How Important Is Multicultural Literature for Kids?
- Multicultural Literature Teaches Children Diversity
While learning the common traditions and cultural peculiarities of the numerous ethnical groups, people acquaint themselves with a new manner of thinking. As a result, this person gets an opportunity to examine the same issues from a new perspective.
- Multiculturalism as the ‘Anti-Racist Education’
In accordance with a popular speech of a Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Bernt Peterson, “Reading multicultural literature is one way for white ethnically encapsulated students to come face to face with the experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of culturally diverse people”.
- Fairy Tales Display Common Human Emotions
Regardless of their origin, education, appearance, and racial background, all the children have a shared reaction to different bright spots as well as to the bleak events
- Multicultural Books Teach Kids Tolerance and Respect
Reading of various large books or even short stories about different people who represent other cultures contributes to a significant increase in the individuals’ cultural awareness. Furthermore, such an interesting hobby helps the youngsters become more respectful towards the representatives of cultural minorities.
How Important Is Multicultural Literature for Teenagers?
The important thing is that multicultural literature has a number of positive effects on the teenagers’ personality development. The majority of modern educators engage their student in the learning process by sharing an interesting knowledge of cross-cultural communication.
In particular, using a range of multicultural books in the classrooms, they are able to:
– Raise the students’ awareness of a variety of social practices, belief systems, and values
developed by different counties;
– Prevent their students from feeling detached and isolated, and as a result, foster their positive
self-esteem.
Such an effective approach will allow college professors to cultivate the senses of respect,
empathy, and acceptance in their undergraduates;
– Promote unity among different cultures;
First of all, “Whoever Are You” is an old publication that provides a clear evidence supporting the idea regarding the impact of multicultural literature on promoting friendly relationships between the nations across the world. In a given story, the narrator highlights that all the children tend to experience the same feelings and emotions regardless of their origin, native language, and physical appearance. Through the plot of this particular story, a prominent Australian writer Mem Fox shared her idea concerning the common features of people representing different ethnicities. From her perspective, the individuals from different corners of the world have certain common traits despite the fact that they have more differences at first glance.
– Promote the development of cross-cultural friendships
Analyzing the popular multicultural books, one may notice that the key part of them portray an exciting interaction of kids across distinct ethnic backgrounds. What is more, the majority of the related short stories tend to deny the belief that racial and ethnic identifications might pose a barrier to this cross-cultural communication. By contrast, the authors of such narratives regard an individual’s race as a significant contribution to the inimitable beauty and the remarkable uniqueness of our multicultural universe.
A vivid example of multinational publication is a beautiful short story “My Two Blankets” published by an Austrian author Irena Kobald in 2014. In accordance with the ploy of a given story, a young girl Cartwheel who fled her homeland and immigrated to the westernized country in an attempt to escape from armed hostilities and military operations that continued to give the shudders to the residents of her motherland. Being a refugee, a little Cartwheel felt lost and isolated in a totally unknown country. In the following pages, Kobald describes how the main character of this story met a young girl while waking in the park. The main theme of this narrative is the history of friendship between a refugee and a typical little girl from Austria.
– Help their students look at the world through the critical lens;
It is common knowledge that readers have an opportunity to experience a variety of feelings and emotions that are displayed by the characters portrayed in a story. Hence, while reading a book, students are usually encouraged to look critically at the world, which has been created by the author of a given narrative on the pages of this publication. As a result of critical thinking, the youngsters have a chance to gain a greater understanding of the world’s society.
– Assist the representatives of the modern generation with their identity formation.
Formation of an individual’s identity is an important aspect of the social development of a child. Those youngsters who have already formed their identity are given a sense of being accepted by a certain society. Apart from that, such teenagers should have a sense of belonging to this particular society.
How Important Is Multicultural Literature for Students?
- An Increased Sense of Self-Worth
Multicultural literature tends to enhance not only the students’ sense of self-worth but also their hopes regarding their successful future. Having a certain knowledge about other cultures, students will have a chance to acquaint themselves with the concept of ‘cultural pluralism’. It implies a condition in which the representatives of different cultural backgrounds live in peace and harmony. In this case, the individuals are given an opportunity to maintain their cultural differences as well as a useful ability to thing from the multicultural perspective.
- Maintenance of Educational Equity
The achievement of educational equity is another goal, which is limited by the three main regulations that include the following ideas:
– an equal opportunity to study;
– a set of positive educational outcomes witnessed by the individual learners and by groups of students as well;
– equal physical conditions and financial abilities of all the students. - Moving Towards Cultural Pluralism
Being the supporters of cultural pluralism, modern educators modified a set of effective principal conditions in an attempt to promote an unbiased and even-handed learning process. The individuals who have already had a certain multicultural educational experience noted that the distinctive realities of diverse cultural, political, and economic conditions enhanced the youngsters’ moral responsibility and civil liability.4. A Sense of Empowerment for Students
In general, the concept of student empowerment implies giving the youngsters an opportunity for an active participation in different school activities and critical decisions.
- An Opportunity to Work in Groups
This particular goal involves students’ capability to work in harmony with individuals who represent different cultural backgrounds. In turn, the educators should provide them with the appropriate knowledge and useful skills to teach their students not only coexist with those young adults but also learn from one another.
- Teaching from a Multicultural Perspective
In this case, the professors will take responsibility for challenging the wrong assumptions and defying foolish stereotypes. That is the main reason why these college educators should carefully select the teaching materials that do not promote various stereotypical perspectives, such as culture, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.
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