Cultural Voice and Strategies for Multicultural Education

Abstract

Current approaches to multicultural education tend to ignore the cultural politics of educational relationships that rest at the heart of intercultural encounters. This essay uses the concept of “voice” to describe how individuals orient themselves to school discourses. The idea of “cultural voice” is developed to explain how the dynamics of culture groups reveal the critical relationship between the reconstruction of cultural principles and the development of the individual. This alternative explanation of the relationship between school discourse and cultural voice reinterprets the cultural politics of educational discourses and reassesses the impact of racism, sexism, and classism. From this discussion, the essay draws out a framework for multicultural education which focuses on the politics of educational relationships in pluralistic societies. It sketches out several teaching suggestions for a multivoiced, democratic, multicultural education that can counter cultural biases in schools.

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