Multicultural books are a bridge that shortens the gap between misunderstanding in diversity. Between class, age, ethnicity, culture, race, color, religion, achievement, and disability, diversity is something that needs to be addressed. The way we do that in schools as early as kindergarten is through multicultural books. Immersing students at a young age greatly increases their chance of forming unbiased opinions and being empathetic toward others that are different.
The class gap is something that is problematic. Students that have better means can hire tutors and go to better schools; Upper-class parents will probably not challenge their kids to read multicultural books, thus our next generation will not understand citizens with fewer means. The achievement gap can parallel the sentiment of the class gap. Achievement is greatly increased with more exposure to educational tools, highly qualified teachers, and more time spent on learning. Reading multicultural books might not seem important to parents who have kids that are succeeding. Why add an element of knowledge if everything seems fine.
The age and disability gap is something a bit different. People are living longer. People with disabilities are now living at home or on their own as all the mental hospitals are closing or already closed. Even people with severe disabilities are told they have to fend for themselves. Loved ones are burden with the daunting task of taking care of their family members. People living longer will be problematic. What will they do? Will they work longer? What about health care? Our youth needs to understand our older society and out disabled. Younger people may have to work with these diverse people or have to make the decision about them in politics. We need our youth participating in government and not only to participate but understand we have a diverse country. Multicultural text can bridge this gap of understanding by immersing our children into diversity through reading. It's our next generation we have to think about.
I read that by 2060, the U.S. Will be a “majority of minorities”. This means that the future generations of Latino-Americans and African-Americans will make up the majority. If this is the trend, then we need multicultural books more now that we ever have before. It has only been since the 1960s, that minorities have had fair and equal rights. Not even then did they really have equality. The more we expose our children to other races, ethnicity, and cultures, the better off we will be as a society.
Religion can parallel the people of color sentiment. The U.S. Is a melting pot of different religions. Faith is not going away. We must learn to see our neighbors as “us” and not “them”. We can do that by looking through the “window” and understanding other people. We can do that by reading meaningful and entertaining stories about other cultures and different religions. These stories will take meaning, and we can understand that people are different, but we also share many of the same dreams and desires. We must educate our students that people of different faiths shouldn't be a frightening thing. We can live in peace together.
Finally, what can I do as a teacher? I've never been one to define the problem without trying to tackle it and find a solution. I have a couple of ideas. I would need to spread these ideas to my colleagues. Hopefully, my ideas will be heard and built upon. If teachers will be banned together, we can get more books into more students hands. I have picked up these ideas from many readings I have had to do in this class. My sources are listed in the resource section of my blog.
My first idea is something I thought about just the other day. I have noticed over the last few years that Amazon has free kindle books. I have read many. I wondered how could they be free, so I did a little investigation. These free kindle books come from authors that are unknown. No one wants to take a chance on them, thus they write a few free kindle books, so people will start to take notice if they enjoy their works or not. After a person gets notoriety, then he/she can start writing to make money. Authors of minority status could work in this fashion. They could offer stories that were free to start out. Our school systems could hire someone to read these free stories over the summer and make a recommendation to the school board. We could then bring them to the school library and make them available. I know I'm not filling in every gap, and I realize there are problems and issues I'm not considering; however, this is an idea. All ideas take a time to shape.
I believe that economics and “supply & demand” are what is keeping our multicultural books off the shelf. I believe that parents and children alike want stories about themselves. If not themselves, then something mystical to read about. We are caught up in a Hollywood generation, so authors and storytellers are always under the burden of creating something more exciting each time. Lastly, every problem I've ever tackled seems insurmountable when I first looked at it. However, through years of practice, I know that problems get a lot smaller as we work at them and chip off barriers as we find the answer needed to solve these issues.
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