Conflict Over Multicultural Education

Report Outline
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Introduction

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Overview

By now it is obvious that something must be done to improve American schooling. It has been more than seven years since a blue-ribbon commission proclaimed the United States “a nation at risk” of losing its slim competitive edge in world markets because of the poor quality of its educational system. And despite the efforts at educational reform that followed the report, the problems remain. Tests continue to show that American children have an astounding lack of knowledge about most academic subjects, and American students regularly score far below their foreign counterparts in international comparisons.

Now, at the beginning of the 1990s, the United States and the world are ever more interdependent. To function well in this changed environment, Americans now need to know a great deal about foreign peoples, their cultures and their pasts.