ABSTRACT
Jennie Ritchie is braver in writing about anti-racism and insisting that the pedagogical considerations in implementing a commitment to anti-racism in pre-service early childhood teacher education is essential. Biculturalism – the equivalent of multiculturalism – is regarded as a soft option because the power sits in the hands of the Paheka – white people. This matches reservations of relying on multiculturalism to combat racism. Jim Cummins, one of the most powerful and critical writers on minority education, wrote this: the overt goals of multicultural education can only be realised when policy-makers, educators, and communities acknowledge the subtle forms of institutional racism that permeate the structure of schools and mediate the interactions between educators and students. Unless it becomes “anti-racist education”, “multicultural education” may serve only to provide a veneer of change that in reality perpetuates discriminatory educational structures.
