Color Blindness and Basket Making Are Not the Answers: Confronting the Dilemmas of Race, Culture, and Language Diversity in Teacher Education

Although the American educational system is dysfunctional for large numbers of children who are not part of the racial and language mainstream, there are no universal strategies for teaching children who are culturally and linguistically different from one another, from their teachers, or from students whose interests are already well served by the system. Drawing on the inquiries of student teachers working in urban elementary schools, I argue that we need to go beyond color blindness and basket making as responses to cultural diversity. Instead, I propose that we need generative ways for student teachers and teacher educators to reconsider their assumptions, understand the values and practices of families and cultures different from their own, and construct pedagogy that not only takes these into account in locally appropriate ways but also makes issues of diversity an explicit part of the curriculum.