Introduction
United States is a 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 is highly important. Most of the schools in the United States are highly practicing the education on the multicultural issues which helps in understanding the ethnic differences among different races and cultures as well as to resolve the gap among the students. Also the civil rights education is also helpful in understanding the social rules in which a human can live and survive. The main aim of the paper is to discuss that 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 the 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 due to which the awkward situations are created mostly. 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 less as I am not a Native American. My assumption from this course was that it will help me to get a better solution to deal the intercultural issues which are highly common and are barriers in making strong bonds among the different ethnic background individuals. Moreover I also expected to understand some better knowledge about the social and civil rights which are highly important to survive in the United States with a liberal freedom.
According to my perspective, the course was 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 the civil rights, its history, movements, and the current situation of the United States. After the initial phase, I was able to understand the intercultural issues which are highly problematic in implementing different civil rights and other law enforcements. Moreover, the current situation, past of the country and the expected future of the country with respect to finding the solutions with respect to the cultural differences and intercultural issues. Most of the content of the course was getting the examples from the history and relating them to the current intercultural issues discussion. I slowly understood the things and then relaxed myself with my own example in which my Chinese and Latin friends are complete different with respect to the culture and ethnicity. Our English friend mostly acts as a bridge among them to keep the bond of understanding and interest.
My actual experience was good and I highly appreciate the lectures as well as the examples given by our teacher. Moreover, I also admire the classmates’ outstanding presentation of their social and civil rights experiences which they observed in the past. When my turn came to express my understanding about the course and to discuss something about the civil rights. My knowledge about the civil rights was just introductory and have very less understanding about it which let me only use it during the discussion of the intercultural issues. My presentation of the intercultural issues was highly good, as according to me this was the best among my all of the other courses. Moreover, I have also collected some best experiences of the classmates which would help me to understand the civil rights education as well as the intercultural discussions as their demonstration of the issues was highly admirable and extraordinary. The course overall have very good impact on every student and we had a good experience of understanding all the aspects of the related topics including the effects on economy, society and culture of overall country after the removing of the barriers.
I have good expectations with the course and almost achieved most of the required knowledge in which the most prominent one is the intercultural issues study. I have initially faced many intercultural differences issues which resulted in loss of friendships and jobs. By the start of this course, I expected that I will be able to completely understand how to overcome the cultural gap which is highly problematic for the American citizens and the people who are not Americans but are living in the United States. I understood only the basic knowledge which was gained by the help of lectures, student’s discussions, reading history books assigned to us as well as some internet journals. I was not expecting the education about the discrimination with respect to the 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 which I was able to observe was that, all of our friends were living and studying since a year but our differences with respect to race, ethnicity, religion and culture was barrier to talk about these topics. With the help of this course I am now able to resolve all the intercultural issues that I was currently being facing. Most of the Americans are unable to live happily with the intercultural groups because of a number of differences among the individuals, groups and societies. This course is highly beneficial for me to understand the different ethnic issues among me and my friends which are now very much resolved and the level of friendly behavior and frankness is highly increased.
The most unnecessary part which was expected not to be included in the course was the discussion on the religions. Since in United States, the religion is rarely practiced and an outnumbered people don’t like the discussion of religion at all around them or with their children as they want to believe on liberalism and freedom rather than boundaries of freedom. The first amendment should be 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 which were required to be discussed as the country is currently facing them including the immigration and criminal activities. They were not discussed by the professor and neither raised in the class. These kind of issues helps in making the thinking about the intercultural issues and civil rights.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the course was highly beneficial in all respects. It helped me to socially build and to express my feelings and to discuss the issues to the culturally and ethically different people. Most of the Americans are feeling the issues of no good conversations with the culturally different people. The Native Americans are unable to achieve their goals, securing the jobs and making good socially and culturally different friends. The main problem here is the lack of education on the intercultural issues overcoming which was very rarely practiced in the past. Despite all the problems in understanding, my experience to the course is highly amazing and understandable which is helpful for the ethnic relationships among the 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.
