Multicultural vs. Citizenship Education

Introduction

Since ancient times the issues of education have been a central topic for all governments and nations – the unity and identity of a nation are formed with the help of successive generations that have to be properly raised to fulfill the tasks stipulated by the family, the state, the community, and the global population. Every person, having been born, becomes a member of the global community and participates in social, cultural, and economic life at many levels. For this reason, it is essential to form the growing personality correspondingly, for him or her to know the basic values of the family in which the individual was born, to comply with the values and concepts of the society in which they live, and to realize the global values and aims that are pursued by the whole world’s community such as preservation of the nature, promotion of the country’s well-being and struggling for the global progress or innovation.

There is no surprise in the fact that reforming education has become the central issue of every nation that pursues the way of democracy and development. Education, first of all, should include all scholarly disciplines that would create a strong background of the individual and would enable him or her to make proper choices for specialization in the future as well as become an intelligent and educated personality. But the growing understanding of the fact that education is not only science has to lead to the reform in education and research in the sphere of additional disciplines that would provide a comprehensive schedule for the growing population and would ensure the fulfillment of not only scholarly but social, cultural and civic goals that have become an indispensable part of each citizen’s personality.

Politicians and forward-looking heads of states are occupied by generating the curriculum that would include aspects beyond the regular schedule and would raise children and adolescents who would be able to boast not only high intellect but also high ethical and moral values, citizenship consciousness, and understanding of all national and international implications of an individual and a community of any scale.

One more vital factor that has shaped the new paradigm of education is the continuous process of globalization that is occurring in all regions of the world without any exception and creating a global community in which national borders are gradually erased. Representatives of various nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and cultures exist side by side, cooperating and communicating daily both at work and in social life. Much conflict and misunderstanding arise from these close interconnections as in many cases people lack a basic understanding of the concepts of the multicultural diversity of the world’s society and tolerance as well as loyalty that have to become the dominant policy in the contemporary multicultural world.

However, despite the growing necessity of raising children with a clear understanding of the cultural diversity of the world without borders the need to educate true citizens is also a must. The reason for this change of emphasis is the fact that too many people have lost the sense of citizenship that is close to patriotism and is closely connected with knowing the basics of the political life in a country as well as becoming its active participant. People have become detached from the national life and have proven ignorant of the things representing utter importance for their state such as the Constitution, the political power in the country as well as the main policies of the state in which they live. Hence, citizenship education is another side of the reform so desired by the majority of states nowadays.

Analyzing all directions of research and action in the sphere of education nowadays shows the dramatic importance of generating a balanced and reasonable curriculum that would include multi-aspect disciplines teaching people both realization of their citizenship and national identity and the ability to set aside that citizenship and become a member of the global multicultural community. To make this two-tier system work it is crucial to understand the core concepts, values, and aims of both directions in education and to understand in what dimensions differ and in what contexts they can be harmoniously blended. The present paper aims at analyzing both multicultural and citizenship education to generate a clear idea of their similarities and differences and make an empirical conclusion on the range of possibilities as to their application in the real curriculum of the majority of modern states.

Citizenship Education Analysis

The first notion to be clearly understood to proceed to study citizenship education is the concept of citizenship and the main domains in which it is realized. Citizenship mainly concerns the relationships of the individual with the state and relationships of individuals within one state. Judging from this point, it is clear that citizenship education refers to the ability of the state to educate individuals as active participants in its social and political life (Hebert and Sears, n.d.). Citizenship education can be realized in four domains of the individual’s life: civil, political, socio-economic, and cultural (Hebert and Sears, n.d.). This is why the ability to provide citizenship education is directly connected with the consideration of each domain of citizenship and addressing it properly through the prism of education.

The civil domain refers to the ability of an individual to participate in the political life of his or her state. As for the political domain, it mostly refers to the ability of self-realization in politics through the right to vote and to express one’s will freely in a democratic state. The socio-economic domain is connected with the ability to work and function in the labor market to provide sustainable conditions and well-being to one’s family, as well as social security, loyalty, and solidarity (Hebert and Sears, n.d.).

Citizenship Education Through History: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives

Citizenship education was mostly ignored in the previous centuries and was closely tied to national identity, according to the opinion of Kennedy (1997). This fact is closely connected with the exclusiveness of citizenship education ignoring the rights of ethnic, religious, and lingual minorities – the majority of countries have adopted the policy of promoting the mainstream aspects such as the state language, one dominant religion, and the dominant population. However, the fall of large empires-colonizers and the growth of minority movements have brought about the necessity of recognizing the multi-dimensional form of citizenship education that evolved and became more inclusive (Kennedy, 1997).

The second factor that contributed to the recognition of citizenship education is the extensive research that was conducted on the verge of the 20th and the 21st centuries showing the dramatic “community ignorance” and “civic deficit” in the majority of modern countries (Kennedy, 1997; Hebert and Sears, n.d.). Kennedy (1997) points out the study of Macintyre on the citizenship identity in Australia that proved that the overwhelming majority of the growing population (adolescents) do not know the basic concepts of the Australian Constitution and do not know how the High Court functions. Similar studies were conducted in Great Britain – the nature of Britishness was investigated by Crick, King, Modood, and Parekh; the number of publications dedicated to the issue of citizenship by Callan, Crick, Demaine, Lister, and Miller grew considerably, marking the intensified attention to citizenship on the whole (Halstead and Pike, 2006).

Canada has also shifted the focus of attention in education to the assessment of the real-time citizenship awareness within the country, and results turned out to be less than satisfactory. The sense of crisis in citizenship education was widely recognized as the young part of the world’s and Canada’s education was divided into the following categories:

• Ignorant (those members of the community who are ignorant of the basic concepts that would enable them to function as citizens in their state)
• Alienated (those members of the community who feel detached from the political life of the country in which they live due to the disappointment in its political system, policy, or politicians; this group is mostly composed of those adolescents who criticize the political system and consider it corrupted and dishonest, thus having no wish to take part in the political life of the country)
• Agnostic (those citizens who have no belief in the political system existing in their country at the contemporary period, thus being unable to implement them in their personal political life within their country) (Hebert and Sears, n.d.).

This situation is additionally aggravated by lack of attention to citizenship education in the educational curriculum; however, with the results of research mentioned above published, and the sense of citizenship awareness crisis coming to the governmental tenants all over the world it becomes evident that the focus on citizenship education is likely to become the number one priority in the context of the 21st century:

“There is a growing recognition that citizenship is a complex, multidimensional concept that citizens, even in the same state, will understand differently… most modern states are diverse and contain various types of minority groups which may not completely share the same sense of common citizenship. Even so, it is possible to build a common civic culture which allows for considerable diversity” (Hebert and Sears, n.d.)

Building the common framework for implementation of citizenship education in the national curriculum is impossible without an understanding of the “civic megatrends” such as APEC, globalization of economy, the growing recognition of the rights of women, the influence of communication technologies, and the changing role of the UN (Kennedy, 1997). Hence, the citizenship knowledge that is intended to become the basis for citizenship education worldwide should be “interdisciplinary” and “integrated” and include all changes that occurred in the world on the verge of millenniums.

The major function of citizenship education of the future should become the balanced and harmonious education of a global citizen of the third millennium who would be able to realize his or her belonging to a particular state, who would be able to take an active part in the national life and would at the same time be able to comprehend the global diversity in cultural, religious and ethnical dimensions and would fit in the global framework successfully.

Concepts, Values, and Aims of Citizenship Education

As it has already been stated, the concept of citizenship occupies the central place in the context of citizenship education. It is of vital importance to identify citizenship for every individual due to the large scale of community integration that is evident up to date. The main challenge regarding the issue of determining the scale of citizenship is the mistaken, unconstructive cases of too broad (global citizenship) or too narrow(citizenship within the context of the individual’s family, religion, and local community) definitions that do not give the desired citizenship awareness to the citizen (Halstead and Pike, 2006). The fixed scale of citizenship is important to answer the main questions posed in front of the citizenship education framework:

• What does the particular country expect from its citizens?
• What benefits and rights of ‘membership’ can the state offer to its citizens?
• How far should the citizens’ loyalty extend to enable them to enjoy the whole range of benefits the state can offer? (Halstead and Pike, 2006).

As for the integration processes taking place in the modern community, one should consider such an easy example – the modern European integration has resulted in the dual, or even triple identity and citizenship an individual may obtain. Thus, nowadays the majority of Europeans have the UN citizenship identity (ratified by the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 and argued by Davis and Sobisch, Hoffmeister). In addition to this identity, they also have their national identity, i.e. German, Italian, French, etc. In addition to those two identities, they can have the global citizenship identity (a great number of scientific works have been dedicated to the investigation in the field of global citizenship such as Demaine, Ibrahim, Lynch, and Oxfam) (Halstead and Pike, 2006). As it can be seen from the example, at times it may be too hard to find the balance between the scales of citizenship consideration, which may result in the generation of improper goals for education or inappropriate techniques for citizenship education implementation.

To continue shaping the common framework of citizenship education it is necessary to consider the concept of ‘membership’ so attractively put forward in its program. ‘Membership’ is understood as a unifying force for people of different religions, cultures, and lingual groups that helps reduce the tension and conflict that used to exist between them. It mainly concerns “rediscovering shared values” that the members of one community, even taking into account the deep differences existing between them, have within one state. As a result of this consideration, one should understand the emergence of two major dimensions of citizenship education resulting from the cultural diversity of a particular state’s citizens:

• Shared cultural and other practices
• The rights and duties of citizens (Halstead and Pike, 2006).

The concept of ‘active citizenship’ also acquires key importance because patriotism and a sense of shaping the country’s policies and activities using active participation in the life of the country have become essential aims in citizenship education. Active citizens can democratize their states, change the unfair legislation through non-aggressive and non-violent actions. This way, the basis of active citizens’ activities is shifted to the awareness of their rights and responsibilities legitimized by the state (Halstead and Pike, 2006).

Summarizing the information on the key values, aims, and concepts contemporary citizenship education should include and pursue it is essential to outline the following generalized objectives thereof:

• Becoming informed citizens
• Developing skills of inquiry and communication
• Developing skills of participation and responsible action (Halstead and Pike, 2006, p. 12).

Finally, as a result of such planned, balanced action taken jointly by political and educational institutions of any given state, the implications of citizenship education should include the students’ clear understanding of the studied subject, knowledge of their rights, responsibilities, and duties in the role of active citizens, the role that the voluntary sector performs within their state and the potential contribution they can make to it, forms of government present within their state and the public services available for them on its territory, etc. (Halstead and Pike, 2006). As one can see, much has to be done in the context of citizenship education, so the practical side of the issue following the theoretical basis will be highlighted in the next section.

Citizenship Education in the Curriculum: Teaching and Assessing

Halstead and Pike (2006) have developed a broad set of applications in the curriculum that can be found for citizenship education. The main emphasis they make is on literacy and language learning that has become the major focus of their attention. The authors give the opinions of such researchers as Hall, Powell, and Harrison who state that literacy has the most powerful transformational potential in the course of reforming the society and teaching it to become participatory in the life of their state. Due to the research made in the sphere of literacy, it has become possible to conclude that only literate people can obtain a critical view on the situation in the country and get an incentive to introduce a relevant change or to take an active part in the formation of the state’s policies and objectives.

The argument posed in defense of literacy’s crucial importance concerns critical reading – the authors argue that only through extensive reading the citizen may obtain the ability of a critical thinker, which will further lead him or her to the realization of the active citizenship role possible to be fulfilled in reality (Halstead and Pike, 2006).

The next aspect of the traditional school curriculum that can foster citizenship education concepts is Arts and Humanities. Halstead and Pike (2006) argue that through studying arts the individuals will “develop empathy, imagination and social engagement”, thus opening the new ways for their moral activities in the state. Humanities, History, and Geography, in particular, have a powerful potential for citizenship education as well: through the careful introduction of citizenship material in these subjects, the educators will achieve a set of goals. They include making students informed citizens – knowing the political implications of the state’s history, understanding the evolution and development the state went through to become their contemporary motherland, understanding the geographical changes, acquisitions, and losses, the emergence of geographical boundaries and commonalities that can be found in residents of border territories will form the sense of national pride, active participation, and competence in state-related issues. In addition, it may lessen the tension regarding the minorities that historically found themselves on the territory of their state.

Another emphasis made by Halstead and Pike (2006) is on RE (Religious Education) and PSHE (Personal, Social, and Health Education). Surely, these subjects represent the steepest ground for educators due to drastic differences evident in representatives of different minorities and groups, so they have to be approached in a very careful way. However, the potential effect promises much for the educators regarding citizenship education: if they find the common ground for representatives of different religions, cultures, and languages to realize their commonalities and shared values, the tolerance and harmony established in the classroom will be highly rewarding.

Multicultural Education Analysis

Multicultural education is a complex, comprehensive phenomenon that has to be considered closely in the context of modern global integration, globalization, and diversity. It is an idea that all students disregarding their gender, race, skin color, age, ethnicity, etc. should have equal opportunities in studies. It is at the same time the public movement for equality – the reason for it to emerge was the despite the recognized equality in all contemporary democracies the issues of equality of access to education, instructing materials, and justice of assessment have not yet become the widely accepted practices, so many representatives of different minorities or discriminated groups still experience restricted access to education and unequal opportunities. Finally, multicultural education concerns the continuous process being enacted in modern educational establishments that has a set of goals and objectives: to inform and educate students in the context of modern cultural diversity and to erase the stereotypes and boundaries still existing in the world pursuing the path of globalization at the present period (Banks and Banks, 2009).

Multicultural Education from the Historical Angle

The roots of multicultural education are seen in the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement in the USA when the African American population has started to claim their rights in all aspects of cultural, social, and economic life (Banks and Banks, 2009). Further on, the recognition of the necessity for multicultural education has expanded worldwide. The reason for this is that practically all countries have ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Mexicans in the USA, Aborigines in Australia, Welsh, and Gaels in the UK, Gypsies and other traveling people in many other countries of the world (Lynch, 1986). In addition, multicultural education has included such minority groups as varying by gender or spoken language in the scope of studies, research and action due to the multiple cases of discrimination and exclusion in educational policies. However, to understand the true roots of multicultural education as a worldwide necessity one should consider the historical nature of cultural diversity and responses of both minorities and dominant communities to multiculturalism.

Initially, the classification offered by Watson introduced the measures and scope of multicultural education politics adoption. He defined three groups of countries judging from the described criteria:

• Countries with a deep-rooted racial and cultural mix (e.g. the USSR or the USA)
• Countries diversity of which has resulted from extensive colonization (e.g. France and Holland)
• Countries the diversity of which was shaped due to the historical immigration (e.g. Germany) (Lynch, 1986).

Historically, multicultural education is concerned with migration processes that took place in various regions of the world. According to Gordon’s classification, it falls into the following categories: colonization-related migration, labor migration, and refugee migration (Lynch, 1986). Depending on these types of migration, the cultural responses and phenomena of exclusion or inclusion vary across countries and communities in the following way (regarding the assimilation processes between the dominant community and the immigrants): cultural (adoption of cultural patterns), structural, marital, identificational (adoption of state membership and identity), attitude reception, behavior reception and civic (Lynch, 1986).

However, in case of immigrants are more eager to assimilate with the dominant community, the latter is not as willing to accept the minorities as the population equal in all aspects and can adopt a set of negative practices, some of them about education, such as:

• Subjection to harassment, discrimination, and violence (Lynch, 1986)
• Ethnic encapsulation of the dominant group (Lynch, 1986)
• Educational marginalization (Lynch, 1986)
• Teacher stereotyping, ability underestimation (Lynch, 1986)
• Structural overrepresentation in special education (Lynch, 1986)
• Sedimentation of minority children into lower streams (Lynch, 1986)
• Structural underrepresentation in prestigious forms of education (Lynch, 1986)
• Undercredentialization of minority children (Lynch, 1986)
• Grade retardation (Lynch, 1986)
• Additive and impotent change (Lynch, 1986)
• Culture bias in the control mechanisms of education (Lynch, 1986).

Based on this preliminary research proving the presence of much inequality and discrimination in education the necessity of generating a reasonable, well-balanced multicultural education reform has been realized. Researchers who work in the sphere of creating multicultural education practices and techniques are Smedley, Quintana, Omi and Winant, Hernstein and Murray, Phinney, etc. These authors, together with many others, have dedicated their effort to study the underlying reasons for educational exclusion, so their findings may become of much help when introducing multicultural education in practice on local, national, and international levels (Ramsey, Williams, and Vold, 2003).

Culture as a Central Element of Multicultural Education

As it is already clear from the name of the educational approach, multicultural education poses culture at the center of its theory and practice, arguing that culture is the central element around which an efficient educational framework can be built. Thus, it is essential to consider the concept of culture in society and education as an indispensable element of the multicultural approach considered in the present work.

When reviewing the notion of culture, Banks, and Banks (2009) recollect the origin of culture as a term and philosophy of diversity that existed before the discovery of cultural roots of diversity. Researchers say the key differences across nations in genetic inheritance, which resulted in West-European dominance and imperialism over Non-Western nations. Even with the emergence of the term ‘culture’ it has been widely misused and misinterpreted throughout the 20th century, mostly due to the heavy impact of superiority and inferiority considerations (Banks and Banks, 2009). Intensive, deep research of culture in education can be found in the works of Bohannon and Gonzalez.

Culture is a vague and elusive notion that has not yet been clearly defined; for this reason, it is ready hard to speculate over it. The most general definition of the human culture pertains to actions certifying one’s being human. This approach makes it possible to assume that everything about education is directly related to culture:

“Culture is in us and around us, just as is the air we breathe. In its scope and distribution, it is personal, familial, communal, institutional, societal, and global… As we learn and use culture in daily life, it becomes habitual. Our habits become for the most part transparent to us. Thus, culture shifts inside and outside our reflective awareness” (Banks and Banks, 2009, p. 35).

Hence, making a general conclusion on the notion of culture, one can state that culture is an inherent quality of every individual, group, and community, representing the cumulative enriched experience of humanity and constituting the essence of all human activities. However, in the context of modern times, it is also essential to note that all people are multicultural. Everybody has roots of their authentic culture and also encounters representatives of other cultures who enrich their experience, making them multicultural (Banks and Banks, 2009).

Despite the commonly shared diversity and wealth of cultural realizations, it is still evident that cultural differences and boundaries are stronger than commonalities. It is due to the politics of national encapsulation that culture has become the force of separation rather than unification (Banks and Banks, 2009). As a result of such processes, cultural differentiation has become the dominant practice worldwide. This phenomenon has been studied by Giles, Powesland, Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland, etc. – the research proved various processes that continuously occurred on the territories of various states and strengthened cultural bias and exclusion towards representatives of other cultures.

Growing concern over the negative trends in the cultural dimension of human interaction, especially in the context of worldwide integration and globalization that is rapid and unavoidable the need for an internal, natural change of cultural perception has become vital. For this reason, multicultural education is the innovative paradigm created to promote healthy cultural identity, intergroup awareness, and importance of shared culture in daily practices:

“Teaching about the cultural practices of other people without stereotyping or misinterpreting them and teaching about one’s cultural practices without invidiously characterizing the practices of other people should be the aims of multicultural education. In situations of intergroup conflict, these aims can be ideals that are difficult to attain. Educators should face such difficulty realistically” (Banks and Banks, 2009, p. 43).

Multicultural education has been entrusted with a huge set of tasks and objectives that will shape the modern multicultural, harmonious world where trade, business, communication, and collaboration on all levels will become fully possible. In the globalized world where boundaries are erased there is no place for segregation and exclusion, so the main aim of multicultural education is to reform the way of treating cultural diversity in such a way so that it would become not a challenge but a powerful, helpful force for integration and enhancement of global cooperation.

Main concepts and Dimensions of Multicultural Education

The conceptualization of multicultural education has many challenges because it cannot be limited only to ethnic, cultural, and racial implications. The reason for this is that multicultural education should become an integral part of the whole educational process and should not be excluded from seemingly irrelevant disciplines such as math and other precise sciences. Logically, multicultural education has been accepted as the irrelevant-of-content approach that is implemented in five dimensions:

• Content integration (Usage of various examples and situations that would illustrate the variety of cultures – it should be logical and coherent to illustrate the key theories and principles of the studied discipline. Surely, it is easier and more natural to integrate multicultural knowledge in such subjects as arts, humanities, music, or literature. However, there is still a set of opportunities for the integration of content in all disciplines without exception, though math and physics have fewer of them.) (Banks and Banks, 2009).
• The knowledge construction process (This technique concerns the extent to which educators can take part in the formation of implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, biases, etc.) (Banks and Banks, 2009).
• Prejudice reduction (This dimension speaks for itself – prejudice in any form should be eliminated in the context of education with the help of teaching techniques and targeted action with the help of theoretical and empirical basics of multicultural education.) (Banks and Banks, 2009).
• An equity pedagogy (This dimension refers to the action that should be taken individually by every educator – he or she should re-consider the set of teaching techniques in possession and choose the ones that can be applied to ethnic minorities individually. Though it is rather hard to implement, still targeted attention to specifics of educating representatives of various minorities will yield highly positive results if applied continuously and comprehensively.) (Banks and Banks, 2009).
• An empowering school culture and social structure (The important role of school culture was recognized as a crucial element of the fight against segregation and exclusion established by the provisions of multicultural education. The structure should be jointly formulated including grouping and labeling practices, sports participation, the disproportion in achievement, etc. The key factor of this process’ success is the harmonious and active collaboration of the staff and representatives of all ethnic groups, both genders, etc. to ensure the inclusion of all school members’ needs and expectations.) (Banks and Banks, 2009).

Finally, the subject of concern for educators willing to implement the basics of multicultural education is the choice of instructional materials for the studies. In this respect Ramsey, Williams, and Vold (2003) offer the following piece of advice:

“Use of a multicultural perspective requires that curriculum and teaching resources that are chosen either be complementary to the existing practice (thus refining ongoing work) or that they serve as vehicles for innovation and change. In either case, the articulation and coherence of the materials and methods selected, and the ways those will impact upon what Sarason (1982) calls “internal irregularities” of the classroom or school. Must be examined” (p. 160).

Comparison and Contrast of the Two Perspectives

The two perspectives discussed in the present paper are very much similar in the aspect of their major aims – to reform the vision of the contemporary state in which they live as well as the vision of themselves and their place in the community surrounding them. Citizenship education is aimed at making citizens of a certain country more focused on their national identity, taking an active part in the life of their state and its policies. Patriotism and political awareness in this respect is more important than culture, though cultural inclusions are also presupposed by the framework of citizenship education. Multicultural education is more focused on erasing the boundaries than on stipulating them – cultural awareness here is perceived in the context of the world’s heritage, so strengthening the national boundaries is unacceptable within this approach, since it may enhance stereotypes and exclusion instead of ruining them.

The second difference that can be seen between citizenship and multicultural education is that the values put forward to be applied in the process of their application are also substantially different. Citizenship education makes the main emphasis on the political and civil rights and responsibilities of students, making them enter the reciprocal relationships with the state and shape their lives through the political prism. Multicultural education is more centered on the inner world of the students, addressing their deep-rooted stereotypes and stigmas that have been incorporated into their minds on a subconscious level due to the long historical process of differentiation and exclusion.

Nonetheless, there are some similarities in the discussed approaches that may enable politicians and educators to incorporate both of them into the educational process of the 21st century. They are both aimed at educating worthy members of the innovative society who will be able to critically assess the modern reality and take part in the life of their community in a civil, organized, and harmonious way. Both approaches protect the rights of ethnic minorities for equal participation in the social, cultural, and economic life of the society, thus aiding the creation of the innovative, multicultural and multi-ethnical community of the third millennium.

Conclusion

The 21st century placed many challenges in front of humanity in many aspects – the necessity of new patterns of life, education, business, and communication has proved to be evident and is now demanding urgent action on micro-and macro-levels. Education has become one of the central themes for change because of its strategic importance in the education of successive generations properly and correspondingly to the innovative needs of the world community. For this reason, so much attention is nowadays paid to citizenship and multicultural education. Both approaches have justified their reasonability and compliance with the needs of people in all parts of the world, thus winning priority among other policies for innovation and development on the national and international scale.

Globalization is a highly positive phenomenon from the point of view of redistribution of profits, international trade, and mobility of labor force; however, together with erasing the boundaries between states it also negatively affects the national identity of citizens, thus making them more and more ignorant of nationally essential things and detached from the active participation in the national political life. Consequently, the need for citizenship education has become the hallmark of innovative education – it is called to strengthen the national identity, patriotism and incorporate cultural, political, and social notions in the life of every individual.

Multicultural education faces another problem that emerged as a result of natural migration processes around the world and the historical diversification of nations. Cultural exclusion, differentiation, and isolation have brought about the growing tension between representatives of different cultures, especially in the context of one of them being the dominant culture on a certain territory and another one representing the ethnic minority. Hence, multicultural education is mostly aimed at erasing the cultural barriers and educating students in the stream of cultural tolerance and loyalty.

As a result of comparing and contrasting these two approaches to education, it becomes obvious that both of them are essential in application worldwide though they are focused on different aspects of the education of an individual. In case they are implemented coherently and logically together, students will be educated as aware citizens who can preserve the feeling of national pride and identity and understand the whole diversity of cultures in the world as well as accept their right for peaceful co-existence.

References

Banks, J.A., & Banks, C.M.A. (2009). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. John Wiley and Sons.

Halstead, J.M., & Pike, M.A. (2006). Citizenship and moral education: values in action. Routledge.

Hebert, Y., & Sears, A. (n.d.). Citizenship Education. Canadian Education Association. 2010, Web.

Kennedy, K.J. (1997). Citizenship education and the modern state. Routledge.

Lynch, J. (1986). Multicultural education: principles and practice. Routledge.

Ramsey, P.G., Williams, L.R., & Vold. E.B. (2003). Multicultural education: a source book. Routledge.