Multicultural and Global Education: Seeking Common Ground. Issues in Education.

Multicultural education deals with human diversity at the domestic level. It incorporates the study of racial and ethnic differences, as well as issues related to gender, age, socioeconomic status, and physical disabilities. Its primary goals are to create a sense of understanding and respect for differences, to overcome prejudice and discrimination, to provide an understanding of the dynamics of racism, to replace historical and cultural distortions with accurate information, and to assure that all students receive equitable benefits from the educational system. Global education deals with diversity at the global level. Its primary focus is on those interrelated systems that affect the entire planet. The primary goals of global education are to build understanding and respect for peoples and nations outside the United States, to transcend the narrow Western-centric bias that pervades much of traditional curriculum, to provide an understanding of the dynamics of imperialism and oppression, to create awareness of the earth as an interrelated and holistic system. The relationship between multicultural and global education is interactive. To understand one's own cultural roots and that others may have very different cultural experience means little until learners have examined the impact this diversity has on the world. And learners need to understand that individual behavior and choices can have global consequences in an interdependent world. Programs from either perspective should not be implemented in isolation from the other. (JB)