ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with educational policy and practice with a commitment to a view of education which promotes respect of difference and social justice. The emphasis on multiculturalism as a perspective of viewing Greek education is relevant and timely because:
(a) the education system serves mainly a monocultural school practice (see, for example, May 1999b, 1);
(b) the country and the nation have for a long time been considered homogeneous;
(c) there is an infl ux of immigrants and refugees in the last forty years, intensifi ed since the beginning of the 1990s;
(d) intercultural education has been introduced as an institutional framework for curriculum policy making;
(e) education practice regarding differences adheres to an oversimplifi ed view of how social power relations affect the lives of minority students (May 1999b, 2); and
(f) recent educational policies are in the midst of contested politics and economic crisis bearing immediate effects on combating discrimination against minority students.
