Worldly goods

Before embarking on any discussion of multicultural products, it is important to recognise that they fall into two different groups. The first contains products that depict people from a range of ethnic backgrounds - jigsaws, books, dolls, small world toys and the like.

These items are not, strictly speaking, multicultural, because they give no insight into ways of life and thought in non-western societies. On the contrary, their aim is inclusion, so the people usually appear in clothes and settings that the majority population would regard as 'normal' - parks, schools, living rooms, firefighters' uniforms, white coats.

The second subset, the truly multicultural one, consists of items that teach children from the majority population about other societies - clothes, cooking utensils, ceremonial objects, musical instruments and so on. Here, the emphasis is on difference, but it's a positive emphasis. By playing with these objects, children learn to appreciate the wonderful variety of human experience and, if the teaching is good, to understand and value the people whose cultures the items represent.