Against the Multicultural Agenda: A Critical Thinking Alternative / Edition 1

by Yehudi O. Webster

Overview

This is a pioneering work, timely, scholarly, and grounded in critical-sociological, anthropological, and philosophical traditions. It offers an empathic analysis of pluralist, Afrocentric, and postmodernist advocacies of multicultural education and multiculturalism, but reveals formidable flaws in their conceptions of gender, race, culture, knowledge, learning, and social change. It is required reading for those desiring a synopsis of the literature on multicultural education and multiculturalism, and an understanding of the disputes among the various schools of thought. The author claims that multiculturalism is not a remedy for problems of sexism, racism, and educational underachievement among ethnic minorities. Rather, so questionable is multiculturalism's endorsement of biological classifications, so relativistic and moralistic are its arguments on cultural differences, and so negligent its analysis of human reasoning that it has become a political pawn. Read Against the Multicultural Agenda to discover what is wrong with the multicultural agenda and what is powerfully persuasive about the alternative—critical thinking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275958770
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/26/1997
Series:	Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.51(d)
Lexile:	1420L (what's this?)

About the Author

YEHUDI O. WEBSTER teaches in the Sociology Department at California State University. He holds degrees from Warwick University, London University, and Warsaw University. Dr. Webster is the author of The Racialization of America (1992), which was selected as the Outstanding Book published in 1992 on Human Rights in the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Multicultural Education: Definitions, Development, Variants, and Controversies
Multiculturalism: Egalitarian Social Reconstruction through Educational Reform
Multiculturalism: An Assessment of Variations, Basic Arguments, and Concepts
The Multicultural Agenda and Critical Thinking Compared
Bibliography
Index