Critical Multicultural Education: Theory and Practice(Multicultural Education Series)

This volume collects Christine Sleeter's core work focusing on critical multicultural education, situating culture and identity within an analysis of power and racism. Multicultural education arose in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and, in its inception, shared with that movement a focus on eradicating both interpersonal and systemic racism. The problem this book takes up is that, over time, many people have come to understand and enact multicultural education in ways that evade grappling directly with racism. This dilution has happened for several reasons, including White teachers' rearticulations of multicultural education as "getting along" or learning to be colorblind and neoliberal reforms that have reduced it to a celebration of cultural diversity while maintaining silence about racism. This volume includes ten of Sleeter's articles that explicitly locate multicultural education within critical understandings of race, racism, and colonialism, offering both theoretical and practical discussions of what that means. Book Features: Brings together, in one volume, the full arc of work by a leading scholar in multicultural education. Offers a unique focus on why multicultural education needs to be critical and what it means to be critical. Directly connects theory with practice by offering vignettes of practice following theoretical or conceptual discussions. Examines how the power of Whiteness and racial capitalism has forestalled progressive education and social change. Spans multicultural education from its inception in the 1970s through the current attacks on Critical Race Theory, showing how it has been targeted, ignored, or misused.

Table of Contents:
Contents Series Foreword James A. Banks  ix Introduction  1 Pivot Points in My Biographical Journey  1 Why Critical?  5 Part I: Defining Critical Multicultural Education 1.  Critical Multiculturalism: An Introduction  13 With Stephen May The Limits of Liberal Multiculturalism  15 Critical Responses to Multiculturalism  19 Critical Multiculturalism  22 2.  Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Antiracist Education: Implications for Multicultural Education  25 With Dolores Delgado Bernal Critical Pedagogy and Multicultural Education  27 Critical Race Theory and Multicultural Education  33 AntiRacist Education  41 Discussion  46 3.  Capitalism and Caste  50 Roots of Caste and Capitalism  50 Racial Capitalism  52 Marxism as a Western European Totalizing Theory  53 School Reform, Curriculum, and Public Consciousness  55 Conclusion  57 Part II: Critical Multicultural Education and School Reform 4.  Challenging Racism and Colonialism Through Ethnic Studies  61 Minoritized Youth and Historical Amnesia  62 What Happened to Multicultural Education?  63 Curriculum: Still Through White Points of View  65 Ethnic Studies as a Decolonial Project  67 Ethnic Studies Praxis  70 Implications  73 5.  Critical Race Theory as the New Villain  75 With Francesca A. López The Bastardization of Critical Race Theory  75 Efforts to Make Curriculum More Inclusive  77 Reactions to Equitable Education Endeavors  79 What the Critics Are Saying  81 How We Respond to the Critics  83 CRT as the Villain  85 Conclusion  89 6.  Diversity, Social Justice, and Resistance to Disempowerment  90 Diversity, Social Justice, and School Reform Under Neoliberalism  91 Curriculum That Disempowers  93 Curriculum That Empowers  95 Confronting the Education Reform Paradigm  97 7.  Equity and Race-Visible Urban School Reform  98 The Problem With Color-Blind Solutions to Urban School Challenges  99 Race-Visible Pedagogy in the Classroom  101 Race-Visible Teachers  105 Race and Class Visible Equity in Access  107 Conclusion  109 8.  Teaching for Social Justice in Multicultural Classrooms  111 Four Hallmarks of Teaching for Social Justice in Multicultural Classrooms  111 Framework for Designing Classroom Teaching  114 Conclusion  120 Part III: Personalizing Critical Multicultural Education 9.  Situating Oneself in a Critical Multicultural History  123 Family History as an Entrée into History  124 Benefiting From Colonization  125 Implications  127 10.  Multicultural Curriculum and Critical Family History  129 Approaches to Family History Research  129 Theoretical Lenses for Critical Family History  130 Tools for Researching Critical Family History  133 Teaching Multicultural Curriculum With Critical Family History  136 Conclusion  139 References  141 Index  167 About the Author  178

About the Author :
Christine E. Sleeter is professor emerita in the College of Education at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her books include Critical Race Theory and Its Critics, Transformative Ethnic Studies in Schools, and Un-Standardizing Curriculum.

Review :
"Sleeter effortlessly weaves together analyses of personal narratives, anecdotes, history, case studies, and political events and social movements to argue for a reanimated critical multicultural education theory and practice; and in doing so, Sleeter shows just how deep the roots of the multicultural education tree lie." -- "Teachers College Record"