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Choosing Democracy: A practical guide to Multicultural Education by Duane Campbell, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill/PrenticeHall, 1996. 381 pages; notes, bibliography, index. $40 (paper).
Choosing Democracy is a powerful text which provides a comprehensive analysis for improving the practical strategies for multicultural education in America. Author Duane Campbell's pedagogical philosophy is filled with democratic sentiments. Campbell chairs the Department of Bilingual and Multicultural Education in the School of Education at California State University, Sacramento. He speaks Spanish fluently and has taught in several public school systems with heavy minority representation before becoming a professor of education.
Campbell believes that school reform, including the development of multicultural education, is sorely needed to preserve a democratic community. Choosing Democracy seeks to assist educators to analyze their own cultural frames of reference and to develop a second multicultural perspective. Campbell's ultimate goal is to create schools where students from all cultural, racial, and social groups have an equal opportunity to learn. Campbell's book opens with an explanation of the seriousness of the crisis in public education. He writes: "the majority of children of the working class will end up in the service sector as fast food employees, service workers, and maintenance personnel earning less than $7 an hour. Unless education gives working-class students access to new careers, knowledge systems, and technology, they will join the working poor." He proposes a democratic school system that "encourages the widest possible participation in political decision making, respects the rule of the majority, and protects the rights of minorities."
Choosing Democracy addresses how issues related to race, politics, and social class have clouded educational improvement efforts in California. For instance, California's classrooms serve an average of 31 students each, compared to 22 in Texas. One of the causes of this phenomena is that California voters are unwilling to support public education at the level it requires. It does not take much...