Multicultural Education

Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process. A major tenet of multicultural education is that all students, regardless of their race, ethnic group, culture, or language, should be provided an equal opportunity to learn in schools, colleges, and universities. Because multicultural education focuses on providing equal educational opportunities for all students, it is consistent with the democratic ideals and values that are expressed in the founding documents of the United States, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. A major goal of multicultural education is to actualize for all the ideals that the founding fathers intended for a small elite. Multicultural education is a process because the goals toward which it aims, such as educational equality and justice, are ideals toward which we must continually work but may never totally achieve.

Multicultural education theorists and researchers believe that an important part of a political democracy is cultural democracy. When cultural democracy exists within a political democracy, racial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups are able to fully participate in the civic life of the nation-state while maintaining important aspects of their community cultures, identities, and languages. The history of ethnic groups in the United States and other nations indicates that it is difficult for a political democracy to exist when cultural democracy is denied to disempowered groups. Ethnic and racial groups focus on cultural survival and empowerment rather than on the overarching issues of the mainstream society when they are denied full participation in the economic and political communities of a nation-state. They also focus on cultural survival when the mainstream society does not reflect and incorporate their histories, struggles, perspectives, and dreams. The structural inclusion of ethnic, racial, cultural, and language groups is an essential requirement for justice and equality in pluralistic democratic nation-states.