Service-Learning as a Method of Teaching Multiculturalism to White College Students

Multicultural service-learning has come to be seen as a viable means by which to teach about the complexities of our multiethnic, multiracial world. However, when the service component involves having White college students tutor Black and Latino schoolchildren, there are numerous ethical issues that must be seriously considered. It is argued that a number of ideological and institutional barriers prevent multicultural service-learning from being an ethically defensible and transformative pedagogy. What it has become instead is a way of acting out cultural deficit thinking in the name of multicultural education.