Multicultural Education in Curriculum

Multicultural Education

• Multicultural education is based on democratic values and seeks to foster cultural pluralism within culturally diverse societies.
• Goals of multicultural education include:
  • Bringing more information about various groups to textbooks
  • Combating racism
  • Restructuring the school enterprise
  • Reforming society
  • Making schools culturally fair, accepting, and balanced

India as a Multicultural Society

• India is a multicultural society with a long history of cultural diversity, contributed by Dravidian, Aryan, Mughal, French, and British cultures.
• The country is characterized by diverse traditions, beliefs, races, languages, literature, art, food habits, and religions.
• There is a complex web of interactions among people, with different architecture, art forms, and dresses.
• People's religious beliefs, ways of life, and understanding of social relationships are distinct from one another.
• All groups have equal rights to co-exist and flourish, and the education system needs to respond to the cultural pluralism inherent in the society.

Democracy in Curriculum

• Democracy is essential for achieving educational goals, and each Indian child can be enabled to participate in and learn how to interact and form partnerships with others to preserve and enhance democracy.
• The quality and nature of interrelationships among individuals determine the socio-political fabric of the nation.
• Children are often socialized into discriminatory practices, which can be countered through education.
• The participation of children is a means to preserve and add a new vibrancy to the culture of egalitarianism, democracy, secularism, and equality.

Nature of Knowledge

• Knowledge is cumulative and non-material, and its accumulation is inevitable.
• Knowledge is perspectival, constructing reality within the limits set by experience, and is interpreted in a social context.
• Knowledge develops perspectives among knowers and is both limited and limitless, with limits set by available experience and existing means of obtaining knowledge.

Social Bases of Education

• The education system is deeply influenced by the social context, including hierarchies of caste, economic status, and gender relations, cultural diversity, and uneven economic development.
• These social factors affect access to education and participation of children in school, leading to sharp disparities in school enrolment and completion rates.
• The education system unintentionally reinforces privilege and exclusion, undermining the constitutional values of equality of opportunity and social justice.