Design and Instruction for Effective Education

The issue of multicultural education is a critical component of instructional environments. Additionally, consideration of conveyance method and transformational pedagogical environments linked with integrative intentionality, allows for effective education. Hence, the writer proposes an integrative approach to education.

Freire and Macedo challenged the traditional banking model of education, in which “the teacher presents himself [or herself] to his [or her] students as the necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he [or she] justifies his [or her] own existence.”¹ Learning takes place by rote. The teacher is a narrator of content. The students simply receive, remember, and repeat.

In a sense, the banking concept of education exposes education as oppressive. There is a sense of power from the standpoint of those who are the “bearers” of education. There is need for a liberating freedom from robotic teaching and learning encounters that propagate lack of conscious learning that can lead to critical thinking, interaction, and application of learning for change. The oppressiveness of the banking approach brings about a noticeable lack of integration in education, evidenced by no real incorporation of dominant cultures and sub-cultures in the design and instruction of curriculum as a holistic methodology for education.

The dehumanized learners are learners who are stripped of their ontological selves, to the extent that they do not have the capacity to critically ruminate and act. This oppression drives the learners to “worship” at the feet of the educated liberated ones who are the “keepers of the truth.” In essence, there is a reliance on begging for flakes of substance because the learner is crippled by dependence, continued by luring learners to the depository of knowledge. In this light, I agree with Freire’s and Macedo’s thinking that “authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”²

Is the proposition to change the ideology of banking education an easy proposition? Certainly not! There is a systemic cancer that has spread through the halls of education. Success resembles the model of the teacher as being “lord” and the learner as “slave.” Learning is touted as successful when content is given, and the culmination is sufficient regurgitation of that content to receive the required “pass.” The concept of banking education leads to a monopoly of education taught from the standpoint of the teacher’s bias. It is exclusive to what the teacher desires the learners to learn and repeat. Freire and Macedo stated, “Problem-posing education, responding to the essence of consciousness—intentionality—rejects communiqués and embodies communication.”³

The quote above is perceptive. It offers latitude for education to embrace multiculturalism in curriculum instruction and design for effectiveness. Liberated minds can incorporate culturally relevant critical thinking to bring about a change in instructional environments with integrative intentionality.

Diversifying education to meet the needs of a population is necessary. The issue of diversity is educationally relevant. Hence, there must be a stratagem for meeting the demands of diversity. Corson wrote, “In this new world [of postmodernity], many more voices are being raised, including the voices of those who were once disposed; these voices are bringing a surprisingly different range of messages to policy makers and practitioners alike.”⁴ This is a paradox standpoint from which education and educators function. This paradox is captured in the following quote from Corson:

On the one hand, in this new world of postmodernity, human diversity is being recognized at last. On the other hand, people’s real sociocultural identities have little value in the marketplace of that new world. As a consequence, wherever the values and interests of schools are linked tightly into that marketplace, students and teachers from diverse backgrounds find that their interests are still missing from education.⁵

The entrapments of advocacy for homogeneous units of like ethnicity, color, and “race” to interact are no longer a viable option for educational systems to be successful learning environments. The shifting worldview that now reflects post-modernity creates a disposed environment for education to become inclusive. Post-modernity allows for a world that is interconnected in relation to the desire to explore and incorporate elements from different cultural perspectives. Perhaps, the uneducated ones in the future will be the ones who were deprived of a rich, diversified education.

The amendment must be education that is integrated by including diversity through the dominant culture and sub-cultures in curriculum design and instruction for effective educational providing. Education cannot be truly regarded as education, when large amounts of content from innumerable sources within a culture are disqualified.

If education is wrapped in economics, the dominant group in culture dictates the curriculum in schools. Labeling, association of groups by certain designations, and exclusion of weaker sub-cultures become the horror of exclusive education. In such an environment, education cannot function at its best because the true culture of the general populace is not represented. Disenchantment, aggression, and dropout all form part of the noticeable outcomes of educational environments. Corson wrote, “Against this background [of exclusion], it is hard to escape the conclusion that the power of formal education is socially unjust.”⁶

The above quote supplies an avenue for discussing the fact that education takes place within some social structure. The question is which social structure? Generally, education includes the concern of the dominant group within any culture. Integrating education by including both dominant cultures and sub-cultures in curriculum design and instruction is a viable solution. This should include issues of language, cultural understandings, learning particularities, etc. There will be need for training educators in cultural sensitivity and diversity, language acquisition, and cultural immersion. It will call for an integration of schools and curriculum in which educators and persons from other cultural understandings are evenly spread throughout the school system. Integration calls for a mixing of cultural perspectives within the culture of a country so that the factual tapestry of interwoven cultures is composed to produce a magnificent quilt of educational diversity that is opulent and flamboyant!

If integration is copiously deliberated, the writer suggests along with Corson, “Everyone’s point of view and interpretation of the world would be consulted [and] everyone’s interests would be taken into account when shaping the dominant narratives through which the distributions of power, position, and privilege were accounted for and justified.”⁷

You think this is too idealistic, don’t you? Freire and Macedo, Corson, and this writer share the same ideal! The inclusion of dominant cultures and sub-cultures in curriculum design and instruction for effective education is a commendable methodology for educational environments. Is it unrealistic to believe the illiterate ones in the future will be the ones who were deprived of diversified instruction?

References:

1. A.M.A. Friere and D. Macedo, eds.,The Paulo Friere Reader (U.S.A. The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000), 68.
2. Friere and Macedo, The Paulo Friere Reader, 72.
3. Ibid., 74.
4. David Corson, Changing Education for Diversity ( Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1998), 2.
5. Corson, Changing Education for Diversity, 4.
6. Ibid., 11.
7. Ibid., 19.

Bibliography:

Friere, A.M.A. and Macedo, D. eds.,The Paulo Friere Reader. U.S.A. The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000.
Corson, David. Changing Education for Diversity. Philadelphia: