Multicultural education is a set of strategies and materials in U.S. education that were developed to assist teachers to promote democracy while responding to the many issues created by rapidly changing demographics of their students. Multicultural education means to ensure the highest levels of academic achievement for all students. It helps students develop a positive self-concept by providing knowledge about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diverse groups.

Multicultural education assumes that the future of U.S. society is pluralistic. Today, teachers in most urban areas face students from a variety of social classes and cultural and language groups. Many students do not share the middle-class, European American culture common to most college-educated teachers. Teachers find large numbers of English as a Second Language (ESL) students in their classes in both urban and rural areas such as Iowa and Utah. Multicultural classrooms promote decision-making and critical thinking while moving away from inequality of opportunity and toward cultural pluralism.

Multicultural educators seek to substantially reform schools to give diverse students an equal chance in school, in the job market, and in contributing to building healthy communities. one of the leaders in the field of multicultural education, describes five dimensions of multicultural education: (1) content integration, (2) the knowledge construction process, (3) prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...

 reduction, (4) an equity pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure.

Many universities offer multicultural education courses and modules as a part of their teacher preparation.

Joe L. Kincheloe

Joe L. Kincheloe

Joe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book-chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban...

 and Shirley R. Steinberg

Shirley R. Steinberg

Shirley Ruth Steinberg is a university educator who is currently teaches at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 2010, she was a research professor at the University of Barcelona. She is known for her notions of Critical Multiculturalism, Kinderculture, Christotainment, and Postformal...

, Peter McLaren

Peter McLaren

Peter McLaren is a Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles . He is the author and editor of forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters...

, Henry Giroux

Henry Giroux

Henry Giroux, born September 18, 1943, in Providence, Rhode Island, is an American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies,...

, Antonia Darder

Antonia Darder

Antonia Darder, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, activist, and public intellectual. Dr. Darder holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University...

, Christine Sleeter, Ernest Morrell

Ernest Morrell

Ernest Morrell is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Associate Director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access...

, Sonia Nieto

Sonia Nieto

Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy and Culture at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. With experience teaching students at all levels and from many socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, Nieto is one of the leading authors and teachers in the field of...

, Rochelle Brock, Cherry A. McGee Banks, James A. Banks

James A. Banks

James Albert Banks is an American educator and the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies and director of University of Washington's Center for Multicultural Education...

, Nelson Rodriguez, Leila Villaverde and many other scholars of critical pedagogy

Critical pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...

 have offered an emancipatory perspective on multicultural education.

This theory concentrates on the need of including notions of race, class, and diversity while teaching. Multiculturalism supports the idea that students and their backgrounds and experiences should be the center of their education and that learning should occur in a familiar context that attends to multiple ways of thinking. If done correctly, students will develop a positive perception of themselves by demonstrating knowledge about the culture, history, and contributions of diverse groups. This way, multiculturalism is a tool for instilling students with pride and confidence in their unique and special backgrounds.

Globalization is a social trend which integrates people with different cultural backgrounds. Culture meet, clash, and grapple with each other as if in the contact zone. Under this circumstance, people started to improve the teaching methods, which means the phenomenon of multicultural education is coming along with the development of globalization. The influence of multicultural education for international students shows on both positive and negative sides. Multicultural education provides a relatively fairer learning environment for international students, which can help them easier to get involved in a new community. Additionally, with the help of this education method, international students can receive more opportunities to better access to knowledge. Moreover, when teachers pay attention to cultivate a multicultural atmosphere, it helps international students to gradually obtain global view. However, multicultural education may cause abandonment of original cultural for international students. Teachers sometimes use multiple examples to satisfy diverse students, but there is no standard benchmark for multicultural education and teachers usually add their own values to their education. Consequently, if teachers try to deliberately concentrate on providing multicultural examples, it may confuse international students and it cannot guarantee a fair education environment. Furthermore, international students may feel being left out when teachers want to emphasize on multiculturalism. Overall, multicultural education is a dialectical issue with two sides.

Kincheloe and Steinberg's taxonomy of multicultural education

Kincheloe and Steinberg in Changing Multiculturalism (1997) described confusion in the use of the terms "multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...

" and "multicultural education". In an effort to clarify the conversation about the topic, they developed a taxonomy of the diverse ways the term was used. The authors warn their readers that they overtly advocate a critical multicultural position and that readers should take this into account as they consider their taxonomy.

Kincheloe and Steinberg's taxonomy of multiculturalism and multicultural education can be summarised as follows:

Conservative multiculturalism

Assumptions:

1. Unsuccessful minorities from culturally deprived backgrounds—undermined by a lack of family values.
2. Common culture—WASP norms as invisible barometer for quality form the basis of the curriculum
   Curriculum
   See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
   
   . These norms should be transferred to the next generation.
3. Content of curriculum is decided by dominant cultural norms. I.Q. and achievement tests used uncritically to measure student acquisition of content and student cognitive ability.
4. Non-white ethnic groups are studied in conservative multiculturalism as add-ons to the dominant culture, outsiders expected to melt
   Cultural assimilation
   Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
   
    into the Great Pot
   Melting pot
   The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
   
   .
5. The existing social order is just
   Social justice
   Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
   
   .
6. Whiteness is not included as an ethnicity—it becomes an invisible barometer of normality.
7. Education is a form of ethnicity striping for economic success.

Liberal multiculturalism

Assumptions:

1. Multicultural education should be based on a notion of “sameness”—we are all the same.
2. Racial inequality exists because of a lack of opportunity for minority groups.
3. Abstract individualism
   Individualism
   Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
   
    is central to Western social organization. In this context it is believed that all humans can succeed if given a chance.
4. In abstract individualism we are free agents responsible for our own success or failure. Such a position, Kincheloe and Steinberg maintain, often fails to account for hidden forms of racism and norms devised around dominant cultural traits.
5. Everyone enters the competitive race of life from the same starting-line.
6. Celebrations of Black
   Black History Month
   Black History Month is an observance of the history of the African diaspora in a number of countries outside of Africa. Since 1976, it is observed annually in the United States and Canada in February, while in the United Kingdom it is observed in October...
   
    or Latino history
   History of Hispanic and Latino Americans
   The history of Latinos and Hispanics in the United States is wide-ranging, spanning more than four hundred years and varying from region to region within the United States...
   
    month are positive ways of honoring ethnic groups. Critics believe that liberal multiculturalism in this context often tokenizes ethnicity with such add-ons.
7. Whiteness still viewed as “non-ethnic” norm.
8. Studies of racism
   Racism
   Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
   
   , sexism, class-bias
   Bias
   Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...
   
   , homophobia, and colonial
   Colonialism
   Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
   
    oppression
   Oppression
   Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
   
    viewed as “divisive.”
9. Subjugated knowledge might be studied as a quaint manifestation of diversity
   Multiculturalism
   Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
   
   —not profound alternative insights that provide everyone new and consciousness changing perspectives on the world.

Pluralist multiculturalism

Assumptions:

1. This discourse often has served as the mainstream articulation of multicultural education over the last 20 years.
2. Pluralist
   Cultural pluralism
   Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture. Cultural pluralism is often confused with Multiculturalism...
   
    multicultural education shares numerous features with liberal multicultural—it focuses more on difference than liberal multiculturalism.
3. Like liberal multiculturalism, often serves as a form of regulation and decontextualisation that fails to problematise whiteness and the Eurocentric norm.
4. Diversity is intrinsically valuable to the dominant culture in a globalizing world
   World
   World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
   
    with its free market economy.
5. Curriculum involves learning about Other
   Other
   The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
   
   s, their knowledge, values, beliefs, and patterns of behavior.
6. Social unfairness does exist and education should address prejudices and stereotype
   Stereotype
   A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
   
   s.
7. Education should build pride in minority groups’ heritage. It often studies members of such groups who have attained success (implies that anyone can make it).
8. Psychological affirmation is the equivalent of socio-political empowerment
   Empowerment
   Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, racial, educational, gender or economic strength of individuals and communities...
   
   .
9. Like liberal multiculturalism often ignores issues of social class
   Social class
   Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
   
   .
10. Non-whites are gaining upward mobility and empowerment in ways not matched in reality.
11. Race and ethnicity are viewed as private matters that hold little connection to the complex structures of patriarchy
    Patriarchy
    Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
    
    , class elitism
    Elitism
    Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
    
     and economic colonialism, and white supremacy.
12. The coverage of harsh realities of race, class, gender, and sexual oppression does not have to be “upsetting.” Thus, the horrors of such realities often become a form of cultural tourism instead of a rigorous analysis of human suffering
    Suffering
    Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...
    
    .
13. As prejudice dose exist between different cultures, child from multicultural families could play a role to build a bridge within diverse cultures and help to improve this situation.
14. In order to provide a comfortable education environment to multicultural students, colleges should pay more attentions to care about vary cultures.
15. In this multicultural society, people always get into the social groups with same cultures as them.
16. In a pluralistic multicultural educational society laws exist to prohibit discrimination based on race, color, gender, age, and creed. Even though there are laws, the society of the United States still contain behaviors that are derogatory to some ethnic, cultural, and social groups, and preferential to others.
17. Pluralist multicultural education segregates people. It also tends to isolate people in small individual groups that share the same cultural background.
18. More social unfairness is induced by the pluralistic approach to multicultural education.
19. In pluralistic multicultural education, the differences between cultures are usually being focused on instead of the places where the culture is in common.
20. Main flaw in United States is the fact that pluralism usually separate people and isolate people racially, socially, and culturally different. People with similar cultures usually come together and form bigger cultures. For example, China Town, Little Italy, and The Hood are all formed from a blend of cultures. These cultures usually are defined by economic differences, not by ethnic differences.

Left-essentialist multiculturalism

Assumptions:

1. A caveat: racism, class oppression, sexism, and homophobia are all forms of right-wing essentialism
   Essentialism
   In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
   
    and have a far more pervasive impact on society than left-essentialist multiculturalism
2. Cultural differences are central to multiculturalism.
3. Races, ethnic groups, genders, and sexual orientations possess a specific set of characteristics that make them what they are.
4. These essential traits are romanticized, even exoticized in a process that positions difference in a distant past of social/cultural authenticity. This removes various groups from history, culture, and power
   Political power
   Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
   
    relations and returns them to a primeval past.
5. One’s ethnicity or gender, their politics of identity
   Identity (social science)
   Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
   
    guarantees that their pronouncements will be “politically correct
   Politically Correct
   Politically Correct may refer to:*Political correctness, language, ideas, policies, or behaviour seeking to minimize offence to groups of people-See also:*Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, book by James Finn Garner, published in 1994...
   
   .” Such a position undermines our attempt to analyze the ambiguous ways that historical forces
   History
   History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
   
    shape our lives and our education.
6. That the “good guys” are now the “bad guys” and vice-versa. The curricula that come from this assumption simply invert traditional stereotypes and truth claims. Thus, a multicultural education is created that constructs a seamless history that in its moralistic reductionism fails to understand the subtlety of racism and other forms of oppression.
7. Subjugated knowledge is important in this context, but it is often romanticized as a pure manifestation of natural truth. In this way it can be passed along as a new authoritarian canon.
8. Second caveat: Kincheloe and Steinberg in their critique of left-essentialist multiculturalism in no way imply a rejection of the dire need for African American/Latino/indigenous studies or African American/Latino/indigenous based curricula. Because of the erasure of such knowledge in mainstream curriculum, such scholarship and such curriculum development is necessary. Such ethnic knowledges as well as gender, class, and sexual knowledges need to be studied as both separate and integrated phenomena—separate from white, male, middle/upper class, and heterosexual experience and inseparable from them at the same time.

Critical multiculturalism

1. Representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality are grounded on larger complex social struggles.
2. A multicultural curriculum is part of a larger effort to transform the social, cultural, and institutional structures that generate these representations and perpetuate oppression.
3. Race, class, gender, sexual differences exist in the context of power and privilege.
4. Unlike liberal, pluralist, and conservative positions, justice in Western societies already exists and only needs to be distributed more equitably.
5. Community
   Community
   The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
   
    is not built simply on consensus but on, as Paulo Freire put it, unity in diversity. In a multiethnic society that respects but does not essentialize differences, great gains can be realized in the cultivation of critical thinking
   Critical thinking
   Critical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...
   
    and ethical reasoning.
6. A homogeneous community grounded on consensus may be unable to criticize the injustice and exclusionary practices that undermine it.
7. Reform of cultural pathology often comes from the recognition of difference
   Difference
   Difference may refer to:* Difference , a 2005 power metal album* Difference , a concept in computer science* Difference , any systematic way of distinguishing similar coats of arms belonging to members of the same family* Difference , a statement about the relative size or order of two objects**...
   
   , from the interaction with individuals who do not suffer from the same injustices.
8. Multicultural education is based on solidarity in difference: grants social groups enough respect to listen to their perspectives and use them to consider existing social values; realizes lives of individuals in different groups are interconnected to the point that everyone is accountable to everyone else.
9. It is essential to make commitment to the legitimation of multiple traditions of knowledge.
10. Students come to see their own points-of-view as one of many socially and historically constructed ways of seeing.
11. Difference in solidarity expands their social imagination, their vision of what could be.
12. Notions of whiteness and the effects of “being white” should be critically examined—multicultural curriculum in this context explores the social construction of whiteness as an ethnicity. In this move the curriculum is dramatically changed, it investigates both self and other.
13. White male experience must be problematised as the norm, the invisible standard by which other cultures are measured.
14. Subjugated knowledge becomes a living body of knowledge open to different interpretations. It is not simply passed along as the new canon, but is viewed in relation to the old canon.

Departments of multicultural affairs

Universities in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

frequently have a Department of Multicultural Affairs, with the aim of creating an environment that promotes diversity and multiculturalism. According to Talbot, diversity is an environment that consists of the tangible presence of individuals all of which represent unique and different attitudes, characteristics, attributes, and beliefs. Multiculturalism is a developmental journey through which an individual enhances knowledge and skills about different cultures so that he/she can feel comfortable in any situation and can communicate effectively with other individuals from any culture. Talbot states, “Multiculturalism is not an inherent characteristic of any individual, no matter his or her race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender; rather, it is based on an individual’s ability and openness to learn”. Therefore, Multicultural Affairs is a college or university’s efforts to incorporate these two concepts within their campuses. Hence, the purpose of Multicultural Affairs is to create an inclusive environment that can support, empower, and encourage all students to develop socio and cultural awareness of diverse cultural backgrounds and lifestyles, as well as, to provide safe inclusive environment where such development can occur.

In some form or another, diversity and multiculturalism are integrated or embedded in the framework of many, if not all, college campuses. Multicultural Affairs in some campus environments is a division of Student Affairs, but in others it functions under the Admission Department. Also, Multicultural Affairs serves under different names such as, Ethnic Resource Center, Student Support Services, or Diversity Office. Although they are different in name, many share the same goals and purposes.

Castellanos and Gloria proposed that in order for campuses to create a meaningful multicultural environment they must follow seven core competencies, including (1) helping and interpersonal skills; (2) assessment and evaluation; (3) teaching and training; (4) ethical and legal experience; (5) theory and translation; (6) administrative and management skills; (7) multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

Multicultural Affairs Centers address and implement cultural awareness and diversity differently. The Multicultural Affairs Centers provide a wide range of support programs for students. Each center encourages student participation in campus life, student organizations, academic excellence, and community service by providing advising, advocacy, mentoring, and leadership training to individual students as they pertain to overall student development issues. While Multicultural Affairs centers their efforts on placing a value of diversity and building a sense of community, campuses implement their efforts in many ways.

Multicultural education in k-12 schools in the U.S.

Advocates of democracy in schooling, lead by John Dewey (1859–1952), argued that public education was needed to educate all children. Universal voting, along with universal education would make our society more democratic. An educated electorate would understand politics and the economy and make wise decisions . Later, by the 1960s, public education advocates argued that educating working people to a higher level (such as the G.I. Bill) would complete our transition to a deliberative or participatory democracy. This position is well developed by political philosopher Benjamin R. Barber in Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, first published in 1984 and re published in 2003.
Multicultural education in public schools would promote acceptance of diversity. Multicultural Education should reflect the student body, as well as promote understanding of diversity to the dominant culture. Multicultural Education should be inclusive, visible, celebrated and tangible. Multicultural education is appropriate for everyone. Citizens need multicultural education in order to enter into the dialogue with your fellow citizens and future citizens . Further, multicultural education should include preparation for an active, participatory citizenship.

James Banks, a lifetime leader in multicultural education and a former president of both the National Council for the Social Studies and the American Educational Research Association, describes the balancing forces in ( 4th. Edition, 2008)
“Citizenship education must be transformed in the 21st.century because of the deepening racial, ethnic, cultural, language and religious diversity in nation-states around the world. Citizens in a diverse democratic society should be able to maintain attachments to their cultural communities as well as participate effectively in the shared national culture. Unity without diversity results in cultural repression and hegemony. Diversity without unity leads to Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state. Diversity and unity should coexist in a delicate balance in democratic multicultural nation-states.”
Planning curriculum for schools in a multicultural democracy involves making some value choices. Schools are not neutral. The schools were established and funded to promote democracy and citizenship. A pro democracy position is not neutral; teachers should help schools promote diversity. The myth of school neutrality comes from a poor understanding of the philosophy of positivism. Rather than neutrality, schools should plan and teach cooperation, mutual respect, the dignity of individuals and related democratic values.
Schools, particularly integrated schools, provide a rich site where students can meet one another, learn to work together, and be deliberative about decision making. In addition to democratic values, deliberative strategies and teaching decision making provide core procedures for multicultural education.

From: Choosing Democracy; a p ractical guide to multicultural education. 4th. ed. 2010. Used with permission. pp. 340–341.

External links

• A Critical Examination of Anti-Racist Education
• Alliance for Equity in Higher Education; http://www.ihep.org/programs/the-alliance.cfm
• American College Personnel Association Standing Committee for Multicultural Affairs; http://www.myacpa.org/sc/scma/
• International Journal of Multicultural Education; http://www.ijme-journal.org
• Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME); http://www.kame.or.kr
• Multicultural Education Review; http://kame.or.kr/eng/journal.html
• National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME); http://www.nameorg.org/