What’s involved talking about cultural diversity in the classroom?

Nowadays talking about cultural diversity in the classroom is a hard topic, there are
controversial arguments present on this topic, and Colombian policies in contrast
with Colombian education are not the exception. To start, the concept of cultural
diversity is defined by Winter (1973) as “…cultural diversity is a valuable resource
that should be preserved ad extended. It affirms that major education institutions
should strive to preserve and enhance cultural pluralism…” but it seems to be a
superficial definition if it is compared with our reality in the education, most precisely
in classrooms.

Furthermore, in our Colombian constitution of 1991 says that “state recognizes and
protect ethnical and cultural diversity of Colombian nation” but this is just a
statement, if we go deeper in the classroom, we do not see this “recognition”. One
point to discuss is that Colombian policies are related to educational, economic,
social and cultural factors, so it can be said that the issue come from long time ago
and, the reason why is because the Colombian policies are focusing on producing
people to work on big factories, to create specific profiles to work on recognized
brands rather than researching or spend more money and time on education and
proposals made by students.

First I will take as example the DBA’s created by the Ministry of Education in 2015,
these were created for students as a reference point to verify what competences
students need to have at the end of each year but, here is maybe the main problem:
the competences established by the ministry do not talk about cultural diversity nor
multiculturalism despite of the Constitution stablish a recognition about this in the
whole country and, having a look at them some propose the cultural context that
surrounds students but in a general way. But nobody knows what is going on more
precisely about indigenous cultures present in our city, or country cultural diversity
is a frequent topic in our context, day by day our society is including more people
with big cultural heritage that can be useful and considered as important in the
society if it is valued and respected as it should be.
Then, making a connection with Bourdieu’s (2010) perspective this is a clear
example of this gap of recognition about cultural diversity in the classroom.
According with him people have four kinds of capital social, cultural, economic and
the last one as a connection of the previous ones so that is called symbolic capital,
in this capital if you as a person have more money, goods, history, etc. you can have
more opportunities and better jobs and so one. So, the people with more capital start
to promote policies and ideologies in which they can benefit from others and, one
form to make this is to create projects and policies that are seen as good and benefit
for people but the majority of people never asks what is under that and what is more
relevant they impose a specific profile to students in this case without taking into
account any consideration about cultural background that each student may have.

For example, in classrooms students can come from many different types of cultures
but sometimes this is not appreciated or considered as valuable and as an
opportunity of learning and here another issue appears that is the homogenization
of this cultural diversity there is no space in the classroom to talk or share about this
and most of the teacher give a specific topic without highlight this fact that is
important for students also, when the culture is recognized in the classroom as
individual for everyone students can open this knowledge to be conscious about
what is in the classroom and why is important to know about this. Going back to the
DBA’s they establish a profile a series of competences that students should have
but in these ones there is no recognition neither mention about this cultural diversity
that can be find in the classroom.

To sum up the analysis of this DBA’s is important because we as language teacher

can be conscious about this topic and see this kind of diversity in our classroom as
an opportunity to enrich our culture and not to follow a foreign pattern that is imposed
in many cases when they learn another language in which the culture, aspects and
ideologies are transferred with the idea of globalization but with the underground
idea of dominance and power execution.
References

 Rincón O. A. (2010). Análisis de la política educativa actual en Colombia desde la

perspectiva teórica de Pierre Bourdieu. Magistro 4(8). 33-48.
 (Constitución política de Colombia, 1991, art.7)