ABSTRACT
Since the numbers of children in UK schools from non-white, non-European cultures began to increase in the 1960s, much has been written about the need to make the school and the curriculum more multicultural in order to respond to the needs of children from cultures beyond the indigenous British culture. This view of culture is flawed as it sees cultures as discrete and static entities rather than combined and dynamic. Within this view, approaches to this multiculturalisation have been varied in focus and intent. (The history of multicultural education has been discussed elsewhere; see Dhondy 1981; Brandt 1986; Smyth 2001b.) A major criticism of multicultural education has been that it has tended to take a ‘three S’s approach’ (Troyna and Williams 1986). Troyna and Williams argued against a response to multiculturalisation that attempted to focus on the exotic components of cultures such as saris, samosas and steel bands, i.e. the three S’s. They argued that this interpretation of pluralism was not only tokenistic, but served to contain and defuse the three R’s: resistance, rejection and rebellion. Within their argument, multicultural education is one of the causes of underachievement among minority ethnic pupils. This argument is beyond the scope of this book and can be pursued in the suggested references and elsewhere.
