ABSTRACT
Over the years, multicultural education has promised much and delivered little. Since its popularization in the late 1960s and early 1970s, proponents have argued that multicultural education, and the associated notion of cultural pluralism, can accomplish all manner of things. A central claim has been that multicultural education can foster greater cultural interaction, interchange and harmony, both in schools and beyond. It has also regularly been touted as the best educational means of addressing and redressing long-standing patterns of differential achievement for minority students. The result has been a proliferating academic debate on multiculturalism over the last 30 years and a burgeoning multicultural education industry in curricular and resource development (although, as we shall see, the two have seldom actually informed each other).
