Design Schools to Meet Ethnic Needs in a Culturally Diverse Society

Countries like Finland, Canada, and China, are known for academic achievements in mathematics. Although the United States remains an economic power in the world, American students are said to have weak math and problem solving skills as compared to other countries in the developed world. Consequently, the United States are preoccupied with competing to gain the advantage over other societies to ensure their rightful place in the global economy. As the United States has shown considerable population growth over the years, the country’s ethnic census proves that American society has become more culturally diverse and projects even greater changes over the next several decades.

An interesting study on the theory of cultural discontinuities is regarding China as they have experienced great success using ethnic mathematics for teaching math. The theory carries the concept that every minority has their own culture while every ethnic culture is suitable.

According to Zhao, (2011) teachers should address teaching math through ethnic mathematic knowledge to help eliminate cultural discontinuity. Mathematics is found to be not only objective but subjective and cultural. Zhang (1996) says that school math and ethnic math come from two separate cultures as school math is developed from the ancient Greek culture and considered universal and objective, ethnic math is developed from cultural contexts as to bind together a practical thinking system within a cultural community (Xia, 2000). From the angle of the cultural anthropologist, students have an ethnic kind of mathematics before they go to school. As I intersperse a personal experience here to validate this concept, I can recall when my two girls were advanced in math and reading before they entered kindergarten and were invited to attend a private girl’s school on full scholarship after their entrance exams. I was asked to stop teaching them because the math culture I communicated at that time created conflict for the school math culture which was predominantly upper middle class Whites. My children obviously needed to learn a new culture and if they were to succeed, the sooner they adapt the better.

According to Zhao (2011), different minorities have different mathematics. In exploring the Chinese and how they succeed in math, he says that they employ the national curriculum in math but they use local ethnic mathematics for the different needs of the 55 nationalities residing in China. They have the national, local and school-based levels of school management system. Some develop school-based kinds of curriculums to address the ethnic needs. American anthropologists say the design of the school must consider the cultural background of the students (LI, 2004), as if preset cultural backgrounds of the “school mathematics” are not removed, then the ethnic student will have difficulty causing psychological burdens for learning school mathematics. Teachers are encouraged to use math knowledge so that students understand so as to stimulate interest for math and student creativity (Zhao, 2011). Exploring ethnic history, ethnic mathematical thought patterns and methods are the first steps for developing relevant materials for ethnic math. Zhao says that excavating cultural connotations of math, while embodying internal connections with the national mathematics curriculum, and providing an angle of ethnic mathematical history will give students greater appreciation for their native mathematics.