Multi-Culture

Abstract

Anti-racist teachers are faced with a dilemma: how should they respond to the range of new policies that are affecting black students in British schools? On the one hand, ‘multi-culturalism’ offers one of the very few remaining areas in which resources are being made available for curricular innovation. As Clara Mulhern argues in a document produced in November 1979 by ALTARF (All London Teachers Against Racism and Fascism):

In a climate of retrenchment and defensiveness in education, when many of the curricular innovations of the Sixties are under attack, practically the only present source of progressive perspectives on the curriculum is the concept of multi-culturalism.¹

But in the same month, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent pointed tellingly to a different aspect of policy.

It is no coincidence that the cuts in education will not mean a reduction in the number of disruptive units. Some boroughs are even considering building more, despite their reduced budgets.²

The problem often seems to be that discussions about the nature of curricular changes that could adequately reflect a multiracial society tend to avoid — or at least to address only implicitly — issues of discipline and control which are central to education practice.

Screen Education, no. 34, Spring 1980.