ABSTRACT
Post-formal Thinking and Critical Multiculturalism As the make-up of our classrooms has rapidly changed to reflect the growing percentage of different racial and ethnic groups in our country, much educational discussion and debate have centered around the learning styles, abilities, and preparedness of these seemingly disparate groups of students and how public education can best meet their collective and individual needs. Such professional dialogue and musings inevitably lead to discussion of multicultural education: what it is or should be; its purported positive effect on student self-esteem and the correlative desire to learn; and, indeed, whether it is even desirable or necessary for public schools to introduce such curricula into their programs. Query into the nature and purpose of multicultural education, rather than illuminating the most desirable course of action, has led, rather, to much heated debate and contestation, for it lays bare the inequities of some of our most historically ingrained educational ideologies.
