[[alternative]]The Research on Rationality of Multicultural Education

[[abstract]]Multicultural education stands for the spirit of equality that proposed in the Declaration of Independence,and advocates the equality of educational opportunity to the American social deprived groups.In order to put this into practice,it msut take the norm of law as a base.Thus,this thesis explores the rationality of multicultural education in the perspective of the norm of law. Controversies about the norm of law in the field of multicultural education,mainly arose from the different viewpoints between Liberalism and Communitarianism.Liberalism proposes Individual rights,and emphasizes a kind of neutral principle of education,it advocates each member in the community has the same opportunity to receive education. But the school education in its practical operation,often possesses social-reproductive functions;the selection,organization,delivering, distribution of school curriculum,and also the formation of the teacher-student’s relation,often imply a kind of domination of dominated values. Contrary to it,Communitarianism believes the rights of each individual is restricted,and only embodied by community. Furthermore, Communitarianism suggests that the foundation of individual’s rights is not enough to ensure the equal opportunity for the social deprived groups to receive education,thus,it proposes that the nation should provide a kind of positive discrimination which called ‘collective rights’ to the social deprived groups.But then,this might be another kind of discrimination to other members in the community; also, members in the community will feel hard to attend to the autonomy of individual choices. Jurgen Habermas protest viewpoints of Liberalism and Communitarianism.He thinks that theories of Liberalism eliminate values and interests of community,this is because Liberalism maintains the respect of individual rights.Habermas believes that social relation is based upon a life world,members in society play theirs actual roles, then the construction of social relation is interests-oriented. Communitarianism,in fact,adopts the principle of equal rights which Liberalism proposed.If we explore deeply into this, we can’t ignorant the existence of the cultural differentiation.Habermas critics that Communitarianism is not truly conscious of the importance of the norm of law,and he maintains that rights’ theory and the process of the norm of law can not be separated,so we can only affirm the multicultural rights through the norm of law. Furthermore, he also thinks that the legitimation of law can only be attained through the consensus discourse,and also the rational consensus which emerged from the ideal process of communication.To assure this system,members in the modern multicultural society ,based on the frame of constitutional democracy ,can admire different cultural merits mutually. The basic principles of paradigm,such as the sovereignty of the people and the participating in the process of democratisation,is adopted by a modern democratic and constitutional nation.Hence,before exploring the rationality in the field of education for indigenous people,we must base the legitimate rights of indigenous education on the constitutional frame. After this,if we would like to achieve the rights of indigenous people,then the nation’s power plays an important role.If we take Habermas’ theories to examine the process of policy making for indigenous education,we will notice that the process is not transparent;also,the indigenous people won’t participate in it,and it might incline to authoritarian.In this way,the policy of indigenous education can not be called “rational consesus”.Hence,the government should note that contemporary indigenous education mainly restricted in the process of policy making ,so the government must examine this top-to-down process . According to Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action，he emphasizes each individual has an equal opportunity to express their opinions,so the norm can be tallied with the actual social justice.Then,the openness of a policy,and the down-to-top process,are the legitimate foundations for the policy of indigenous education.This will reconstruct a new mode of social relationship between the indigenous and the non- indigenous society,and also,through this process of communication,increases the critical thinking competence of the indigenous subjects,finally,to achieve the true meaning of democratic politics.