1. CULTURAL CHANGESINTRODUCTION:Whenever two or more people come together with a shared purpose, they form a culture with itsown written and unwritten rules for behavior. Our families, workplaces, and communities all havecultures. These cultures have a tremendous, though rarely recognized, impact upon our behavior asindividuals.Each cultural environment provides a set of standards to which we must adapt. Our behavioralpatterns change dramatically from one cultural context to another. We are expected to behave inaccordance with our cultures, but if we choose not to go along, we must be prepared for theconsequences. When we select goals for ourselves that violate the culture, we must either changethe culture or endure a never- ending struggle.Changes in culture that are initiated by a group need cultural support of the members of thegroup, or else they will not last long. A supportive cultural environment is needed for a lastingchange.WHAT IS MULTICULTURALISM? Multiculturalism is a policy that emphasizes the unique characteristics of different cultures,especially as they relate to one another in receiving nations. Multiculturalism is a systematic and comprehensive response to cultural and ethnic diversity, witheducational, linguistic, economic and social components and specific institutional mechanism.HARRISON (1984)Multiculturalism is a theory about the foundations of a culture rather than apractice with subsumes cultural ideas.THREE INTERRELATED, DISTINCTIVE, REFERENTS OF MULTICULTURALISM: The democratic-descriptive usage occurs when the word multicultural refers to the existence oflinguistically diverse segments in the population of a society or state, Ideological-normative usage of multiculturalism generates the greatest level of debate since itconstitutes a slogan and basis for political action. Programmatic-political usage of multiculturalism refers to the specific policies developed to respondand manage ethnic diversityWHAT IS MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION? Multicultural education is an emerging discipline whose aim is to create equal educationalopportunities from diverse racial, ethnic, social class and cultural group. Multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education that holisticallycritiques and addresses current shortcomings, failings and discriminatory practices in education. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed tofunction effectively in pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicatewith peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for thecommon good.

2. A related goal of multicultural education is to help students develop more positive attitudes towarddifferent racial, ethnic, cultural and religious.BANKS AND BANKS (1995) - define multicultural education as a field of study and an emergingdiscipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities from diverse racial, ethnic,social class and cultural groups.JAMES BANKS (2001) - the primary goal of multicultural education is to transform the school so thatthe male and female students, exceptional students, and students from diverse cultural, social-class,racial, and ethnic groups experience an equal opportunity to learn.SHARED IDEALS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: Every student must have an equal opportunity to achieve her or his potential. Every student must be prepared to competently participate in an increasingly intercultural society. Teachers must be prepared to effectively facilitate learning for every individual student, no matterhow culturally similar or different from themselves. Schools must be active participants in ending oppression of all types, first by ending oppressionwithin their own walls, then by producing socially and critically active and aware students. Education must become more fully and student-centered and inclusive of the voices and experiencesof the students. Educators, activists and other must take a more active role in reexamining all educational practicesand how they affect the learning of all students.DIMENSIONS OF MUTICULTURAL EDUCATION:There are five dimensions of cultural education according to Banks (1997):1. Content Integration---it deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from avariety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, generalizations, and issues within theirsubject area or disciplines.2. Knowledge Construction process---it describes how teachers help students to understand,investigate, and determine how the biases, frames of reference, and prospective within a disciplineinfluence the ways in which knowledge is constructed within it.3. Prejudice reduction--- it describes lessons and activities used by teachers to help students to developpositive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.4. Equity pedagogy---It exist when teachers modify their teaching in ways that facilitate the academicachievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social class groups.5. Empowering school culture and social structure---this dimensions is created when the culture andorganization of the school are transformed in ways that enable the students from diverse, racial,ethnic and gender groups to experience equality and equal status.