monolingual students that true cross-cultural communication does not mean all our neighbours have to learn English, it means we may have to learn something new as well.

If we truly want to build a multicultural nation then we have to look at how to create a sense of community and respect between people at a deeper level. "Ethnic" food, festivals and dress only scratch the surface of what different cultures have to offer each other. In the classroom, multicultural curriculum needs to "move beyond looking for brown faces in the text to finding books that deal with important human values and dilemmas". Even if there are no non-English students in a class, North Americans can learn to replace ethnocentric practices in favour of a more inclusive world view - and this means developing multilingualism alongside multiculturalism within Canadian classrooms.

Post 2

Author: Krista Schwarz _Schwarz
Date: 07-08-1999 12:53

I am still amazed that elementary students in America are not required to take a foregin language. Children are like sponges, absorbing everything around them. Why do we wait until the junior high to expose them to a new language? It seems to be pretty obvious to me that the earlier they begin to learn a new language, the more they will learn in the long run. The society is becoming more and more diverse, and students need to be prepared to live, work, and socialize with people who may not be like them. Multicultural books are great, but like the author said, books are not enough. I definitely don't have any magical answers, but I do think exposing elementary aged students to languages other than English is a good place to start. Americans are so egotistical, always expecting everyone else to cater to their language, their customs, and their lifestyles. Why is that? I am still trying to figure it out.

Reply 2a

Author: Rebecca_Wangenheim
Date: 09-14-1999 20:24

I completely agree with Krista when she says that we need to begin to implement more foreign languages programs at the elementary level. As someone who will soon be able to teach both English and German, I can tell you that children at the elementary age DO soak up language like a sponge. It's been proven that learning a second, third or fourth language as a child will help to benefit that child in more ways than one in the future. Their standardized tests scores will go up, their knowledge and awareness of other cultures and ability to communicate with people from other cultures will definitely also flourish. Not to mention they will be able to attain a higher level of fluency with the second language. When adults (anyone after age 12) begin to learn a second language, more time is needed on grammar instruction in the classroom, whereas with children, less time is spent on that. I've also been told that by age 12, a person's vocal cords harden and stuffen, making it difficult for a late learner of a second language to prounouce certain sounds. For example, in German, the ö,ü and ä, which sound much different than English vowels. Adults might be able to attain a higher level or proficiency in language learning at a faster rate, but if we start teaching foreign languages at the elementary age in such programs as immersion programs, they will end up having a much higher fluency level. And remember, proficiency and fluency are two totally different things. For a student/language learner to be fluent, they muct not only know grammar structure and vocabulary, but also be familiar with things like culture and customs. I disagree with Krista in the fact that she says that the US is egotistical, and always expecting people to be able to cater to us and speak our language. I believe that the US is more ignorant and maybe unwilling to test out new foreign language programs in the elementary schools, and how to really find a way to run billingual/immersion schools all across the United States in an effective manner. Change can be a scary thing, especially when you talk about re-vamping and changing a entire nation's old and archiac system of teaching foreign languages.

Reply 2b

Author: JoAnn_Tiemann
Date: 12-07-1999 15:46

I am for Krista's response. I too believe that exposing children to other languages besides our own could only benefit them. As for myself, I was always anticipating the chance to learn a language other than my own. I was anxious to get to high school and learn a different language. This completely excited me. I couldn't wait to say I could speak another language. But, unfortunately I had to wait to high school to receive this chance. I am happy to see that many junior highs are now offering various languages but I believe it should start earlier than that. I think elementarty students should have the opportunity to be exposed to languages. This will only enhance their learning and give them a chance to be as diverse as our society is becoming. I feel it is selfish for us to only teach our languages when there are many other countries that are required to learn their language as well as ours. I only believe that it is out of respect that we learn other languages but we must first be given the opportunity to do so!

Post 3

Author: Shelley_Klopfenstein
Date: 11-09-1999 00:58

I am an education student at UBC currently exploring the issues of social justice and the challenge of multiculturalism in today's schools. Personally I have spent by periods of time as a child in Switzerland where I was both amazed and humbled the number of languages the majority of people speak. A difference between here and there is the value placed on language acquisition. I don't feel that the majority of our population recognizes the importance of learning more than English. Many of today's problems, big and small, are a result of miscommunications. If our goal in education is to produce individuals who can be moral and active participants within society, shouldn't there be more emphasis on communication skills within our curriculum? I am encouraged that math is now considered a communications course. to With such a culturally diverse population there is potential for the acquisition of so many languages. We should look for all possible places to implement language development into the curriculum to facilitate the development of communication. I have a tremendous amount of passion facilitate the development of responsible individuals who see other perspectives and who are capable of creating their own just society. Does anyone have some recommendations of exceptional resources that explore core human values?

Post 4

Author: Karla_Stroet
Date: 11-10-1999 13:04

I agree with the author that two of the best ways for students to understand each other across the many cultures prevalent in Canadian schools is through learning several languages and through exposing them to multicultural literature. When I was going through school, I did not have a choice of languages to learn besides English and French. However, I would be interested in hearing suggestions of specific strategies for incorporating more language choice into the already overloaded elementary curriculum. Also, I am wondering if it would be a major strain on already limited resources to hire trained professional teachers who are fluent in a variety of languages. As the example the author gave in Baffin Island illustrates, they are finding difficulty with the transition between learning in Inuit and learning in English because they have a limited number of teachers who are fluent in both languages. I grew up in a small town in Western Canada, similar to the author, and I went through the public school system from 1978 to 1991. I was not exposed to learning French until I reached Grade 7, and I continued to take it until Grade 11; however, I feel I came away from this experience with a minimal amount of competency in speaking and writing the language. Last year I visited Quebec for the first time and I tried to use some of what I could remember from my five years of French instruction and quickly realized how incompetent I was in speaking French. I know several people who had the same instruction as me who feel the same way about their experience. I am happy to see French is being introduced to children in Elementary school now, but I wonder how much more effective the program is now that it is taught at a younger age?

Reply 4a

Author: Jenny_Wong
Date: 11-12-1999 18:57

I too agree that in order to be accepting of other cultures we should learn more than just English in the school system and we need to be exposed to multicultural literature. Here in BC we do not take French as a second language very seriously. I was never exposed to French until I was in grade eight. Even then, I would only speak and write French in French class and never worked up to the fluency that was needed to speak orally. I "studied" French until I was in grade twelve. I was in no way a poor student in French. I always got an "A" in French class throughout high school, yet I cannot communicate in French. I do not think that French was taken seriously in school and I took it because I wanted to get into university. I would have liked to have taken Mandarin (which is more useful in Vancouver) but when I was in school, that wasn't recognized as a second language requirement to get into university. As the author pointed out, we do not value any language besides English and that's unfortunate. I live in Vancouver and I know that the majority of students in the classroom I'm interacting with (in Richmond) has English as a second language.

But how do we teach a second language in schools with the limited budget we face? Also, although I realize that our official second language is French, in the Lower Mainland we have so many students that do not have English or French as their first language. If we have both English and French in the schools, it would put these students at such a disadvantage. I have a student in the class that did not speak a word of English until she came to Canada. It is very difficult learning one language, let alone learning two languages in a foreign country. I just wonder how practical (and fair) it would be having both English and French in schools, specifically in the Lower Mainland, when there are so many students that would be at a major disadvantage trying to learn to languages at once.

Post 5

Author: Tricia_Wautier
Date: 11-11-1999 18:26

I liked Angela Ward's view that knowledge of several languages should be the mark of an educated person. Like most of the other respondents, my six years of highschool and university French left me with the merest smattering of the language. I was always astonished at Europeans' proficiency in languages, particularly the Germans and Swiss. However, I assumed they just got more immersion opportunities than we had on the west coast of Canada.

Increasingly, though, as our cities become more multicultural, we don't have this excuse. In Vancouver, for instance, a great many of the shop and restaurant signs are in Chinese, and large portions of the population speak Cantonese or Punjabi. A little girl I know was fluent in Punjabi by time she was three from playing with the neighbourhood kids. Is it a desire to play down the presence of other cultures in Canada, to keep the illusion that ours is a country of only two nations, that prevents schools from teaching these languages?

In our schools, ESL students are classified in the "special needs" category, pulled out for special classes two hours a week, and left to get by the rest of the time. Despite the fact that up to 80% of the children in some schools speak Cantonese as their first language, "the language of learning" is still English. The English speaking minority are not encouraged to learn Cantonese. As a result, when Chinese children do sometimes speak their own language, it creates discomfort in some of the English speakers. They feel excluded and fear being talked about. I thus agree with the author that we need to promote multilingualism in our schools if we truly wish to foster cross-cultural understanding.

Reply 5a

Author: Catherine Brett_Whitelaw
Date: 11-12-1999 19:11

I think that the two most salient points that Angela Ward makes in her article are: 1.) that "we persist in worrying about students who are bilingual rather than lamenting those students who speak only English." Even with regard to a French Immersion programme, arguments are often put forth that students will be deficient in English if they start their schooling (first three years) in French. In my experience this is not the case. Most people whom I went through 12 years of French Immersion with were very competant in English, and in fact were enrolled in I.B. English in grades 11 and 12. The issue I think has less to do with the challenges we give children (e.g. extra languages to learn) than with the climate of learning - parental participation, diversity of learning experiences (non-formal, formal,etc) and outlook of the teachers and school administration. 2). "the school can be transformed beyond activities that focus on the foods, dress, and dances of other cultures to build a community of caring." I completely agree with this. I think the tendancy of focusing on such superficial characteristics of cultre reinforce stereotypes and get away from better understanding and better communication between cultures. I think that we would be better off if we as teachers took it upon ourselves to better understand the cultures of those children in our classrooms - learn some words and put them up in the room (e.g. the word for window in Punjabi on the window as children to particpate in the sharing of all cultures in the room).This said,children have a great capacity for language and we should not stifle them in learning as much as they are capable of, simply because of our own lack of knowledge. Language learning promotes deeper understanding of who we all are.

Post 6

Author: Martha_Matyas
Date: 03-06-2000 19:51

I believe that integrating multiculturalism into the classroom is very important in bilingual schools, as Angela Ward said in her article. I also think it's just as important in all schools. Today our schools are made up of a diverse group of students. In one classroom we could have Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian students, Hispanic students, etc. Yet we continue to have all of them read traditional stories written by white men. I think it's time that we became more aware of what we are teaching and consciously tried mixing the curriculum with various authors, and protagonists of different nationalities. This means that we do this throughout the entire year-not just certain weeks here and there.

We have to take the first steps in our own classrooms. If several teachers in one school were to do so things could gradually change. Let's give students something they can relate to and that they are interested in learning about.

Reply 6a

Author: Amy_Wollering
Date: 04-17-2000 21:15

Multicultural literacy is extremely important to develop among students. I read another article that described an international visitor program in an elementary school. I think that this program was a wonderful idea because it exposed students to people of other cultures firsthand. They got the chance to learn about other cultures from a person who actually lived in that other culture. I was never exposed to anything like this in school. I feel that I missed out because of that. I went through elementary and high school in a strictly middle to upperclass white community. I wish that my teachers would have exposed me to various cultures through literature at the very least.

Reply 6b

Author: Marcus Langford
Date: 04-20-2000 17:49

I also believe that multicultural literature should be presented in all schools. I think that in many instances students are aren't being exposed to any multicultural literature. When they are, it is nothing new or original. Students are presented with a Langston Hughes poem or two, maybe "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston or things that have become a part of the "diversity/multicultural" canon. What about reading Julia Alvarez, Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, and Theresa Cha? The list could go on and on. I think that teachers need to take responsibility to present students with literature that deal with numerous expereinces and situations. I think that it speaks volumes about your (Amy) character when you acknowledged that you "missed out." Many individuals don't see the value in mulitcultural literature let alone express feelings of disdain due to thier lack of experience in it. I hope that you can spread that type of attitude to others.

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