In Marianne Modica’s novel, The R Word, she tells the story of one life changing year in a young girl’s life. Rachel Matrone is a white teenage girl who is raised by conservative grandparents and her protective uncles, in a primarily white area. Rachel’s father passed away and her mother left her before she passed away as well. Rachel’s father was a cop and he was killed on the line of duty. Although she has a very loving family, she feels as though they are hiding something from her. Rachel is determined to find out what secret her family is hiding. Early in the novel, Rachel’s best friend, Antonella, moves away and Rachel feels lonely. Rachel’s grandmother encourages her to become involved at school, to meet new people, and keep herself busy.…show more content… The problem, a social psychologist argues, is that they are undervalued, in ways that are sometimes subtle and sometimes not”. This is an issue of social justice. Social justice is the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges in a society regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. When people are undervalued due to race, this is not a fair distribution of opportunities. He provides the example of a third grade student Jerome; who’s talents were ignored. It is suggested that he is ignored because he is African American, but perhaps if it were a white, middle class student possessed these talents, they would not go unnoticed like Jerome. This is the main challenge I find with creating multicultural curriculums: social change. If people are continuing to have these attitudes and have ignorance towards people of other races, how are we supposed to…show more content… He defines ethnic studies as, “Ethnic studies should be, in part, the scientific and humanistic examination of the variables related to ethnicity that influence human behavior.” He suggests that ethnic content must be integrated into the curriculum for a multicultural reform, but he analyzes different ways this could be implemented suggesting “we need to reform the total school curriculum”. This is once again an issue of social justice and the challenge of a social change is faced once again. Banks offers four potential models for “ethnic studies as a process of curriculum reform”. Model C and D are the two he shifts focus to. Model C shows a multicultural curriculum where each event is studied from a different ethnicity’s perspective. Model D shows the ultimate goal of curriculum reform, which is studying events from perspectives of different groups within a nation. Through analyzing the different ways concepts, issues, themes, and events can be studied, Banks then comes to different approaches to teaching ethnic content and the four levels of the integration of ethnic content: level one is the contributions approach, level two is the additive approach, level three is the transformation approach, and level four is the social action approach. Each of these levels and approaches suggest different ways to incorporate ethnic studies into a multicultural
