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Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society, Second Editionreviewed by Moira Wilkinson - March 26, 2008 Title: Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society, Second Edition Author(s): James A. Banks Publisher: Teachers College Press, New York ISBN: 0807748129, Pages: 199, Year: 2007 Search for book at Amazon.com I have seen in my own public school teaching experience both the damaging effects of mainstream knowledge on students of color, and the liberating power of transformative knowledge that James Banks describes in Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society. Racism is real, and Banks shows how it is imprinted not only on educational institutions themselves, but in the covert and overt ways mainstream curriculum and instruction enforce the mythic, idealized American Democracy. The traditional curriculum focuses on sanitized heroes of predominantly European heritage and promotes the accumulation of selected facts about this nation that are to form citizens perceptions of self and country. The systemic, pedagogical marginalization of people of color in the content and the institutions of education has an array of consequencesoften brutal onesnot only for the way these students inhabit their citizenship, but also for the trajectory of their lives.
Not being reflected in the American meta-narrative... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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- Moira Wilkinson
UNICEF E-mail Author MOIRA WILKINSON is Consulting Project Officer with the Education Section of UNICEF in New York, and teaches regularly at the City College of New York. Her interests are in democratization, governance, gender, and quality education. She is currently coordinating a five country study in Eastern and Southern Africa to improve access to quality education for young people in communities affected by HIV and AIDS through bringing essential services into schools.
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