A Multicultural Science Curriculum: Fact or Fantasy?

This article explores the possibilities and benefits of developing a multicultural science curriculum using Aboriginal input through factual disclosure, and metaphorically in literature. Environmental concerns are cited. curricula used presently in schools are challenged, and an outline for creating a multicultural science unit is provided. The article concludes with a reference by Murfin and a plea by him to pool resources for the benefit of the world. The multicultural of society and schools in Canada requires every teacher `to reinvent the classroom as a public space' (D'Oyley, Shapson, 1993: 9). Teachers must widen their perspectives to meet the challenges of diversity in the classrooms. This attention to diversity is more than just being politically correct. Current scientific problems in the world require a pooling of knowledge and perspectives from many sciences for solutions. This pooling of information would take the form of a multicultural science curriculum in the schools, beginning with the early years (K-Gr. 4). The curricular design would reflect a problem solving approach, one steeped in pragmatic application. Scientific concerns for now and into the new millenium would address environmental mismanagement and its effects (eg. greenhouse effect, energy depletion) as a prime example. Although scientific advances at the expense of have been many in the past, it is now time to pay the piper for this progress. A multicultural science curriculum would more fully equate the concepts of nature and and the benefits of living with as advocated by Aboriginals and the Japanese, for example. This perspective would fly in the face of taming and exploiting as found in biblical reference, and promogated through the historic Eurocentric science model. Eurocentric science, or western modern science (WMS) had its origins in Ancient Greek and European cultures Europe was an expansionist culture that brought Eurocentric science to various lands and their inhabitants. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, most European thinkers reasoned that the unprecedented control over made possible by its science proved that European thought correlated most closely to the underlying realities of the universe. Supporters of Eurocentric science are known as universalists.They argue that WMS provides a superior knowledge of the natural world as compared to other views which may be seen as mythical or heretical (Good, 1995; Slezak, 1994). In contrast, constructivists (Geelan, 1997; Phillips, 1997) describe science as socially constructed, and that WMS is only one approach toward explaining nature. WMS is portrayed as a cultural icon reflecting power, prestige, and progress (Baker & Taylor, 1995). educator Michael Matthews (1994), a universalist, states `WMS is an intellectual activity whose truth-finding goal is not, in principle, affected by national, class, racial, or other differences' (Matthews, 1994: 182). Siegel (1997) adds `as educators, we are obliged to treat cultures other than our own, and members of these cultures, justly and with respect' (Siegel, 1997: 1). In any event, the quest for a truly multicultural science curriculum must be based on this consideration, `Any narrow view of science diminishes the authenticity of knowledge gleaned through naturalistic observation' (Cobern, Loving, 1998: 11). This perspective goes beyond the notion of so called respect and tokenism granted cultures outside WMS. Controversies over multicultural science approaches have been dubbed Science Wars (Nature, 1997). Documents and supplements enhancing multicultural science have been sent to American schools to raise the self-worth of students and present a set of beliefs seen as superior to those of WMS (eg. The ancient Egyptians foreshadowed the Theory of Evolution.). What is needed, however, are integrated multicultural science curriculums at provincial or state levels and not just supplemental cultural references noted in this curricula. …

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