Policy and theory on race and education: a critique of multiculturalism and anti-racism

Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education have emerged in the 1980's as the main alternative approaches to race and education. But the debate between them has become a sterile one. The central arguments of the 'radical' critique that underpins anti-racist education have revealed fundamental flaws in the analysis and strategy of multicultural education. However, this has not lead to a coherent alternative framework for policy and practice. Rathef, it has suggested that it is theoretically and practically impossible to oppose racism in and through education. My aim is to demonstrate that such a conclusion depends upon errors in how the 'radical' critique theorises the racial structure of society, in how it analyses policy and practice 'on race in education and consequently, in how it relates racial structure to educational processes. The theoretical and methodological differences with the 'radical' critique provide the major foci of the thesis. The first is an extensive consideration of theories of racial stratification which draws upon an outline of race relations in post-war Britain. The second is the analysis of different approaches to race and education, their periods of dominance, their base values and concepts and the relation between them. The third focus is the 'anti-racist' policy of an LEA and this allows one to clarify the relation of LEA policy to national policy and school practice. Fourthly, I outline a model of institutional racism in education in order to give detail of the relation between racial structure and educational processes. The final focus is the ideological and practical educational context for multicultural and anti-racist education. Through the issues that I consider I aim to suggest a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of policy and practice which incorporates the insights of the 'radical' critique but engages with the complexity of the relation between race and education