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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Multicultural education in Canada was conceived as a response to cultural pluralism in society. It is linked to immigration and represents a shift in Canadian social policy that parallels dramatic shifts in immigration policy (Ghosh and Abdi 2004). As a result of Canada's historical immigration patterns and policies, as well as public responses to immigration, Canadian social and educational institutions differ significantly from those of other immigrant-receiving countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and France, among others. Although these unique patterns influenced the singular development of Canadian educational policies, research, and practices (Lund 2003), a noticeable cross-fertilization of theoretical frameworks has developed in these countries, both in their implications for multicultural education practices and the critique of these practices. Mitchell (2001) states that most contemporary liberal thought in educational theory deems that democratic practice in Western education occurs in and through communal efforts to work through problems in an essentially multicultural student body. She points out that "within this theoretical framework, by virtue of collective, plural education, Americans and Canadians simultaneously endorse both democratic possibility and the ongoing maintenance of national unity and identity" (68).
In Canada, educational institutions are seen as having the obligation to provide continuity and content to the ongoing dialogue about the nature of multiculturalism and the management of diversity (Elliston 1997). Indeed, periodically, educational reforms are identified as one of the initiatives needed for the integration of immigrants into majority-language institutions (Kymlicka 2001).
In the past decade, however, concern has increased among the general public, researchers, and practitioners that schools are poorly equipped to cope with increased diversity and that instead of playing a role in facilitating equity and belonging, they may become locations that foster isolation and replicate racialized forms of injustice (Wideen and Barnard 1999). The fact that racism in schools is persistent and is afflicted with denial and defensiveness (Dei 2005); that stereotyping Tamil youth, for example, with the gang label or Paki name-calling; and the pervasiveness of gendered Islamophobia and the politics of veiling women point not only to how the negative stereotypes constitute violence to bodies in the post-9/11 context (Zine 2004), but also raise the general question of how effective multicultural education is in integrating minority students. Recent attention to the challenges faced by second-generation immigrant youth (e.g., Filipino-Canadian youth) who still experience a sense of dislocation and restrictions on belonging enforced by daily racism in the Canadian system (Pratt 2002) provides evidence that multiculturalism is unable to provide protection from the sense of exclusion.
Furthermore, the expectation that multicultural education policies and practices will result in equal participation of all students in education and thus allow for equal participation in the public and economic spheres has been challenged by the fact that visible-minority students' dropout rates exceed those of the Canadian-born (Derwing et al. 1999; Watt and Roessingh 2001) and that some racial groups are overrepresented in the criminal system (Wortley 2003). Furthermore, a number of studies (Li 1998; Gee and Prus 2000; Kazemipur and Halli 2003) show that "non-White origin creates a penalty for visible minorities in the labour market" (Li 1998, 126). The findings of these studies indicate that the idea of liberal multiculturalism has not been achieved if measured by household income, and, as a result, racialized groups are more highly represented among the poor than are White Canadians (Galabuzi 2005).
The ability of multicultural education to become a vehicle for achieving justice, liberty, and equality that pervade the social, economic, and political life of society (Giroux 2001) has been challenged since its inception. The purpose of this article is threefold. First, to examine the critical discourses in the academic literature on multicultural education pointing to the major conceptual flaws in multicultural education theory that have led to practices that have achieved effects opposite to the intent of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. Second, to identify some of the suggestions being made in the context of the post-multiculturalism discourse defined as alternatives to multiculturalism (Vertovec, n.d.) on how to address these flaws in multicultural education theory and practice. And, third, to discuss some possible implications of the key findings of the review for multicultural education.
METHODS AND PROCEDURES
In order to identify and articulate the most common criticisms of multicultural education, a critical review and analysis were conducted of the English-language academic education literature. The focus was on journal articles, books, dissertation abstracts, book reviews, reports, policies, and other documents. Databases researched included ERIC, Academic Search Premier, Proquest, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Some repetition eventually became evident, and saturation was reached in these sources.
The keyword searches were multicultural * or post-multicultural * with multiple other search terms that were variable, for example, critic * or critique *, or problem * (the asterisk ending on a keyword expands the search to include other endings) and the limits of years between 1996 and 2006. Some seminal works prior to this period were also included in this article in order to provide an historical context for more recent criticisms.
Each search began with a broad base, and limits were added and combined to produce a manageable dataset. The initial search produced sixty salient pieces. For the purposes of this article, from this data set, forty-eight academic peer-reviewed articles, four books, seven book reviews, and five reports that focused on a theoretical critique of multicultural education, rather than on providing evidence of racism, discrimination, and the failure of immigrant students or the need to improve teacher preparation programs in order to meet the needs of the diverse student body, were analyzed in depth.
Analysis of the above sources enabled the identification of the most common theoretical perspectives which most of the authors have used to critique various aspects of multicultural education in the past ten years: antiracism, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory. These theoretical perspectives emerged as oppositional discourses to mainstream multicultural education theory, policies, and practices and thus provide a distinct yet somewhat overlapping array of criticisms or concerns about multicultural education.
Following a brief historical overview of multicultural education in Canada, the criticisms articulated in the English-language literature about the problems of multicultural education are organized into three major sections. The first focuses on the criticisms of multicultural education; the second focuses on emerging propositions in the post-multiculturalism discourse on potentially productive directions for multiculturalism policy and multicultural education. The third section provides a summary of the key findings of the review of literature and discusses some implications for multicultural education.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN CANADA
The emergence of multicultural education in the Canadian educational system is influenced by the implementation of the 1971 federal Multicultural Policy statements (James 2003; James and Shadd 2001), the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the 1988 Canadian multiculturalism Act. From its inception, multicultural education is linked to the goals of the original federal multiculturalism policy, which promotes ethnocultural retention, fosters appreciation of the cultural heritages of others, and assumes increased intergroup harmony (Lund 2003).
Willinsky (1999) identifies the effect of the Multiculturalism Act on education as follows:
* Government sponsorship of cultural community groups, ethnic events, and related school programs, creating a hyphenated mode of being among the nation's citizenry
* Initiation of heritage language programs in a number of Canadian communities, extension of Anglo-North-American traditions of English literature to a new range of voices and experiences, and inclusion of non-European inventors, scientists, and mathematicians in mathematics and science lessons
* Implementation of anti-racist programs to help students deal with the racism they encounter in school and community
A major problem of the implementation of Canadian multicultural education is that "the Multiculturalism clause [of the federal Multicultural Policy] for education is vague" and that the "lack of federal control over education, and provincial legislation in general, has limited federal ability to influence education in this direction to any meaningful degree" (Ghosh and Abdi 2004, 45). Because education is a provincial responsibility, multiculturalism as a federal policy is interpreted differently by the provincial educational authorities and is translated into varying forms of educational policies. Currently, five provinces have officially accepted multiculturalism in education, with Saskatchewan being the first to implement this policy in 1975, followed by Ontario in 1977, and Quebec with its own intercultural education perspective. The other two provinces are Alberta and Manitoba.
Despite the differences among multicultural educational policies across Canada, a synthesis of the components of multicultural education identifies three specific goals: "1. equivalency in achievement; 2. more positive intergroup attitudes; and 3. developing pride in heritage" (Kehoe and Mansfield 1997, 3). These goals are to be achieved using a number of strategies including, but not limited to, teaching English as a second language while encouraging retention of heritage languages; removing ethnocentric bias from the curriculum; providing information about other cultures, which...
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