ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one particular approach to the understanding of multicultural education through social anthropology. This approach is based on a concept of culture, the core concept of social anthropology. Sociological and anthropological studies on different human societies and/or cultures demonstrate that native discourses on their own cultures do not coincide with the discourses elaborated by social scientists. Multicultural education should be aimed at transmitting, fostering and facilitating a critical understanding of culture, of cultures. Discussions on multicultural education arise when some aspects of culture, as the ‘macro-variable’ which embodies diversity, enter the classroom. The chaopter reviews the diverse conceptions of multicultural education. It utilise the categorisation made by Margaret Gibson. In her article, Gibson analysed different approaches to multicultural education in the USA. B. M. Bullivant is one of the authors who has stressed with most effect the need to borrow from the anthropological concept of culture in designing multicultural education conceptions.
