Multicultural Education, Dimensions of

Content Integration

Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples, data, and information from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations, and theories [Page 1540]in their subject area or discipline. In many school districts, as well as in popular writings, multicultural education is viewed only or primarily as content integration. The widespread belief that content integration constitutes the whole of multicultural education might be the factor that causes many teachers of subjects such as mathematics and science to view multicultural education as an endeavor primarily for social studies and language arts teachers.

Figure 1 Dimensions of Multicultural Education

Source: Copyright 2011 by James A. Banks.

The push by ethnic groups to have their histories and cultures taught in U.S. schools, colleges, and universities and incorporated into the popular culture has a long history. African Americans led the movement that pushed for the integration of ethnic content into the curriculum during the 1960s and 1970s. Consequently, it is appropriate to provide a brief historical discussion of the movement to integrate the curriculum with ethnic content using African Americans as a case study.

The historical development of the content integration movement among African Americans began with the historical work of George Washington Williams, who published his two-volume History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizen in 1882 and 1883. Williams is usually considered the first African American historian in the United States. The early ethnic studies movement—which began with Williams—continued quietly until the ethnic studies movements of the 1960s and 1970s emerged and received national attention because they were a consequence of the civil rights movements. Historians such as Williams, Charles H. Wesley, Carter G. Woodson, and W. E. B. Du Bois created knowledge about African Americans that could be integrated into the school, college, and university curriculum. Educators such as Woodson and Wesley worked during the early decades of the 20th century to integrate the school and college curriculum with content about African Americans.

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