Schooling and Intergroup Relations: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

At present it is popular for educators in the United States and elsewhere to develop school programs that promise greater tolerance for cultural differences. This multicultural emphasis accompanies the long‐held expectation by social and cultural groups that school success is a vehicle for achieving positions of political and economic power. Based upon a review of the literature on educational practice and intergroup relations in several nations, this article argues that the implicit goals of public school practice are, first, to persuade or compel subgroup members to adapt to the cultural and structural interests of one or more of a society's dominant groups and, second, to limit the dominant group's own need for altering the status quo. This suggests that dominant groups are likely to permit school programs to reflect greater cultural rather than structural diversity as long as the existing social structure and balance of power among groups are not threatened.