Public Education and Multicultural Policy In Canada: The Special Case of Quebec

Ghosh, Ratna. (2004). International Review of Education, 50 (5-6), 543-566.

[Through a historical and comprehensive review of the multicultural policies in Québec, Ghosh critically examines the policies reflected on education.]

In her criticism of rising voucher-like system in certain provinces, she contests that the provincial governments help private schools by subsidizing the cost of their tuition. Explosive immigration had a great impact on the government policy entitled "Bilingualism within a Multicultural Framework" in 1971. As to bilingualism, Ghosh criticizes that the Official Languages Act, which acknowledged French and English as the two official languages at the federal level in 1969 as an honor of of the "founding nations", totally ignored Canada's Natives. Multiculturalism, which was federally legislated in 1988, is rephrased by the author, "consensus within the rhetoric of a 'just' society where there is to be 'unity within diversity'. By reviewing four stages of the objects of multiculturalism, Ghosh pays attention on its interpretation from the recognition of diversity to the promotion of equitable participation of all Canadians after the Multiculturalism Act of 1988.

Ghosh, however, maintains multicultural practice in education has been negligible in Quebec such that the province has historically sustained the assimilation and the exclusion of the 'other' as a policy. Since 1974 when French became the official language of Quebec, the government's effort to safeguard French brought about intercultural education policy. Interculturalism, Ghosh explains, 'a Quebec that will be pluralistic in outlook, but Francophonic through its reliance on the medium of the French language.' In this pluralistic society, Ghosh states, "Fear of racial tensions and happenings is the least of their apprehensions. The real danger is perceived to be the threat posed to the French culture by the multiplicity and vigor of other cultural groups" (p. 559).

In her conclusion, she states that despite three decades of multicultural policy, discrimination against visible minorities, in particular, immigrant youth, still exists both at personal and at structural levels and racism is on the increase, thus multicultural education has failed.