ETHNICITY IN THE CLASSROOM Ethnic patterns are changing every year. It seems that the minority groups are rising and are getting stronger as every new school year starts. There are many minority groups in the school setting now. " Nearly half (46 percent) of school-age youths in the United States will be people of color by 2020 (Pallas, Natriello, and McDill 1989)". A minority group is "a group typically numerically inferior to the rest of the population state... (A.J. Jongman and A.P. Schmid)". There used to be two major groups in the school setting, the blacks and the whites. Now there are whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc. And even to go along with that (they are not truly minority groups), there are the "freaks", nerds, obese people, homosexuals, too. With all the groups, the feeling for each one has gotten stronger. For example: "Typically, members of a minority group share a sense of solidarity and a desire to preserve their culture, traditions, religion or language (A.J. Jongman and A.P. Schmid)". With all these gangs forming all over the US, each minority is sticking together, more than ever. They are all proud of who they are and what ethnic they are from. The fear of homosexuals and the hate towards the "freaks" have grown more, also. Which makes it tougher on the teachers and principals to keep everything running smoothly. This change will have a big affect on our public schools. As I alluded to earlier, the groups are more protective of their heritage or their group in the school setting. Not only outside in the hallways (fights, gangs, etc.), but in the classroom as well. Not everybody is the same. "Research indicates that individual learning styles vary, that all people do not learn in the same way. Of particular interest to multicultural education is research suggesting that learning styles may be related to ethnicity in some ways (Hale-Benson 1982; Shade 1989). On the basis of this research, ...
