The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach About Diversity (Multicultural Education Series)

When it comes to teaching about diversity, schools face a powerful competitor – the mass media. Analyzing both entertainment and news media, this important new book grapples with such issues as the ways that media frame diversity-related themes, transmit values concerning diversity, contribute to stereotypes, and influence thinking about topics like race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. Cortés suggests ways that schools and parents can more effectively address the implications of this inevitable media multicultural curriculum. Both powerful and useful, this seminal work should be on every educator’s bookshelf.

Carlos Cortés is a Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside. Since 1990 he has served on the summer faculty of the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education and is also on the faculty of the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication.