Multicultural Education: Challenges and Aspirations

We speak with New York State Regent Luis O. Reyes on the evolution of multilingual education in New York, beginning with the ASPIRA Consent Decree that in 1974 established bilingual education as an entitlement for Puerto Rican and other Latinx students. NY is gradually transitioning to bicultural and bi-literate education. The Regents’ Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework represents the way forward. *Overview and transcript below. [ss_player] Image: hostos.cuny.edu Overview 00:00-01:04 Intro 1:06-04:09 Relevance of John Dewey, Paolo Freire, Eugenio Maria de Hostos 5:00-26:37 ASPIRA Consent Decree 45 years later 26:38-37:10 Regents’ “Social Emotional Learning: Essential for Learning, Essential for Life”; culturally responsive-sustaining education 37:11-41:35 Resources and resource needs for implementing Regents’ Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework 41:36-48:56 Recruiting and supporting Latinx and other culturally-competent teachers; creating teacher-development pipelines; increasing early childhood teacher salaries 48:57-52:57 Need for more state funding; Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision; equitable access to funds for all schools Transcription of the episode Amy H-L: 00:15 Hi, I'm Amy Halpern-Laff. Jon M: 00:17 And I'm Jon Moscow. Welcome to ethical schools, where we discuss strategies creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs that help students to develop both commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions. Amy H-L: 00:33 Our guest today is Dr. Luis O. Reyes. Dr. Reyes is member of the New York state Board of Regents, the body that oversees all educational activities in the state, including the New York State Education Department. Regent Reyes is the Director of Education at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. He was a member of the New York city Board of Education from 1990 through 1998 and has been an educator for more than 48 years. Welcome Luis. Luis R: 01:04 Thank you. Amy. Jon M: 01:06 John Dewey wrote about schools modeling democracy and preparing students for democratic citizenship. You have talked about the influence on your work of Eugenio María de Hostos and Paolo Freire, who talked about education in the context of liberation. What's the relevance of these perspectives for schools today? Luis R: 01:25 I think the relevance of John Dewey and Paulo Freire and Eugenio María de Hostos is that these were all men who were educators, leaders of movements to ensure that education was not just about rote memory or about testing, but education in pursuit of living in a democratic society and living a fully participating, using one's mind, one's will and one's understanding of the social realities of our times to ensure that education becomes an instrument, not of dictating to people who they are, what they know or what they must do, but giving them the tools to help be co-creators of their own reality. Eugenio María de Hostos, a Puerto Rican educator after whom Hostos Community College in the South Bronx is named, was one of the preeminent leaders in education in Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean as part of the Confederación Antillana. He's actually buried in the Dominican Republic and is revered there as he is in Puerto Rico. Jon M: 03:10 And didn't he say that he didn't want his body to be returned to Puerto Rico until it was independent? Luis R: 03:15 He did say that and that has been respected all these years. There's no element of any part of Puerto Rican society trying to recover his remains irregardless of Puerto Rico's status. So that's Hostos. John Dewey obviously is a very famous and noted progressive educator leader in the United State...