WHAT DOES IT MEAN - EXPLORING THE MYTHS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

This article, based on an ethnographic study in a predominantly White working-class middle school in the South, critically examines why a literature-based multicultural curriculum failed to get ''students to talk about racism.'' According to the author, attempts to implement a multicultural curriculum fail not because of unprepared, insincere, or insensitive teachers; rather, these efforts fail primarily because of dominant mainstream beliefs embedded in the institution of schooling and in the discourse of multiculturalism itself.