multicultural literacy essay

A Guide to Selecting Multicultural Literature

Separating the wheat from the chaff, introduction.

The language arts curriculum presents an extraordinary opportunity for sharing powerful multicultural perspectives. Multicultural literature opens up the world, allowing all students to hear voices both different from and similar to their own, both from within their own community and beyond. Powerful literature can transport students into a world where they can feel the joys and struggles of others and where they can inhabit the cultural landscape the characters live in. Our ability to take students on these journeys has been greatly enhanced in recent years by an explosion of multicultural literature for children and young adults.

Our challenge today is to prepare ourselves for this journey and, especially, to know what to pack for it. Too often, we pack the old classics without making room for the new. Research suggests that at the secondary level, the choice of authors has remained “remarkably resilient since English coalesced as a school subject at the end of the nineteenth century.” (Appleby, NCTE, 1993). While the elementary level has seen some broadening of selection, standard book lists for selecting literature continue to recommend few multicultural texts.

This guide to selecting multicultural literature is intended to encourage broader use of this literature by offering guidelines for selecting titles. Guidelines are unfortunately still necessary, because culturally biased books continue to be published and even to to receive awards. Moreover, it is difficult for any one teacher to evaluate books from so many different cultures both within the United States and around the globe. In addition to the selection guidelines, this essay will recommend ways to become self-reliant in evaluating titles, so that long after the bibliography becomes dated, educators can continue to make their own assessments.

What do we mean by multicultural literature? The general meaning refers to literature which embraces many cultures and where culture itself is an integral part of the story. Such a definition has implications beyond its dictionary-type appearance. For example, if we use “multicultural” as a shorthand for works about people of color, then we continue, even if only unconsciously, to place this community into the category of “other.” Thus, we continue with the old paradigm of “literature” (white/European) and “multicultural literature.” Such usage assumes that white/European is the universal culture, because it is simply “literature,” while all other literature come with a special cultural designation. Multicultural literature should embrace all literature–the Greek epic, The Iliad , as well as Sundiata , the great epic from ancient Mali. At the elementary level, multicultural literature includes both Cinderella and Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters . However, our challenge today lies in insuring the inclusion of cultures which have been historically marginalized. Thus, for the purposes of theses guidelines, we will focus on the literature about people of color in the U.S. and abroad. However, we should also keep in mind the need for works about other underrepresented groups, such as the working class.

General Considerations

Three general comments are in order before turning to the main criteria for evaluating multicultural literature. First, any literature selection should be able to stand on its own in terms of quality of characterization, language, illustration and the other standards of good writing. Secondly, accurate and perceptive writing on a culture is a key element in choosing a work. While authors who are members of a given culture generally offer this, non-members also can. Writers such as Vera Williams, Katherine Paterson, and Rush Jhabvala have all succeeded at this leap of imagination. Thirdly, while copyright dates can sometimes aid in reviewing a book, they are not a sure indicator. Some new titles do still contain stereotypes. Moreover, some old titles are and should remain classics, such as Richard Wright’s Native Son and Langston Hughes’ Dream Keeper . Finally, while there are still some publishing gaps in multicultural titles at the elementary reading level, students at the adult level can choose from the enormous treasury of U.S. and world literature.

Criteria for Selecting Culturally Inclusive Works

Works chosen must meet two broad, overlapping criteria: the works must have cultural integrity and must avoid exoticising the culture.

Cultural Integrity Literary works should be specific to a culture, both in the written work and in our use of it. Aspects of the culture should be embedded in the text and the illustrations. In picture books, the illustrations should enhance our understanding of the locale and the characters. We need to keep the “cultural” in multicultural. If there is no cultural context, the work may represent only a token effort at diversity. Thus, a folktale described in the text or preface as “African” is dubious, as all folktales are indigenous to a country or area. A reading of a folktale such as Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain gives us the opportunity to explore the cultural landscape of Kenya which bears little resemblance to, say, Ghana’s. Similarly, readings from Puerto Rico cannot represent the “Latin American experience,” as this enormous region is too diverse for such an effort.

Illustrations should be evaluated not only for their general cultural embedding, but specifically for their accuracy in portrayal of people. Caricatures of Arabs and Blacks continue to surface. For example, Arabs may be portrayed as dark-skinned, menacing men. Drawings of African-Americans should show individuality of character and should neither exaggerate nor minimize physical characteristics. Likewise, the diversity of color among Latin Americans should be reflected in the illustrations.

U.S. ethnic groups should not be confused with their overseas counterparts. Thus, Asian-American life and literature differ substantially from Asian life. Further, the Asian-American experience differs significantly along both national and generational lines. In addition, the experience of recent immigrants differs from those who arrived much earlier, even from the same countries. A novel such as The Joy Luck Club , with its theme of inter-generational differences, illuminates this point well.

Dialect should be appropriate to the situation and the time period. For example, African-American dialect differs across time and place. Moreover, its usage varies according to circumstance and person. Thus, choosing only books on African-American life written in dialect (or written with no dialect at all) misrepresents African-American life.

Avoidance of Exoticism

Literary selections should be chosen for their representative character, especially as our students often are not able to distinguish between the typical and the unrepresentative. Stereotyping comes in two main forms: 1) focusing on atypical cultures and situations and 2) allowing a typical situation represent all situations of a given culture. Careful selection is especially important, given that our students are not generally familiar with a wide range of cultural groups and may take a single work of literature to be representative of a whole group.

The first form of stereotyping comes from stories focusing on an atypical cultural group, such as the tiny Maasai population in Kenya. The second form of stereotyping can occur when only a single piece of literature is used to represent a whole culture, especially a culture with which students are unfamiliar. For example, literary selections which focus exclusively on traditional Native American tales can reinforce preexisting student notions of Native Americans as a people living in the past and without a presence today. Again, stories which place Chinese-Americans only in Chinatown can be misleading.

No single piece of literature can represent a culture. Because of this reality, we face a conundrum: our students need a variety of texts, yet we have time for only a limited number. There are a number of ways to resolve this problem, among them:

• choosing additional works, perhaps short ones, to give variety in viewpoints;
• looking for variety in what students read over a period of years rather than focusing just on what they read in a single year;
• supplementing the reading of the work with a study of that culture, thus offering an opportunity for interdisciplinary learning.

Fundamental to any literature program is the goal of creating lifelong readers. Our sharing of multicultural literature can open new vistas for students, making way for new explorations not possible within the time constraints of the school calendar.

We need to be mindful of our audience and the preconceptions they bring to a reading. Thus, a novel of horrors set in Africa, such as Heart of Darkness , reinforces student notions about Africa being mysterious and dangerous. Similarly, stories focusing on violence in African-American characters may reinforce notions about violence in this community.

Folktales can be a powerful entry point to a culture unfamiliar to our students and to its values. Folktales also offer a wonderful entree to oral literature. (We are facing an publishers’ explosion in folktales, because they promise cultural accuracy and they are inexpensive to produce, as the tales have already been told and are in the public domain.) However, there are certain pitfalls we need to avoid to use this literature well. The main one is balance. In particular, folktales abound from Asia and Africa, yet our students need exposure to other cultural experiences and genres of these peoples. Young students (and often older ones), unfamiliar with a culture, may not be able to differentiate between the world of the folktale and the world of today. Thus, students may hold on to the impression that Chinese life has not changed for two hundred years or that wild animals are found everywhere in Africa. (Most Africans today have today have never seen any wildlife.) Such misrepresentations are often reinforced by T.V. and movies.

Offensive and inappropriate language is not the problem it once was. We should remain alert, however, to two problems. The first is where language encodes stereotypical views such as a “noble people,” or “a typically meek Chinese girl.” Illustrations can also encode stereotypes, such as an overabundance of Asian-Americans wearing eyeglasses. The second problem arises when authors use non-parallel language. Non-parallel language occurs when an author uses different words for another culture to describe the same things which exist in mainstream U.S. life. Thus, works like “hut” for house or home, “a native” for a person, and “superstition” for a religious belief are offensive.

Racially charged remarks are acceptable if they are for the purpose of exposing a character and if they are used in a context which will easily be understood by the readers as defining that character.

• For Africa: www.africaaccessreview.org
• For the Middle East: www.meoc.us
• For Latin America: http://claspprograms.org/teaching_outreach.htm
• For South Asia: http://www.poojamakhijani.com/sakidlit.html

Becoming Self-Reliant Reviewers of Multicultural Literature: READ, READ, READ

Any bibliography quickly becomes dated. Thus, we need to develop habits of mind for finding, evaluating and enjoying quality multicultural literature.

Of first importance is the need to model engagement with literature from a variety of cultures. Reading such literature brings joy and power form new perspectives and powerful language. For example, a short Senegalese novel, So Long a Letter , struck such a cord among teachers that it spread out from a Boston summer institute to a number of reading groups. It has been quoted at an award ceremony for an outstanding teacher and has given one woman a fresh perspective on her impending divorce. As we know, reading one amazing book often whets our appetite to explore further. Establishing a teacher reading group is one effective way to foster such engagement with new works. Choosing writings by recent recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature gives us an opportunity to read from a wide range of writers: playwrights from Nigeria and the West Indies, or novelists from Japan, Britain or the United States.

The more we read, the more we learn about cultures and become attuned to cultural accuracy. We can in turn engage our students in developing criteria for quality multicultural literature, guiding them to be critical readers. As we read critically, we should also evaluate what is currently on our shelves and consider moving some books, such as Travels with Babar , to a special section for the study of stereotypes.

We all rely on outside resources in selecting good books. There are several such resources focusing on literature about peoples of color. The periodical, Multicultural Review , and publications from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, including Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults , v.1 and v. 2 are terrific resources.

For highly recommended books on Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia, visit these websites, which list award-winning books published in the United States on these regions:

Finally, we must continue to look for new titles to read, particularly in areas currently underrepresented. While there has been an explosion in children’s literature in recent years, large gaps remain. Some of the most critical gaps are: literature on Hispanic and Latin American life, Asian-American children’s literature which is culturally embedded, Arab literature for children, and African literature beyond picture books and rural environments.

Barbara B. Brown, Ph.D. Director, Outreach Program African Studies Center, Boston University http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach Email: [email protected] Phone: 617-353-7303

Why Multicultural Literacy? Multicultural Education Inside and Outside Schools

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• Michael Hoechsmann  

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It is widely known that Barack Obama is the first President of African heritage in the United States, that Mahatma Ghandi encouraged non-violent resistance to colonial rule, that the Chinese have practiced medicine for thousands of years, that the Middle East and the Arab world is the “cradle of civilization”, that indigenous peoples around the world have sophisticated knowledge of natural ecosystems, and that the Afro-American musical tradition of blues begot rock and roll. This awareness of the poly-cultural origins of a global intellectual heritage, combined with the tools to locate these origins within broader narratives and patterns of world history and knowledge production, is what we are terming multicultural literacy, an appreciation and understanding that bespeaks a multipolar worldview even if it manifests in an apparently fragmented form. As we describe below, multicultural literacy is something to strive for, a challenge for educators and educational policy makers that can support antiracist values and an anticolonial politics. By identifying the knowledge of the cultural and intellectual contributions of racialized and often minoritized peoples and cultures as a component of what it means to be literate, we set the conditions for a de-hierarchization of knowledge. The awareness of such legacies speaks to a particular stance vis-à-vis what counts as knowledge; it’s one that recognizes our profoundly rhizomatic and dialogic global history of proliferating ways of understanding our world and systematizing these understandings into diverse knowledge traditions and forms of shared consciousness.

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Taylor, L., Hoechsmann, M. (2012). Why Multicultural Literacy? Multicultural Education Inside and Outside Schools. In: Wright, H.K., Singh, M., Race, R. (eds) Precarious International Multicultural Education. Transgressions, vol 84. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-894-0_17

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Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society Essay

Introduction, student’s side, teacher’s side.

Multicultural education aims to avail equal education opportunities for scholars from diverse ethnic, cultural and social classes. Students are thus required to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to function effectively in a pluralistic and egalitarian society. The interaction of students with diverse groups thus creates the necessary harmony to improve the society.

It strives to promote equity in education in learning institutions.

This approach to teaching and learning recognizes, accepts and affirms human differences and similarities. Multicultural knowledge is applied in the educational environment through course books and instructional materials, verbal interactions, focusing on real-world tasks or using cooperative learning. These applications and techniques appeal differently to both students and teachers.

A student must develop a multicultural viewpoint in order to amplify a decent self-concept and self-understanding. As a student, facilitating divergent thinking is one of the appealing styles in multicultural education. Independent scholar thinking and personal achievement through competitions assists a student in brainstorming both passively and actively. The psychosomatic foundations of this education thus create a better understanding of self.

Small-group discussions and collaborative learning are another effective way for culturally diverse students to learn. Students of different cultures and ages tutoring themselves help provide the experiential information which would allow me easily grasp cultural perceptions.

Description of events and achievement in one’s culture brings out a sense of pride and identity. Critical thinking about my position in the society helps in the comprehension of what purposes I serve in the society, and promotion of my culture, thus enabling recognition of talents and participation in class discussions.

As a teacher, the most suitable approach is the application of vitality in the classroom. The way a guider behaves in the classroom helps students from all languages, ages and gender to respond to their potential. Teachers must be able to avoid both intentional and unconscious biases when dealing with students from different cultures.

This is implemented through creating enthusiasms in the learning process in order to instill basic content in the students. Educators need not only to consider what they teach, but also how they teach. Students develop a better understanding depending on how they are taught rather than what they are taught.

It would thus be necessary for a teacher to use a variety of instruction perspectives, for example, using harmonic responding and tonal variations. The teacher is thus able to enhance socialization and transmission of culture while providing academic skills in a relaxed environment.

The teacher can focus on real-world tasks, which relate students to their homes, communities and experiences. Content and language are best administered to students who can apply and recount what they are being taught in class.

The teachers so awakens social consciousness in students who will effectively take part in diversifying their culture and understand the behavior of other ethnic groups. Everybody in the school community must integrate collaborative efforts in order to enhance the effectiveness of multicultural schooling.

A higher institution of learning provides a platform for students to learn to live in the global society. Multicultural education hence provides several benefits, which apply to both an individual and society at large. Globalization and technological advancements are swift in the present world hence the importance of acquiring skills which are necessary for effective functioning.

The individual is thus able to reduce discrimination against other cultural groups. Students develop attitudes and skills essential to participate successfully in both their ethnicity and other cultures. Students are then able to understand themselves and be able to view themselves from the viewpoint of other cultures.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 20). Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/multicultural-education/

"Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society." IvyPanda , 20 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/multicultural-education/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society'. 20 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society." December 20, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/multicultural-education/.

1. IvyPanda . "Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society." December 20, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/multicultural-education/.

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IvyPanda . "Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society." December 20, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/multicultural-education/.

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Multicultural Education Essay Samples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Diversity , Students , Emotions , Education , Stereotypes , Communication , Multiculturalism , Culture

Words: 2500

Published: 03/17/2020

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Introduction

Multicultural education is a constructive way of pedagogical education and education for tolerance. It is intended to help students understand their culture, the role of stereotypes in the communication between different cultures, aware of his “I”, to answer the question “Who am I?” The student population is very diverse with regard to language, ethnicity, religion, culture and socioeconomics. However, the faculty and administration are homogeneous. Faculty and administration recognize that there may be a cultural disconnect between students and teachers (including administration). The board of trustees has given a mandate to the administration that there must be a push for multicultural education in the school. Multicultural education focuses on developing skills of interaction with people on the basis of understanding and acceptance of cultural differences, which allow realizing the essence to comprehend the reality, look for the causes and meaning of what is happening around, critically reflect contemporary realities of life. Formation of a critical way of thinking involves training depth and comprehensive analysis of the received information in order to identify the extent of its truth, which largely contributes to the formation of tolerant worldview (Koppelman, 2013). Implementation of multicultural communication involves not only a person’s willingness to accept the representative of another culture with all its national and mental features, but also the ability to change you. Learning a foreign language in all its diversity, students are faced with linguistic and cultural phenomena and compare them with those in their native language. For example, learning the lexical and grammatical system of a foreign language, students must turn to the knowledge gained in the classroom of the native language to highlight the similarities and differences in the field of linguistic phenomena and their use. The study of foreign language culture also leads the student to the need to appeal to the cultural and historical facts of his country. Thus, learning a foreign language and engaging in multicultural communication, the student comprehends his native language and culture deeper.

Embracing Characteristics of Multicultural Education

Moving the school toward embracing characteristics of multicultural education include affirmation, solidarity, critique and culturally responsive teaching. So, in the process of mastering foreign language students learn the material that illustrates the operation of the language in a natural environment, verbal and nonverbal behavior of native speakers in different communication situations and reveals behaviors associated with folk customs, traditions, social structure, and ethnicity. First of all, it comes with using authentic materials (original texts, audio, video), which are the regulations in terms of language processing and contain the information of linguistic and cross-cultural nature. It is important to know national and cultural features of the behavior of a foreigner in order to avoid potential conflicts with international communication. Thus, learning a foreign language, the student must not only learn his lexical, grammatical and syntactic features, but also learn to adequately respond to the situation replicas of native speakers, it is appropriate to apply the facial expressions and gestures, use the formula of speech etiquette and know the cultural and historical features of the language spoken (Banks, 2009). Multicultural education is different from other educational areas by several parameters. The main difference is that the necessary knowledge and skills are acquired primarily through direct cultural contacts. This requires often full or partial abstraction from the usual interpretation of various cultural phenomena and entails significant cognitive and affective changes. These changes can be demonstrated by the example of the culture of taste representations: on a cognitive level, it is considered that the proposed unusual dishes of other cuisine must be tried. On an emotional level, this proposal could cause a violent emotional reaction and lead participants in the communication of balance. Obstacles of this kind in the majority of cases occur suddenly, often in a collision with elements of another culture. Therefore, facing their own experience with the similarities and differences of other cultures, students learn to mutually accept and respect each other.

Identifying Bias in the School Curriculum

There are many approaches how people can study about other people’s cultures and create relations simultaneously. The following steps, which are first listed, can be taken and then developed upon one at a time. - Make mindful decision to build friendships with citizens from other cultures. - Get together in situations of meeting people of different cultures. - Inspect biases about populace from different cultures. - Request populace issues about their cultures, traditions, and views. - Listen to people tell their stories - Notice dissimilarities in contact styles and principles; don’t suppose that the majority’s approach is the correct approach - Risk doing faults - Train to be a friend. Many people face propaganda and typecasts about populace in dissimilar cultures. Particularly, when being young, people learn such information in bits and pieces from TV, communicating with other people, and from the traditions at large. This doesn’t mean that people are bad because they acquired this; nobody asked for being deceived. But with the intention of building relationships with citizens of unusual cultures, people should become responsive to the propaganda they acquired. An outstanding approach to become responsive to own stereotypes is to choose groups that people simplify about and write down defined opinions. Once people have, inspect the thoughts that came to their mind and where people got them. Another approach to become responsive to stereotypes is to speak about them with other citizens who have comparable cultures. In such locations people can talk about the propaganda they got without being unpleasant to people from an exacting group. People can have a meeting with a friend or two and speak about how they got stereotypes or doubts of other dissimilar people. The following questions can be answered, namely (Community tool box, 2014): - How did student’s relatives feel about dissimilar cultural, national, or spiritual groups? - What did student’s parents converse to the person with their procedures and words? - Were student’s parents’ communicating with people from many dissimilar sets? - What did people study at school about an exacting group? - Was there a short of data about several people? - Are there any people whom people can shy away from? Why?

Adapting Curriculum for Multicultural Classrooms

For example, the following game can help to adapt for multicultural classrooms. Its purposes are to simulate the situation of intercultural communication, to consider the aspect of linguistic diversity in multicultural interaction, to analyze the possibilities of non-verbal communication, to contribute to the emergence of interest and sympathy for the culture of others and to help develop the communication skills of participants. The number of participants should be 15-25 people.

Proceedings include:

1. The teacher divides the participants into equal groups. The number of groups depends on the total number of participants. For example, if there are 16 participants, four groups of 4 are formed. 2. The Group is offered over 10 minutes to come up with its own language, which must be different from all known languages and does not contain any elements of them. The language should consist of four words, namely hello, bye, any noun (e.g., apple) and any adjective (e.g., fluffy). Thus, through the allotted amount of time each group should have its own language. 3. Then the teacher asks the participants to form a new group, which will meet in one of the languages of each carrier. From this moment the participants allowed to talk only in their new language. The use of other languages or their elements is unacceptable, as record keeping. At this stage, before each task it is given 15-20 minutes to train new partners to its language and, in turn, “mastering” their languages. 4. At the end of the allotted time, participants returned to their original groups, which have the opportunity to exchange experiences.

1. What are the emotions experienced by participants at different stages of the game (inventing the language of the original group; teaching others their language, learning the language of other groups, returning to the “home” group)? 2. Which of the stages of the game was the most difficult? Why? 3. What are the difficulties experienced by participants in the game? 4. Have all participants to learn languages of partners? 5. What helped complete the task? 6. What game situation resembled any real life situations? 7. What conclusions can be drawn by analyzing the experience of participation in an interactive game?

The optimum for this method is that amount of participants in which the number of people in groups on the first and second stages of method is the same (e.g., 16 (4 groups of 4) or 25 (5 of 5) members). But it is quite acceptable if the group has a different number of people. For example, if a group of 15 participants at the first stage is formed by three groups of five human, and the second – 3 groups of 5 persons. Desirably, the number of members was divisible by three, four or five, otherwise, it is difficult to use this method. Typically, the method is very active and emotional. For another sometime after the end of the game participants can actively share their experiences and emotions. This is especially important to take into account (and use) the planning of programs and finding a place for this method.

Racism and Prejudice at the Individual and Institutional Levels

Considering cultural differences in thinking, opinions, attitudes, and behavior, it is easy to succumb to cognitive and emotional reactions to the material, begin to generalize, to form negative stereotypes about other people and even in advance to make a judgment about these differences and others, which is inherent in this behavior, before people really understand what lies at its core. These processes and reactions are common in today’s world, and to describe them the term ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination are often used. Unfortunately, these terms are often used without a clear idea about them that only exacerbates the problems that they have to clarify. Some of today’s most pressing social issues connected with these processes, as the boundaries between countries and cultures are becoming more permeable as a result of the development of means of communication, technology and business. It is impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine or turn on the television news program and see the information about problems relating to ethnocentrism or racial and ethnic stereotypes. These problems range from international business to violence and wars caused by racial and ethnic differences. These issues are expected to become even more relevant in the future when technological progress more closely unite the diverse cultures of the world. Institutional or structural racism means as the public, financial, instructive, and political forces or procedures that work to promote discriminatory results or provide penchants to participants of one group over others, obtains its origin from the genesis of race as a concept (de Silva & Clark, 2007). One of the most important ways of making efforts to reduce discrimination (in addition to the recognition of ethnocentrism and stereotyping and to think critically about the shortcomings of these stereotypes) is learning how to control emotions. People need to learn to regulate their negative emotions when they arise, as well as its positive, reinforcing emotions when they are challenged. Just like learning to regulate emotional processes, people can do the exercises on critical thinking, studying the possible distortions in thoughts, feelings and actions and adjusting them accordingly. Without the ability to regulate emotions, such higher-order thought processes are not possible.

One of the first steps to improve understanding of intergroup relations is a better understanding of culture – particularly the impact of culture on the basic psychological processes, as well as the formation and maintenance of ethnocentrism and stereotyping. However, the improvement of understanding of culture and its influences is only the first of many steps along this road. It is necessary to probe own culture, to find out the reasons why certain stereotypes persist and how conservation can go to the benefit of culture. It is required to recognize the existence of substantial individual variability within groups and cultures, as well as the shortcomings of their cultural ethnocentrism and malevolent, limited stereotypes. The study of culture shows the importance of cultural environment, education and heritage, as well as their influence on behavior. The recognition of the contribution of culture in action, behavior and the reasons behind them helps people to understand, respect and evaluate these differences, when they see them in real life. Several studies conducted over the years have highlighted the potential contribution of the extended cross-cultural experience in reducing the number of inflexible ethnocentric attitudes, fixed stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. Many of these studies have directed attention to the multicultural experience gained through the travel of participants and their living in other cultures than those to which they have joined. And what if people were the victims of prejudice and discrimination? One of the first countermeasures is to see the flaws and sources of such thoughts, feelings and actions in others. Unfortunately, more often people have few means to combat deficiencies of thoughts and actions of others, because people change only when they want to do it.

Banks, J. A. (2009). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. Wiley. Community tool box (2014). Chapter 27. Cultural Competence in a Multicultural World. Retrieved from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence de Silva, E. C. & Clark, E. J. (2007). Institutional Racism & the Social Work Profession: A Call to Action. Retrieved from http://www.socialworkers.org/diversity/institutionalracism.pdf Koppelman, K. (2013). Understanding Human Differences: Multicultural Education for a Diverse America, 4th edition, Pearson. Nieto, S. Bode, P. (2010). Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical context of multicultural education. (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality. (6th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. T-kit 4: Intercultural learning. Retrieved from http://pjp-eu.coe.int/ru/web/youth-partnership/t-kit-4-intercultural-learning

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