A good school takes children of different ages, temperaments, interests, and abilities and over time brings them to a common level of achievement. It does so in two ways. First, it adjusts its own structure and mode of teaching to the characteristics of the students. For example, it groups younger students together to give them preparatory instruction older students don't need. It gives extra instruction to slower learners. It offers art for students interested in drawing and shop for those interested in building.

Second, a good school requires the students to adjust to it. Whatever their ages, temperaments, interests, and abilities, the school expects the students to work hard, eschew cheating, and treat each other and their teachers with respect and courtesy.

There seems nothing at all controversial about this description of the rudiments of good schooling. Yet we can generate from it educational proposals that spark considerable dissent. Suppose that a school's students differ “culturally.” They don't speak the same languages; in their folkways and customs, they are alien to each other and to their teachers; their religious views put them at odds with some of the school's expectations. Then the good school must adjust itself “culturally” to the students, and it must overcome “cultural” barriers to the students' adjusting to it. Here is the germinal idea of multicultural education. Multicultural education is what good schools do in the face of extensive “cultural” differences among students and teachers.