The Semantics of Multiculturalism: A New Element in Curriculum

Abstract

Adequate teaching for multiculturalism must deal with both affective and cognitive aspects of awareness. Attitudes as an element of the former are notoriously difficult to change by admonition and exhortation. Teachers would therefore be wise to avoid being seen as preachers. Consequently, this article proposes an approach via a process of infiltration rather than frontal attack in the form of direct teaching about multicultural matters. Thought of like this, the cognitive could deal with ways of viewing a range of cultural and social problems. The cognitive core should be drawn from elementary and general semantics, especially as this relates to ethnocentrism and stereotypy. The article questions a facile assumption that schools promoting a multicultural outlook should institute self-contained ad hoc courses in multiculturalism itself, and elaborates a suggested alternative, namely that, with suitable additions and minor changes of approach, most subjects in the present curriculum could make their contributions to a pervasive aim acceptable to any Canadian school. That aim might be to understand ourselves and others in cultural terms.