Well-known multicultural educator Paul Gorski has written a guest post on the blog of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Here’s a snapshot of Gorski’s ten commitments each multicultural educator must make:
1. Commit to working at the intersections ~ consider how multiple identities and oppressions intersect
2. Understand the sociopolitics of schooling ~ consider your work in the context of neo-liberalism, corporatization, consumer and pop culture, among others
3. Refuse the masters’ paradigms ~ resist the urge to refer to children and families as “at risk”, for example, and refuse the temptation to ‘sell’ multiculturalism as a way to compete in a global market
4. Transcend the 4 D’s: Dress, dance, diet and dialet and push multiculturalism beyond celebrations that, while having a place, can serve to perpetuate stereotypes rather than challenge them
5. Don’t equate (or promote) multiculturalism with universal validation ~any multicultural ‘space’ cannot be both multicultural and hegemonic
6. Resist simple solutions to complex issues ~ challenge the status quo, even of multicultural theories and approaches
7. Be informed ~ do your work, check research to ensure it includes a community context and reflects actual voices
8. Work with and in service to the disenfranchised ~ apply multicultural principles to the work and to the process of the work
9. Reject deficit ideology ~ examine power hierarchies from the ground up and do not look down at those disenfranchised by power inequities
10. Pursue justice, not peace ~ do not assume that parties occupy similar space on the privilege-oppression continuum
See the full blog posting here.
