Multiculturalism as a reflection of cultural and demogrpahic reality:
It is generally known that Australia is multicultural due to its heterogenous demographic profile. In the early days of the white settlement Australian white population was predominantly monolingual and monocultural (Anglo-Saxon culture). After the discovery of gold in the middle of the 19th century Australia quickly became a multicultural reality, even though no such policy was proclaimed by the political establishment at the time. Today, after fifty years of constant and high migrant intake, Australia is culturally highly diverse. It could be argued therfore that the term 'multiculturalism' depicts cultural and societal reality of modern Australian society.
Multiculturalism as a social philosophy:
Multiculturalism is a philosophy on which a political action can be (or is based). As philosophy, it includes the idealistic theory of non-conflictual coexistence of various ethno-cultural groups in a particular society. Philosophy of multiculturalism is a theoretical foundation for a practical policy.
Multiculturalism as a form of social policy:
It is in this sense that we use the term 'multiculturalism' most often. As such, multiculturalism is bound to political establishment. As a social policy, multiculturalism implies ideas of cultural freedom, culturally sensitive educational policies on languages, encouragement cultural diversity, tolerance and diversity etc. In short, multiculturalism is one out of many possible government's responses to deal with cultural and ethnic diversity of a society. Such a policy needs restructured governmental agencies (eg. social security, education, etc). A government in a multicultural society is responsible for providing different services for citizens (for NESB in Australia), such as translating services, ESL classes, migrant language education, broadcasting in community languages, multilingual prints, etc...
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