Nurturing and Reflective Teachers:

A Christian Approach for the 21st Century

a] "While some Christian activists have included multicultural education in their litany of complaints against the public schools, they have had to borrow much of their rhetoric from individuals who are more concerned with preserving the predominance of a particular viewpoint within the Western European academic tradition than with inculcating children with Christian values."

Explore the implications of this statement. For what reasons does Parker set the ‘rhetoric’ of "some Christian activists" against "inculcating children with Christian values"? What is the content of this rhetoric? Is it justifiable? Upon what grounds? If it is contrary to Christian values, why are some Christians ‘borrowing’ it?

b] Expand the columns below into a table which contrasts the features of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ multiculturalism. Consider aspects such as power, distribution of resources, educational opportunities, and so on.

c] Consider the four ‘levels of support’ cited from the work of Sonia Nieto (1994). At what level would you rate your own perspective, and that of your institution, on multicultural education? Justify your position and / or possible actions for change.

d] Parker makes reference to the work of Glazer (1994), who concludes that the ‘struggle’ over multiculturalism is essentially about identity. What is your understanding of your nation’s ‘identity’? What are its constituent elements, its history, its heroines and its heroes, its defining moments? Does it celebrate diversity, or is it threatened by the idea of ‘the other’, and so must be protected against the ‘balkanization’ of society posed by the ‘intrusion’ by competing ideals? Is this a realistic threat or, in the words of Walzer (1994), can the "cultural associations fostered by multicultural curricula…eventually lead to a more cohesive society"?

e] Evaluate the Christian response to multiculturalism suggested by Parker. The following points may serve as a guide to your thinking in this regard.

1. What directives or examples of cultural exchange can be found in scripture? What do such instances suggest about a Christian understanding of multiculturalism?
2. Is Parker right in stating that "the monocultural and affirmation, solidarity and critique levels…may pose some difficulties in terms of a Christian endorsement"? What difficulties do these positions contain? In what ways are they different from the "tolerance or the acceptance and respect levels of societal support"? Why are these positions open to ‘Christian endorsement’? Does Christianity "probably have more in common with the marginalized groups that multiculturalists seek to give voice to than to the mainstream culture"?
3. Why is ‘liberal democracy’ not a ‘scriptural concept? It is simply absent from scripture, or does scripture offer an alternative ‘system’ which, by implication, makes ‘liberal democracy’ antiscriptural? For what reasons would Parker state that it "has worth, in and of itself"? If it is not scriptural, should a Christian perspective seek to ‘propagate’ it?
4. To what extent is ‘cultural relativism’ a pillar of modern multiculturalism? What effect does the questioning of this concept, even by multiculturalists such as Fluehr-Lobban (1995), have upon the claim of multiculturalism to be accepted as a valid alternative to a monocultural approach?
5. In the final paragraph of this chapter, Parker explains his vision of a Christian view on multiculturalism. What does he say about the relationship between culture and a Christian perspective? In what ways does he answer the ‘rhetoric’ of the ‘Christian activists’ mentioned earlier? If "what Christians need to be able to do is differentiate between those aspects of a culture which are reflections of God’s creative diversity and those which are reflections of the sinful nature of human beings" so that the "Christian voice" can speak out, against what criteria are such decisions to be made?