FOREWORD

“The keynote of democracy as a way of life may be expressed..as the necessity for the
participation of every mature being in the formation of the values that regulate the living of
men together...All those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in
producing and managing them.”
John Dewey

I am very pleased to write a forward to this volume on multicultural education that
pragmatically addresses the issue so succinctly posed by John Dewey. Our society is
becoming increasingly multicultural demographically; however, our educational institu-
tions, particularly those of higher education, are belatedly and reluctantly coming to the
realization that our academic curricula are not reflective of that increasing demographic
diversity. I hasten to say that this is not an argument for simply adding colorful examples of
various ethnic literature, customs, and culture. As I have said elsewhere, “the inclusion of
diverse voices in the educational dialogue is vital to the search for truth... that will bring our
history, our social science, our philosophy, and our literature to higher levels of richness and
complexity.”
The intent of the development of multicultural curricula is the serious business of
transforming the educational process to more closely approximate the multidimensional
nature of our actual lived experiences as a species, rather than the replacement of one narrow
cultural panoply with another equally narrow one. Moreover, the intent of a multicultural
curriculum is to help students develop values that will assist them to live in a multicultural
world.
For example, at Le Moyne College (NY) this spring, the college’s leadership came
to the distressing conclusion that their curricula were leaving their “college graduates...
poorly prepared to function in our pluralistic society.” Moreover, their students “didn’t see
what connections their courses had to one another and to life outside the classroom.” As a
result, Le Moyne College embarked on an ambitious program of course revision that would
not only be multicultural in nature but would be interdisciplinary as well, embedded within
a context of values exploration. The result is that the college’s Values Program “has
generated a deeper respect for diverse perspectives.”
This present volume on multicultural education has the even more ambitious goal
of not only articulating the vision of “diverse perspectives,” but of giving pragmatic
illustrations of how to implement such diversity in college and university courses of study.
The book presents strategies for both transforming curricula and training effective multicultural
educators. It also deals with specific course content and broad concepts of curriculum
development, as well as recommendations to chief administrators and governing boards for
transforming higher education institutions for the twenty-first century. ...