Two approaches to multicultural education and objections to their neutrality

How should we learn about a culture whose values differ from our own? The opening gives us a shared goal—multicultural understanding—but immediately separates that goal from the different ways people propose to achieve it. Keep those two levels apart. Disagreeing about a method doesn't necessarily mean disagreeing about the goal.

The first approach teaches about other cultures from within the majority culture's framework. Students still use its methods, perspectives, and values, including democracy, tolerance, and equality. My initial reaction is that this sounds reasonable: I can learn about someone else's beliefs without automatically abandoning mine. Understanding a belief and endorsing it don't seem like the same thing.

But the critics think this framework distorts what students are trying to understand. Other cultures may have developed different values under different social and historical conditions. If we insist on viewing them only through our own framework, we may fail to appreciate what those values mean in their original setting. The word only matters here. This criticism targets a way of approaching another culture; it doesn't yet establish that an outsider can never understand it.

The second approach responds by trying to be neutral about differences in values. Don't use one culture's values to judge another; take each on its own terms. I might still wonder how far neutrality should go when I disagree strongly with a practice. That is a real reaction to this proposal, but it isn't a substitute for following the next objection.

The second approach continues to use anthropology, social psychology, political science, and sociology. The account identifies those methods with the Western scientific tradition. The critics now ask: can a method itself carry values, even if the person using it promises not to judge?

Their answer is yes. Scientific methods favor objectivity, logical reasoning, and empirical verification. Choosing those methods therefore gives certain ways of understanding the world priority over others. Epistemological system may sound intimidating, but the issue is straightforward: what do we count as a good way of knowing or explaining something?

That is why these critics think the second approach is not essentially different from the first. The first explicitly keeps the majority culture's framework. The second tries to suspend cultural judgments but, according to the objection, still privileges a particular framework through its methods. The proposed neutrality doesn't reach all the way down.

The contrast with myth, tradition, religion, and mystical insight explains the concern. Those forms of thought can be central in the cultures being studied. If the investigator insists that scientific explanation must take priority, the investigator may distort the very outlook being examined. Cultural chauvinism here means giving one's own cultural standards an unjustified privileged position. It is not limited to the word's familiar use concerning sexism.

We don't have to agree that scientific study necessarily creates this problem. Nor should we misread the objection as saying that no non-Western culture uses science or that Western people alone value truth. The claim concerns the priority assigned to particular methods and the effect that priority has on cross-cultural understanding.

The final objection proposes a demanding alternative: genuine understanding requires adopting the perspectives and methods of the culture studied. Can outsiders actually do that? I might question whether I can fully take on a perspective shaped by a life and culture I haven't experienced. Keep that concern available without turning it into a conclusion the writer has already established.

The useful map is two proposals, each followed by criticism. An initial impression that multicultural education simply cannot work would go too far. The discussion gives us objections to these methods and reports what critics think is required; it doesn't rule out every possible route to understanding.