Beyond Multicultural Education: International Perspectives

David R. Hutchinson is a consultant in Saskatchewan’s Indian and
Métis Education Branch.

This collection of essays represents a significant departure from the
“cultural safari” approach to multicultural education, which is
served up by well-intentioned educators who are oblivious to the
socially reproductive nature of their work.

As Moodley and various contributors suggest, multicultural education
must go far beyond the celebration of holidays and heroes. Given the
marginalizing nature of traditional classroom practice, coupled with the
“ghettoization” of non-mainstream students in curricula, it is
evident that multicultural education must turn its attention toward
developing a more just, humane, and equitable society.

For Moodley et al., such change must first involve critiquing the
ideological underpinnings of traditional, nationalistic curricula and
instruction. Effective intercultural education would also require an
alternative pedagogy, one centred on a theoretical framework for human
development that does not give pride of place to behavioral and
cognitive psychology. Rather, such a framework would stem from cultural
psychology, a critical theoretical discipline that acknowledges the
interrelationships between social institutions and human mental
functioning. Citing rising “minority” demographics, as well as
various systemic inequities and their concomitant social pathologies,
Moodley et al. stress the emancipatory possibilities for this revised,
more complex model of multicultural education. “Until societies reach
the point where ethnic differences are actually considered virtues in
the marketplace” writes Moodley, “lip service celebration of
cultural difference is likely to exclude minorities from competing
equally.”