Carol Korn - Rethinking Multicultural Education: Case Studies in Cultural Transition

Cover

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RETHINKING MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

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Case Studies in Cultural Transition

Edited by Carol Korn and Alberto Bursztyn

Foreword by Joe Kincheloe

Nina Neimark, Imprint Adviser

BERGIN & GARVEY

Westport, Connecticut London

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rethinking multicultural education : case studies in cultural transition / edited by Carol
Korn and Alberto Bursztyn ; foreword by Joe Kincheloe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0897895444 (alk. paper)ISBN 0897898710 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Multicultural educationUnited States. 2. MinoritiesEducationUnited States.
I. Korn, Carol, 1953 II. Bursztyn, Alberto, 1952
LC1099.3.R49 2002
370.117'0973dc21 2001043011

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 2002 by Carol Korn and Alberto Bursztyn

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001043011

ISBN: 0897895444

0897898710

First published in 2002

Bergin & Garvey, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

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In memory of our mothers, Celia Milstein Korn and Jenny Reznik Bursztyn, and for our fathers, Harry Korn and Valentin Bursztyn, whose transitions across geographic, cultural, and class divides shaped our earliest experiences and motivated a life-long interest in how people negotiate passages in their lives. We also dedicate this book to our children, Dan and Josh, whose own transitions, both physical and metaphoric, remind us of the universality of human experience.

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Joe Kincheloe

Rethinking Multicultural Education: Case Studies in Cultural Transition can best be understood as a work that takes shape in a particular social, cultural, political, and educational context. Over the last thirty years we have witnessed a well-planned, persistent, and successful effort to reeducate Americans around issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and their relation to social justice (Apple, 1996; McLaren, 2000). Education as an institution has been dramatically affected by this reactionary project. Reacting to perceived social, political, cultural, and educational changes of the 1960s, protectors of dominant power relations sensed an opportunity to advocate a return to traditional values, neoclassical economic policy, long-standing racial and gender relations, and a fragmented and fact-based accountability-friendly school curriculum.

In this context the guardians of tradition promoted a new cultural narrative that played well to white male audiences frustrated with the changes they saw taking place in the world. Via the power of the new narrative, the guardians of tradition engaged these white men and their allies in what might be labeled the recovery of white supremacy and patriarchy perceived to have been lost in the civil rights movement and the womens movement. The reeducation process was directly connected to this notion of recovery of what had been lost. Throughout Rethinking Multicultural Education, especially in the particular case studies of student and teacher interactions in the everyday life of the classroom, we see reflections of this larger sociocultural dynamic.

In the multicultural domain of race Aaron Gresson (1995, 2001) argues that this new white story of the need for recovery inverts a traditional black narrative. Because of the dominant cultures portrayal of the eco

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