The Importance Of Knowledge In Education

According to Banks, knowledge means the way a person explains or interprets reality (1996, p. 5). James A. Banks was the director of the Center of Multicultural Education and president of the American Educational Research Association. He specializes in improving ethnic and race relations within schools and universities in different nations. The three types of nationalities participating in this canon debate are Africans, Western Americans, and Multiculturalists. Students should have the different kinds of knowledge taught to the in school; personal/cultural, popular, mainstream academic, transformative academic, and school. Knowledge comprises awareness and understanding through experiences. When gaining knowledge you have a positionality of what you believe or think and presented in different forms. Next, personal/ cultural knowledge consist of your own knowledge from home, family, and community. Popular knowledge is media that portrays the minorities in a stereotype way. Mainstream academic knowledge is where the majority tells the history from their perspectives and usually in textbooks. The other article discusses how certain African Americans believe that we are all the …show more content…
11). We need to be explicitly taught those norms and expectations because a lot of time teachers do not do this. So when the child fails they are automatically labeled as being dumb. Also low income families’ values and beliefs are way different then high income families. Another way children fail is the curriculum and instruction are is structured around standardized testing. The standardized testing is geared towards the majority where the norms, knowledge, and culture are way different. That is how minority students are