ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the overall aims and the more specific objectives of multicultural education, in the context of a fundamental concern for equality of opportunity. It lays emphasis on three areas of discussion. Firstly, a consideration of whether there is within the debate about aims, rhetorical though it is, a more limited set of objectives which can be fought for within the existing system, even though the precise spelling out of these objectives might excite opposition which would remain quiescent so long as the debate remains on the level of rhetoric. Secondly, a look at the actual transactions, of a social as well as a purely educational kind, which go on in the schools; and, thirdly, the development of a critique of what now passes as multicultural education.
