Why Education Must Be Multicultural

The United States is considered the land of immigrants and cultural diversity, and our nation’s ever changing demographics attests to this. Yearly, our nation and schools become more racially and linguistically different. In what ways, we must ask, are schools welcoming and providing for students who come from different cultural backgrounds, especially Black and Hispanic students? The author contends that schools and educators must be culturally responsive; however, misperceptions hinder their appreciation of and respect for multicultural education and, thus, the adoption of culturally responsive practices is infrequent and/or met with reservations. Several (by no means all) misperceptions are share accompanied by counterarguments.