Values are the evaluative and judgmental facet of a culture's "personal orientation system," helping its members determine what is right or wrong, good or bad, important or unimportant. However, the values which are of primary importance to citizens of a particular country may be of only secondary or tertiary importance to citizens of…

Supporters of the teaching of "standard English" maintain that permitting students to retain their own dialects leads to chaos, hampers communication, and promotes ignorance. Those supporting the rights of students to retain their own dialects focus on the concept that language is constantly changing, expresses the thoughts of living people, and…

Hong Kong education is based on an imperialist rhetoric which serves to "domesticate" rather than "liberate" the school population. The importance of memorization is clearly evident in education in Hong Kong. The community's educational system reflects a classical Chinese emphasis on familiarity with a set body of texts and on…

Foreign students make up an important, and growing, segment of higher education in the United States. Reasons why foreign students come to the United States to study include the following: (1) the United States offers a serious approach to higher education in which students receive appropriate training and generally are able to complete the…

Ethnic differences are valuable to the well-being of society, but it is difficult to determine how to transmit this cultural value from one generation to another. The development of the value of cultural pluralism is dependent upon the development of both a comprehensive theory of cultural pluralism and a model of cultural transmission which focus…

Given the assumption that children learn societal values in schools, textbooks and teaching manuals were reviewed to determine their effects on immigrant and minority-group children. The study was limited in three ways: (1) only primary through eighth-grade materials were reviewed; (2) only the immigration period (1880-1920), the post war period…

One of the basic problems men and women confront in any complex is the limitation imposed on their access to institutions of their society. How the problem of of institutional or structural access is related to ethnicity and ethnic studies is the focus of this essay. Concern for ethnicity and ethnic studies in education can be traced to the…

This report describes the completed second stage of an investigation and analysis of the state of educational leadership, policy, and organization in northern Canadian schools. It presents and discusses the different perspectives held by constituents with respect to the goals and purposes of schooling, and the curriculum and language of…

This paper discusses the issues of power, self-determination, and culturally appropriate learning as they relate to Australian Aboriginal, Native American, and Maori early childhood programs. It is asserted that many programs for the education of indigenous peoples in Australia, the United States, and New Zealand have failed to serve the needs and…

In the twentieth century, both the need and the opportunities for acquiring a foreign language have greatly increased. However, even today, foreign language instruction has not been firmly established worldwide as an essential element of basic education. In Great Britain, enthusiasm for foreign language instruction has risen and fallen repeatedly.…

Conflicts between traditional Hmong values and traditional American parenting values are explored, drawing on the experiences of a coordinator of an Even Start program serving Hmong parents. Even Start is a state-funded early childhood intervention program with a literacy component for parents with less than an eighth grade proficiency in reading…

Disparities between Whites and African Americans exist in many areas in U.S. society. These disparities are exacerbated by social ills, including the Persian Gulf conflict. Positive change on the part of African American educators is required to combat these problems. The following four postulates for teaching African American youth are provided:…

Considerations for identifying the stages of cultural learning of individual students of English as a second language (ESL) are discussed. It is suggested that culture shock, or the shock of the new, is a common experience for those learning a second language in a second culture, and that anger, unhappiness, frustration, and even illness may…

Very little is taught about Asian Americans in United States' education institutions at any level of instruction. Evaluations of standard U.S. history and social studies textbooks since World War II show that most are inadequate in their coverage of minority groups to the extent that they have encouraged the perpetuation of negative stereotypes.…

Examines Canadian educational systems as they reduced Indian students' self-esteem. Traces history of systematic degradation of Native culture through educational systems since 1600s. Beginning in late 1970s, intervention by Indian parents and tribal elders has led some Indian communities to operate their own school systems. (TES)