Multicultural Curriculum

The curriculum in American public and private schools is a curriculum that tends to support the lifestyle of the White upper-middle and upper classes, the groups that determine both the ethos and the directionality of American society. Yet American educators must ask why the power structure overlooks the moral/ethical, intellectual, historical, and cultural traditions of nondominant ethnic groups. Some educators believe that gifted education programs exclude the brightest children who are from nondominant ethnic groups, segregating the children of parents with social capital from those whose parents do not have it. Students traveling to Europe can be excused for missing [Page 600]school for a week, whereas the travel that migrant students do for the purpose of learning by earning, doing manual farm labor, is not ...