Civil Rights Education and Multicultural Issues

Introduction

The United States is multicultural and extremely diverse with respect to ethnicity, religion, and racism. The people living in the country are from almost all parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, and Russia. Multicultural issues in providing education are highly important. Most of the schools in the United States are highly practicing education on multicultural issues, which helps in understanding the ethnic differences among different races and cultures as well as resolving the gap among the students. Also civil rights education is also helpful in understanding the social rules by which a human can live and survive. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the ways this course influenced me as a human being and as a social individual.

Discussion

My personal expectations for this course were commonly to understand the ethnic differences and to understand civil rights and liberalism as a citizen in America. I have a number of friends who are Native Americans, Latin, English, and Chinese. We all have some cultural differences, which is why awkward situations are mostly created. Mostly, we were able to overcome by being friends, but if a stranger observes or experiences these things from us, he feels annoyed, and we don’t have any possible solution to relax him. Also, according to the civil rights, my personal knowledge was very little as I am not a Native American. My assumption from this course was that it would help me to find a better solution to deal with intercultural issues, which are highly common and are barriers to making strong bonds among individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, I also expected to gain some better knowledge about social and civil rights, which are highly important for survival in the United States with liberal freedom.

According to my perspective, the course started with a brief knowledge about the main topic, which would be discussed throughout the course. In the initial days, I was able to understand civil rights, its history, its movements, and the current situation in the United States. After the initial phase, I was able to understand the intercultural issues that are highly problematic in implementing different civil rights and other law enforcement. Moreover, the current situation, past of the country, and expected future of the country should be considered with respect to finding solutions to cultural differences and intercultural issues. Most of the course’s content was about getting examples from history and relating them to the current discussion of intercultural issues. I slowly understood things and then relaxed myself with my own example in which my Chinese and Latin friends are completely different with respect to culture and ethnicity. Our English friend mostly acts as a bridge among their friends. The boat understanding between interesmaintainyatual experience was good, and I highly appreciate the lectures and the examples our teacher gave. Moreover, I also admire my classmates’ outstanding presentation of their social and civil rights experiences, which they observed in the past. When my turn came to express my understanding of the course and to discuss something about civil rights, My knowledge about civil rights was just introductory, and I had very little understanding of it, which allowed me to use it only during the discussion of intercultural issues. My presentation on intercultural issues was highly good, as, according to me, this was the best among all of the other courses. Moreover, I have also collected some of the best experiences of my classmates, which helped me to understand civil rights education as well as intercultural discussions, as their demonstration of the issues was highly admirable and extraordinary. The course had a very good impact on every student, and we had a good experience understanding all the aspects of the related topics, including the effects on the economy, society, and culture of the country after the removal of the barriers.

I have good expectations with the course and almost achieved most of the required knowledge, the most prominent one being the intercultural issues study. I initially faced many issues of intercultural differences, which resulted in the loss of friendships and jobs. By the start of this course, I expected that I would be able to completely understand how to overcome the cultural gap, which is highly problematic for American citizens and people who are not Americans but are living in the United States. I understood only the basic knowledge that was gained with the help of lectures, student discussions, and reading history books assigned to us, as well as some internet journals. I was not expecting the education about discrimination with respect to race, culture, and ethnicity, but it was highly involved in the course as a helping material as well as for the discussion perspectives.

The most remarkable and outstanding experience that I was able to observe was that all of our friends had been living and studying for a year, but our differences with respect to race, ethnicity, religion, and culture were barriers to talking about these topics. With the help of this course, I am now able to resolve all the intercultural issues that I am currently facing. Most Americans are unable to live happily with intercultural groups because of a number of differences among individuals, groups, and societies. This course has been beneficial for me in understanding ethnic issues among my friends, which are now very much resolved, and the level of friendly behavior and frankness has increased.

The most unnecessary part that was expected not to be included in the course was the discussion on the religions. In the United States, religion is rarely practiced, and outnumbered people don’t like the discussion of religion at all around them or with their children as they want to believe in liberalism and freedom rather than boundaries of freedom. The First Amendment should have been discussed, but it was ignored. It was the only to explain the freedom of doing anything with very few limitations. There are a number of other different and highly complicated issues that were required to be discussed as the country is currently facing them, including immigration and criminal activities. They were not discussed by the professor and neither raised in the class. This kind of issue helps people think about intercultural issues and civil rights.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, the course was highly beneficial in all respects. It helped me to socially build, express my feelings, and discuss issues with culturally and ethically different people. Most Americans are feeling the issue of no good conversations with culturally different people. The Native Americans are unable to achieve their goals of securing jobs and making good, socially and culturally different friends. The main problem here is the lack of education on intercultural issues, which was very rarely practiced in the past. Despite all the problems I had with understanding, my experience with the course was highly amazing and understandable, which helped me to develop ethnic relationships among cross-cultural groups.

References

Jackson, R. (2016). Inclusive study of religions and world views in schools: Signposts from the Council of Europe. Social Inclusion, 4(2).

Manning, M. L., Baruth, L. G., & Lee, G. L. (2017). Multicultural education of children and adolescents. Taylor & Francis.

Santamaría, L. J. (2014). Critical change for the greater good: Multicultural perceptions in educational leadership toward social justice and equity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 50(3), 347-391.

Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2017). Teacher education and human rights. Routledge.

Losen, D. J., Keith, M. A., Hodson, C. L., & Martinez, T. E. (2016). Charter schools, civil rights, and school discipline: A comprehensive review.