An Analysis On Multicultural Curriculum Development Of Primary And High School In The U.S.

The United States is the biggest country of migration, and also the source of multiple cultures. Under the influence of Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States, countries around the world have begun to implement the policy of ethnic tolerance and multiculturalism policy in all aspects. Specific to the field of education, even though many countries in the world have the history of multicultural education, the United States is the most typical representative. In the theoretical and practical contribution to the multicultural education, the famous sociologist and educator Banks should be justified as the most distinguished representative of the contemporary. Therefore, it is important and valuable to understand the multicultural education in the United States through studying Banks' thoughts.Curriculum is the way to bring educational theory into practice, while curriculum development and implementation promote the continuous development of educational theory. Multicultural education needs to merge into schools through dominant and recessive multicultural curriculum. And ultimately, students can form the attitude, knowledge and skills to tolerant and accept different races and ethnics, which help to develop and maintain cultural diversity. Then on the basis of study on multicultural policies and theories, we can go further to know the detail about the U.S. multicultural curriculum development in theory and practice.The paper discusses the theory, modalities of American multicultural curriculum development as well as the practice. The first part includes history, policy, basis and models on multicultural curriculum. The second part presents the practice on multicultural curriculum development of primary and high schools, by means of individuation curriculum and teaching cases. Most important of all, the paper gives us a vivid description on curriculum design and development of the foreign culture and the local one. Chapter V explains our present situation and shows the significance of the development of multicultural curriculum in China.Wish there would be chance to conduct a follow-up study on our immigrant city, Shanghai.