Educational bureaucracies are inherently resistant to change. However, the emerging pluralistic philosophy in Canada requires innovation and creativity. Public demands for the integration of multiculturalism into the educational mainstream conflict with the bureaucratic resistance to change and result in a disequilibrium which in turn causes still greater resistiveness. Workable compromises can be reached only by turning from a priori resistiveness to change to a dispassionate analysis of its merits. (Author/MK)