Further Reading
Kaplan, William.Presumed Guilty: Brian Mulroney, the
Airbus Affair, and the Government of Canada.To-
ronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998.
Sawatsky, John.Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition.To-
ronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1991.
John David Rausch, Jr.
See also Business and the economy in Canada;
Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement; Elec-
tions in Canada; Foreign policy of Canada; Income
and wages in Canada; Meech Lake Accord; Reagan,
Ronald; Turner, John; Unemployment in Canada.
Multiculturalism in education
Definition A movement that recognizes the
diversity of cultures that make up the United
States, and, as such, seeks to create an
educational system that will educate all children
equally
Education activists who were dissatisfied with the inequi-
ties of the educational system and the ability of schools to
produce graduates who understood and appreciated the va-
riety of cultures that made up the United States developed a
body of scholarship and pedagogy that focused on “educa-
tional equality.”
Multiculturalism in education had its historical
roots in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and
1970’s. Prior to the 1980’s, the focus of such educa-
tion might have been an effort to promote learning
about one culture (for example, African American)
or the introduction of learning materials related to a
single unit of content (for example, women’s his-
tory). In the 1980’s, through the influence of a num-
ber of vocal and prolific teacher-scholars, the em-
phasis moved toward a more encompassing view of
multicultural education. Multicultural teaching in
the 1980’s usually involved instructional content
that promoted appreciation of the diverse cultures
that make up the United States.
Important Scholarship James Banks, a pioneer of
multicultural education, supported the view that
the total school environment must change in order
for multicultural education to work. Scholarship fo-
cused on oppressive practices in current education,
including tracking, teaching strategies that were not
sensitive to students’ cultural backgrounds, stan-
dardized testing that might be culture-bound, and
the classroom climate.
Much of the theoretical writing on which multi-
cultural education was based took a critical view of
contemporary educational practice. Writers such as
Joel Spring, Henry Giroux, and Peter McLaren de-
veloped major critiques of the educational system,
which, they said, had kept the oppressed “in their
place.” With this theoretical background as an un-
derpinning, multicultural education became a field
of study and practice that led educators to make
changes that would be empowering to those who
had previously been marginalized or oppressed by
the educational system.
Models for Delivery Teachers and curriculum devel-
opers in the 1980’s developed various models and
frameworks for the delivery of multicultural educa-
tion in the schools. The following is a summary of
these models, which were described in detail by Chris-
tine Sleeter and Carl Grant. One approach sought to
raise the academic achievement of oppressed groups
by attempting to make instruction culturally rele-
vant—for example, teaching content that was not as
tied to the needs or backgrounds of the dominant
culture but that would be useful to students’ lives. A
human relations focus taught all students about the
commonalities of all people. A single group approach
focused on the histories and contemporary issues of
oppression of people of specific groups. A multicul-
tural education approach reflected the pluralistic na-
ture of society. Students were taught content using in-
structional methods that valued cultural knowledge
and differences of numerous cultures and lifestyles.
Finally, toward the end of the 1980’s, a social
reconstructionist approach to multicultural educa-
tion was developed that involved teaching students
about institutionalized oppression and discrimina-
tion. Students learned about their roles as agents of
social change so that they might improve the society
in which they lived. It is important to note that these
approaches varied widely, and thus “multiculturalism
in education” in practice looked very different from
one educational site to another.
Areas of Debate and Disagreement In the 1980’s,
educators were not in agreement regarding goals vis-
à-vis multiculturalism. Some wished the United States
to be a “melting pot,” in which all cultures were sub-
sumed into one American society. Many felt thatThe Eighties in America Multiculturalism in education 679