This kind of curricular reform serves to keep invisible the authority and power of dominant groups and turn non-dominant groups into the exotic. As Richard Dryer notes: "Looking with such passion and single-mindedness at non-dominant groups has had the effect of reproducing the sense of the oddness, different ness, exceptionality of these groups, the feeling that they are departures from the norm. Meanwhile the norm had carried on as if it is the natural, inevitable, ordinary way of being human" (Dryer, 1988: 44). Thus the minority student and her culture become, to use Deborah Britzman's term, "a special event." White Anglo-Saxon Protestant students and teachers remain outside of race, culture and ethnicity.

To avoid a multicultural focus that centres on the exotic "other," some educators have made efforts to emphasize differences among all students usually by an examination of ethnic rather than racial backgrounds. Such an approach to multiculturalism depends upon a "proliferation of particularisms" (Laclou, 1992: 87). That is to say, we all embody particular differences and these many differences should be celebrated. The notion that "we are all different" and therefore "we are all the same" ignores how power operates to determine the difference some differences make. The processes and practices by which certain differences are normalized, minimized or ignored is not explored and thus the power and invisibility of dominant groups is assured.

To make visible the norm of whiteness and how white identities are constructed, conferred and normalized is of tremendous importance in exposing white, Eurocentric assumptions about the world. This exposure will help to create the possibility for change. With this in mind that we now turn to an examination of the production of white "lady" teacher identity in the context of multicultural education.

Lady Bountiful

"Lady Bountiful" is a representation of the white lady missionary or white lady teacher that emerged during the time of British imperialism. It is an image in which "notions of imperial destiny and class and racial superiority were grafted onto the traditional views of refined English motherhood to produce a concept of the. English woman as an invincible global, civilizing agent" (Ware, 1992). She was seen as having a unique duty to bring civilization to the "uncivilized." In the early 1800s, her role was to educate British working-class women in religion, morality and hygiene. Exported to the colonies, the ideal of femininity became the white woman, an embodiment of chastity and purity who acted as a "civilizing" force.

According to Honor Ford Smith, this image and role carries with it the imperative "to know" and the incredible arrogance of' that imperative. Lady Bountiful, to be bountiful, must know and feel what is wrong and be able to fix it. She needs to be at the centre but at the same time her needs -- her own "self" -- remain absent. Her ability to act as the civilizing force, to be the white teacher-mother in the service of the Empire, is dependent upon her need to be at the centre, knowing and helping her charges. If Lady Bountiful doesn't know, can't feel, can't be in control, then she will feel guilt as well as the fear that she is unmotherly or unladylike or unchristian (Ford Smith, 1993).

Examples of Lady Bountiful abound, in historical documents, in popular culture, and especially in texts concerning English as a second language. Until relatively recently in Canada, it was charitable organizations and religious denominations: that offered English instruction to immigrant families. The teachers were often the wives or daughters of ministers or church elders. Evident in the earlier part of the century, at a time when there was a large influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, the task of these ladies was to assimilate or "Canadianize" their students. It was at this same time that the term "New Canadians" came into the , lexicon and that in literature and speeches teachers were sometimes referred to as "cultural missionaries" (Jaesen, 1977).