Book Description

In England, multicultural education is one of the most important focal points within the ongoing educational debate. To answer questions of practical policy, multicultural education may be viewed from the perspective of education as social process. More than simply pupils and teachers, classrooms and textbooks, education provides social continuity and engenders social change. A process linked to powerful structural and ideological variables in the wider society, education may vary according to the importance placed upon indivudual development compared with the perceived needs of society. As a result of this dichotomy, all educational systems must strike a balance between educating for variety and educating for conformity, between diversity and cohesion. In a culturally pluralistic society, the tensions between these poles are particularly great: a plural society is, by definition, more diverse and thus has a greater need for conformity, yet it also has a greater natural resistance to conformity. British educationalists are now faced with deciding at what point the acculturation necessary for full participation in society becomes a repressive assimilation, and at what point the celebration of diversity ceases to enrich and becomes potentially divisive. Diversity and conformity are in fact interdependent, and majority children can benefit as much as minority children from multicultural education. (KH)