Origin and Development of Multicultural Education in the USA

Abstract

Modern society is undergoing complex social, economic and political transformations of planetary scope due to globalization processes. One of the peculiarities of a modern globalization wave is an intercultural interaction that, in its turn, has resulted in multicultural education. Multicultural education is quite a new branch of pedagogical theory and practice. Its appearance is considered to be connected with a period of complex social and cultural transformations in the USA during 1960s-1970s. However, J. Banks, an American scholar, proves that multicultural education is closely related to African-American movement of the 19 th -20 th centuries. Having analyzed the history of origins of multicultural education and stages of its development presented in works by J. Banks and C. Grant we can conclude that the process is associated, predominantly, with migration, and originated as a means of racism prevention. In the course of time the essence of multicultural education was shaped. It became obvious that multicultural education must meet needs of representatives of both different races and social groups. Also, the implementation of multicultural education into practice depends on high-quality professional training of a pedagogue able to work in the context of multicultural society. According to A. Thomas contemporary multicultural education is needed when an individual strives to understand peculiar systems of values, perception, cognition and thinking of people from different cultural backgrounds, integrate new experience into his/her own cultural system and apply it to alien cultural field. Nowadays theory and practice of multicultural education in the USA are still actively developing. Quite high demand are researches of outstanding American scholars and pedagogues in the field of multicultural education, namely, J. Banks, C. Grant, S. Nieto, Ch. Sleeter and many others.