68 Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter IV Computers and the End of Progressive Education David Williamson Shaffer University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA IntroductIon As information and communication technologies bring people, places, and events from around the world to our desktops, telephones, and televisions, the economic, social, and cultural issues of the globe are becoming increasingly, unavoidably, our own (McLuhan, 1964). The concept of diver- sity is thus a broader and more complex concept than ever before (Ladson-Billings, 2001a), and preparing young people for citizenship in such an interconnected world necessarily means helping them develop the ability to understand complex cultural issues from multiple perspectives. Mul- ticulturalism is an essential tool for democratic citizenship in an interconnected world. This is not a new idea, of course. Over a cen- tury ago the Pragmatists—including perhaps the AbstrAct Multiculturalism is an essential tool for democratic citizenship in a world made ever more closely in- terconnected by information technologies. In this paper, I propose a model for progressive multicultural education in the computer age. I begin by describing the Pragmatic Progressive model of learning implicit in Dewey’s writing on education. I then discuss two revisions to the model in light of techno- logical developments and theoretical work over the last few decades. Taken together, these revisions suggest that we might proitably revisit—and revise—Dewey’s ideas in the post-industrial era. I bring these ideas together to describe a theory of pedagogical praxis that offers an opportunity to move from multiculturalism to multisubculturalism: a view of education that focuses on diverse educational goals rather than diverse pathways to a single pedagogical end—and thus a view of learning more suited to the diverse ways of thinking and living that characterize our increasingly integrated world.