Chapter 2: Cooperative Learning Programs and Multicultural Education: Improving Intergroup Relations

There are few places in American culture where race and racial identity are more salient than in public schools. Public education is one of the few social institutions in which the entire texture of American diversity can be experienced. Policy analysts project that by 2002 there will be as many as twelve school districts in the country which will serve students from more than one hundred different racial, ethnic, and international backgrounds (Clinton, 1997). Schools, like society at large, will have to decide whether the rich diversity among students is a problem to be solved or a cultural asset to be valued and celebrated. Regardless of the approach educators choose to address the issue, diversity among students in public schools cannot be ignored. With the exception of the family, no other social institution has the same profound influence on what students think, whom they value, and how they will behave, than the public school. With students spending more than half their waking hours involved in school related activities, it would stand to reason that school plays a vital role in helping adolescents understand and give meaning to the multiple ways racial, ethnic, and cultural differences are socially constructed (Giroux, 1992).