Summary

Since the 1980s, Rethinking Schools magazine has been renowned for its commitment to racial equality in education. Now, Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice has collected the best Rethinking Schools articles that deal with race and culture.

Rethinking Multicultural Education moves beyond a simplistic focus on heroes and holidays to demonstrate a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education.

Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Education reclaims multicultural education as part of a larger struggle for justice and against racism, colonization, and cultural oppression—in schools and society.

Winner of a 2010 Skipping Stones Honor Award as one of the "finest teaching resources that promote multicultural awareness."

 

 

Praise for the book:

"This important book redefines the meaning of multicultural education. You will read about the struggles and successes of teachers and students engaged in bilingual and multicultural education; the power and potential of language use; strategies to confront racial issues in the classroom, and ways to include critical literacy practices in the curriculum. This book will leave you with new questions and insights about issues of equity, access, diversity, special education, ELL learners, and anti-racist education. Most of all, it will provide you with a broader, more inclusive perspective that can lead to meaningful professional conversations about social justice and systemic change in our schools."

— Voices From the Middle: Volume 17: Issue 2

"Rethinking Multicultural Education powerfully reminds us that any attempt at 'multicultural education' that fails to raise critical questions among students, teachers, and administrators about racial justice is inadequate to the needs of this time. It’s an indispensable resource and a bracing call to action."

— Jeff Chang, author Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.

"The discourse about education and school reform has been dominated for decades by market metaphors and notions of schooling as a commodity. The urgency of now—this era of 'Yes, we can'—is to upend that discourse, and to focus on the unique qualities that define education in a robust democracy: access and equity, of course, but also the full recognition and incalculable value of every human being. Rethinking Multicultural Education is an essential text as we name the schools we deserve, and struggle to bring them to life in classrooms across the land."

— William Ayers, teacher, activist, award-winning education writer, and professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.