Center for Multicultural Education

Studies in the Historical Foundations of Multicultural Education

A major goal of this project is to document the ways in which the current multicultural education movement is both connected to and a continuation of earlier scholarly and activist movements designed [Page 311]to promote empowerment, knowledge transformation, liberation, and freedom in society. Another important goal is to mentor graduate students. This series was initiated with five papers presented at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 1993. The center also presented symposia on this project at the 1994 and 1995 annual meetings of AERA. Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives—edited by James A. Banks—was the first publication of this project. This book contains most of the papers presented in the AERA symposium series. It documents persistent themes in the struggle for human freedom in the United States since the late 19th century as exemplified in the scholarship and actions of people of color and their White supporters.

Improving Multicultural Education: Lessons From the Intergroup Education Movement, by Cherry A. McGee Banks, is the second book in the center's Historical Foundations of Multicultural Education Series. This book builds on and deepens the work contained in the author's chapter in Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action, the first book in the center's historical series. Intergroup conflict has been a perennial problem in the United States since colonial times. This book describes how a group of educators, social activists, and scholars tried to reduce intergroup tensions and create schools where people of all groups could learn together and from each other. Demonstrating the links between the current multicultural education movement and the roots of intergroup education, the author helps multicultural educators to understand where they have been, where they are, and where they might strive to be in their future attempts to reform schools so that they respond to the diversity within U.S. society. The intergroup education movement was very active from the 1930s to the late 1950s. It had all but disappeared when the civil rights movement of the 1960s emerged.

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