How can a multicultural society educate its members for democracy? Many contemporary controversies about public schooling turn on the clash of two apparently competing educational aims: securing common values and respecting cultural differences. This chapter argues that democratic education can integrate both civic and multicultural aims, and not merely in a pragmatic compromise but in a genuinely principled combination. At the outset, I describe two responses that fail to do justice to both aims. One response sets the project of civic unity against the diversifying tendencies of multiculturalism; the second puts cultural diversity above the claims of civic education. Both responses reflect significant political impulses in the United States and throughout the world, and both contain partial insights. I try to capture the partial truth in each and integrate them into a democratic conception of civic and multicultural education.

The second part of the chapter develops the integration by considering a test case – a recent French controversy known as the “Affair of the Scarf” or the “chador case” – that highlights one of the deepest conflicts endemic to multicultural societies. Can a conception of democratic education at least provisionally resolve conflicts between religious toleration and the other civic aims of democratic education? I show how a democratic response to this case can respect a wide range of cultural differences without sacrificing the aims of teaching a common set of civic values to all citizens.