A Study of Multicultural Education and School Reform in the United States

Abstract

Since the civil rights and ethnic revival movements of the 1960's, educational programs and practices promoting equal opportunity have emerged and have been developed in response to the needs of various ethnic groups;education related to ethnic issues has come to be called multicultural education.As policymakers have emphasized equality in education, the development of multicultural education as a reform movement promoting equal opportunity for all students-regardless of ethnicity, race, gender, exceptionality, social class, and so on-has been considerable.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the basic idea of multicultural education as a reform movement, and to show the present situation of multicultural education policies in relationship to total school reform.
My initial focus is on the basic idea that multicultural education is an attempt to reform the total school environment, including textbooks, materials, curriculum, teaching strategies, the composition of school staff and its attitude, the hidden curriculum, school norm.It can be said that a dominant Anglo culture has permeated every area of American schools, has brought about the omission of information and has resulted in culturally-related inequality, so much so that it is necessary now to infuse the total school environment with multicultural perspectives in order to eliminate inequalities.
Secondly, emphasis is put on documenting the present situation of multicultural education policies at the state level, focusing on curriculum, instructional materials, teacher education, school culture, and parents-community involvement. This is followed by a description of an actual reform plan in Iowa, which has attempted to refer to multicultural perspectives in every aspect of schooling.
Lastly, implications for multicultural issues in Japan, such as the education of Korean and Chinese populations, other foreign students, students returning from overseas are discussed.