MEASURING MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS IN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Abstract

Multiculturality must be understood as a natural reality deliberately presented by God for His beloved people. In practice, however, humanity has misunderstood this gift of multiculturalism resulting in religious violence and social conflicts. As part of the national education system, Catholic Education bears on its shoulders the noble responsibility to propagate the virtuous values of multiculturalism, and additionally sentiments such as those of open-hearted inclusiveness and tolerance, all notions that would build a utopian dream wherein the people in strive for peace, harmony, solidarity, indiscriminate to one another and to those possesing differing cultural ideologies. It is the paramount duty of Catholic Religious Education to bulwark against the abominations that are the negative misconceptions spawned of inadequate or perhaps even erroneous understanding of pluralism and multiculturalism. To this end, it is of no small importance that one is able to gauge as to what degree pluralism and multiculturalism suffuses Catholic Religious Education. Only then would it be prudent that the appropriate actions be undertaken to ensure the students acquire satisfactory critical understanding in multiculturalism.