ABSTRACT
Multicultural education tends to be regarded as a naturalistic framework for understanding cultural differences and dynamics of cultural contact in a culturally diverse society and learning environment (Hidalgo, Chávez-Chávez & Ramage, 1996). Yet many researchers argue that most contemporary education systems can best be described as Eurocentric cultural and knowledge systems, and their curricula have been used to defend its ideological values and political framework (Giroux, 1988; Hidalgo et al., 1996; Lander & Past, 2002; Muchenje, 2012; Stanesby & Thomas, 2012). Specifically, they argue that white privileges have been reproduced, truths have been sought by positivist approaches, and ethnic authenticity and Indigeneity have deteriorated. Basic assumptions of Eurocentric knowledge are primarily characterised by the dualisms of reason and body and subject and object (Lander & Past, 2002). Likewise, culture is also understood in opposition to nature and the nature/culture opposition facilitates an upward linear direction of scientific knowledge (Lander & Past, 2002). A process of differentiation and demarcation between us and them (or othering) creates cultural regulators of societal normality (Stanesby & Thomas, 2012). Such a binary cultural construction essentialises and stereotypes others as inferior in education (Lander & Past, 2002). In practice, it appears to transform other cultures and to reject them when they are perceived relatively unsystematic and unproductive by a dominant culture. These criticisms draw our attention to the necessity of metaphysical analyses of contemporary multiculturalism discourses and multicultural education models, in particular, why and how cultural diversity and intercultural interaction are perceived and constrained.
