Culture and Education: Polishing the Lenses

Diaz, Massialas, and Xanthopoulos (1999) state that "there is significant confusion over the definition of multicultural and what constitutes multicultural education" (p.2). They illustrate this confusion with the example of an American elementary school event that was promoted as a multicultural fair but was actually international in focus. Each display featured a different country from around the world, but none dealt with the diversity of cultural groups within the state or the nation. Gallavan (1998) similarly discovered that many K-12 teachers equate global studies with multicultural education, leading to the ineffective practice of both. Although multicultural education and global education share many of the same concerns, the former is based in a domestic intra-national context, and the latter deals with issues in the international or cross-national arena. Each approach has distinct emphases, histories and theories that have developed independently of one another. Diaz, Massialas and Xanthopoulos (1999) remind us that "the fundamental conceptual distinction between multicultural and global education is critical because it is often blurred in the school curriculum and classroom practice" (p.3). In art education, too, there seems to be a great deal of confusion between what is essentially global versus multicultural in focus. For example, the newly published Culture Smart. Ready-to-Use Slides and Activities for Teaching Multicultural Appreciation through Art (Rodriguez,1999) features over 115 art production activities from ten different regions of the world, but fails to address adequately cultural diversity within the U.S. or within the other countries presented. It essentially repackages earlier similar curriculum resources such as Exploring Global Art (Needier and Goodman, 1991), under a different label. To distinguish a multicultural approach from one which is global in focus, it might be constructive to situate these two curriculum models in relation to other endeavors that are concerned with education and culture, such as comparative-international education and community-based education. Each of these offers a different lens through which to consider the intersection of education and culture. Clarifying what each distinct lens has to offer may help art educators position their efforts within the larger educational arena. Comparative-International Approaches As a field of study, comparative-international education emerged after World War Il due to an interest in how "changes in educational provision, form, and content would contribute to the eradication of poverty or the end of gender, class, and ethnic based inequalities" (Arnove, Altbach, & Kelly, 1992, p.1). Although much of the research in this field crosses national boundaries, often the complexities of a single country or system are examined in-depth as the basis for future comparison with other cases. Generally, comparative-international educators focus on the big picture, discerning patterns and trends in education worldwide, rather than developing curriculum for particular cultural contexts. Arnove (1999) explains three traditional dimensions of comparative-- international approaches to education. The first is the Scientific Dimension, wherein the world is a laboratory for cross-national comparisons between the interactions of variables such as cultural factors, governmental policies, and educational structures and practices. A typical scientific study in comparative-international education might rely upon quantitative data to draw conclusions about policy outcomes in different educational settings. One example of this approach in art education is the study by Kamens and Cha (1992) of "The Legitimation of New Subjects in Mass Schooling: 19th Century Origins and 20th Century Diffusion of Art and Physical Education." In this study, the authors examined data from three different periods in as many as 123 different countries throughout the world to determine when and how art and physical education were first introduced into formal curricula. …