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Culture And Gender Bias

Culture Bias

Educators have an obligation to prepare young people for the future. The future will be in a culturally pluralistic nation and a rapidly shrinking world. Therefore, we need to prepare all students to be culturally literate citizens of the world. Teaching students using a multicultural perspective is one way to achieve that goal. All educators need to become sensitive to learning needs and abilities, to personal interests and motivation, and to ethnic and cultural differences and similarities.

The following is a list of steps educators can take to provide a multicultural classroom experience:

• Affirm and validate students' ethnic experiences by inclusion of the experiences of different cultural groups in the classroom; i.e., bulletin board displays, projects and presentations.

• Recognize and understand cultural differences.

• Vary your teaching style to accommodate different learning styles.

• Recognize and correct historical distortions.

• Examine all curriculum material for ethnic and cultural bias.

• Promote and foster healthy interaction among diverse groups for making decisions and solving problems.

• Help students become responsible for their own intellectual, social and emotional development.

• Promote students' ability to understand and cope with an environment which can and will change.

• Infuse multicultural concepts whenever possible in all areas of the curriculum.

• Develop problem-solving and higher level thinking skills.

• Teach students sensitivity to and appreciation of similarities and differences.

• Be aware of elements of culture including language, food, clothing, time, space, gestures, ethics, values, religion, sex roles, rights and duties, esthetics, etc.

• Promote effective interaction between/among individuals and groups.

Multicultural education goes beyond awareness and understanding of cultural differences. Multicultural education goes beyond dancing and eating ethnic foods. The goal of multicultural education is acceptance, support and appreciation of similarities and differences. It also recognizes the right of different cultures to coexist. Multicultural education is for all children. Pursuing this goal will bring a richness and quality of life that will go far towards preparing students for the future.

Gender Bias

Some suggestions for avoiding gender bias in your classroom:

• Use inclusive language. "You guys" may be a popular way of addressing groups, but it's an example of gender bias.

• Make sure your expectations are the same for all of your students. Both genders can succeed at math, science, language arts and reading.

• Use examples that are gender balanced. If there are none in your textbooks, do some research to find some.

• Avoid stereotyping jobs for students such as having girls clean up and boys carry things.

• Screen books, posters and other instructional materials for gender balance.

• Try to put girls and boys in non-traditional situations, such as the placement of girls first in this sentence. Isn't it normally boys, then girls?

• Make the classroom atmosphere one where both girls and boys are encouraged, questioned and reinforced.

• Actively integrate groups by not allowing self-segregation.

• Never use gender to group students.

• Model gender balance by what you say and do.