Visioning Multicultural Education

Visioning Multicultural Education: Past, Present, Future is the book every educator needs to read and implement in their practice. Filled with chapters from today’s leading scholars, this book provides a road map for all of those committed to multicultural education as well as outlines how multicultural education needs to change and grow to ensure that its goal of equity can be achieved.

--Hoyt J. Phillips III, Deputy Director, Teaching & Learning | Teaching Tolerance

A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

When I walked into my first multicultural education course as a doctoral student 45 years ago, I knew I had found my home. In the intervening years, the field, while staying true to its founding ideals of social justice and equity, has become more inclusive and also more incisive in its critique of the forces that marginalize many of our young people. The authors and editors of this volume, both veteran and emerging scholars, remind us why multicultural education has been, and will always be a transformative project. May it continue its long and splendid journey toward justice and liberation.

--Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

As global pandemics, violence, poverty, and environmental destruction wage sinister wars on global communities of color, educational systems continue to struggle against the tide of intersectional oppressions, fostering apathy and ignorance despite the wishes and efforts of isolated educators. Visioning Multicultural Education provides a needed series of reflections from the nation's leading scholars, advocates, and critical educators. The authors, founders of the movement for multicultural education, senior scholar-activists, and mid-career educators carrying future generations, come together to provide critical affirmations and lessons learned from past and contemporary struggles, suggesting how educators must transform schooling if we are to survive, and indeed, thrive, as a pluralistic, integrated, socially cohesive society beyond tomorrow. As the authors show, we cannot tinker our way out of each of these global meltdowns; our futures lie in the collective solidarity that multicultural education offers.

-Christopher Knaus, Professor, Education, University of Washington Tacoma

Charting an effective path forward requires an examination of past and current efforts. In this book, the pioneers and esteemed scholars in the field of multicultural education call on us to challenge our thinking, understand current barriers, and examine the practices that continue to limit access to a quality education for ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students. It is an exceptional and insightful book that is a must-read for educators and administrators.

-Faye Snodegress, Executive Director, Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society in Education

Visioning Multicultural Education is a powerful book all educators and community members must read to better understand the field of multicultural education and its work towards social justice in schools and communities. Written by noted scholars and rooted in intergenerational perspectives, the book provides us an important look back on the foundations of the field and its impact, engages in a critical inquiry of where we are now in our scholarship and advocacy, and provides us a clear roadmap of vision, hope, and action for our future work with schools, communities, families, and, most importantly, the students we serve.

- Kevin Roxas, Editor, Multicultural Perspectives, NAME Journal, Professor, Department Chair, Secondary Education Department, Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University

Visioning Multicultural Education: Past, Present, Future is the book every educator needs to read and implement in their practice. Filled with chapters from today’s leading scholars, this book provides a road map for all of those committed to multicultural education as well as outlines how multicultural education needs to change and grow to ensure that its goal of equity can be achieved.

--Hoyt J. Phillips III, Deputy Director, Teaching & Learning, Teaching Tolerance: A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

When I walked into my first multicultural education course as a doctoral student 45 years ago, I knew I had found my home. In the intervening years, the field, while staying true to its founding ideals of social justice and equity, has become more inclusive and also more incisive in its critique of the forces that marginalize many of our young people. The authors and editors of this volume, both veteran and emerging scholars, remind us why multicultural education has been, and will always be a transformative project. May it continue its long and splendid journey toward justice and liberation.

--Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

As global pandemics, violence, poverty, and environmental destruction wage sinister wars on global communities of color, educational systems continue to struggle against the tide of intersectional oppressions, fostering apathy and ignorance despite the wishes and efforts of isolated educators. Visioning Multicultural Education provides a needed series of reflections from the nation's leading scholars, advocates, and critical educators. The authors, founders of the movement for multicultural education, senior scholar-activists, and mid-career educators carrying future generations, come together to provide critical affirmations and lessons learned from past and contemporary struggles, suggesting how educators must transform schooling if we are to survive, and indeed, thrive, as a pluralistic, integrated, socially cohesive society beyond tomorrow. As the authors show, we cannot tinker our way out of each of these global meltdowns; our futures lie in the collective solidarity that multicultural education offers.

-Christopher Knaus, Professor, Education, University of Washington Tacoma

Charting an effective path forward requires an examination of past and current efforts. In this book, the pioneers and esteemed scholars in the field of multicultural education call on us to challenge our thinking, understand current barriers, and examine the practices that continue to limit access to a quality education for ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students. It is an exceptional and insightful book that is a must-read for educators and administrators.

-Faye Snodegress, Executive Director, Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society in Education

Visioning Multicultural Education is a powerful book all educators and community members must read to better understand the field of multicultural education and its work towards social justice in schools and communities. Written by noted scholars and rooted in intergenerational perspectives, the book provides us an important look back on the foundations of the field and its impact, engages in a critical inquiry of where we are now in our scholarship and advocacy, and provides us a clear roadmap of vision, hope, and action for our future work with schools, communities, families, and, most importantly, the students we serve.

- Kevin Roxas, Editor, Multicultural Perspectives, NAME Journal, Professor, Department Chair, Secondary Education Department, Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University