A tolerance initiative versus multicultural education: Portraits of teachers in action.

Shadypine Middle School has recently implemented what they called a Teaching-for-Tolerance initiative designed to help all students become tolerant of cultural perspectives. This initiative involved teachers adding multicultural education to current curricula to show students groups of people who were discriminated and prejudiced against and their reaction to the discrimination and prejudice. Since teachers are using multicultural education as a base for this initiative, this study investigates how the tolerance initiative illustrates or exemplifies levels of multicultural education as described by Sonia Nieto. This study also investigates what the reactions of the parents and students are. This qualitative study employed interviews, observations, and analyses of school documents. Three teachers were interviewed and observed. A few of their school documents were analyzed. Parents and students were also interviewed. The curriculum of social studies teacher in this study clearly mirrors several of the levels of multicultural education as described by Sonia Nieto. The language arts and mathematics teachers curricula mirror few of the levels of multicultural education; in fact, their interviews and observations point out that they are in favor of a monocultural education. The parents and students are overall satisfied with the efforts of these three teachers. But the parents were concerned that there are some faculty and staff who do not practice tolerance when interacting with students, yet students are expected to become tolerant as part of this initiative. The students believe the initiative has merit, however, they recommend some things Shadypine faculty should consider teaching as part of the initiative