Global citizenship, a model for student inquiry and decision-making

Abstract

As a reform movement in education, multicultural education is one response to the realities of cultural diversity in the United States. Current programs in multicultural education rely on multicultural experiences to teach students to think and act multiculturally. Teachers are required to know and respond to learning differences which arise from students' cultural diversity. Goals for existing programs vary, but a generally held goal is equal access and open opportunity for all students to the benefits of education. Current multicultural education programs fail to address the cognitive patterns of students as they relate to the processing of information about cultural diversity. The information they bring to experiences enables students to inform and learn from their experiences. Without examining the a priori by which students determine the truth of their multicultural experiences, multicultural educators are perpetuating existing patterns of prejudice and discrimination. By creating a synthetic a priori, students are able to more effectively learn the intended lessons from the multicultural experiences provided in the curriculum. In anthropology, investigation into other cultures is guided by the Kluckhohn Model. This model stresses cultural relativism in the observation and collection of data about other cultures. Anthropologists suspend, as far as reasonably possible, their own cultural values as they describe other cultures in terms of those cultures' own systems of values, beliefs, and responses to the world. Once the other culture is responsibly understood, comparisons may be made in reference to the anthropologists' own culture, and evaluations may be made based on reliable data. By adapting the Kluckhohn Model to education, and implementing it as part of proposed and existing programs in multicultural education, the effectiveness of those programs will be greatly improved. Students will create a synthetic a priori which will empower them to approach multicultuiral experiences in the manner of the anthropologist. Their ability to make reasoned inquiry into and decisions about cultural diversity will be enhanced. Resistance to multiculturalism from a variety of sources cannot change the realities of global and national cultural pluralism. Through the Kluckhohn Model, education will provide students with the skills necessary to assume first-class national and global citizenship.