Multicultural Education in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1980s: The Role of Interest Convergence

• In Event: James A. Banks: A Pioneer for the Advancement of Social Justice in a Global World

Abstract

This comparative study examines early multicultural policies and programs in New York City and London in the 1980s. Using Caraballo’s (2009) analysis of intercultural and intergroup programs in the 1940s and 1950s as a model, we apply Bell’s (1980) principle of interest convergence to examine their underlying antecedents. We use Critical Race Theory as a framework. A key tenet of Critical Race Theory in education (Tate, 1995), Bell’s (1980) principle of interest convergence supports challenges to claims of neutrality in the dominant liberal multicultural discourse, particularly given the reluctance of mainstream and privileged groups to recognize unearned privilege, disrupt racialized epistemologies (Ladson-Billings, 2000) and construct new knowledge beyond the mainstream (Banks, 2004a). Bell contends that racial equality (and/or cultural pluralism) is accommodated only when they converge with dominant interests (Caraballo, 2009). Archival sources as well as oral history accounts were used to construct parallel historical case studies and situate early multicultural programs and policies in each city within larger demographic, social, and political contexts. Primary data sources included school board minutes, reports, official correspondence, newspaper articles, and archival photographs related to multicultural curriculum development, campaigns for community control (New York City) and the formation of Black cultural programs and supplementary schools (London). Results suggest the following: New York City. Multiculturalism rose to the forefront during the community control movement in the late 1960s with calls for more teachers of color, culturally responsive curriculum and instruction, fiscal equity for poor African American and Latino children, and narrowing the racial achievement gap (Podair, 2002). By the late 1980s, the New York City Board of Education adopted the most comprehensive US multicultural policy to date, enacted in the wake of the beating deaths of two young African American men in white neighborhoods (Johnson, 2003). London. By 1980 Britain had (reluctantly) become a multicultural nation. While multicultural policy and coursework for teachers was developed in the Inner London Educational Authority (ILEA) in the late 1970s, it was the Brixton uprising in 1981 which heightened public attention about police profiling of Black youth. The release of the Rampton Report (1981) confirmed that African Caribbean children were underachieving in British schools and that low teacher expectations and "unintentional racism" were to blame. The Comparative View. Multicultural programs in both cities arose from a convergence of Black community activism to improve the life chances of Black students, and White school officials who sought to placate tensions from changing demographics and racial unrest. Networks of multiculturalists including James Banks (University of Washington) and Jagdish Gundara (Institute of Education) influenced international policy borrowing. Overall, the birth of multicultural education is often couched as an outgrowth of the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. A comparative approach uncovers similar influences and convergence of interests in the UK, and establishes the transnational scope of the movement. Understanding these parallels can “deepen our understanding of how contextual and historical factors must be considered in determining the direction of future scholarship, research, and practice in the field” (Caraballo, 2009, p. 9).

Authors

• Lauri Johnson, Boston College

• Limarys Caraballo, Queens College - CUNY