Chapter 5: Critical Multicultural Social Studies And The Socialist Challenge

In this chapter, we will focus on the iterative and potentially self-reinforcing relationship between Critical Multicultural Social Studies (CMSS) and Marxist/socialist ways of understanding society; and how this relationship—and the resultant pedagogical and larger struggles for justice and equity—might be fostered. First, however, we will provide readers with some background about ourselves such that they might understand how we came to believe in the importance, and the liberatory potential, of both CMSS and socialism; within and outside of educational contexts.

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Marc grew-up as a working class White boy in neighborhoods across Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s; earned his official BA in Political Science and International Relations (his unofficial BA was in Marxism, literature, Bob Marley, and protesting the U.S. wars of the 1980s in Central America); taught for nine years as a bilingual primary school teacher in a refugee Latina/o community; was part of the community-based political Left in L.A.; earned a PhD in Curriculum (studying practical applications of Freirean pedagogy with Peter McLaren); and then worked as an academic and activist along the U.S./Mexico border for 14 years teaching social and multicultural education. In 2010, Marc took an academic position in Melbourne, Australia, doing very similar work.