An Introduction to Multicultural Education

I have been using James Banks' Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies for teaching intercultural education at the college level for almost a dozen years and have yet to find one better. The first semester when I was preparing to teach the class, I had not yet chosen a book when, leaving our college library one day, I noticed an old edition of Banks' book on the give-away shelf. His name jumped out at me since he was noted in my doctoral studies as the foremost authority in the field at that time. I read the book over Christmas break just before my course began and was ecstatic to find that such a learned author had compiled chapter histories of ten major ethnic groups in the United States. These are histories that until recent times were never taught in schools. They are eye-openers in ethnic history from the eyes of those who experienced not only the Civil Rights era, but one to two centuries of the history of our country's ethnic groups before that. As a Caucasian, I was extremely impressed with Banks' extensive work, something no one else until his time had attempted to do, especially in one volume. Even after changing texts for two semesters, thinking students might appreciate something different, they begged me to return to an approach that would tell 'the stories' of suppressed peoples in the United States. I returned to Banks and plan to stay with him for the rest of my carrer. In recent semesters, my students have been creating power points highlighting chapter histories in Banks (He's an excellent resource for that), resulting in some rich discussions that might not have happened otherwise. I have come to the conclusion that most of us don't live long enough to recall or appreciate the struggles of peoples who came before our time, especially those that were, up until now, seldom taught in our institutions. Banks book, especially the chapter histories, helps to fill that gap in our knowledge and lives.

Frankly speaking, this book is easy to understand for a foreigner like me. Banks uses simple words and fluent writing style to sketch the outline of multicultural education. Althought I think it simplifies the content of multicultural education, it's still a good textbook for a person who begins to enter the world of multicultural education.