Issues and Dilemmas of Multicultural Education: Theories, Policies and Practices

Abstract

Multiculturalism has a short history and is vulnerable as a concept and policy in the neoconservative state, after 9/11. It originated in the late 1960s, emerging with the encouragement of the New Left and after a decade of the civil rights movement that forced the recognition of cultural differences on the statute books. The word was first used, curiously, to describe Switzerland, and then was adopted by Canada in 1971 as the first country to develop multiculturalism as an official policy following the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism that responded to the grievances of the French-speaking minority. This policy affirmed the status of all Canadian citizens regardless of their 'racial' or ethnic origins and it confirmed the rights of aboriginal peoples and the status of Canada's two official languages. The policy was soon adopted elsewhere, especially within the Commonwealth and by countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. New Zealand developed its own bicultural policy in the last two decades of the twentieth century after the Maori renaissance of the 1970s revived the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi and began challenging the dominant monoculturalism of New Zealand society and its founding institutions. Multiculturalism, then, had its political home in civil rights, indigenous peoples' movements, in the critique of colonialism and neo-colonialism, in citizenship rights, and in a robust notion of equality, all of which intersected and coalesced during the 1970s. This volatile political mix soon made its presence felt strongly in education and the education system was seen as the basis of establishing a kind of monocultural socialisation in the past and also as the means for addressing new citizenship questions of identity, cross-cultural understanding, ethnic harmony, social and 'racial' coherence, and the discouragement of 'racial' hatred, discrimination and violence. Increasingly, education was employed as the means for initiating the 'naturalisation' of new citizens and immigrants, as well as one of the vehicles for redressing past grievances among indigenous peoples. These immense demands often were translated into attempts to build a multicultural curriculum. Up until the later 1960s, the liberal state followed a policy of 'one language, one culture, one people' and assumed that cultural homogeneity was a necessary condition for modernisation and development. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the relation between two cultures – a traditional one and a culture of modernity – came to be officially perceived as largely a problem of modernisation, of making the former more like the latter. This modernisation was not just a form of 'assimilation' or 'integration': the logic of modernisation was taken to supersede all forms of traditionalism. Tribalism, in particular, was perceived to be inimical to the interests of the liberal state because it promoted historic 'we–they' attitudes and thereby militated against the unity of an integrated state. Only recently in Western development and political theory has it even seemed a remote possibility that the enhancement of traditional ways of life might actually contribute to, rather than hinder, the 'development' or 'progress' of a people. 310 There is probably no more pressing a set of philosophical problems in educational theory than those that fall under the broad issue of cultural difference. The question of cultural difference in the era of modernity can be considered in abstract terms, in terms of the logic of alterity, of Otherness, but it cannot be thought of without examining the historical context of colonisation, its consequences for imperial, white-settler and indigenous cultures, and the historic struggles against the exercise of imperial power: the myriad forms of decolonisation, cultural reassertion and self-determination. With the ascent of neo-liberalism in the 1980s multiculturalism suffered a series of setbacks. First, there was a revival of attacks from neo-liberals who criticised multiculturalism for allegedly impeding a 'shared national identity'. Old liberal arguments concerning the 'balkanisation' of the liberal state were advanced alongside arguments by the likes of Diane Ravitch, Allan Bloom, Dinesh D'Sousa, Roger Kimball, Thomas Sowell and Charles Sykes in the USA that warned about the ways in which multiculturalism undermined universal values and led to cultural relativism. Second, in the domain of public policy, the market became the favoured means of the allocation of public goods and the basis for redistribution rather than direct state intervention. This ideological perspective eroded many of the political gains made during the 1970s and multiculturalism became a target for the Right that was seen as ripe for reversal. Yet the institutionalisation of multiculturalism in education and in law, as official policy, in so many aspects of the state practices, including hiring practices, official language, anti-discrimination, etc., meant that reversal was not easily accomplished even though the political climate was right. If anything, the move to the neoconservative state has heralded a new era of multiculturalism where it is even more threatened and vulnerable despite this institutionalisation. Neoconservatives understand that crisis of the neo-liberal state to be one of governance and disorder after excesses of market individualism that in part requires the embrace of traditional conservative morality to address the cultural crisis of individual anarchy, sexual permissiveness, hedonism and cultural relativism. The integration of the Christian Right into American politics, which took place under Reagan and then accelerated under George Bush, has focused a new assault on diversity in the name of (monocultural WASP) values. Multiculturalism is seen as being responsible for tearing down the values of 'civilisation'. After 9/11, multiculturalism is also seen as a mistaken policy, as a policy that has promoted the demolition of the state and created now insurmountable internal security risks. In Britain, the USA and France the emphasis has turned away from rights discourse in relation to immigrants in favour of greater security, more surveillance through the introduction of 'community cards', control and policing of borders, separate education of illegal immigrants – often involving a denial of cultural rights – and an erosion of those liberties that we take for granted. For instance, it has been revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency has secret jails around the globe and a recent amendment to a finance bill introduced by Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has just been introduced that will reverse the Supreme Court decision and take away any legal rights of inmates at Guantanamo, thus destablising the rule of law and questioning the status of habeas corpus. Most often, local resident, immigrant and especially Muslim populations suffer these new indignities. The new policies have begun to impact on the independence and existence of 'faith schools' in the United Kingdom and religious practices in French schools (the government's ban on Muslim girls' veils in schools). Riots in France, perhaps the most extensive since the 1968 student protests, which have spread from Paris to Lyons, typically involve young French Muslims and Blacks living in suburban housing estates on the outskirts of Paris who suffer high unemployment and who have been excluded from the benefits of French society. These young people complain bitterly of racism and the way the French state requires immigrants to adopt French values and customs. This has given rise to comparisons with American multiculturalism that follows anti-discrimination laws based on statistical data (the French state does not keep such data), yet the treatment of poor Black people in New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina struck has indicated how the neoconservative state failed to protect and look after its people. Multiculturalism since 9/11 and under neoconservatism now faces fresh legal, ethical, political and economic setbacks. These risks are acerbated under globalisation. In a globalised era, tensions have been pinpointed between movements towards homogeneity of policies and practices in education – particularly represented by models grounded in market-oriented approaches towards efficiency and accountability – and those that take cultural diversity,