ABSTRACT
This chapter develops some of the major issues in intercultural education as they are manifested within the British context. The debate about definitional terms in relation to concepts of the nation state and pluralism is examined first, in order to clarify the context within which the educational debate takes place. Then follows an analysis of the ways in which the concept of multiculturalism may be best examined. The model chosen is based on an investigation of social group discrimination within nation state contexts, initially using a model derived from the comparative education work of Nicholas Hans. Thus as England moves towards a narrow exclusivist definition of the British nation, events within the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the European Community are moving in an opposite direction, pulling Britain and other European Community states towards greater unity, posing further questions to those raised in the previous sections and countering to those aspects of current British educational policy that encourage assimilationism.
