Chapter 1: Multicultural Education: History, Issues, and Practices

We live in a time when we have opportunities to interact with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Communication technologies and the mass media have made it possible for us to communicate and to learn about other cultures in the comfort of our own living room. Modern transportation system has enabled people to travel or to migrate from one country to another. In United States, for example, 47 million residents traveled abroad in 1995, 71,000 students were enrolled in programs to study abroad and some 454,346 international students were registered in U.S. universities. Of the current children “in U.S. public schools, one third speak a first language other than English at home” (Lustig & Koester, 1999, p. 7). Similar movements of people in Europe and to a lesser extent in Asian countries are also observed.