TOPIC:
Towards Critical
Multiculturalism: Setting the Agenda for the 21st Century.
As we begin the 21st century, what are
the challenges and possibilities confronting the movement that
has come to be termed 'multiculturalism'? This paper will explore
four key challenges currently facing multiculturalism, and by
implication multicultural and anti-racist education. These challenges
are:
- the ongoing critique of multiculturalism
from the Right;
- the tendency of multiculturalism to concentrate
on culture at the expense of structural concerns such as racism;
- the challenges that postmodernist understandings
of identity present for multiculturalism;
- the urgent need to develop a multiculturalist
paradigm that effectively addresses - and, where necessary, redresses
- all of the above.
In this paper, I will first outline and
then respond to each of these challenges, and will conclude by
discussing the possible pedagogical implications of each. In
so doing, I will argue that critical multiculturalism, as it
has come to be known, provides the most promising way forward
- both theoretically and pedagogically for education in
the multi-ethnic and multilingual world of the 21st century.
Brief Biography
Dr Stephen May teaches in the Sociology
Department, University of Bristol, UK, where he has been since
1993. Prior to this, he was a secondary school teacher in multi-ethnic
schools and, subsequently, a teacher educator in Aotearoa/New
Zealand. He has written widely on multicultural and anti-racist
education and, more recently, on the wider interconnections between
language, education, minority rights and the organisation of
modern nation-states. In addition, he has research interests
in social theory (particularly, the work of Bourdieu), nationalism
and ethnicity, sociolinguistics and language policy, indigenous
education, and bilingualism and bilingual education. His major
publications include Making Multicultural Education Work
(Multilingual Matters, 1994); Critical Multiculturalism: rethinking
multicultural and antiracist education. (Falmer Press, 1999);
Indigenous Community-based Education (Multilingual Matters,
1999), and a major new book, Language, Education and Minority
Rights: rethinking the nation-state (Longman) which is due
to be published later this year. In 2001 he will be Visiting
Professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies, OISE,
University of Toronto.
