Multiculturalism: The Art of the Crayon

I'm taking an excellent class on Multicultural Approaches for Teaching Young Children. The idea is that no matter how diverse, or not, your classroom is each child should be proud of their own culture and appreciate those of others. It's beyond tolerance or just celebrating one holiday for each group a year. It's often called anti-bias ed or multicultural ed (which I prefer because it sounds more proactive). Today we watched a video of a anti-bias curriculum school in Seattle. The teacher presented a really interesting lesson plan that I can't stop thinking about...

Her class was pretty diverse. She had all the kids gather around and using Crayola® Multicultural Paint, each child tried to match his/ her skin color to the paint. What was great is that the kids realized that no one is "white" or "black" and that they often had to mix the pain colors to reach their own. Even amongst the Caucasian kids there was a great deal of skin color diversity. (Pictured: the multicultural markers)

I checked out the Crayola® website as well as a blog (Racalicious) that had a few comments about it. Here's what I found really interesting:

• The crayon currently known as "Peach" was called "Flesh" until 1962. Crayola® says the change was partially a result of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
  
• "Indian Red" was not renamed "Chestnut" until 1999! And this was only in response to educators who demanded the change. Crayola® says the slur was not intended, but rather the crayon "name originated from a reddish-brown pigment found near India commonly used in fine artist oil paint."


• The current Multicultural Pack has 10 colors: Golden Beige, Beige, Tan, Tawny, Bronze, Terra Cotta, Mahogany, and Sienna. (Pictured: Multicultural paint, as see in the film)