Holidays and heroes. Foods and festivals. Celebrations of Black History Month, the Chinese New Year, or November 19, the day Columbus discovered Puerto Rico.

These occasional observances pass for "multicultural education" in many American schools. But a national leader in the field of multicultural education believes that such scattershot methods may be worse than nothing at all.

"We should avoid the food and festival approach. If it's done in isolation, it might be better not to do it at all because that approach perpetuates stereotypes and waters down issues of racism and bias," said Sonia Nieto, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the third annual Bodek Lecture of Distinguished Educators.

Her lecture--titled "Multicultural Teacher Education: Who Needs It?"--drew about 300 people to Bodek Lounge in Houston Hall last Tuesday. In answer to her own rhetorical question, Dr. Nieto said, "Everyone needs multicultural education, but for different reasons."

Ongoing research on multicultural teacher education, she pointed out, focuses on the importance of preparing elementary- and secondary-school teachers of European-American ethnic backgrounds to teach increasingly diverse students. Current demographics reveal that fewer than 10 percent of public-school teachers are of African-American, Latino, Asian-American or indigenous descent, she reported, yet their young students have widely diverse roots.

The vast majority of teachers are white, middle-class females who have little personal experience or professional training in multicultural issues, she noted, and many hold "negative attitudes and low expectations" of students who come from differing ethnic, racial or socioeconomic backgrounds.

Multicultural education is equally important to teachers and their students, Dr. Nieto stressed, because many teachers cite their own backgrounds as "just American," or as one described herself, "I'm not really ethnic. I don't have a culture. I'm normal."

"These attitudes allow many practicing and prospective teachers to deny or downplay the privileges they enjoy based on their race, skin color, ethnicity, language or class status," she said. "And they also buy into the idea of America as a meritocracy, so they sidestep issues of bias and structural inequities."

Photograph by Jenny Friesenhahn

Dr. Nieto believes that multiculturalism needs to be pervasive.

Multicultural education should not only be "more inclusive" than the heroes-and-holidays version, Dr. Nieto stressed. It also should be "a dynamic process that challenges racism and other forms of discrimination...and affirms pluralism. It should permeate the curriculum and promote democratic principles of social justice. It's not just how people celebrate holidays around the world. It is not just taught from 10 to 11 a.m. on Tuesdays. It's not a class. It is a philosophy.

"It needs to be infused into the pedagogies--we need to look at tracking, staffing, reading materials, bulletin boards, foods in the cafeteria, offerings in the athletic programs, letters sent home to parents and the language they're written in. Multicultural education needs to be pervasive," she said. "It's an issue of equity, not just changing the curriculum. It means using students' experiences as part of the curriculum."

Multicultural programs are sometimes "attacked as a fad, as frivolous," Dr. Nieto added, "but I want to say firmly that multicultural education is basic. To teach students without it is to send them into the world unprepared. That is another kind of illiteracy.

"Multicultural education is anti-racist, anti-bias, and confronts those issues directly," she continued. "Rather than sanitizing the curriculum, multicultural education welcomes these discussions and teaches ways of combating bias and racism."

Dr. Nieto was born in Puerto Rico and raised in the States. "She is a product of the New York City public schools," said GSE Dean Susan Fuhrman in welcoming Dr. Nieto, "and, as another product of the New York City public schools, I have the pleasure to introduce her."

Both an elementary- and secondary-school teacher, Dr. Nieto has been in the field of multicultural education for 20 years, teaching its principles and practices to teachers for the past 16 years. She taught the first bilingual program in the Northeast.

Dr. Nieto concluded her lecture by describing her recent experiences in teaching a graduate course in multicultural education. The students ranged widely in age, educational, socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Frequent conflict erupted in classroom discussions, as many grad students openly voiced rage and prejudices. "Some, who had been rejected for so long, drowned out other voices. Many others were guilt-ridden," she reported.

"Multicultural education courses can be powerful. They can change the way people think. They won't solve all the problems, but they can get people to look at their own experiences and see that theirs aren't the only valid, valuable ones.

"My goal was to achieve consensus in this course," she explained. "We didn't achieve it, but we did create a community. And the course taught me to be patient."

The endowed Bodek Lectures of Distinguished Educators were established three years ago by Gordon S. Bodek, Penn trustee emeritus, and the Graduate School of Education.