Modifying the Small Group Experience for Multi-Cultural America. Working Paper Series, Number 7.

The Minnesota Project on Ethnic America inaugurated an experimental program to explore the problems of a culturally diverse college population in a small setting. The program utilized techniques borrowed from related programs and reflects recent social sciences findings on the continued impact of the ethnic factor in American society. The project's Workshop on American Pluralism established a number of innovative precedents in the contemporary movement to make American education more responsive to the cultural needs and new assertiveness of minority groups in American society. This essay sketches the scope of this undertaking and, at the same time, places the program in both its historical context and philosophic framework. This program provides a small group experience for a selected cross-section of Americans from diverse ethnic, religious, regional, and social backgrounds. Ethnicity and other collective identities are assumed to be important factors that generate differences in attitude and outlook among Americans. Consistent with this fundamental assumption, the program aims to increase the number the range of cultural differences within each workshop group. Among the topics discussed are the following: the origins and forerunner of the Minnesota program, the importance of analyzing each individual's particular communication style, and the reexamination of the rules that come to govern different cultural groups. (Author/AM)