ABSTRACT
Reviews of multicultural education have identified and described various forms of multicultural education that serve a range of purposes for students. Of these forms, the one that Banks (1993) calls content integration provides teachers of English and language arts with direction for transforming their literature curricula. This model holds that the infusion of ethnic and cultural content into the curriculum (for literature, in the form of texts by and about people of a range of ethnicities) validates the experiences of all students, with particular attention to students of color whose histories and stories have been overwhelmingly excluded from classroom study. In addition, such inclusiveness strengthens the knowledge base of all students by providing a view of U.S. history and literature that more accurately reflects the range of experiences of all people in the population. A more inclusive curriculum can embrace diversity as defined by a range of factors including race, ethnicity, class, nation of origin, religion,
gender, and sexual orientation. Whereas diversity based on any of these factors deserves attention in school curricula, this chapter focuses primarily on ways to diversify literature curricula in terms of race and ethnicity.
