A Multicultural Grassroots Effort to Reduce Ethnic and Racial Social Distance among Middle School Students

Raising tolerance for people of different ethnic and racial groups is the goal of the Multicultural Mosaic program, a grass-roots multicultural education effort initiated by a small group of middle school teachers in a private school in the northeast. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of the first year of the Multicultural Mosaic program on the attitudes and beliefs of the middle school students toward people of different ethnic and racial groups. The research incorporated a pretest/post-test design, measuring feelings of cultural universality and diversity and social distance among the students. Participation in the surveys was voluntary and students were required to obtain parental consent. The goal of the study was to determine whether participation in the Multicultural Mosaic among the middle school students was associated with greater feelings of closeness and understanding of people from different ethnic and racial groups. (Contains 3 tables.