Praise for Rethinking Multicultural Education

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

"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 is both thoughtful and timely. As the nation and our schools become more complex on every dimension—race, ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexuality, immigrant status—teachers need theory and practice to help guide and inform their curriculum and their pedagogy. This is the resource teachers at every level have been looking for."

— Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor & Dept. Chair, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children.

"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.

"Hats off to Rethinking Schools for 25 years of positioning critical multiculturalism as the vehicle through which a more complete understanding of society may be nurtured and achieved."

— Angela Valenzuela, Professor, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin, author of Subtractive Schooling and Leaving Children Behind.

"I use Rethinking Multicultural Education in a graduate level diversity in education course. The students, almost all teachers or administrators, find the collection of works provocative and inspiring. It provides them a vision of teachers engaged in the complex work of pursuing education within a social justice framework.  It pushes them to rethink their own teaching but, more importantly, to become clearer about what teaching for equity and justice can entail. These educators appreciate the narrative format of the text. I know it moves them to work to make a meaningful difference in the settings where they find themselves. I will continue to use this book in the coming years."

— Francisco Alfonso Rios, Ph.D., Professor of Educational Studies, College of Education, University of Wyoming