Depoliticizing Multicultural Education: The Return to Normalcy in a Predominantly White High School

Abstract

This article examines how teachers at a predominantly white, middle-class high school enacted multicultural education in an innovative course called “Cultural Issues.” Responding to often tacit pressures in their school and community, teachers placed parameters around the kinds of issues acceptable for examination, de-politicizing the curriculum and deflecting discussions from matters of oppression and privilege. We explore some illustrative examples from the course, suggesting that the micro-political contexts of school and community shaped curriculum and instruction in important but often unacknowledged ways. We argue that before reforms such as multicultural education can take root, frank attention is needed to the often unspoken influence of contextual norms upon curricular framing and classroom interaction.