1.0 Introduction

When we tried to search about the definition of culture, there are many different results

came out. Many philosophers describe culture based on their own perspective and knowledge.

As for me, I could describe culture is a group of people that share the same cumulative beliefs,

values, attitudes, religions and also concepts of the universe and pass it from generations to

another. According to Thomas Wolfe, “Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs”, which

concluded that culture is something to do with beliefs in one’s self. Culture is like the food to the

soul of human body, without it, a human will be pointless and soul will be regardless empty.

Malaysia is a special country because Malaysia has an extremely culturally diverse to

offer. This multiracial country has a population of 23.27 million consisting of (61%) Malays,

(30%) Chinese and (8%) Indians. The Chinese community, for example, uses a number of

dialects including Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin. For the Indian society, the

language spoken is Tamil, and for the Malay, the language spoken is Bahasa Malayu (Hassan,

2005). These three largest ethnic groups which are Malays, Chinese and Indians follow different

cultures and traditions, and commonly profess different religions. They have different codes of

dress, customs, value systems and beliefs (Jamil & Abd. Razak, 2010). Other groups (13%) that

make up the population include the Eurasians and indigenous groups in the Sabah and

Sarawak regions like the Kadazans, Dusuns, Muruts, Ibans, Bidayuhs, Penans, just to name a

few (Ishak, 2009).

Total population of 60.4% using Islam religion, Buddhism 19.2%, Christianity 9.1%,

Hinduism 6.3% and others 5.0%. Malaysia has a plural society with people of different religions

and races living harmony under one roof even each person maintains its traditional culture.

Each citizen can freely practice their culture, religion and belief without any complication faced.

This uniqueness of races, religions and cultures become one of Malaysia’s ways to attract

tourists from all over the world.

Cultural diversity in Malaysia has affected many ways in Malaysian’s life styles, food,

music and others but all this difference significantly good for the country itself. The same case

goes when multicultural students in one same class. Therefore, before implementing any

lesson, teacher need to carefully using this aspect of multicultural for gain successful outcome.

This is because cultural difference is not something simple and easy that can be left out from

the sight. As teachers, we must know about multicultural effect towards teaching and learning in

classroom and prevent any bad consequences from happen.

After age 9, racial attitudes tend to stay the same unless the child has a life-changing

experience (Aboud, 1988). However, before that happen, we still have a good chance to help

children develop positive perspective about their racial and cultural identity. We can also

challenge the immature thinking that is typical of very young children. That's important because

this type of thinking can lead to prejudice (York, 1991). Here, I can wrap up that teacher clearly

hold a crucial role to gain positive effects from multicultural aspect in the classroom.

2.0 Implication of multiculture toward teaching and learning in classroom

2.1 Cultural Awareness

The presence of varied ethnic groups in classroom has resulted in cultural awareness in

the students’ self. Teachers who are aware of the impacts of cultural differences are more likely

to bring children’s different cultures into the classroom (Gay, 1994). Therefore, teacher can

highlight about the art of culture in topic “Culture and Tradition”, Unit 9 in the English Year 5

syllabus. In this topic, teacher will able to introduce to the students about cultural diversity in

Malaysia and what arts are represented by each of the culture. Example, Malay’s unique art

forms such as wayang kulit, silat, makyong and gamelan while the Indians have enriched the

country with ancient dance traditions such as Bharatanatyam and Odissi, as well as the

energetic Bhangra from Punjab. On the other hand, the Chinese also have their own lion dance

and war drums that play firm part in country’s culture. Other minorities in Malaysia also have

their traditional dances like the Sumazau from the Kadazandusun in Sabah and the Ngajat by

the Iban of Sarawak.

When the students are learning about other cultures, they will trying to embrace

differences between cultures and accept it without hesitation. Their views and perspectives

became broader and this will make them to show sensitivity for the differences between

cultures. Example, Chinese students are interested to get to know better about Indian’s dance

and also give it a try. For exchange, the Indian students are also showing efforts to learn about

Chinese’s taboo, cuisine and dance. As a result, the cultural awareness will be implemented,

while racism and discrimination will be erased indirectly.

Multicultural education is both a concept and deliberate process designed to teach

learners to recognize, accept and appreciate differences in culture, ethnicity, social class,

sexual orientation, religion, special needs and gender (Baruth, L.G & Manning, M.L 2008). This

statement obviously supported that teacher can use the aspect of cultural diversity in the

classroom to enhance cultural awareness and promote acceptance of culture between the

students. When the students are aware with the cultural difference between them, they will more

understand about the nature of culture and how it works. Therefore, all the unwanted

consequences will be banned and students also become more comfortable to expose and share

their culture.

According to Winkelman (2005), awareness of cultural differences and their impact on

behavior is the beginning of intercultural effectiveness. He states that “cultural self-awareness

includes recognition of one’s own cultural influences upon values, beliefs, and judgments, as

well as the influences derived from the professional’s work culture”. When students are

successfully aware about cultural differences, they will being conscious of other’s values,

beliefs, perceptions and religions.

Cultural awareness implies to being open to the idea of changing cultural attitudes. It is

important as a way to help members of a multicultural team identify where things may be going

wrong to best leverage their differences. Without some sort of formal cross cultural awareness

training it is difficult for multicultural teams to identify areas that need attention.

2.2 Unity

For a number of years teachers have become more interested in multicultural education,

with the assumption that such approaches help children feel more welcomed, validated,

integrated, and able to cooperate with others in their classroom (Allen, McNeill, & Schmidt,

1992; Bredenkamp, 1986; Byrnes & Kiger, 1992; Gollnick & Chin, 1994). The statement above

definitely think that teaching using multicultural aspect will able the students to cooperate and

unite in their community. When the students know better about each other’s culture, they will not

feel neglected and left out. It is because all the students feel that they are belong into the class

community and the unity become stronger. One of the way to show unity is when the festival

season.

There are tons of festivals and celebrations held at Malaysia. Teacher can teaches

about the festival season in Unit 2, “Proud to be a Malaysian” in Year 6 syllabus. One of

Malaysia’s customs when the festival season is the ‘Open House’ concept where celebrating

community will play host to the others in their homes. For example, when Hari Raya celebration,

families and friends from different cultures would visit their homes that celebrating. The guests

come to share the happiness and enjoy the feast prepared by the hosts. It is an unspoken rule

that everybody is welcome at an open house. Teacher can asks the students to act out this

particular scenery in the classroom to give them clearer view about the situation in ‘Open

House’ during Hari Raya or other festivals.

When this activity is being carry out in the classroom, students will know how the Malays

celebrating Hari Raya, their traditional festival cuisine and clothes. To make it even livelier,

teacher can bring the actual food such as lemang, ketupat, rendang and biscuits. As the host of

‘Open House’, Malays students can wear their traditional Baju Kurung and Baju Melayu.

Therefore, as the guest, Chinese, Indian and Iban students need to politely enter the ‘Open

House’ and start a simple conversation with the hosts. They can converse about how delightful

the foods are and get to know each other like what is their name and where do they live.

According to Keow, 2008, “education serves as a common platform upon which all

ethnic groups can come together and interact with each other in order to achieve a significant

degree of understanding and tolerance”. Throughout the conversation process, the students will

learn to respect about other cultures and finally become closer with each other. After all, this

activity help to strengthen the ties among themselves.

When unity between the students are strong and unbreakable, they can reject any idea

or possibility of racism to happen. Like Henry Ward Beecher said, “That is true culture which

helps us to work for the social betterment of all.”

2.3 Mutual Respect

Earn respect to be respected. If one wants to be respected for their culture, belief and

religion, then one has to show that they have respect for others and their respect is always true

blue and cannot easily be swaged. Mutual respect takes constant maintaining and effort to keep

it. Even a smallest mistake can make a huge damage to the respect, and once it gone, people

will always walk away and it is hard to get nearer to them anymore. Differences in culture, belief

and religion is not something that easily can be accepted especially for young children who still

have narrow and immature thinking about life. Coexisting peacefully, based on mutual respect,

is not a given but instead has to be learned, with the target group being all students (Batelaan,

2004: 54). Therefore, teacher need to be wise and creative to develop mutual respect even

though there is a fine boundary between them.

In the multicultural classroom, teacher must shed old practices such as biasness in the

students based their races and then, modify the lesson and change the traditions. Instead of

asking questions to students which compels them to respond in terms of just one particular

culture group, teachers need to be more universal in asking question. Open-ended question

technique encourages all the students to participate actively in the lesson because each student

feels that they are able to speak out their opinion. By embracing these principles in teaching,

teachers enable to create a climate of diversity and fostering mutual respect in the classroom.

This is because the students feel that their opinion is respectfully taken by everybody in the

classroom include the different races students. In short, mutual respect is one of the positive

implications from the open ended question technique using multi culture aspect in the

classroom.

To create a safe environment in multi culture classroom, teacher need to emphasize

each students’ duty which is to learn how to deal with these variations, accept and respect the

difference.

Too much example either similarities or differences will make the students feel prejudice

and lose their respect to other culture. Does not mean that less powerful groups of students who

is the minority of the class deserve the least respect and attention. Thus, a good multicultural

education need to be balanced to fulfill each student’s needs and requirements.

Other than that, teacher indeed to make it very clear that that there is no room for

disrespect of different cultures in the classroom. In this way, targeted students who is young

children know immediately that is not appropriate to be rude and underestimate about other

culture. Multi culture element in the classroom can transform the students to be the person with

much better judgment about differences in culture. With this cleverer thinking, each student will

get the respect that they are deserved to.

Respecting difference is important for preventing the exploitation of less powerful groups, but it can be dangerously divisive if it leads to stereotyping. Educators need to provide a balanced view that does not exaggerate either the similarities or the differences that exist among people of different groups or within the same group (Booth, 1999: 23).

All teachers are responsible for teaching students about all kinds of people both during formal instruction and during informal, casual conversations. Experienced teachers do not realize what strong influences and powerful role models they are for young people as they demonstrate the importance of being aware of others, valuing cultural diversity and behaving respectfully toward others. Frequently, young students never even realize how they were exposed to negative role-modeling by their teachers (Cabello & Burstein, 1995).

Teachers serve as essential role models as they demonstrate the importance of learning

and valuing about other cultures. It is because teachers give significant effects on young

students that also include the negative ones. In that case, teachers should expose culture to the

students carefully so that the students will absorb only the good influences from the teachers.

Teachers also can use this advantage to develop mutual respect between the students because

in the students’ eye, they put teachers at a very high position.

According to Kofi Annan, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, "Tolerance,

inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where

peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected." Hence, teacher need to use

multi culture is one of the booster to obtain tolerance and mutual respect in the classroom

community. Without mutual respect, harmony classroom environment is impossible to happen.

2.4 Prejudice Reduction

Studies of the effect of multi culture towards teaching and learning in classroom

commonly reveal a positive effect. Studies have supported about how differences in issue of

race and culture in classroom can lead to less prejudice, (Aboud & Doyle, 1996a, 1996b; Aboud

& Fenwick, 1999; Aboud & Levy, 2000), suggesting that a greater integration of multicultural

curricular content will generally lead to improved rather than worsened or unchanged relations

between the students.

Changing the racial climate between and among students at schools is an important aspect of multicultural educational practice because of the detrimental role that prejudice and racism play in the everyday educational experiences of students of color (Steele, 1997; Zirkel, 2004, 2005, 2008c).

All teachers are responsible for teaching students about all kinds of people both during formal instruction and during informal, casual conversations. Experienced teachers do not realize what strong influences and powerful role models they are for young people as they demonstrate the importance of being aware of others, valuing cultural diversity and behaving respectfully toward others. Frequently, young students never even realize how they were exposed to negative role-modeling by their teachers (Cabello & Burstein, 1995).

As the guider, teacher have to know the most effective way to change the racial climate

in the classroom so that prejudice and racism will never occur. One of the ways is facilitating

open classroom discussion about current issues of culture and racism. Open discussion is

efficient for decreasing prejudice between students and improving their relationships. When the

students know better about other culture, all the nonsense prejudice will be erased. The

students will finally understand that each culture has their own unique beliefs and need to be

give a same fair position. The students will not tolerate with any actions of prejudice and racism

because they think that their friendship is the ultimate culture of all.

According to the study above, it is crystal clear that when the students engage actively in

discussion of their beliefs, the prejudice and racist attitude will be reduced. It is because they

have chance to share about the specialty and uniqueness of their heritage of culture. This

opportunity also give a parallel benefit to the other students that act as the listener of the

discussion.

The exchange of opinions and thoughts will change the way students look at the culture.

Like before, Malay students think that all Chinese and Indian students are outsiders that came

to Malaysia and did not deserve any national integrity. However, after hearing Chinese and

Indian students’ feeling towards culture, and how high level of their patriotism, the Malays will

understand that they absolutely not outsider, but also Malaysians that have different cultures. All

prejudice image, ideas are answered by the outcome of the discussion.

Multicultural classroom has made the students to throw away their negative judgment

about other culture because they will appreciate their relationship with their friends. The strength

of relationship is much tighter and they will not let anything goes between them even it is about

their own heritage of culture. In a whole, prejudice reduction is also helping students develop

more positive attitudes about people of different races and ethnicities because their view in

judgment become wiser.

3.0 Conclusion

Interventions that focus fairly directly on changing students’ attitudes about race and ethnicity by having them engage in direct discussions of their beliefs have proved effective in reducing prejudice and racist attitudes among K–12 students, at least in the short term (Aboud & Doyle, 1996b; Aboud & Fenwick,1999).

Teaching is not the best job most of the time, and teaching in the multicultural classroom

is one of the real challenges that every teacher need to deal with. Despite using the old teaching

strategies, teachers should practice brand new strategy from time to time. However, there is no

real magic potion that teachers can use to make teaching in multicultural class instantaneously

easy; there is no short cut or simple solution. Somehow, teachers must creatively use the

aspect of existence multi culture in classroom to gain positive outcome such as cultural

awareness, unity and mutual respect.

According to Kofi, “almost every country in the world has citizen that practicing different

religions and cultures, and this overlapping identities can help to keep us together”. Unity can be

developed and finally peace can be found everywhere like white sand in the beach. Although

the differences is huge, we can still love and embrace our life without any hatred. Proudly, we

can thrive in our own tradition, but at the same time, we can still learn about other culture and

faith. Within this, they know that respect other culture is a compulsory thing to do in a society.

Although, there are many problems regarding teaching and learning in a multi culture

classroom, a serious benefits also can be taken from it. Furthermore, teaching and learning in

multi culture classroom setting is expected as the globalization of world are surprisingly

increasing nowaday. Multiculturalism offer numerous advantages and we should try to

implement it in ourselves. Each and every Malaysian must consider that cultural differences is

not a big barrier, but it is a challenge to trigger themselves to strive for the excellence and be a

better citizen of this country.

"People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups. We can love what we are, without hating what – and who – we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings." —Kofi Annan, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations