The Concept of Multicultural Education

823 Words4 Pages
The Concept of Multicultural Education Yidnekachew 2009 Multicultural Education has a basis laid on the ideology of multiculturalism, which recognizes the broad scopes of race, ethnicity language, sexual orientation, gender, age disability class status, education, religious orientation and other cultural dimensions (American Psychologists Association, 2002). Multiculturalism strives to integrate multiethnic and global perspectives, both present and past, in to the traditional curriculum that is primarily monoethnic. The term ‘Multicultural education’ has the concept of culture embedded with in it. Though culture has been defined in many ways, “It can be viewed broadly as the socially constructed and learned ways of believing and behaving that identify groups of people” (Stockman, 2004:1). Hence, the word culture with a prefix ‘multi’ can refer to more than one socially constructed and learned way of believing and behaving. ‘Multicultural’ presently, is employed in so many spheres that it has become the common adjective preceding any idea, concept or location that needs a major change in education. The following can be raised as examples: multicultural curriculum, multicultural instructional materials, multicultural society, multicultural nation, etc. “Multicultural education is variously a concept, a goal, a demographic identifies and approach, a strategy, an attitude, and a value with almost as many definitions as users” (Swartz, 1993:494). Some definitions of multicultural education emphasize on the cultural characteristics of diverse groups, while others rely on social problems, political power, and the reallocation of economic resources. Some other definition limit their focus to race and ethnicity, while others include all major groups such as gender, religion, language, social class, sexual preference to categorize individuals that
Open Document