Students in a multicultural classroom gain better understanding of other cultures, which helps reduce existing misconceptions and prejudices regarding these cultures. For example, the term "Native Americans" to many students means people with feathers on their heads, animal skin costumes and engaged in savage wars --- an image depicted by the popular media, which lends a narrow and superficial perspective of the culture. Such pre-formed perceptions can prevent students from understanding the true contributions of these cultures and people to the human life. Multicultural education also broadens students' knowledge of existing but not so publicly visible cultures; for example, in the U.S., students are more aware of Americans of African and Mexican origins than Native Americans, whose population is lower and are rarely seen in newspapers.
By promoting correct understanding of cultures, multicultural education helps shatter myths of superiority and inferiority of a specific culture, leading to a more balanced view. Students of a specific culture may feel their culture is insignificant while those belonging to popular culture may exhibit feelings of superiority. With multicultural education, students attain the right understanding of their own culture as well as others'. This increases feelings of personal worth and pride in their cultural identity in students who have heretofore believed that their culture has nothing of value, leading to better academic performance and better growth as individuals.
With the world becoming increasingly pluralistic, it has become more important than ever to learn how to coexist with different cultures. Multicultural education trains students to interact with people of other cultures. This system teaches students the viewpoints and the cultural aspects that govern the behavior, attitudes and values of people belonging to different cultures. Such understanding enables students overcome prejudice, fear and hostility of other cultures that may creep up when they are suddenly thrust into a multicultural environment later in life. Multicultural education enables students develop effective relationships in such settings in the future.
Certain instruction approaches in multicultural education can increase prejudice toward other cultures, failing the very purpose of the system. One such method is where educators choose specific periods of the year for teaching about a particular culture. Black History Month is one such example, during which teachers teach students about African-American historical personalities. Such instruction method gives only a superficial perspective of the culture, limiting details to language, clothing and festivals of the culture, without delving into the day-to-day lives of the people where the truer picture exists. This type of approach degrades the importance of cultures and stereotypes them, with students forming more prejudices than before. An example that the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory website gives is that of white students who refused to attend their school's Black History Month, as they felt it was a program for the African-Americans and not for them.