ABSTRACT
The word ‘multiculturalism’ was all but unheard of a decade ago. Now it is bandied about as a rationale for citizenship, as a label for some types of television, as a ‘welfare’ category and as a major area of educational policy and school curricula. P. W. Matthews, head of multicultural education in the New South Wales Department of Education until 1981, was a clear exponent of this view. He drew up a model of Australian society which looked like a pyramid, representing its unquestioned hierarchical structure. Multicultural policy in education prescribes a better society, based on an understanding that some social groups are disadvantaged. Cultural patterns, viewed by ethnic politics as group life-chances and wider structural relations, need to be changed. In other places ‘culture’ is reduced even further to feelings, frames of mind, personal values or attitudes which can be chosen or dropped at whim.
