Rethinking Assimilation Within Multicultural Education

• In Event: 34.071 - Educational Opportunities and Culture Across Time and Space

Abstract

Multicultural education scholars have long critiqued assimilation theories for assuming that U.S. incorporation requires ethnic minorities to erase their ethnic cultural practices and assume White, English-monolingual, middle class norms. However, a more nuanced understanding of recent theories of assimilation illuminates how schools can use multicultural education to reproduce a pluralist model of Americanness. In this paper, I analyze multicultural education through the lens of bi-directional assimilation (Alba & Nee, 2003) to illustrate the link between this pedagogical strategy and nation-making. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of a diverse middle school in California, I show that where the school assimilated to its minority students, students were more likely to identify as American and describe America as a multicultural nation.

Author

• Cristina L. Lash, Stanford University