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News & Events
Spotlight on Faculty
Faculty Spotlight
James A. Banks
Russell F. Stark University Professor, Curriculum & Instruction
Director, Center for Multicultural Education
As part of an ongoing series, the College of Education will be profiling its faculty members, asking each of them the same set of questions. Loosely based on the Proust questionnaire, these questions are intended to provide brief views on a variety of topics. This interview features James A. Banks, Russell F. Stark University Professor and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education. He has written or edited 20 books in multicultural education and social studies education, and written over 100 articles, contributions to books, and book reviews for professional publications during his career. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).
Question: What moved you to become a teacher/researcher?
Answer: I wish I could say that I had a grand plan to become a teacher, but it was really quite coincidental. I was a working-class kid who grew up in the rural South who came of age in the 1950s and 60s. I wanted to go to college in Chicago because my brother was living there. The only free college was Chicago Teachers College. So I became a teacher because it was one of the few professions available for a working-class kid from Arkansas.
Also, I admired my teachers; they were heroes in my Black, Southern community. People didn’t look down on teachers but respected them. One of the great events of my life was when Mrs. Wilson, one of my elementary school teachers, came home to spend the night with us. This was a rural community where the teacher would spend the night with a family, and teachers were really adored.
Question: What teacher had the greatest impact on your life?
Answer: I wouldn’t say that there was one teacher. There were a group of teachers—the Southern, Black rural teachers that I knew. Mrs. Sadie Mae Jones taught me in first grade—in those days there wasn’t kindergarten for African Americans in my community. She certainly had an impact, and I had her again in eighth grade when the schools consolidated. Mrs. Wilson and Miss Curry, my language arts teacher in junior high school, also had very powerful influences on me.
Mrs. Saunders, my high school French teacher, gave me a great love of France and the French language. When I finally got to Paris after I became a professor and went down the Champs Elysees, I thought of Mrs. Saunders and how she would romanticize Paris and talk about the great fun she had there. All of these teachers had a profound impact on me, and I’m very grateful to them. I think they were unsung heroes.
Question: If you could embark now on any adequately funded research project, what would it be?
Answer: I think it would be what I’m doing now, just on a bigger scale, and with more support. My work examines how schools can find ways to increase the academic achievement of minority students. There are many theories about the achievement gap, but it still exists. Another goal of my work, which I would continue no matter how much money I had, is to help all students develop democratic racial attitudes and help us all get along. Whether or not we can all get along is a burning question, because we’re not getting along very well in this country or across the world. My work also examines global relationships—how can we educate students to be effective and active citizens of the world?
People become interested in problems for various reasons. I became interested in minority achievement because that’s my life. I’m working for the future of my children, and for the future of African American and Latino students, which impacts everyone’s future, because by helping African American and Latino youth we’re creating a better society for us all.
Question: If you knew now that you could write only one more book/article in your career, what would the title be?
Answer: Well, I hope I’ll write many more books, but I have my next book planned. Next year, I’ll be at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, which some people call the professor’s heaven. We go there and have a year to think and write. During that year, I’m going to write about how we can better educate students to be citizens of their cultural communities, of the nation state, and of the world.
I started out in Black Studies, teaching my students about African Americans such as Crispus Attucks and Sojourner Truth. I began to realize that you really can’t understand racism in America just by studying Blacks. Then I started studying Latinos, American Indians, and other ethnic groups. I edited a book in 1973 titled "Teaching Ethnic Studies: Concepts and Strategies," in which I brought together authors and information on diverse ethnic groups. I then expanded my work to multicultural education, which includes gender, exceptionality, and the global dimension. So in my next book, I plan to bring together all of my work, including the most recent work on global issues.
Question: What qualities do you most admire in your professional colleagues?
Answer: I really admire people who have deep knowledge—who read, who think, and who are on the cutting edge of their disciplines—but who also have a heart. We need to educate not only for the mind, but also for the heart. I admire people who care deeply about kids and about the world community. I happen to believe that we’re in a crisis in our country and in the world. The gap between the rich and the poor is escalating, we have tremendous gaps in income and achievement, and I think educators need to care, and they need to act to make a difference in the world.
Question: What book should be read by all who would become teachers?
Answer: I suppose one that I would recommend would be "The Miseducation of the Negro," by Carter G. Woodson. It was published in 1933, and it raised questions that we’re still struggling with today. Woodson points out that African Americans were being taught about European culture and civilization, but not about their own culture and civilization.
Another really important book is by W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Souls of Black Folk," published in 1953. In this collection of essays, Du Bois talks about having a "double consciousness," meaning having to fit into one’s own ethnic community and also fit into the wider mainstream culture. This condition extends beyond African Americans, and to groups such as Native Americans and Asian Americans as well as to immigrants coming from Africa, Asia, and Mexico. I’m an avid reader who has many favorite books, but these two books have stood the test of time.
Question: What trends and ideas from the popular culture will have an impact on education over the next ten years?
Answer: The widening gap between the rich and the poor, the reemergence of conservatism, the call for religion in the schools, the anti-gay movement, large numbers of immigrant students, and students who speak a language at home other than English—I think each of these developments will have a profound effect on how teachers do their work. How do teachers teach about evolution, for example, when they have fundamental Christians on the school board and as well in their classrooms? How do they deal with this difficult issue? The current national and state trends towards accountability and standardization will also affect schools in substantial ways, some of which will be negative.
Some trends will affect us in a positive way. The minority population will continue to increase. The U. S. Census projects that minorities will make up half the nation’s population by 2050. I’d like to think that this large ethnic population is going to demand some changes in our society, and hopefully those will be progressive changes. I believe that the counterforces of the progressive movement against religious and political conservatism will affect schools in deep ways. I think that we are entering a time in our nation and our world when it’s really important for people committed to a progressive agenda to stay committed. Those of us who are working towards school transformation will be severely tested over the next few years. I think it’s important to maintain a commitment to social justice and not get disillusioned and give up. We must stay the course. Our work is needed now more than ever.
Question: What things about the current state of education give you hope?
Answer: I think it’s the individual teachers, the individual principals, and the individual schools that maintain a commitment to equity, equality and social justice, despite all the countertrends that are going against them including standardization and the accountability movement. I think that we have to maintain hope. You have to be hopeful and committed in difficult times. That is the only way that we will overcome.
Spotlight on Faculty
