Who Are Your Friends Epstein Analysis

Introduction The United States is known to be a “melting pot”, where there has been an increase in human diversity over the years. However, the nation has struggled to live up to its standard of an unprejudiced society. Multicultural education is a form of pedagogy that incorporates cultural and race diversity into schools and classrooms (Wilson 1997). The purpose of this is to have students appreciate their culture as well as embrace that of others. It is believed that schools and other public institutions are a driving force to students developing racist attitudes because of the laws and policies that govern them. Liberal and conservative social institutions operate on a system of “White” standards, where everything is measured against …show more content…
In Epstein’s article “Who Are Your Friends?” Complexities in Multicultural Education,” she discusses how social institutions, schools and teachers do not implement strategies and policies that will alter attitudes of prejudice. Epstein explores the after school program, “Beyond Today”, which is set up for fourth and fifth grade students get engaged in multicultural education. The program assembles Black, White and Latino/a children in an urban society and exposes them to the issues of discrimination, social injustice and give them the opportunity to develop leadership towards social change. The article sheds light on how these students respond to the program. Epstein’s (2010) article talks about how “white students and students of color live relatively closely to each other, but have segregated schools and social circles” (p.40). The diverse nature of the society is supposed to provide an opportunity for these kids to form ties, and learn multiple things from each other but that does not usually occur. The program was put in place to bring about “social change which is establishing community, understanding the concept of crossing borders, student leadership, and social action projects that students define and develop” (p.41). This was achieved by using creative pedagogical strategies such us having “students take part in role playing and the using photographs, video clips, newspaper clippings and large sheets of graffiti to identify and relate to acts of prejudice in society” (p.41). According to Powell, students are taught the norms and values of the larger society, from a ‘white-centric perspective’. In her article, a similar strategy was used to incorporate effective multicultural education in a classroom with little racial diversity. Students were encouraged to have one-on-one conversations about their culture and sometimes discriminatory stories,