The Contributions Approach

James A. Banks, a professor of education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and a very well known author in the field of Multicultural Education describes four approaches to integrating multicultural content into the mainstream curriculum.  The first approach is described below.

The Contributions Approach:  This is the most common approach used in which ethnic heroes are added to the curriculum.  These heroes are often viewed from a mainstream perspective and are usually selected for inclusion into the curriculum using mainstream criteria.  In other words, ethnic heroes who were seen positively by society at that time (and continue to be seen positively) are chosen.  These include Sacajawea and Booker T. Washington.  Ethnic Americans who challenged the dominant group, such as Geronimo or Cesar Chavez, are not studied as frequently.  With this approach, the mainstream curriculum remains unchanged in terms of its basic structure and assumptions.

Think about textbooks that you may use that have ethnic heroes or multicultural tidbits (e.g., multicultural math) described in boxes that are set apart from the main text of the chapter. This information may be interesting, but is often not reviewed in questions at the end of the chapter or included in test questions.  The implicit message is that these facts and heroes are not important in the same sense as the rest of the chapter is.  Students may learn to see ethnic issues as an addition to the curriculum and thus, as an appendage to the main story.

 

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