Chapter 1: Knowledge in Community: A Service-Learning Approach to Community Building and Diversity

I have taught courses on sociology of education for close to thirty years. These courses typically include sections on cultural diversity, race and ethnic relations, and social change in which I present ways that the content of schooling is becoming more diverse in terms of the types of courses offered as well as the variety of topics covered within courses. But when it became clear to me that many teachers at all levels of schooling expect students from different cultures to adopt a Western (European-American) approach to learning, I realized that this could never lead to a truly diverse society.