Civil Enculturation: Nation-State, School and Ethnic Difference in The Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and France 9781782387237

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Civil Enculturation


Civil Enculturation Nation-State, Schools and Ethnic Difference in four European Countries

Edited by Werner Schiffauer, Gerd Baumann, Riva Kastoryano and Steven Vertovec

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2004 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2004 Werner Schiffauer, Gerd Baumann, Riva Kastoryano and Steven Vertovec First paperback edition printed in 2006.

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without the written permission of Berghahn Books. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Civil enculturation : nation-state, schools and ethnic difference in four European countries / edited by Werner Schiffauer… [et al]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57181-594-5 (alk. paper) 1. Education--Social aspects--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Civil society-Europe--Cross cultural studies. 3. Nationalism and education--Europe--Cross-cultural studies--Congresses. 4. Multicultural education--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 1. Schiffauer, Werner, 1951–. LC191.8. E85C58 2003 306.43'094--dc21

200305244172

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN 1-57181-594-5 hardback ISBN 1-57181-595-3 paperback


Contents Preface

vii

Introduction: Nation-state, Schools and Civil Enculturation Gerd Baumann

1

PART I: FOUR CIVIL CULTURES AT SCHOOL 1 The School as a Place in its Social Space Gerd Baumann and Thijl Sunier 2 Representing the Nation in History Textbooks Werner Schiffauer and Thijl Sunier 3 Taxonomies of Cultural Difference: Constructions of Otherness Sabine Mannitz and Werner Schiffauer 4 The Place of Religion in Four Civil Cultures Sabine Mannitz 5 Muslim Headscarves in Four Nation-states and Schools Beate Collet

21 33 60 88 119

PART II: CIVIL ENCULTURATION AND DISCURSIVE ASSIMILATION 6 National Language and Mother Tongue Thijl Sunier 7 Regimes of Discipline and Civil Conduct in Berlin and Paris Sabine Mannitz 8 Argumentative Strategies Thijl Sunier 9 Pupils’ Negotiations of Cultural Difference: Identity Management and Discursive Assimilation Sabine Mannitz

147 164 210 242

EPILOGUE Limitations, Convergence and Cross-overs Sabine Mannitz

307

Notes on Contributors

335

Bibliography

337

Index

349 v


Preface

The findings presented here have resulted from a research process of some complexity. A comparative study across four countries is difficult at the best of times, even when everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Our initial division of labour was simple enough: one researcher for each country, each of them accompanied by a supervisor who would later act as editor of their respective chapters. In Berlin, our researcher Sabine Mannitz worked with her supervisor and editor Werner Schiffauer, who initiated this project; in London, our researcher Talip Küçükçan worked with Steven Vertovec; in Paris, Beate Collet’s research was supervised by Riva Kastoryano; in Rotterdam, the research was done by Thijl Sunier and accompanied by Gerd Baumann. Clean-cut though our initial division of labour may have looked on paper, it could not be maintained in the face of the inevitable exigencies inherent in any process of research and writing. The realities of fieldwork and the differences in personal commitment demanded new divisions of labour as well as new authorial and editorial responsibilities. In hindsight, this was all to the good. Re-jigging the original, effectively nation-state, divisions of labour allowed us to aim at a more integrated comparative approach, proceeding theme by theme rather than team by team. These cross-fertilizations of the comparative process, however, would have been impossible without the wonderful flexibility of the Volkswagen Foundation who funded this research, and we want to express our gratitude, especially to its then Director of Anthropological Research, Dr Hiltgund Jehle. The generosity and the intellectual good sense of the Volkswagen Foundation allowed us to let all researchers visit all other researchers’ schools, enabled us to have four plenary meetings each year to spark off heated discussions across the nation-state and theoretical boundaries, and finally allowed us to organize the process of analysis and writing in a manner that cut across our differences. It allowed us to cross-divide our work according to analytically compelling themes. We did not know these themes before: rather, we had to work them out in the vii

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process of analysis and writing. It was the themes that emerged from the data which provided us with the argumentative structure of our book. In the end, these ongoing readjustments necessitated also an editorial process of some complexity, and we are most grateful to Emma Newcombe at The University of Oxford and to the team at Berghahn Books for their enthusiasm, skill and understanding. Gerd Baumann

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„ Introduction: Nation-state, Schools and Civil Enculturation Gerd Baumann

Nation-states, which love to dress up as stable, organic, and self-perpetuating entities, have often had to re-invent themselves. To reproduce national identifications, civil structures, and civic credibility requires continuous labours of adjustment, re-definition, and reformulation of what ‘the nation’ is thought to stand for. One of the crucial challenges to face the northwestern European nation-states over the past twenty years has been the task of ‘integrating ethnic minorities’ – a rather questionable phrase, but one which has become an instantly recognizable shorthand throughout the European Union. If integration means to incorporate an originally autonomous entity into the fabric of another pre-existing and pre-defined whole (Baumann 1987), then the loaded word is indeed the apt one, for most European nation-states have certainly addressed the challenge as fully-fledged national characters, if not self-perpetuating structures. In each country, politicians and national media, civil societies and, as we shall see, even state schools, agree that there is such a thing as a Dutch way of facing the multicultural challenge as opposed to a British one, a German path to democratic pluralism as opposed to a French one. Yet for schools, still the primary site for integrating social and cultural differences into a pre-defined national whole, the matter is far more complex and interesting. They operate on the cutting edge between, on the one hand, reproducing recognizably nationspecific structures and routines and, on the other, recognizing and engaging with cultural differences and socio-cultural inequalities on a day-to-day basis. The nation-state school has thus taken on two missions at once: it is expected to perpetuate a sense of nation-state continuity but also to integrate non-nationals and first-generation citizens into the democratic project of equalizing chances and access for all. To explore the resulting dynamics between nation-state agenda, state schooling, and the negotiation of ethnic or cultural 1

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difference, we have researched and compared four schools in four European countries and have conceptualised our findings in relation to processes we have summarised as civil enculturation. The term can be specified by adding nothing more than the adjective ‘civil’ to the well-established definition: (civil) enculturation is ‘the process by which an individual acquires the mental representations (beliefs, knowledge, and so forth) and patterns of behaviour required to function as a member of a [civil] culture, […largely] taking place as part of the process of…education’ (Rhum 1997). To sketch the theoretical background of the project and our eventual analytic trajectory, it will be easiest to start with the long-established relationship between the nation-state and ‘its’ school.

A Commonsense Nexus: Nation-state and School State-supervised schooling has long been recognized as the quintessential mechanism by which nation-states turn children into citizens or individuals into political persons, and this has fundamental effects upon the person thus enculturated into a new civil and/or civic identity. Without state schools, there would be no nations as we know them in northwestern Europe, no national conscience collective, and no effective means of inculcating and rehearsing the conventions of the dominant political culture: ‘certainly, most governments since the end of the nineteenth century have seen it as one of their prime duties to establish, fund and increasingly direct a mass system of public education – compulsory, standardized, hierarchical, academy-supervised and diplomaconferring – in order to create [both] an efficient labour force and [a] loyal, homogeneous citizenry’ (Smith 1995: 91). We need not rehearse the historical constellations which led to this pivotal role of the nation-state school in northwestern Europe. Here, universal schooling under nation-state supervision responded to new elite formations in the great cities, expanded outward from there to advance the process of nationbuilding in the rural areas, and eventually managed to define a national identity on a standardized canon of purportedly shared cultural and moral norms. The process has been shown with exemplary quality by Weber who traced the transformation of Peasants into Frenchmen (1976) and stressed the role of the school in advancing a unified French nation during the Third Republic. In the other countries, the same process started at around the same time, from the 1870s on, but took rather longer to develop unitary structures. In the Netherlands, the delay was due to long-inscribed Catholic-Protestant enmities; in Germany, with the exception of Prussia, it was held up by the slow pace of political centralization; in England it had to compete with class-based resistances to a unitary education system. The different histories, however, came to converge on systems and practices that readily allow for comparison across nation-state boundaries. 2

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Yet taking for granted the intimate relationship between nation-state identities and nation-state schooling, we face the problem of turning common-sense into empirical precision: what exactly is it that schools pass on to the citizensto-be, or indeed to those of their pupils who are not citizens or nationals in the legal sense? Our answer is, in short: civil culture.

A Missing Link: Civil Culture There are three good reasons to specify more precisely what schools pass on to their pupils in the process of nation-state education. First, northwestern European schools are no longer transmitting simplistic messages of patriotism or nationalism: their civic and political messages have become far more subtle and sophisticated, concerned with seemingly universal values of democratic participation, supra-national inclusiveness, and the peaceful resolution of all conflicts. Imagine analysing the nation-state dimension in school education by comparing French lessons about Napoleon with British lessons about Wellington. Although we shall return to the example, we clearly need a more subtle approach to, and ethnography of, the national specificity of political enculturation. Second, northwestern European nation-states have become multi-ethnic and multi-national, and so have their schools, especially in the major cities. This means that schools can no longer focus their political mission on nationality in a strictly legal or vaguely ethnic sense. Unable any longer to teach their pupils to ‘feel German’ or ‘be proud to be Dutch’, they have had to develop a variety of ways to translate nation-state exclusivities into nationally specific, but productively inclusivist ‘styles’ (Anderson 1991) of participation and identification. The third reason to specify the missing link follows straight from the previous two: if nation-state schooling can no longer be nationalist in the simplistic sense, then the nation-state dimension in state education will tend toward a more subtle understanding of its specificity: it is no longer about content within and boundaries to the outside, but about ways and means, methods and discourses of legitimate political participation and civic or civil identification. These methods and discourses are no longer about ‘who you are’, for everyone has the right, at least in normative parlance, to cultural or ethnic difference, but about ‘how one does’, for in that respect there must be some similarity of ‘style’ regardless of the variety of ‘roots’. This, by the way, is why in the last chapter of this book we speak of ‘discursive assimilation’ rather than ‘new identities’. Taking these three considerations together, we needed to specify anew what it is that nation-state schools put across to their present-day pupils. The specification had to be empirically useful, but had also to be sufficiently abstract to allow for comparison across nation-state boundaries, take account of pupils who are not nationals, and respond to the increasing emphasis on the ‘how’ rather 3

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than ‘who’ of political participation and identification. The simplest choice fell on the term ‘civil culture’.

Why Civil Culture? Civil culture combines three elements: competence in relation to the workings of a country’s civil society; competence with regard to its nationally specific conventions of civic culture and norms of civility; and some familiarity, conformist or hopefully critical, with its dominant national self-representation, what Taylor calls its ‘social imaginary’ (Castoriadis 1987; Taylor 2002). In proposing the term ‘civil culture’ to span these three dimensions, we want to stress two things. First, when we speak of competence we do not mean compliance with something. The competence we speak of is a capacity to conform to or reject, play along with or undermine dominant representations, all in a socially shareable way. Civil culture is not about conformity or resistance; it is about the competence of arguing for or against an option within a (nationally specific) framework of discursive conventions. One can say Yes or No to any one proposition, only the style of arguing and the phrasing of agreement, difference or any compromise proposal must be recognizable as a legitimate option by one’s companions. Take an example taken straight from school practice: when Muslim pupils at the British school wanted halal school meals, they argued as Muslim Britons who should have their community rights in a nation-state formed of different communities; when Muslim pupils at the Dutch school wanted the same for their annual celebratory dinner, they argued, not for a separate provision for Muslim pupils, but for halal meat to be offered to all alike: not a separate concession as had already been made to vegetarian pupils, but a unifying consensus carried by all. Sectional solutions are encouraged less in this civil culture than a consensus which, however vague, has repercussions across communities and aims at masking, rather than exposing, cultural cleavages. Let me emphasize, using this example, that discursive competence is not the same as conformity, self-denial, cultural assimilation or a denial of one’s heritage. It is about the methods of arguing one’s point rather than the content of any one argument. The second reason for choosing ‘civil culture’ as our central analytic term is its independence from criteria of citizenship in the sense of nationality. The term has not arisen from any theorizing ambition spun out for its own sake; rather, it arose from the simple fact that many pupils in western Europe are not citizens in the sense of nationals. The proportions vary from country to country, as do the increasingly frequent reforms of the laws governing nationality, naturalization, and dual nationality. What was required, therefore, especially in a comparative study that spans four different nation-states, was an analytic term which specifies those aspects of citizenship which apply to all school 4

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pupils, whether nationals in any one of the multitudinous legal definitions or not. No less importantly, it was the setting of the school that demanded a composite term to describe the astonishing coherence of all three dimensions put across to the pupils as one package. The three elements are intertwined at school, and this intertwining is functional, if not crucial. Any pupil must have the right to question a particular national imaginary; must be free to relativise a given civic culture and flaunt its behavioural conventions; and must be motivated to take a reforming interest in its civil society. This, perhaps, is the whole point of a democratic education: the pupil gets a tied-and-tagged package of civil culture, but is yet expected to untie it carefully and examine it piece by piece. Civil culture, in summary, is comprised of all three elements: civil society, civic culture, and dominant national imaginary; these can be observed to operate regardless of the national or civic status of its performers. Messages of civil culture are put across by teachers and schoolbooks, formal curricula and informal disciplines or conventions, and they are received or rejected, absorbed or critiqued by pupils in their daily lives at school. It is, as we shall detail further on, this focus on daily lives that has dictated the methodology of the researchers: empirical observation in schools, close-to-the-data interviews with pupils and teachers, mutual visits in each other’s schools, and a painstaking precision to distinguish what is contingent within any one school from what is characteristic for the dominant civil culture that it puts across to its pupils. No school in this book is typical of any other school in that country, this much is obvious. There are patterns and indeed consistencies of designing, putting across, and receiving or else rejecting civil-cultural messages, which could not be shifted from Paris to London or Rotterdam to Berlin without the reader accusing us of implausibility. However, the plausibility stands to reason: long-standing nation-states have had a long time to calibrate their dominant civil cultures as they are reproduced in schools. The institutions have been in place for at least a century, at least eight generations of school pupils, and this has allowed for a high degree of systematisation: nation-state bureaucracies and local education authorities, teacher-training colleges and schoolbook publishers, educational and institutional reformers have had ample time to get used to each other, and their multi-stranded compromises with one another have taken on an increasingly routine consistency. This makes it plausible, and often empirically compelling, to see the contours of French civil culture reflected in Paris and their Dutch equivalents exemplified in Rotterdam. The best test case for this nationstate responsiveness may be seen in a much shorter time-frame. If nation-states are indeed redefined periodically, as was said above, then schools should show this, too. German civil culture took leave of some of its previous certainties from the 1950s and turned to a veritable veneration of ‘the individual conscience’; British civil culture turned from celebrating the hub of a global empire to projecting a great multi-ethnic nation from the 1960s; Dutch civil culture replaced religious pillarisation (verzuiling) with a neo-moralizing stress on cul5

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ture-transcending conflict denial. All these new certainties of the dominant civil culture can be traced step by step in the data collected within each of the four schools. A good example of this internal consistency of each civil culture may be seen in Chapter 2: ‘Representing the Nation in History Textbooks.’ All schools have some, and in three of the four countries very considerable, freedom in choosing their history textbooks. This makes it all the more telling that the history textbooks chosen by the four schools we studied provided compelling examples for the specificity of each nation-state’s normative civil culture. Are the schools, then, representative after all? No, we insist, unless anyone can specify what makes data gathered representative of data unknown. But are they characteristic, typifying, exemplary, unmistakeable with, and unexchangeable for each other? The answer is yes: if we can specify the analytical approach under which this is so. Since this approach is one of civil culture, let us review its elements one by one. Element One: Civil Society In the words of Michael Walzer, civil society comprises ‘the space of uncoerced human association and also the set of relational networks – formed for the sake of family, faith, interest and ideology – that fill […the public] space [of uncoerced association]’ (Walzer 1992: 89). These networks include labour unions, churches, political parties, social movements, co-operatives, and, as Walzer puts it with a superb ironic smile at definitional rigour, all kinds of ‘societies for promoting this and that’ (ibid.: 90). The essence of all these institutions, however they may be bounded in any one case or analysis, lies in their multi-centred contribution toward a democratic style of (self-)governance: ‘A democratic civil society is one controlled by its members, not through a single process of self-determination, but through a large number of different and uncoordinated processes’ (ibid.: 105). Yet schools, unlike Departments of Political Philosophy, are institutions impatient with un-coordinated processes. They have but ten years or so to imbue any one cohort of children with the idea of the nation-state, and thus they often turn to rather more normative and disciplining notions of how civil society and civil exchanges should be structured and conventionalised. This furthers an empirical, rather than a theoretical, approach. Furthermore, the notion of civil society is impartial as to citizenship or nationality. Non-nationals, too, take part in the institutions of civil society, be they trade unions or cultural associations, mosques or sports clubs, print or other media, pressure groups or indeed ‘societies for promoting this and that’. An understanding of civil society and how it works in any one nation-state is a crucial ingredient in defining its civil culture and in assessing and comparing the civil enculturation of school pupils. 6

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Element Two: Civic Culture and Civility In combining these two conceptions, we aim to relate the rather abstract remoteness of the former with the more quotidian and experiential reality of the latter. The term ‘civic culture’ started off as a label created by American political scientists delivering academic ammunition for their Cold War leaders (Almond and Verba 1960). Why was Soviet Communism never as faithful, committed and service-minded to its citizenries as the media and market democracies offered to ‘the people’ by the elites of the United States and other Western elites? The answer is largely because the people in non-democratic societies missed their historic chances of developing an equally ‘democratic’ civic culture, due to bad luck or other factors. Some of what has been published under the name ‘civic culture’ seems rather simplistic now: dated by variations of political correctness; whereas other contributions have better stood the test of time (Almond and Verba 1980). Nonetheless, what one can take from this is something quite basic and empirically plausible: there are historically particular, and sometimes even peculiar, conventions in each nation-state about how a citizen should interact with the powers that dominate the public sphere, be they institutions of the state itself, judicial institutions or the rule of law, the conjunction of governmental and corporate powers, or just civil servants running bureaucracies. To make a complaint in Germany, so Mohammed Qurban explained to some of us in Amsterdam, means you ask for the supervisor: that is polite because it absolves the front-line staff from their responsibilities. However, when complaining in Holland, you must never do that: you must ask the lowest-down for their help, because appealing higher up would make the lower ones feel devalued: it is politeness to those at the bottom that will get you your right from the top. Qurban, born in Surinam, learnt during ten years of Dutch schooling how to argue his point by respecting Dutch civic-cultural expectations, namely to avoid any semblance of conflict; and he even knows how the Dutch conventions differ from German ones. His analysis, short and to the point, stands here as a perfect example of civil enculturation and discursive assimilation. More than that, it connects the idea of civic culture – concerned with citizens within state bureaucracy – with the idea of civility. It matters little, after all, whether the officials in charge work for the City of Rotterdam, a Dutch airline or a housing association: the skills of courteous behaviour and civility required are much the same within, but noticeably different across, nation-state boundaries. True, on the face of it, civility may sound like a general competence quite untouched by political or nation-state specificities. The first degree of civility to be mastered is indeed how to treat others depending on the situation: it entails certain rules of the social game, more or less internalised, and a certain horizon of social and self-disciplines expected of others and applied to oneself. Yet just as the codes of politeness differ from culture to culture, so the codes of civility dif7

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fer from one civil culture to another. Civility recognized as such in any one nation-state describes the preferred method of interaction in the public sphere, and often the only one accepted as competent. Even the degree of internalisation differs from one civil culture to another, as we found in the schools and will detail later on. The civility inculcated at the Parisian school is imperious, but lucid enough to be accessible to all. However, in the school in Berlin it is so lowkey and implicit that even teachers hardly try to put it across in class, saying ‘if you haven’t learnt that at home, there is not much point in telling you now’. Without learning the dominant style of civility, it is virtually impossible to engage in effective civic participation. Civility, in short, is the positively sanctioned methodology of behaving as, or at least like, a citizen. As Madec and Murard (1995) point out, it can work, and even fail, quite independently of citizenship as a legal status. It is the way to get your way, but also a methodology of distinguishing when, how, and how far you can expect to get it. In effect, the patterns of behaviour that are recognized as civility reinforce the consistency, as well as the inclusiveness or exclusiveness, of any civil culture. The canons of civility, as well as their degrees of transmissibility and transparency, have much to tell us about the chances of civil equality for all. To summarise, the idea of civic culture is useful as a shorthand to refer to the dominant set of expectations, attitudes and methods deemed to structure the interaction of citizens with a particular state, its civil service and other bureaucracies. At the same time, it suffers from three limitations: its theoretical interest is far more limited than that of civil society; its adjective ‘civic’ has the inappropriate shortcoming of singling out citizens in the narrow sense of nationals, precisely what the word ‘civil’ can overcome so easily; and its relevance to young people is rather remote. When combined with the notion of civility, however, it makes for a worthwhile and operational element: a way of dealing with established power structures that obey, but in turn expect, certain nation-state specific conventions of how to argue about what with whom. Only this will allow one to make one’s point effectively, get one’s rights where they are due, and sometimes even push the boundaries of what is acceptable. Element Three: National Imaginary Both civil society and civic culture unfold their dynamics in the presence of a state, notably a nation-state. The most effective means to turn a cold and coercive state into a nation-state, warm with solidarity and willed by its citizens, lies in the creation of a national imaginary which imbues its organizational controls with a sense of identification with the community. Such national imaginaries work partly on the basis of symbolic imagery – the tangible trappings and tropes of the nation’s claim to statehood – and partly on the basis of more abstract repertoires of the nation’s self-sameness and historic calling: ‘our nation as a beacon of…’. In the following chapters, we therefore use ‘national imaginary’ as the most general term, ‘national imagery’ as the more specific. We thus follow 8

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Anderson (1991) who has provided the most influential analysis of the ‘imagined’ character of national consciousness, but also acknowledge Billig (1995) who has emphasized the pervasiveness of its symbols by drawing attention to their workaday ‘banality’. Anderson (1991) stressed that nation-state elites appealed to an ‘image of communion’, as if to create a seductively ‘deep horizontal comradeship’. True, ‘in the minds of each [citizen] lives the image of their communion with all others’, but Anderson wisely added two great contradictions: this happens regardless of whether they know each other (or even want to) and regardless of the actual inequalities and patterns of exploitation that divide them (ibid.: 6–7). Such a national imaginary draws upon the widest variety of symbolic resources that are no longer recognizable as such: nation-state mythologies are played out and propagated in censuses and registers, in national maps and museums, national heritages and historiographies, national holidays and commemorations, national pastimes and ancestors, national standardizations of language and civility, not to speak of assumptions about public as opposed to private, political as opposed to religious, conscience as opposed to public duty, sociality as opposed to personhood. These are not necessarily the result of grand designs by which scheming elites manipulate the populace: national imaginaries can work all the better when they use the trappings of banality: nationally propagated ‘patterns of social life become habitual or routine…: thoughts, reactions and symbols are turned into routine habits and, thus, they become enhabited’ (Billig 1995: 42). It is this seemingly banal and mundane habituation that renders national imaginaries so hard to resist in daily practice and can even make it hard to diagnose them for an ethnographic analysis. Schoolbooks and curricula are an evident example. Since the national imaginary needs to be inculcated in a credible and subtle form at school, there is little point, as I have said, in looking at French schoolbooks which glorify Napoleon and comparing them to British ones which glorify Nelson or Wellington. Nationalism may be mundane, but civil enculturation into a nation-state imaginary is anything but banal: it cannot rely on a selective manipulation of content or even on descriptive bias, but has to place the same European or postcolonial ‘historical facts’ into different discursive frameworks. For example, at the French school, Napoleon may be presented as a torch-bearer leading humanity’s liberating march toward self-civilization; Wellington at the British school may appear as an exemplar of the recurrent necessity to contain contending forces within a pragmatically calibrated balance of powers – much as British multiculturalism does. It is clear, from this second gloss on a banal example, that we are not dealing with rival schools of contending nationalisms when we analyse different modes of civil enculturation. Rather, we deal with observable differences between nation-state schools at a level of discursive practices, assumptions, and competences. We thus try to specify the habituations or ‘enhabitations’ that may seem banal on the surface (Billig 1995), but in doing so we find deeply elaborated and highly sophisticated processes of civil enculturation. 9

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The necessity to disengage civil-cultural participation from civic or national status could not be more obvious from the literature: witness the indiscriminate use of the vague term: ‘active citizenship’ in political rhetoric and the proliferation of new adjectives in the social science literature of the past few years: from ‘differentiated citizenship’ (Young 1989) and ‘postnational citizenship’ (Soysal 1994) to ‘neo-republican’ (van Gunsteren 1994), ‘cultural’ (Turner 1994), and ‘multicultural citizenship’ (Kymlicka 1995) to ‘transnational citizenship’ (Bauböck 1995). All of these go back to Thomas Marshall’s classic idea of ‘social citizenship’ (1965), and all of them question the link between citizenship and nationality. Yet this lexical jungle provides only limited help. Positively, it recognizes citizenship as a competence, rather than a status; negatively, it neglects to trace empirically what this competence consists in and how and where it is acquired. This is where we see our place with regard to normative debates. To sum up our approach so far, we engage with a reality where nation-state schools are no longer schools of nationalism, yet we continue to recognize that state-directed schooling is always related to identity-shaping purposes within the framework of that nation-state. It matters little whether the state’s own rhetoric uses words like multicultural, multi-ethnic or pluralist to describe its population or civil society or whether it refuses to designate its territory as a ‘country of immigration’: the realities of cultural plurality are comparable across European schools, certainly in the metropolitan centres. How then do nationstate schools manage to maintain and update their old links with the national imaginary despite there being so many school pupils who are not nationals or else not ethnically recognizable as such? Among the schools we studied, the proportion of such pupils was roughly between a third and a half, so questions about inculcating civil cultures had to be separated from questions of nationality or ethno-national identification. (This was another reason why we chose the inclusive adjective ‘civil’, rather than the restrictive ‘civic’ to specify the processes of socio-political enculturation as they happen at school.) This plurinational and multi-ethnic composition of schools, however, gives a particular urgency to an older and more general problem of late-modern civil cultures, first analysed by Schiffauer (1993) in relation to the nation-states of northwestern Europe.

The Paradox of Universalism and Exclusiveness It stands to reason that the propagation at school of an outspokenly nationalist national imaginary would spell an exclusion of non-nationals, followed by marginalisation or confrontation. While the established national imaginaries were reasonably successful in projecting cohesive nation-state ‘communities’ from the 1870s to the 1950s, they have now reached their sell-by dates with European integration and the settlement of more migrants from outside the European 10

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Union. The time-honoured imaginaries did not drop out of school practice altogether, as we shall show in our analysis of schoolbooks and curricular guidelines; yet, they were transformed into more sophisticated, less offensive, and at least superficially inclusivist forms. The paradox is not resolved as easily when it comes to the particularities of a nation-state’s structuring of civil society. As Bryant (1997) found out in his portrayals of the four civil societies dealt with here, any comparison at the empirical level, country by country, shows up far more contrasts than areas of similarity or overlap. Yet right across these historic differences, most of the civil societies of northwestern Europe, and certainly the four treated here, have been faced with a paradoxical relationship between universalising aspirations and exclusivist compensatory practices. In analysing this paradox, Schiffauer (1993) takes as his starting point the oft-stated claim of these ‘liberal’ civil societies, namely, that they aim at a public sphere where all individuals can and ought to enter into free exchange with all others under the authority and control of nation-states. The central institutions of exchange can be paraphrased with Schiffauer as the market, the forum, and the stage. The market stands for the free and rational exchange of goods; the forum for all the institutions of public politics which co-shape the intérêt général in a free exchange of convictions so as to agree on the bien commun (Montesquieu); the stage may stand for those sites of public culture which enable symbolic exchanges and endorse classifications and values. Each of these institutions can also be found in other societies; what is specific about them in the northwestern European developments is their early and near-total integration. Such an integrated civil society based on free exchange is, in some ways, a historical aberration in that it requires an exceptional form of socialization in order to enable free exchange. It has to go against the ingrained and intuitive idea that seemingly primordial relationships such as family, friendship, patronage, and perhaps ethnicity must be granted primary importance. This older model of selective exchange relations implies a concentric construction of the social world: one feels oneself most indebted and loyal to one’s dearest or nearest; the larger and more inclusive the social unit becomes, the smaller the primary commitment to axiomatic loyalty. In the new and inclusivist model, however, the collective good came to be deemed more important than individual advantage and the general public interest more compelling than the particularist. In the event of conflict, the collective, that is, formally the rule of free exchange, materially the bien commun, had to take priority over the individual and its primary or seemingly primordial collective identifications. This new ideal, of free and equal exchange among all, places extraordinary demands upon the individual and his or her socialization, not least when it comes to the distribution of social positions. The individual must now make decisions regardless of the personalities concerned and allot positions to the best, not to his or her nearest or dearest. Deviating from this new ideal will now 11

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be branded as nepotism, favouritism, or ‘jobs for the boys’. One may call this model the most impudent imposition of modernity. True, it can work with unprecedented efficiency and success; but it also requires an extremely counterintuitive process of socialization – and thus a highly precarious one. A key problem in this form of socialization is the drawing of boundaries, for it is boundaries that must determine how far this imposition of modernity is required to go. In terms of the market, they mark the range of all persons to whom one must apply the rule: ‘may the best one win’; in terms of the forum, they mark the state to which one is subordinated and the networks whose decisions on the bien commun one is expected to accept; in terms of the stage, they mark which exchanges of classifications and values must be free and which are ruled out as illegitimate or taboo. It is thus no coincidence that the history of northwestern Europe revolves so blatantly around the drawing of boundaries and the legitimation of exclusions. Every opening of the boundaries to universal exchange signifies a further demotion of seemingly primordial loyalties, threatens an increase in competition, and thus a further reduction of opportunities based on familial, ethnic, or other seemingly essential bonds. The problematics of boundary maintenance describe the crucial dilemma of these civil societies: their own internal logic and conception aim at universalisation; yet in practice any expansion spells a higher degree of imposition and a wider field of competition, not to speak of ever more anonymous authorities to watch over the process. In fact, the history of these civil societies could be written as a history of boundary manipulations. Not uncommonly, the integration of new groups led to the exclusion of older ones, or integration on one level was counteracted by exclusion on another: it is no coincidence perhaps that the legal emancipation of Jewish Germans in nineteenth century Germany was simultaneously countered by new forms of economic and cultural exclusion. This new model of civil society, Schiffauer (1993) concludes, is an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, it emphasises free exchange and an equal participation of all, and it thus tends to admit many previous outsiders into its midst. On the other hand, it makes bold to deny the intuitive salience of people’s perceived primordial bonds, be they family, ethnic or religious loyalties, and it will thus provoke its participants into finding ever-new ways of partly excluding those whom it partly included. How, one must ask then, can a nation-state school resolve this paradox between the universalizing exchange of all with all and the subjective desirability of exclusivist boundaries? The answer we give is not so different from the answer that schoolbooks and curricula have given to the exclusivist troubles attached to national imaginaries: as we indicated above, these were transformed from ethno-national achievements into more sophisticated and more inclusivist norms of social behaviour. Civil enculturation in its currently observable forms strives hard at managing the seemingly paradoxical: to inculcate pupils with a civil culture that is 12

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nationally specific, yet normatively open to all regardless of their backgrounds, identifications or possible loyalties. The squaring of the circle relies on shifting the emphasis from an ethno-national content to civil-cultural methods. At the risk of oversimplifying, one can say that it favours process over results, and one could paraphrase it loosely by the re-assuring statement: ‘It is not what we did and do here that is great, but how we did it and do it; and it is not who you are that matters, but how you do whatever you do’. One may see in this a hopeful model of democracy as a shared method for articulating differences, rather than a conformist ideology in which everyone has to endorse the same contents or opinions. Civil enculturation, as we observed it, often aimed at elevating civil culture from content to method. Perhaps this is why it seems to work in all four countries with such unpredicted success: all of us had expected to find data of a far more dialectical twistedness, social divisiveness, and civil-cultural plurality. As against these expectations, all four schools that we studied tended, on the whole, to do an astonishingly consistent job of propagating and inculcating the country’s dominant civil culture. True, their curricula and schoolbooks were seldom up-to-date enough to be truly post-nationalist, but that was not the schools’ fault: their options were limited by the nation-state authorities, bureaucracies, and schoolbook publishers. By the same token, their ‘majority pupils’ (sometimes in a minority) were not always mature enough to take pleasure in cultural diversity – but then, why should young people be expected to? Nonetheless, the staff in all four schools did their very best to facilitate exchange and dialogue between and among an enormous variety of, sometimes vociferously self-conscious, national, ethnic or religious identitifications. Most university teachers, dare I say it, would flee from their lecture theatres if faced with similar challenges. However, the school teachers at each nation-state school faced these challenges in very different ways. This observation adds a fourth and last reason to distinguish different civil cultures in the four different schools, each co-shaped by its respective nationstate and that imagined community’s self-understanding, unwritten assumptions, and educational emphases. Compare, if you will, the different teachers’ reactions to the more blatant breaches of civil-cultural conventions that happened in a lively classroom. In Berlin, as we will see, a ‘Turkish’ pupil called Ferhat protests against a well-meant excuse for ‘Gypsies behaving like thieves’ contained in a worksheet distributed by the teacher; but his protest is ruled out as an undisciplined interference in the classroom agenda: it militates against the individualist, but teacher-centred, conscience-building project so crucial to the self-reforming civil culture of the German school. In Rotterdam, by contrast, even fundamental disagreements about what is to be learnt from schoolbook examples are submitted by the teacher to an exhaustive (and, unmistakeably Dutch, inconclusive) process of chewing the cud until any and all normative conflicts have been rendered invisible and muted by exhaustion. In Paris, you will notice that such discussions were absent, but it was not for lack of trying to 13

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witness them: when a French schoolbook explains migration to France as a ‘demographic pressure’ of too many foreign adults having too many children, there is, within French classroom routines and the rationalizing methodology of French civil culture, no come-back against such a scientistic objectification. At the London school, all comparable opportunities to critique schoolbook wisdoms were relegated to private homework: ‘think about this tonight’, the instruction went, implying that the matter should now be left to each pupil’s private sphere.

Evidencing Civil Enculturation in Daily School Practice Civil enculturation, to sum up, combines three strands of learning and teaching participation in a nation-state’s civil culture: first, an understanding vis-à-vis civil society as a space of, relatively more or less, uncoerced association in the presence of a centralized state claiming to remain a nation-state; second, an understanding of the locally dominant civic culture, that is, the methods to structure the interactions of citizens and residents with the organs of the state, as well as the expected and sanctioned criteria of exercising ‘proper’ civility; and third, an understanding of, or at least familiarity with, the particular nationstate’s national imaginary. These three strands of inculcation are made possible by a recent shift, whether conscious or intuitive, pedagogical or political, from proving national superiority to privileging nationally-specific methods. How, then, can the analytic idea of civil enculturation be operationalised in an empirical study of daily realities at school? We have relied on two answers to this. The first was empirical, the second methodological. The empirical answer was simple: use the most detailed methods to observe and clarify what is happening in the classroom. We have aimed at a ‘thick description’ of what we could observe (Geertz 1993a), rather than at bloodless abstractions of what a theorist might have expected. Just like all other studies of civil society, a concrete understanding of civil enculturation ‘requires that careful attention be paid to a range of informal interpersonal practices overlooked by other disciplines’ (Hann and Dunn 1996: 3). Sometimes we have even taken the liberty of analysing the same case in more than one way. Thus, when the pupil Ferhat insists, in blatant opposition to his well-meaning German classroom material, that Gypsies may not require an excuse for thieving at all, and when the pupil Selim is imagined to ‘turn into a squirrel’, we have re-analysed these gems of classroom observation in different chapters and according to each chapter’s different analytic focus. We have thus done our best to apply classic anthropological methods to penetrate below the rhetorical surfaces and ideal-type programmatics enshrined in the school’s workaday pedagogical practice. The second, the methodological answer made use of these anthropological empirical 14

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approaches because of their special aptitude in dealing with collective representations. Schools convey representations, rather than unmediated imprints, of the crucial constellations: nation versus state, citizens versus newcomers, civil equality versus cultural difference, and even the attribution of individual merit or failure are refracted through a succession of interpretive lenses. Schools, to adapt two established oppositions, provide normative ‘models for ’, not descriptive ‘models of ’, nation-state realities as they are, and they draw up ‘charters for’, not ‘blueprints of ’ what they re-represent (Geertz 1993b; Malinowski 1922, 1948). It is part of their job, quite literally, to re-juvenate the civil societies that they serve and to turn private children into civic-minded adults (Madec and Murard 1995). Yet the civil societies, civic cultures, and national imaginaries that they serve up to their pupils are not unrefracted projections. Schools do not mirror realities, whatever these may be, but they re-represent and re-convey representations. Sometimes, the difference is so obvious as to strike one as surreal: Dutch history books deal with a region which has never been able to feed its population (hence the wax-wrapped Dutch cheeses traded for ship-building timber from Scandinavia to import wheat from the Baltic). Yet the history of the Netherlands as taught in various Dutch school books is the history of a Happy Island amidst the storms of past and present-day world power conflicts (see Chapter 2). Germany, the chaotic junction in the middle of Europe, is portrayed in German history books as an ethno-linguistic organism, almost a monadic cell, that germinated at its own peril. Such absurd representations, detailed in the body of this book, are only mentioned here to clarify the methodological point: schools deal in representations, and no repesentation should be confused with national or nation-state realities, however powerful the school as an institution may appear to its pupils or even to the reader. For a study of representations, however, the methods of anthropological research, that is, intense immersion and context-seeking analysis, are the methods of choice. They can document representations without sharing them, trace their efficacy without endorsing them, and contextualise cultural constellations without reifying them. Admittedly, it is easy, faced with the remarkable internal consistency of different civil cultures, to fall into the trap of reification: ‘French civil culture decrees’ and ‘German civil culture expects’ – these formulas are all too easy, especially if one tries to avoid jargon and circumlocutions while recognizing the general in the specific. Yet even if there are echos of essentialisation here and there, we would submit at least one mitigating factor. The usual drift of reification is to define the ‘minority cultures’, or in this case ‘minority pupils’, vis-àvis ‘the majority pupils’ or ‘the dominant culture’. To de-reify or de-essentialise ‘minorities’, however, can sometimes only be done at the expense of reifying the semblance of uniformity which they face: a powerful, self-positing, and often self-defining imaginary of nation-states and their civic cultures. If schoolbooks 15

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express ‘British’ as opposed to ‘other’ values and if teachers speak of ‘proper Germans’ as opposed to ‘mixed ones’, then certain reifications are part and parcel of the empirical data. Moreover, the powers of reification are, after all, powers: differentially distributed and used for very particular ends. As against this, we have shifted the burden of concretization away from the habitually-reified ‘minority pupils’ and dealt the false trump card back to those who played it first to label ‘others’. We have focused our observations of ethnic and cultural difference on what we call ‘Turkish youth’. The shorthand term is a misnomer since most of the these young people are neither born in Turkey nor even, or only, Turkish nationals. Yet the commonsense term seemed to us preferable to boring the reader with jargon (‘youth of (part-) Turkish descent’, not to speak of ‘pupils tracing their ancestry to [present-day] Turkey’). ‘Turkish youth’ is what the pupils call themselves in a vast variety of situations, meaning different things at different times; we saw no reasonable alternative. Why Turkish pupils though? Some reasons are easy to see: Turkish migration to Europe has a special interest not only numerically and economically in the four countries, but also raises crucial questions of civil rights and what politicians and pundits are pleased to call ‘integration’. One may further think of Turkey’s liminal position between a self-declared ‘West’ and its orientalised ‘East’ and its more than ambivalent reception even by the proponents of a ‘United Europe’. Speaking in terms of methodology rather than politics, a further factor is that Turkey has never been colonized. The historically special bond and the distancing that is at work between, say, Jamaicans and ‘native’ Britons, Surinamese and ‘native’ Dutch, or North Africans and ‘native’ French cannot be replicated in any other country in Europe. If one wants comparison, and a project such as this depends on it, it should not be over-determined by a specifically post-colonial set of bonds or aversions. With pupils who trace their descent to parents or grandparents born in Turkey, this is possible, feasible, and appropriate. There are differences, of course, even within this category. Mainland Turks, Cypriot Turks, and Turkish Kurds are obvious distinctions, and we shall refer to them whenever the data suggest that they are relevant. The topic of this analysis, however, is not ‘Turkish youth’ as such but, as the title says: ‘nation-state, schools, and ethnic difference.’ We therefore report the comments and arguments of ‘native’ pupils almost as much as those of ‘foreign’ ones. We also leave intact the discussions where pupils from Turkey are seconded or contradicted by other Muslim pupils from Somalia or Mauritius, just as we report ‘native’ pupils seeking the support of fellow pupils born in Bosnia or the Caribbean. How could one do otherwise when working in ‘mixed schools’ where different cultural identifications run across each other according to changing contexts? So far as there is a focus on ‘non-native’ pupils, it is for an obvious reason: if civil enculturation is the crucial mechanism of the post-nationalist nation-state school, then we need to focus on the non- or yet-to-be-nationals, the future citizens. 16

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Acknowledgements and Anonymity To gather, write up, compare and re-write our rich empirical evidence, we needed not only close-focus methods within each school, but also a large-focus lens so as not to lose our way in myopic details. To obtain this bigger picture, the Volkswagen Foundation enabled all researchers to visit each other’s schools and then critique each other’s accounts, swap responsibility for different chapters, and finally put their names to what they thought best and wanted to stand for as authors. This would have been impossible without the Volkswagen Foundation consistently thinking along with us, prepared to respond to changing needs and priorities, and giving us maximum liberty to adjust the internal division of labour as the project took empirical shape. We are at a loss for words with which to express our appreciation of so much flexibility (budget-neutral, we hasten to add) and ethnographic patience, but want in particular to thank Dr Hiltgund Jehle for her commitment and contribution. The result, needless to say, is not one homogenised account, written as it were by some Olympian intelligence presiding over 4 x 1200 pupils and 4 x 100 staff across four different countries. As Sabine Mannitz pointed out, a German researcher at a German school may be rather more critical of the school treatment of the national imaginary than a German-born researcher placed at a French school; the Dutch researcher in Rotterdam may be less critical about Dutch civil-cultural conventions than our Turkish-educated researcher was towards the British school’s agenda. There is no gainsaying such possible subjectivities of judgement, and we have done what we could to let each researcher experience the other schools and counteract another’s description or over-acceptance of ‘the normal course of events’. This has lead us to accept, and indeed embrace, some deliberate imbalances in the presentation of the data. ‘The German model…,’ so a deeply perceptive reader of the pre-publication manuscript observed, ‘ranks lowest in terms of the authors’ sympathy.’ Was this, we asked ourselves, because of, or despite, the fact that four of the eight participants in the project were born as German citizens and two as Turkish citizens? We cannot know, but have resolved, precisely for that reason, to maintain the slight but noticeable imbalance between more detail on the school in Germany and a little less detail on the other three. If it is true that the German case study shows the greatest difficulties of civil enculturation, then it also deserves slightly more space and detail so that we can see just why and how. One chapter (7) indeed singles out the comparison between Berlin and Paris to highlight the point on ‘Regimes of Discipline and Civil Conduct’ for these two schools, without labouring it for the other two. The greatest pleasure in this brief introduction is to thank the schools’ pupils and staff for co-operating with our research. Pupils, on the whole, were eager to talk to us and warmly tolerant of our sitting in on classes, talking to them afterwards, probing and asking questions. The staff of the schools, more remarkably 17

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perhaps, were co-operative beyond the demands of any courtesy. They talked to us, corrected us, and even shared their misgivings and doubts. We would love to acknowledge them by name; but the conventions of ethnographic anonymity do not allow for this. All schools have been given fictional names, all teachers and pupils have taken on noms de plume, and all local areas have been described without being named. To us, this was an almost melancholy duty, for there are plenty of pupils and staff whom we would rather thank in person and acknowledge by name. But the rules of propriety are as strict in publishing research as they are in civil culture.

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„ Part I „ FOUR CIVIL CULTURES AT SCHOOL

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„ 1„ The School as a Place in its Social Space Gerd Baumann and Thijl Sunier

In introducing the four schools we researched, we should focus on the most tangible impressions first: they are material spaces governed by rules and conventions of access and use, spatial management and daily hierarchies. More importantly, we argue, the patterns of delineating and using their spaces are indicative of their particular relationships with the society that surrounds them and the state that co-regulates them. In passing, this also provides a qualified answer to the blanket question of representation. No school is representative of any other, but most state-financed schools will reflect some crucial aspects of the nation-state whose civil culture informs them and is in turn spread by them. How a school negotiates its physical resources and its boundary with the outside is not a matter of haphazard contingencies but reflects, and symbolically embodies, certain assumptions about the role of schools with regard to the nation-state and civil society. To the casual visitor, these differences in emphasis and indeed civil-cultural ideals may not be apparent on a first visit, nor were they to the researchers on their first days at the schools. However, their mutual observations at each other’s schools produced pointed contrasts and surprising internal consistencies that would be hard to ascribe to chance or local contingencies. The spatial and social arrangements we observed are accessible, at least in their descriptive outlines, to any first-time visitor; what we add to these are our readings of their civil-cultural implications and rationales.

Paris: Republican Bastion amid the Banlieues The first thing that will strike a visitor to the school chosen for the project in 21

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Paris is its gate. The Lycée Fernand Braudel is in essence a comprehensive school, much like the other three schools in our project. It provides vocational training for the less successful, technical or clerical education for the more successful, and an academic education for the most successful. Yet all three socioeducational tiers are accommodated behind the same, instantly forbidding gate and a more than man-high metal fence which cordons off the entire site from the world outside. The visitor on the threshold of the gate has the distinct feeling of crossing a border: beyond it, life has different rules and routines that exist independently of the school’s surroundings. School is the realm where all young people come together to compete. French education must promise everyone three things: liberté from divisive roots, be they ethnic, religious or class-based; egalité of chances in an environment devoted to that purpose; and fraternité, or at least civility, among all those who have entered into this social contract. The school is the embodiment of the republican ideal at its best. The gate is a legitimate way to protect the school from the bondages, inequalities and rivalries that disturb and distort the outside. Lycée Fernand Braudel may strike the first-time visitor as a fortress, but it is by no means a prison. Rather, it is a bastion of that great project to forge an allencompassing state of equal treatment, equal competition and equal chances for all, under the flag, conceptualised and sometimes real, of a national project which transcends particularist differences. The gate may look forbidding, but the ideal is not. What this unitary republican ideal requires of you, though, is to abandon your differences before entering the great gate. If you cannot lay down your tribal dress or religious markers, your language or other marks of identity, then you may undermine the whole project and may well face censure and correction. The visitor will find no expressions of extra-republican identities in the corridors: no pupils’ collages of ‘Afro-Caribbean [sic] Vegetables’ or ‘Temples and Mosques in Our Town’, as we found in London, or posters of popular bands or comedians, as in the Rotterdam school. These are icons of particularism, that is, expressions that spell a disunity with the all-encompassing republican project. They refer to who you are, and that is no way to promote the equality of all. The republican school must keep differences out, hence the gate, for it is private cultural differences that contaminate attempts to establish civic equality. The logic is clear and needs no defence: it says what it does, and it does it systematically. Private difference, including cultural difference, is suspended during school hours: that is the essence of achieving civic equality, for which the school is the agent. The visitor will notice, or is likely be approached by, some adults who are neither pupils nor teachers. These are the surveillants, that is, school personnel who are responsible for discipline and order inside this separate realm. They may be university students doing this as a part-time job, conscientious objectors doing their community service, or local citizens on longer-term contracts. The 22

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practice is civil: surveillants are not, as a foreign visitor might think at first, a police force catapulted into the school to crack down on any breach of the rules. They have their routine observation posts in the corridors and in the school yard, but when seated at their desks and shuffling their lists and report forms, they appear much like the civil servants who fill the gap between citizens and their government. The logic of their calling is much the same. If school is the school of civic equality, then it should separate the discipline imposed on all pupils from the individual judgements of teachers or the context of any one lesson or class. Teachers are there to teach, and they teach the same to all, the grateful and the undisciplined. Surveillants are there to keep order for all, so that all, regardless of the milieu they come from, will make the most of their equality of chances. The visitor who has an appointment will be shown to the administrative wing. The corridors on the way were the cleanest of those in any of our schools, yet they are bare even of school-related identity icons: no photographs of ‘The Class of 79’ as in Rotterdam, let alone snapshots of ‘Year 6 Out Camping’ as in London, but announcements, usually official, and ‘naturally’ all in French. The door to the administration and staff wing is kept locked: one has to knock to be admitted and state one’s purpose in entering there. You will be received with faultless civility, of course, but you should remember that your errand should be serious and lucid if you wish to cross this border between the disorder outside and the order that inspires this realm. Should a member of staff invite you for lunch, you will be taken to the staff canteen, for staff and pupils do not, as in London, share the same queues or tables in order to have lunch. The school, to sum up the visitor’s recurrent impressions, is an island of rational order and educational equality amidst the visceral tensions and cultural inequalities that agitate the local and civil society outside. It is tempting, perhaps, to write this off as a ‘perfectly natural’ response to the social tensions prevalent in the surrounding banlieues; yet a comparison with the London school, which is situated in a district with equally grave social problems and conflicts, shows an entirely different approach.

London: Magnet for all Communities One could not invent a greater contrast to this island of the republic than the magnet of the communities represented by the London school. Huxley Comprehensive School is situated in a Greater London area of social problems and intense ethnic and class frictions. Any traditional pedagogue would volunteer his or her pay to give it an iron fence and a steel gate; in fact, it has such a gate, but it is usually kept open. Except at night, it was locked only once during the period of fieldwork, and this was regarded as an exceptional response to exceptional violence outside. Normally, Huxley Comprehensive is a school without a 23

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gate and even a school without a school-yard, something unthinkable in Paris or Berlin. Pupils stroll in and out as they please during breaks and free periods. Even without this peculiar lack, however, Huxley Comprehensive is the most open of the four schools to the surrounding society. You enter it, and you are in the middle of multi-ethnic London. The buildings, dilapidated 1970s ‘structures’, are like a battered old safe into which generations of the same family have stuffed their most precious belongings. Only, in this case, it is the second generations of an incalculable number of ‘cultural communities’ who exhibit their ‘cultures’ there. The classrooms and corridors are plastered with pupils’ drawings and collages. Their themes may range from ‘Healthy Eating: The Jamaican Way’ to ‘Environment Alarm: My Home in the Seychelles’. True, it is teachers who decide which works are worthy of public attention, but the idea is clear: all learning has a learner, and all learners have their cultures. These cultures are identities, and they should be shown and expressed during school hours, not suspended. If teachers use the wall space, it is to put up notices about ethnic or religious community meetings, to which the school opens its doors in the evenings, or about the wrongs of racial discrimination and, as one researcher writes, ‘every possible kind of politically correct information’. Official signposts and announcements also reflect the consciously multicultural vision of the British school as a mosaic of many identities co-existing under one roof. It is unclear how many ‘minority pupils’ can actually read the announcements translated back into their ‘community languages’, for few of them are fully literate in their mother tongues. Yet difference means variety, and variety is good. The visitor will also find this in the two canteens: rather than separating them between staff and pupils, as in Paris, the London school has one canteen which is cheap and cheerful, staffed by pupils on a rota basis, and another which employs a cook who has mastered eggplant curries and fried plantains with instant honey. However, the first-time visitor to Huxley Comprehensive may not want to stay for lunch: the general state of the buildings borders on the dilapidated, and Huxley is a space even more noisy and confusing than the London streets outside, for it has let in the street as part of the educational process. How on earth, or for that matter in London, can the school manage to perpetuate itself as a bounded entity? Here too, the answer is visual. Pupils wear the Huxley school uniform, and although there are heated arguments every day as to whether a particular baseball cap, pair of sneakers or T-shirt worn above the school shirt is compatible with the uniform, Huxley strikes one as a blue wave inscribed on more than a thousand bodies at once. This alone, the intextation (or rather, intextilisation) of a greater collective identity, is enough to create a sense of additional belonging. Belonging to the school cannot replace the sense of belonging to a culture, community or identity outside the school gate, and it is not meant to. As the school gate is open, so are negotiations over clothing. An effort should be made 24

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to render turbans or headscarves compatible with the colours of the uniform, but no-one should make such an effort that it denies their cultural specificity. The sense of a school community is also reinforced by the singular institution called ‘assembly’, that is, the daily practice of assembling all pupils and staff in the same place. Given the constraints of space, Huxley Comprehensive, like most schools in Britain, has had to compromise on this matter: there is no space that can hold over 1,200 pupils at the same time, so a rota of partial assemblies shares out the hall for each group of years to take its turn. Even 300 pupils, however, is a large crowd for anyone when the director or a head of department dispenses individual praise or condemnation in public. To praise or shame a single pupil in front of so many others is a remarkable way to create a community out of the anonymity and cultural diversity that, in the civil society outside, can be highly contoured and conflictual. But this civil society is not left outside, nor even excluded. Rather, the school invites it in and views it as part of its educational agenda. Pupils at Huxley may be honoured with a document called a ‘Citizenship Certificate’, a prize which the head of the school awards for ‘being particularly helpful or public-spirited inside or outside the school’ or ‘being helpful to other pupils or supportive towards the community and the school’. Citizenship is to be active, competent and committed. During the period of research the school held a special Citizenship Day. This included a workshop with police from the local police station, which was entitled ‘Know Your Rights’ and was especially focused on combining co-operative civility with an insistence on one’s civil rights when confronted with the frequent ‘stop-and-search’ activities meant to control the spread of drugs and knives. Other workshops run by local civil servants or at the initiative of invited citizens stressed the need for civic responsibility regarding the threats of environmental pollution, preventing HIV infection, and the public challenges of London’s chaotic traffic and transport system. The pinnacle of this multiculturally pluralist, yet tangibly inclusivist and overarchingly civic vision of a neo-national civil society is the contract. Parents and children sign printed forms which say: ‘I will not distract the driver whilst on the school bus’, ‘I will not damage anyone’s property whilst at school’, and I will not – if we can paraphrase freely – do anything else so un-Huxley. The form of the contract is of course fictional to the point of absurdity in such contexts. Yet its logic is simple: you promise your best, no matter where you come from, and we in turn will do our best, for now both you and your community are part of us.

Berlin: Absent Community, Abstract State Entering the Lise Meitner Schule in Berlin is a rather different affair: one of the researchers from another country walked past it three times before discovering 25

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that it was Lise Meitner. The Berlin school is surrounded by a perimeter fence much like its counterpart in Paris. But here the front gate is wide open and, just in case it is not, there is always an open door right beside it. Visually this makes for a strange combination, but some of the explanation lies in its unfortunate location as part of a semi-industrial landscape on the outskirts of its actual catchment area. Most of its pupils have to travel three or four stops by public transport to get there. At first we thought that this might be a significant difference between the schools. Then we found that pupils’ daily journeys are much the same in Paris, London or Rotterdam. The difference, however, lies in Lise Meitner School’s perceived social context and location. A comprehensive school like the other three, Lise Meitner School has been placed out on a limb not only geographically, but also politically. Having been built in the 1970s, the original building had to be closed because of asbestos problems and was pulled down in 1988. It was replaced with ten provisional lightweight construction huts which were meant to last for five years. That same year, 1988, plans were designed for a new school building, and the government of Berlin transferred the required sum of DM 80 million to the local authorities. Construction was meant to begin in 1996, but the local government changed its mind. Comprehensive schools no longer commanded the political support they had once enjoyed, and the DM 80 million were re-allocated to build a brand new secondary school (Gymnasium) in one of the neighbouring suburbs whose population was largely more upwardly mobile and middle class. Taken together with the general austerity politics that affected all German schools during the research period, it is not hard to imagine the effect of this disastrous turn of events. Staff morale is understandably low at times, and there is a recurrent feeling of having been pushed into the margins and left to fend for oneself by an uncaring and hostile political establishment. Yet the first-time visitor will not notice this. The atmosphere is friendly and cheerful, sometimes relaxed to the point of not caring. One of the visiting researchers put it in a nutshell, or should we say a dialectical vignette: ‘an engaging, if somewhat decaying Berlin chaos, where liberalism, laissez-faire and a combination of laziness and demotivation have produced a potent combination’. It is as if, in the words of another visiting researcher, Lise Meitner School still saw itself as a provisional solution and an interim staging post: ‘We’re all here now, and that’s more or less okay. But really, we should be somewhere else.’ To the first-time visitor, the space of the school does not look uninviting: the site is spacious and has some shrubs and greenery, as well as a little pond, and people use their physical environment as best they can. Nothing is as squeaky clean as in the Paris school, but then again, nothing looks as worn out as in the London school. There are problems, particularly in finding one’s way about. The Meitner’s layout is an architect’s meditation on the centrifugal. Each of the prefabricated buildings has its own staff room, and even well organized pupils will never know which teacher can be found where at any one time. There are two 26

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central spaces, one of them good enough for a Dutch school to call it an aula or a British school to call it ‘The Great Hall’. Yet nothing much happens here. The other is a space in one of the prefabs, called the ‘Communication Space’ (Kommunikationsraum) in a very Berlinese attempt to reform the German language. Here, one finds a photocopier, a notice board with all the day’s information from lessons cancelled to objects found, and, most importantly, a complete array of mail boxes for all the teachers one cannot find in person. This communications hub had to be declared out of bounds to pupils, since too many of them tried to use it. The school’s physical, budgetary and political marginalisation imposes visible limitations on its local links and its ability to organise extra-curricular activities. There is some openness nonetheless to the civil society within which it is placed. Materials showing citizens’ initiatives, and posters on the dangers of discrimination and injustice, racism and sexist attitudes, are freely displayed and considered part of the school’s educational function. It would be quite unthinkable, however, to emulate the London school and invite police for a Citizenship Day or to award a Citizenship Certificate for activity inside the school, let alone outside it. What links are sought with the state and its civic institutions are very much links in the abstract: messages, diffuse but pervasive, that political freedom and social justice depend on each individual’s commitment to act responsibly and constructively, and that democratic participation is both a virtue and a duty, to be exercised on the basis of the democratic order that is the only guarantor of liberty. The code word, freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung, is taken straight from the Constitution (Grundgesetz) of the Federal Republic, and Germans with a more critical mindset sometimes use the abbreviation FDGO to ironise its formulaic repetitiousness. Yet its normative claim feeds precisely on this cultivation of an abstract remoteness. It does not refer to any particular republican ideal of the sort implied in the French school, but nor does it engage with the tangible organs of the state that we saw being invited into the British school. Peculiar as Lise Meitner School’s distance from its local and political environment may appear at first sight, there is something unmistakably ‘Federal German’ in all this. The stress is placed on the abstract principle of a democratic order and on its internalisation by the responsible individual who must believe in it and serve it conscientiously. Less emphasis is given to state and objectified citizenship than is the case in the French school, and less on nationality and civil society than in the British school. We shall encounter this theme again when we enter the classrooms in the following chapters. 27

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Rotterdam: ‘Safe Haven’, but at the Management’s Discretion Entering the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam, the visitor has three choices, for although it is effectively a comprehensive school, like the other three, it is spread across three smaller sites that are separated from each other by a ten minute walk in each case. This is not so unusual in the Netherlands, where many comprehensive schools were formed by fusing existing ‘higher’, ‘lower’ and ‘middle’ schools into ‘school communities’ (scholengemeenschappen). This recognisably Dutch compromise was intended to avoid any politicised confrontations about ‘comprehensive’ as opposed to ‘class’ schooling of the sort that occurred, and continue to occur, in Britain and Germany. A Dutch visitor will know this, but a foreign visitor may need to be told it in advance. The Nikolaas Tinbergen Community of Schools is, to all intents and purposes, a comprehensive school like the other three, only with its Dutch peculiarities. The Netherlands operates on four rather than the usual three educational tiers, and although the Tinbergen offers no vocational branch (VBO) for the least successful, it comprises technical, clerical and academic tiers that approximate to the respective educational levels, called MAVO, HAVO and VWO, present at the school. Its lowest socio-educational tier, MAVO, is housed in a nondescript 1970s concrete block. As in the other three schools we researched, it is here that one finds the largest percentage of non-native pupils, politely relabelled ‘allochthonous’ (allochtoon) in a sort of neo-Greek neoDutch, the result of a well-meaning language reform devised by a social scientist and endorsed by civil servants in the 1980s. It was just as well that the language reform occurred in this case, for the technical site looks uncannily similar to what Dutch parents, media and even government ministers call a ‘black school’ (zwarte school), that is, a school that spirals into decline because it relies more and more on non-native intake. However, the most likely reception that the first-time visitor will receive at the technical site is, ‘You want to go to the school!’ The MAVO block may be functional and nothing to be ashamed of, but within the Tinbergen Community of Schools it partakes in all the aspirations and flair, the style and self-respect, that emanate from the other two buildings, one of which houses the lower grades, the other the upper grades of the clerical and academic streams. The best of the three buildings, which also houses the administration and facilities shared by all, is considered the centre of the school. Its architecture, dating back to the foundation of a ‘higher’ school in 1909–13, is representative of a then middle-class grammar school: high ceilings, wide windows, marble staircases, and a facade that radiates self-respect and ambition. Overlooking a little park on the other side of the road, this is a place to be proud of, and the staff of the Tinbergen are. Should graffiti appear, they are steam-cleaned regardless of expense; should any branch or class need somewhere to celebrate its achievements, a 28

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place is provided for the asking; and all official leaflets and brochures are adorned with the school’s emblem, its fine central building available to all. At first sight, this separation of educational streams into nondescript and uplifting buildings seems to spell an educational and class apartheid which denies both the comprehensive educational structure and the principle of socioethnic equality. It probably does, but there are two redeeming features. First, the Tinbergen School manages to straddle the social borders between a workingclass area of Rotterdam, ‘rough’ by most comparative standards, and a confirmed middle-class area that still recognises the school as its own. This is no mean feat in a country where anyone can send their children to any school they wish. Second, the semblance of spatial apartheid is bridged by an overarching and encompassing school identity. Every effort is made to let the finest building stand for the school as a whole and to inculcate in all pupils, and even parents, a corporate identity that is the Tinbergen community. The visitor will notice this as he finds his way to the director’s office. The corridors are adorned with photographs of the school as a social organism persisting through time: ‘The Class of 79’, ‘The Third Form in ‘99 on their Trip to “Cats”’ and all the ‘Illustrious Jubilees’ (lustra) of the school, celebrated every five years, as is usual in Holland. All these photographs embody one-hundredfold the same message as the school’s prospectus – ‘A School to Love’ (een school om van te houden) (Tinbergen prospectus for prospective parents, 1997: 14). Walking along these corridors, the visitor will glance at the teaching rooms. As in London, these do not belong to classes as such, but to teachers: so, on the whole, the pupils move while the teachers stay put. Teachers at the London school plaster their walls with pupils’ collages and drawings; teachers at the Rotterdam school decorate theirs with whatever they find attractive – and that includes their favourite pop stars or concert performances, art posters, cartoons, newspaper clippings or snapshots. It is as if the former reflected pupils back on to themselves while the latter projected themselves on to their pupils – less of the horizontal exchange that a visitor would notice at the British school, and slightly more of the vertical education that he or she would expect at the German school. The point, however, is simple: teachers are persons just like you, and so they should let you know who they are. The visitor without directions may accidentally pass a surprisingly unkempt locality known as De Ramses. The pharaonic name is a local coincidence not worth unravelling here; but in ‘The Ramses’, the pupil is king: this common room is ‘just as the kids want it’, with a table-football machine in one corner, a counter with food on it in another, badly repaired old settees elsewhere, and no concessions to civic order except a recent ban on smoking. Retracing his or her steps, the visitor will reach the administrative and staff wing and find, quite literally, that every door is open or at least ajar. No appointment is needed here, and even a first-year pupil can knock on the director’s door to ask to have a word. Acne or AIDS, bullies or parents: one may have to wait a bit, under29

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standably, but even in confidential matters, Dutch courtesy recommends lowering your voice rather than shutting the door. This, by the way, applies to all those who work in the public sphere, be they school staff or social workers, civil servants or university professors. Yet the Tinbergen’s egalitarian ethic remains entirely subject to the management’s discretion. Even physical access to buildings differs from site to site. The vocational 1970s block is sealed off from the outside by an iron gate. This was erected a few years before our period of fieldwork to keep out ‘undesirable elements’ from the ‘rough’ working-class area outside. The measure sounds extreme, but it was certainly not perceived as such: people get used to an iron gate much more readily than to body searches and metal detectors checking them for carrying drugs or knives. The main building, by contrast, is freely accessible, and casual visitors may not even encounter the concierge who is supposed to ask them the reason for their visit. Permeability toward the outside goes the other way, too: pupils who need a smoking break in-between lessons drift towards the little park across the road, while those with a free period may leave the premises unhindered. Again, the contrast is striking: here, iron fences for the technical stream; there, open doors for the more successful pupils. Interaction with the outside is tempered by considerations of pedagogical appropriateness, as well as, implicitly but unmistakably, notions of economic class and social hierarchy. Permeability, yes, but at the management’s discretion, please. The evening hours show the same measured approach inscribed by the authority of managerial rules. Unlike London, outside groups are not welcome, let alone invited, to use the school premises in the evening. No neighbourhood groups, community groups or civic initiatives here – however, the central building welcomes all pupils’ groups, parents’ groups, and the many pupil parties and discos in every branch of the school. It is here too that school classes may assemble in the evening for a joint trip to a theatre or a musical. Such evening and extra-curricular activities are, in fact, de rigueur: pupils are firmly expected to identify themselves as part of the Tinbergen community, and the official brochure for prospective parents takes a high moral tone: We feel that we would be failing as a school if we were to limit our mission to marks and final results. What is crucial to us is to create a school that can offer both quality education and a good pupils’ party, both successful exam results and a good atmosphere in the classroom. However important results may be, the life of children should be more than that, and our school is responsible for both dimensions… Pupils whose parents are only interested in classroom results will not succeed at our school. (Tinbergen School 1997)

The Dutch school insists far more explicitly than even the French school that it must create new civic and civil personalities, young people who can relate to 30

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others regardless of parental strictures or visions. Extra-curricular activities are part of this process, and parents who want social mobility for their children without them undergoing an applied civil enculturation into the school community are explicitly discouraged from applying for a place. This is all the more remarkable, as only Dutch schools among those in the four nation-states are free to seek – but also depend upon seeking – their intake regardless of local residence. Yet what such an option makes available is a feeling of collective belonging in what pupils and teachers sometimes call a ‘safe haven’ (veilige haven), a refuge from the ebb and flow that might disturb the civil society outside, but accessible to all who will submit to the harbourmaster’s benevolent authority.

Conclusion: The School vis-à-vis State and Society None of these schools are representative, of course, of any other school in the same country. Schools are real, civil cultures a heuristic abstraction. What makes them comparable, however, are such factors as their comprehensiveness and thus their socially varied intake, their funding and running as state-financed institutions, open, at least in principle, to all residents’ children, and their location in or at the edge of an area of suburban social problems and inter-ethnic tensions. What makes them contrastable, so far as their nation-state and civilcultural dimensions are concerned, are their different positionings in terms of their local areas, the surrounding civil society, and the state conceived of as a nation-state. In the Lycée Fernand Braudel in Paris, it is certain values of the republic that are embodied, as well as being protected from the cultural variety and social disorder of the surrounding area. Its responsibility is not to society as it is, but society as it should be, that is, to the ideal of a republic that reaches across all sectional interests and cultural identifications. One may choose the symbol of the school gate or the entrance to the staff wing to recognise the general in the specific. The gate, fence and staff doors at Paris are to keep out the disorder and chaos of a civil society divided by irrational conflicts. They protect a better world inside, where competition is rational, discipline anonymous, and success a matter of fitting oneself into a liberating sameness. In the Huxley school in London, it is the values of the surrounding local community and civil society that are enthusiastically invited in and built in, sometimes to the point of reification. Certainly the state is not absent: there is the National Curriculum and the all-powerful monitoring body known as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools, not to mention the dreaded Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted). Yet in daily practice, the school addresses itself to its local civil society and supports a composite ‘multicultural nation’ rather than a nation-state as an arbiter of a unifying ideal. The school gate is there, but it is open. 31

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The Lise Meitner school in Berlin would appear closer to the British than to the French end of this continuum, despite its topographic isolation from the local community it serves. As elsewhere in German schools, most of its staff have been influenced by the thinking of the 1968 students’ movements, the 1970s’ stress on gender equality, and the 1980s’ stress on pacifism and individual conscience. At Lise Meitner school, these benchmarks are in fact more pronounced than in the local, city or Land (provincial) authorities that the school has had to do battle with. What tends towards the French vision, however, is an abstract but nonetheless coercive notion of the freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung, that is, the Constitution of the Federal Republic (1948), as the only guarantor of civil liberty by means of majority decisions reached by elected representatives. If this abstract but nonetheless state-related loyalty is recognised alongside the way in which the school distances itself from the authorities of the state, then the Berlin school falls halfway between the state-focused vision of the French school and the social vision of the British school. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam probably gravitates, like most Dutch schools, towards the British commitment to society over and above the state. This choice is stronger here than it is in Germany, for, after all, no one has ever been allowed to doubt over the past half-century that tolerance, inclusiveness and consensus are quintessentially Dutch. This vision comes with a price tag, of course: the price of a vague consensus is indecision, and the cost of blurring all lines of conflict is the fudging of all issues. The state of the Netherlands can do this, and even the national government tends to portray itself as a mere echo of civil society, in its striving for consensus. A school, on the other hand, cannot fudge all the issues that arise with quite such ease, and so the Tinbergen school makes deliberate attempts to calibrate the permeability of its social boundaries. The surrounding local society is excluded if it includes drug dealers and knife merchants, as in the vocational block; it is accessible if it offers a park to smoke in or a theatre for a class trip. Civil society at large, however, must not enter the school. Much as in Paris, and unlike in London, the school is not a place, even in the evenings, to be used by community groups or civic initiatives. Social embedding is welcome, as it is in London and, to an extent, in Berlin. But it is welcome only if it is carried into the school by the school’s own staff. We have come some way from describing physical spaces to recognizing the imprint of the general in the specific; the first-time visitor with whom we started would have to revisit, compare and contrast the schools more systematically and over a longer period of time, just as the research team did. The differences among the four nation-state models of civil enculturation at school will emerge far more clearly, of course, when we enter the classrooms themselves and observe daily practice, including exceptions and inconsistencies. This is the task of the following chapters.

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„ 2„ Representing the Nation in History Textbooks Werner Schiffauer and Thijl Sunier

History textbooks are an excellent source for the analysis of national imaginaries. Moral communities are constructed by presenting the history of the collective to the next generation. In history textbooks a selective approach is taken to the past, by choosing what is considered necessary to better understand the present and omit what is considered irrelevant. They thus constitute an ‘intentional, maybe even tendentious, literature’ (Jacobmeyer 1992: 376). History textbooks highlight quintessential lessons of the past for the present, and by doing so define the future. It is through such textbooks that the notion of ‘what a nation stands for’ is passed from one generation to the next.1 The concepts presented are, of course, not to be confounded with reality: they reflect how the nation wants itself to be (or what it wants to be seen as), rather than what it actually is. As in every socialisation process, children are not confronted with social life as it is but as it should be, sometimes in an almost self-stereotypical way. However, this does not mean that it is meaningless. On the contrary, principles of legitimacy are defined by transmitting how civil society should be dealt with, who should participate and how solutions should be found. In analysing the underlying assumptions about what being British, French, Dutch and German is all about, we refer to the history textbooks used in the four schools, presenting extracts that we have translated ourselves. We are aware of the dangers of over-interpretation in this context, since indeed, only the one textbook series that is used in that particular French, German, British or Dutch school is analysed. Thus it could be argued that, from a very small group of sources, far-reaching conclusions are drawn. This appears to be particularly problematic with regard to Germany where the federal structure of the educational system means that no curricula exists, only guidelines and recommendations issued by the ministries of culture. This leads to greater variation between existing textbook-series than in the other countries. However, the comparative research project: ‘Rethinking Nation-State Identities in the New Europe’ has 33

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shown that differences are mainly due to the degree of sophistication and analytical differentiation, and those regarding the construction of nationality are fairly minor (Bertilotti, Mannitz and Soysal 2002). The findings of the research group are reflected in the attitude of the teachers of Lise Meitner school. The history textbook series used at the Lise Meitner school (‘Die Reise in die Vergangenheit’) clearly belongs to the less analytic ones on the market. Although the teachers were quite aware of its shortcomings they decided to use it. Among the arguments brought forth was that the simplicity of the argument made it particularly suitable for the students of this school many of whom had difficulties with German language. It was considered to be less sophisticated than other textbook series but not to be false or politically incorrect. So generalisations on the conceptual level are possible, but they should be taken with a grain of salt: it should be kept in mind that they are necessarily simplifications.

Britain ‘Forming an identity, developing a sense of belonging, understanding one’s own and others’ cultures’ is a declared aim, alongside the imparting of knowledge, of the England-wide compulsory foundation subject, history. In its final report of July 1990, the National Curriculum2 History Working Group described these aims in more detail. The aim of history lessons is to help understand the present in the context of the past; to arouse interest in the past; to help to give pupils a sense of identity and an understanding of their own cultural roots and shared inheritances; to contribute to pupils’ knowledge and understanding of other countries and other cultures in the modern world; to train the mind by means of disciplined study; to introduce pupils to the distinctive methodology of historians; to enrich other areas of the curriculum; and finally, to prepare pupils for adult life. The same report also argues that Britain is a country of cultural diversity, meaning that no standard or uniform cultural package should be imposed on young people. The diverse roots of British identity should generate tolerance and respect for other cultures among pupils. The authors of the National Curriculum believe that teaching history offers effective means to prepare young people for citizenship: learning about culture, beliefs, customs and institutions will, together with shared experiences, enhance their identities and develop awareness. These general guidelines clearly determine the contents of a textbook entitled A Changing Nation (1994; in what follows, ACN) used in Huxley Comprehensive. The book raises the question of national identity by discussing three topics that are directly related to it: the experience of immigration, Welsh nationalism, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. The introduction reads as follows: 34

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Most of you reading this book are citizens of a country called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That means you are British. For many people this is important. They are proud to be British and they like their country. But what does being British really mean? (ACN: 2)

The answer is brief: it cannot easily be defined. The United Kingdom is a composite of heterogeneous parts: ‘The laws of Scotland differ from those of England and Wales. The British army has Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English regiments. There is a Church of England and a Church of Scotland. Schoolchildren in Scotland do not follow the same courses or take the same examinations as schoolchildren south of the border’ (ibid.: 2). After examining the legal framework, it proceeds to state that neither self-perception nor language are uniform (‘a recent survey of London showed that pupils there speak 147 different languages’: ibid.). This point of departure can be read as an endorsement of heterogeneity. Inner plurality is emphasized. The reference to well-established institutions like the church and the army is reassuring: plurality is something natural and good. Dealing with difference is something we have been doing all along. It is in this kind of framework that immigration is discussed. The depiction of immigration proper starts with Jewish immigration between 1880 and 1900, continues with Polish and Jewish migration during World War II, and then moves to the post-war immigration of Irish, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians and finally Asian immigrants from East Africa. Again the rather extended historical depth carries the reassuring message that immigration is nothing new. The next two chapters reconstruct the experience of post-war immigration proper, using a combination of descriptive passages and sound bites. The reader is invited to share the immigrant’s view. Situations of exclusion and discrimination are narrated, and the complexities and difficulties of immigrating are analysed, such as the widespread ambivalence between aspirations towards integration and fears of losing one’s children in the very same process. The ‘only’ thing actually new about post-war immigration is skin colour. This message regarding immigration is given in the form of a quotation from Dilip Hiro’s book, Black British, White British (1991): The basic question to ask is: are we to remain prisoners of the past, insisting on an…image of a Briton as a person who is white, Christian, clean shaven, wearing a suit or a shirt? Or should we start conceiving a pluralistic image of being a Briton, possibly black or brown, Hindu or Muslim, wearing a turban, a kanga, a sari? (quoted in ACN: 13)

A threefold message can be drawn from this first chapter: first, the problem lies in the dynamics of ‘white rejection, black withdrawal’; second, we can tackle this problem by updating the concept of Britishness. This would be less a redefinition than an extension: new collective actors would just be added to the 35

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existing ones; third, the situation is too complex to allow for simple solutions; but then, Britons are used to solving complex problems. The third point is taken up again in the second chapter devoted to Welsh nationalism. In answering the question in the heading: ‘Why Welsh nationalism?’, the triad ‘culture-community-identity’, which defines the dominant discourse on culture (Baumann 1996), is invoked: Language is the fruit of society, is essential to civilisation, and is the treasury of all the experiences and memories of a nation. It keeps the visions and desires and dreams of the nation and treasures them in literature. It holds the memory of a nation, its knowledge of its beginnings, of its youth, its suffering, its problems and its victories – all that constitutes the history of a nation. (ACN: 14)

Language very clearly is much more than just a means of communication: it is the basis of culture and identity. The development of Welsh nationalism is portrayed as a drama in two acts. Act 1 describes how ignorance of Walsh considerations in combination with technocratic rationality led to dam building and the drowning of several Welsh valleys (in one case accepting the fact that a village was destroyed). The protest movement against these measures strengthened the Welsh nationalist movement, which ultimately resorted to violent action. Act 2 describes how the acceptance of a devolution scheme by the central government weakened the nationalists. ‘In 1979 Welsh and Scottish voters were able to show in a referendum what they thought about devolution. In Wales only a fifth of voters supported the measure…’ (ACN: 16). The lesson is very clear: pragmatic solutions which pay respect to the culture of the people pay off; dogmatism, on the other hand, does not provide a solution. If you don’t force people to stay in the Union, they will stay of their own free will: dealing with differences in a sensible way allows one to find solutions. The Welsh gained ground with regard to the language question, but (in 1979, at least) they voted against devolution (ACN: 16). It is remarkable to see the issue of cultural difference being raised in the history book with regard to a group whose belonging to Britain is uncontested. Nobody in England wants to separate from Wales. The lesson thus learned is now applied to migrant groups whose status is less clear. In a study task in the book, pupils are given the following question: ‘What similarities are there between Greek Cypriots in London wanting their children to learn Greek, and Welsh nationalists wanting to preserve the Welsh language?’ While the example of Wales demonstrates that solutions can be found if people are reasonable, the conflict in Northern Ireland shows what happens when they are unreasonable: factions harden, and problems can no longer be solved. The problems began with ‘gerrymandering’. In 1922 the voting districts were redrawn in such a way that they systematically discriminated against Catholic voters. This unfair treatment of a minority by a majority led to a hardening of 36

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the divisions between Catholics and Protestants and in the long run created the violence that has been disrupting Northern Ireland since 1968. Another lesson that can be drawn from Northern Ireland is that state intervention usually comes too late and does not bring about a real solution: that can only be found by the people themselves. Thus the schoolbook offers a vision of a multicultural civil society: solutions can be found by respecting the other’s culture. The acting units in this context are cultural communities (between which the boundaries seem to be clear): the Scottish, the Welsh, the Pakistani. An equation between ‘community–culture–identity’ is the basis of this concept. This has some superficial similarities to romantic concepts of culture, but in fact seems to be more rooted in the imperial tradition, it being necessary to broadly classify a number of peoples in a more or less pragmatic fashion. Unlike the romantic tradition, the prototype is not the dispersed but yet integrated whole body, but the confrontation with others who need to be categorised. However, this message is not only present in the narratives formulated in the book, it is also implied in the very structure of the study unit. Here a problemoriented approach is chosen, as in the other books in the series. The titles of the subchapters are formulated as open questions. Take, for example, the chapter on Ireland: ‘How did Protestants get more power than Catholics?’; ‘Why were Catholics and Protestants so divided?’; ‘Why did “the Troubles” begin in 1969?’; ‘Why was there so much violence in Northern Ireland between 1969–1972?’. Pupils are given the necessary information to answer these questions. This approach to history stresses its synchronic rather than its diachronic character: there is an interest in showing the embeddedness of a particular problem in a specific context rather than in reconstructing a systematic sequence of events aimed at locating the roots somewhere in the past. Knowledge is clearly not an aim in itself but something which serves to understand the world and deal with it as it is. This is the same message that is conveyed in the overall curriculum, showing that a pragmatic (rather than a systematic) approach is being favoured. The institutional translation of these virtues is, of course, British democracy: ‘The British Parliament is the mother of parliaments.’ Pupils are taught to be confident and proud of the problem-solving capacity of British tradition. It stood up to the test, in particular in the 1920s and 1930s. Different ways of dealing with the economic depression of 1929 to 1933 are set into sharp contrast by comparing Britain and the Weimar Republic: the Germans failed to deal with the economic crisis, which finally resulted in the complete destruction of democracy. The inefficiency of political mechanisms in Germany during the 1920s is made responsible for the rise of the National Socialist Party under Hitler. Conversely, the way in which contemporary British politicians reacted to the economic crisis is portrayed as having caused the failure of fascist movements in Britain. Since British politicians managed to keep political fragmentation and polarisation at a minimum by holding on to power, they prevented the 37

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emergence of a power vacuum and thus prevented fascism from winning over vast numbers of people. Although Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government was not able to develop satisfactory solutions to the problems brought about by economic depression either, it at least ensured that political stability continued and that the democratic order survived. The positive lesson about Britishness seems to be to remain cool-headed even in the most turbulent situations. When others lost their heads, dismissed democratic principles, fell victim to irrationality and thus brought about disaster, the British pulled themselves together and prevented the worst. To sum up, what Britain stands for, in one word, is reasonableness. The British virtue is to be coolheaded and to be able to find pragmatic solutions which respect the ‘culture–identity–community’ nexus of each of the groups which constitute Britain. The common good is reached best by fair and reasonable treatment in inter-group relations. Boundaries should be respected, because otherwise they would harden.

France The history textbooks used in France reflect a completely different approach. Whereas British books are problem-oriented (and very selective), French books try to give a comprehensive picture of the historical process. The whole undertaking can be described in one word: ‘rationality’. Modern history is presented as a series of revolutionary re-constructions. Dates like 1789, 1830 and 1848 mark phases in the battle of rationality against irrationality. It seems as if, in these revolutionary processes, a (relatively) rational order is erected for a certain time, only to become threatened again by new social developments. Reactionary forces which have been silenced for the time being start to be articulated again; new classes emerge and pose new problems, and a new revolutionary adjustment has to take place. The period between 1815 and 1848, for example, brought about two revolutions: ‘that of 1830, due to the conservative politics of the Ultras, who were hostile to liberalism; and that of 1848, which was related to a serious economic and social crisis and to the immobility of the government of Louis Philippe’ (Histoire, classe de seconde 1996: 244 in what follows HCS). Revolutions are thus both purgatory and constructive. The old order is adapted to new historical situations. The overall positive evaluation of the revolutionary process is underlined by the remarkable absence of the transformation of the revolutionary spirit into the regimes of the Terror and of Napoleon Bonaparte. History thus depicted has a clear direction. It can therefore be described as a battle between progressive and reactionary tendencies: The French Revolution nourished revolutionary movements in Latin America at the beginning of the nineteenth century and those in Europe in 1830 and 1848. In 38

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France it stimulated the republican spirit under the Second Empire and was sanctified under the Third Republic, which created the French national anthem ‘La Marseilleise’ and turned the 14th of July into a national holiday. The basic principles of 1789, which were rejected by reactionary currents and by the Vichy regime, were taken up and broadened in the post-war constitutions, which turned them into the basic principles which today are almost unanimously recognised, without, however, always being respected in everyday life. (HCS: 227)

This implies a linear conception of history and allows balanced assessments to be made. This is an exercise that French pupils are asked to do over and over again. Take, for example, the assessment for 1815, asking the question whether the Napoleonic wars had been good or the bad for the conquered peoples: Liberation or enslavement of peoples? – The end of the state society. After 1815 it was difficult for the countries that had been annexed or dominated by France to reverse the social transformation which had been brought about by the abolition of privileges, serfdom, the title and feudal rights. – The abolition of privileges brought about a class society characterised by a relative weakening of the landed aristocracy and an impulse to the business and financial bourgeoisie, as well as to rich peasants, who were the main beneficiaries of the sale of church property. – The persistence of inequalities. In the countryside the disappearance of communal practice and the reinforcement of small property-ownership rendered problematic the situation of peasants without land… (HCS: 220)

Two forces are thus battling with each other: a progressive force, aiming at more equality and the abolition of privileges; and a reactionary force seeking to establish inequality and domination. The emphasis on progress bears witness to the ideal of enlightenment. Equality is progressive and rational because it is emancipatory: the ideal is the liberation of mankind from the inhibiting ties of established order. This has not only a social but also a cognitive aspect: the emancipation of primordial (irrational) ties has a strict parallel in the emancipation of preconceived notions and stereotypes. ‘Rationality’, in this philosophy of history, must therefore be taken in a very broad sense of the term, covering also the history of the human mind, that is, human civilization. An exceptional amount of space is devoted to art. Pupils are taught systematically to interpret art as a reflection of the historical process. Culture – or rather civilisation – in this context means something completely different than the (romantic) British concept of ‘culture–community–identity’. The British concept of separate cultures that have to be judged in their own right is alien to such an understanding. In a way, the French conception of history is culture-blind: the unilinearity of history (or the civilizational process) goes hand in hand with the idea of the 39

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irrelevance of primordial cultures. This dimension becomes even clearer when we consider the treatment of religion. Religion is also inscribed into the broader process of the development of the human mind and rationality. It has left its influence on civilization: Christianity has left a deep imprint on western civilization: our language, our customs, our cultural past, our environment, are full of Christian traditions. Nowadays, many inhabitants of the planet are receptive to Christianity, which is still one of the most widely followed religions of the world. (HCS 1996: 45)

One may note in passing the encompassing ‘our’. However, the great period of religion lay in the past. In Histoire, classe de première (HCP) it is argued that religion has come under pressure in modern times. Following an account of how different popes reacted to the challenges of urbanisation, liberalism and ‘scientism’, the argument is summed up as follows: Without returning to the condemnation of modern ideas formulated by his predecessor Pius IX, the new pope, Leo XIII (1878–1903), set out to try and reconcile the church with the age. His successor, Pius X (1903–1914), would again show a more inflexible attitude with regard to doctrine as well as politics. (HCP: 11)

Confronted with the present-day situation, religion is remarkably helpless, adaptive at best, reactionary at worst. Religion thus conceived is historicised. It is seen as a force that has made historically valuable contributions to the process of civilization at times, but as such it is outdated. It is clearly not an aspect of human existence which has value in itself regardless of the historical situation. In the present situation it is therefore left off the school curriculum in its entirety.3 This concept of Civilisation is broader than that of an elite or avant-garde culture (Hochkultur). It is conceived as the symbolic capacity of the human mind, of its ability of representation. It is the classic concept of a universal culture that is being put forward here. On the other hand the elitist aspect of modern art, to take one example, is in a way contradictory to the very ideal of equality: Despite the democratic process of democracy and education in many countries, culture remained the prerogative of a social minority at the end of the nineteenth century. The urban classes especially became the consumers of mass culture distributed by the press and popular literature.… The popular classes may have rejected bourgeois culture, but on the other hand they adapted modern sport, which had been born in the English universities in the nineteenth century. (HCP 1988: 42 in what follows: HCP)

The reassuring message being formulated here is that the lower classes have also contributed to universal culture and thus to the progress of mankind. The 40

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romantic concept of culture (‘culture–identity–community’) is completely absent from French books. It is as if all mankind were engaged in one and the same common enterprise, different nations contributing more or less to it in different periods. Rationality is not something limited to a people or a nation. Different nations can play the role of an avant-garde for a certain period of time. Although France has contributed to this process all through history, its absolutely unique contribution consisted in establishing the republican principles of the Revolution. The ‘fundamental role’ of France in the world is described with reference to the great past: – The memory of the French Revolution, of the ‘Great Nation’ which brought to the world new ideas of liberty and the right of people to decide for themselves; – A liberal democracy which, for the first time in Europe, established the universal right to vote: the model for republican states; – The country (la patrie) of the idea of progress, the ‘soldier of the ideal’. (Histoire, classe de première: 87)

Thus a vision and a mission are formulated simultaneously. The French Revolution is not a ‘French’ revolution but the revolution of mankind. In this way French books make much broader reference to Europe or to the global situation than do German or English books. In this book too, the message is contained not only in the facts presented, but indeed in the approach taken. The book aims to teach pupils an almost scientific approach to history. It is a combination of documents (going far beyond the ‘sound bites’ in the British example), a clearly structured presentation of historical development, and ample use of aptly selected maps, graphs and statistics. More descriptive passages are interrupted by set tasks such as ‘Compare the first and second industrial revolutions’; ’Comment on statistical documents: Great Britain and the World Economy at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’; ‘Prepare a dossier on La Belle Epoque’; ‘Study a Painting: Picasso and the Birth of Cubism (Les demoiselles d’Avignon)’; ‘Interpret a Text: The Fashoda Incident’; ‘Develop a Project for a Dissertation: The Beginnings of American Imperialism’. All such set tasks consist of a section explaining the method, give a step-by-step introduction, and provide sources. Thus pupils are taught to approach history in a critical, methodical and systematic manner. In acquiring history in this way, pupils are being prepared to participate in the project of what history is all about – the struggle of rationality against irrationality. British children learn to be reasonable and to respect boundaries; French children learn to judge.4 In learning history, French children learn criteria which will enable them to form an opinion about the rationality or irrationality of social and cultural developments. They are supposed to learn how to take a critical stance towards the world, and to engage in the political process. 41

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Netherlands As in the British case, the history textbooks used at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam are problem-oriented and selective with respect to the themes being treated. However, unlike the British themes of what society consists of, the Dutch themes focus on how society functions. As one teacher put it: chosen themes are not event-oriented: they are system-oriented, apparently serving as examples. There are, of course, history teachers who still think that we must know about, say, the Russian Revolution or Charlemagne just because they are historical facts, but more and more teachers see history as a kind of historical sociology of our own society. We instruct children about Greek democracy as an example of our own democracy, not so much as an example of an ancient civilization. We want the children to be democratic citizens and, of course, in this way we are actually affirming and legitimising the present-day system.

The three books for the third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades read almost like a manual for civil education: what are the basic principles of our social system, and how must individual members act according to these principles? 5 The Dutch nation state shares with all western nation-states the basic principles of the constitutional state. Like France, Great Britain and the United States of America (and unlike Germany and Japan) its system is based on the ‘liberal-democratic model’ (5/6 VWO: 106).6 But even these other states have faced turmoil and revolution – why not the ‘Low Countries’ (Netherlands and Belgium)? The chapters start with an intriguing statement comparing the situation in Lebanon and Northern Ireland with that in the Netherlands. The examples, though no longer very recent, have probably been chosen to demonstrate that the Dutch nation state is as multi-confessional as the other two – but in contrast to them ‘the Netherlands works’. In Lebanon and Northern Ireland people from all kinds of groups and social strata kill each other because they do not recognise the state institutions of their country and do not obey the authorities. The cause of this rebellion is related to the failing state-formation in these countries. Without being self-satisfied, Belgians and Dutch can be happy that history took a different course in the Low Countries. They can walk out of their front doors without shell splinters flying around their ears. Why is this so? (5/6 VWO: 106)

The answer to this question is given in the form of a historical account of the development of the Dutch nation-state. State-formation in the Netherlands is traced back to the sixteenth century. At a relatively early stage the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and workers were able to challenge the aristocracy. Citizens were able to obtain their proper influence over political decision-making through 42

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a series of insurrections against absolutist power and foreign potentates. These insurrections were not so much aimed at replacing one grand political system by another, but rather at creating autonomy and independence. A line of continuity is drawn from the democracy of the ancient Greeks, city-states like Siena and the present-day Netherlands. This led to the development of ‘real’ democracy in which everybody strives for a certain autonomy without slipping into anarchy. This is possible because of a basic commitment to the structural whole, the nation. Contemporary Dutch history shows that this particular political ideal is reached in a step-by-step process. There is thus an emphasis on the unity of the Dutch nation. In that sense it is different from the Belgian nation, which is divided into three language communities still facing difficulties in becoming one integrated whole. The Dutch nation, on the other hand, has managed to develop into a unity without neglecting its internal diversity. The same thread in almost all the chapters is the imaginary of the Dutch nation-state as the result of an evolutionary development by way of trial and error to a peaceful society in which everybody has his or her (equal) share without being uniform – equality but not uniformity. It is not the history of grand universal ideas, of the struggle between evil and good, nor the history of great men who led us to victory – it is the history of ordinary people taking part in a political community and by doing so contributing to the development of that community, even when they have different opinions. It is an account of a certain type of morality allowing for democracy, negotiation and inclusion – the very essence of Dutch civil culture. Society is conceived of as consisting of individuals with different life-styles, opinions and backgrounds. In order to be able to live peacefully, they must adopt a system that ensures optimal application of these principles. What counts is the fact that there is diversity of all sorts, and more importantly ways of dealing with this diversity. The implication of all this is that the Netherlands managed to organise the peaceful cohabitation of religious minorities by ‘not making an issue of the differences’ but rather by ‘playing them low key’. Religion is in a way conceived of as matter of opinion, culture as a matter of subculture and life-style, ethnicity as a matter of background. Diversity in terms of religion, culture and ethnicity is thus recognised but treated as individual options. Collective rights, which figure so prominently in the British concept of a multicultural society, are not provided for in this construction. In this context the questions asked of history are not, how did things become what they are now, but how did people manage to come closer to these ideals? The interest lies in structure and function rather than historical development. The topic that indeed comes up in most chapters is democracy. In more than half of the chapters of the books analysed, it is the main issue discussed. Democracy, according to these texts, is closely linked to citizenship, to a particular idea about who belongs to the political community. The two books for the highest grades start with a chapter on ancient Greek democracy and show that 43

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‘our’ ideal of democracy has much in common with that of the ancient Greeks. Democracy is not so much the risen phoenix following the war against tyranny (Germany) or the victory over irrationality (France). It is not even the same as British tolerance, it is participation. It is the process that is relevant. ….all free adult male inhabitants of Athens could discuss and vote on state issues. Athenian democracy had no parliament. It was a direct democracy. In order to function properly the active participation of as many citizens as possible was necessary. The principle that asks for such a strong commitment is called participation. (5/6 VWO: 11; italics in the original)

The chapter Subjects or Citizens (3 VWO/HAVO) explains that since the introduction of the constitution in 1848 and the parliamentary system in 1868, not much has been changed with respect to the type of democracy ‘we have in the Netherlands’. What did change fundamentally, however, was the sections of the population who were entitled to take part in the democratic process. The culture of participation was developed with the inclusion of new groups: As a consequence of the introduction of general voting rights with a system of equal representation, it seemed as if the Netherlands had an almost ideal type of governance. Every adult now had an influence on politics—at least, that was what it looked like. All kinds of groups, large and small, could, once they were able to reach the electoral quota, enter Parliament. The number of parties grew rapidly after 1918. That was very democratic, but what consequences did it have for the administration of the country? The political programme of the government cannot but be the result of compromises… Reaching compromises is always somewhat unsatisfactory: one is not able to realise all one’s plans. But this is probably the only solution for the Netherlands [our emphasis]. Our country seems to have consisted of minorities from the beginning of the century onwards. (3 VWO/HAVO: 106)

This is followed by a description of the methods by which citizens are able to exert influence over the political process, including civil disobedience, collective action, petitioning and so on. At the end the lesson to be drawn is summarised: ‘Be informed about what happens in your municipality: you are able to exert influence!’ (3 VWO/HAVO: 124). It is not only here that civil disobedience is taught as a means of democratic participation. The 4/5 HAVO book raises the question of whether civil disobedience is legitimate in a democratic, free society. Are citizens not obliged to obey the laws that have been adopted by the parliament they themselves have elected? One example discussed is squatter actions in big cities.7 The answer is not given directly but in the form of a question: Can we call collective action by squatters civil disobedience? The squatters referred to their basic living rights (woonrecht, meaning that once you live somewhere you 44

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cannot be thrown out). How can this woonrecht be applied when house owners keep their houses empty in order to be able to sell them for high prices? (4/5 HAVO: 52)

The clear implication is that there are situations in which civil disobedience is legitimate. The description of the uprisings in the 1960s is particularly remarkable. Although this period is referred to as one in which the ‘harmony model’ was replaced by a ‘conflict model’, it is not the fundamental clash between ideals that is emphasised, but the growing diversity of society. The protest showed how differences in life-style, sexual and marital preferences, and opinions, in short, diversification, grew after World War II. This again is implicitly considered an advantage of Dutch society. The smoke bombs thrown during the public wedding of Queen Beatrix by provos (a youth protest movement in the 1960s) might have caused a lot of turmoil at that time, but there was, after all, no danger to the system in it: it was first and foremost ludiek (‘playful’, ‘original’, ‘funny’, ‘unconventional’). The relativising undertone is striking: more important than the violation of rules was the fact that these youngsters were basically committed to the same fundamental ideals: It was mainly democratisation and liberalisation that young people were expressing. That is to say, greater control by citizens and liberation from the shackles and fetters of norms and decency. Small groups arose who raised issues of environment, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. We saw that young people representing these ideas that existed across broad strata of society. (5/6 VWO: 234, original emphasis) Although in many ways the approach adopted in Dutch schoolbooks, the idea that the common good is reached by respecting differences, resembles that given in the British texts. Much greater emphasis is placed on the commonalities of people and the moral obligations expressed in democracy, negotiation and inclusion. However, whereas differences are underlined in British schoolbooks, here they are played down. The difference between the provos and the rest of the population is a matter of style, not content. According to this construction, the basic intentions were the same as those of the majority population. This didactic concern with history is clearly demonstrated in the chapters dealing with World War II and National Socialism. Two main lessons are taught here. The first is that Nazism came from the outside: it was inflicted upon Dutch society (and all other European societies, for that matter) and caused a lot of suffering and injustice, but it did not fundamentally change the course of Dutch history. Although Dutch Nazis played their part during the Nazi occupation, and although enough ordinary Dutch citizens were willing to obey the Nazi authorities, the Dutch position and attitude towards this era is clear: the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazis after heroic resistance. The government went into exile in Britain and civil society was locked up inside a freezer, only to be taken out again when the storm abated. The Dutch role during the war was confined to support for the Nazis by a minority of Dutch fascists, passive 45

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endurance by the Dutch people, and heroic resistance against the German occupation. The discussion of collaboration is particularly telling. The authors want to emphasize that without ever whitewashing what collaborators did during the war, we must always bear in mind that most of them were not inherently evil. The paragraph in the 4/5 HAVO book on the fate of collaborators in the Netherlands immediately after the war is significant in this regard: it asks, ‘Hang the bastards?’ (4/5 HAVO: 96.) A case study gives the story of a young Dutch member of the Waffen SS who went to the eastern front. After returning to the Netherlands after the war he was afraid of being executed on the spot, but fortunately that did not happen. He needed someone to ask him difficult questions about the choices he made, to confront him with his actions and force him to think about them. On his own, he did not manage to break the vicious circle. Then the passage continues in a more general way, explaining that directly after the war ended there were people who could find no excuse whatsoever for Dutch people who joined the SS: ‘Shoot them!’. But there were also other opinions, as this quotation shows: He may have been member of the Waffen SS, but that does not mean he was a war criminal. Apart from that there were extenuating circumstances. They approved of his arrest, but a bullet was too much. They considered that these young SS members had to be reintroduced into the free (liberal) society. It was probably better to try and re-educate them, so that they should not make these mistakes again, and would receive greater understanding of our democratic system. (4/5 HAVO: 96)

The task is not so much to condemn former Nazis but rather to prevent Nazism from re-occurring in the future. The temptations of National Socialism for young people should be taken especially seriously. A direct relationship is drawn between the manipulations of (innocent) German youth by the Nazis and present-day right-wing extremist parties in the Netherlands. A chapter called ‘Young People and the Lure of Fascism’, dealing with the attractiveness of the ‘simple solutions’ that fascists offer, opens with an intriguing introduction: As a youngster you have to deal with adults in a variety of ways, at home, at school, in clubs or associations, at the municipal office – anywhere one encounters adults. In most cases you are in a dependent position. Adults have more power over young people than vice versa. And it is better that way in most cases. Parents, teachers and club leaders are more experienced. But sometimes they are inclined to exert their power over young people more than usual, especially when they have a bad temper themselves. On the other hand, you are not completely powerless. Parents, club leaders and teachers can be ignored or provoked, and one can talk back to the employee at the counter. It becomes irritating, though, when adults pretend to be speaking on your behalf, while you know very well that they are only acting on their own behalf. Your parents say that sport is good for your health, but at the same time they think, ‘Then we will have a lot of Saturdays off for ourselves’. The man at the 46

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bar of the sports-club canteen creates a comfortable atmosphere not because he likes you, but because he wants to earn money. Some people call this manipulation, but that is rather overstating the case for such unimportant situations. Real manipulation occurs only when adults hide their own intentions as much as possible and deliberately pretend that they are completely on the side of young people. In this way they can abuse young people very unscrupulously. This kind of manipulation cannot easily happen in democratic states because parents, schools, associations and the government (‘the man behind the counter’) control one another. If parents abuse their children, a judge can correct them. If the government or private companies abuse young people, then political parties can ring alarm bells. The possibilities of abuse of any kind can be reduced by sufficient information being provided by all kinds of civil institutions. The media can play a very important role here: they can denounce the abuse of young people by adults. There is, however, a situation in which manipulation can be hidden very effectively. This may happen in a totalitarian regime… A state may be called totalitarian in a situation where it can force adults, schools, youth movements or the press to educate and inform young people in one particular way. Young people cannot find out when and where their desires and preferences are being abused. This is even more difficult when the state manages to pretend as if young people’s desires are its desires. Nazis in Germany especially were very good at hiding their aims and intentions behind slogans that fitted the ideals of young people. This is why young people in Germany discovered only very late the consequences of their support for Hitler. (4/5 HAVO: 73)

The quotation covers practically the entire message of the chapters on fascism. It shows how tempting and deceptive fascism is, because it offers simple explanations to complex problems. The protection consists in guarding the principles of freedom, plurality and transparency. The chapters carry an openly pedagogical message: young people be warned, there is room in our society for every opinion, provided the system is constitutional. However, this passage is also fascinating because it contrasts so clearly with the German construction: in Germany it is presumably ‘responsibility’ and identification with the common good which protects pupils from the temptations of fascism; in the Netherlands it is freedom and the absence (or at least transparency) of manipulation by adults which serves this end. Whereas the chapters on National Socialism describe a movement which is the antithesis of democracy, negotiation and inclusion, the information on immigration and multiculturalism in the Netherlands is construed as an example of how we should be dealing with the influx of people of a cultural background that is different from what we have experienced so far.8 Nevertheless, it is argued, it is not the content of these cultural differences that is essential, but the way in which we as a society are able to integrate this ‘new’ phenomenon into our inclusive consultative democracy. Basically immigration is seen as a cultural issue and therefore mostly confined to social studies. Parallel to the 47

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treatment of extended democratic participation rights in history, the multicultural situation in the Netherlands is also treated in terms of a growing plurality. A book on the multicultural society introduces the issue like this: The Netherlands is a multicultural society. This causes new social problems and issues related to the fact that society now consists of different ethnic groups with their respective cultural peculiarities. (Luijsterburg 1996: 6)

In the second chapter causes of migration are treated from a historical point of view before the book turns to legal and socio-economic issues of the present situation. Many passages in the book are dedicated to the social skills one should be applying to promote co-existence with people of a different cultural background. Noticeably absent from the book is background information on people’s countries of origin. What pupils are to learn, apparently, is not what differences there are, but that diversity is there to be handled and overcome.9 To take Dutch history into consideration might help: Those who study Dutch history will discover that through the ages there have always been foreigners in our country. These were often people who took refuge in our country, which was well known for its tolerant attitude towards others, who were prosecuted for religious or political reasons. According to some historians this tolerant attitude could almost always be explained by the self-interest the Dutch had in the arrival of foreigners. (ibid.: 10)

Germany Yet another vision of history is developed in the German school books used at the Lise Meitner School. Like French books, they try to give a comprehensive picture of the past. However, it is mainly German history which is passed on rather than a world history. The framework is clearly narrower than in French books. Developments outside Germany are only discussed if they had direct implications for Germany (like the Russian Revolution or the rise of America). The second striking difference is the completely different outlook. The basic message is that Germany has been an economic success story but a political problem. Whereas political history is depicted in an optimistic way in French books, political history is treated sceptically against the background of German history generally. Whereas French history textbooks teach a positive attitude to history (‘judge and act according to reason’), German history textbooks are defensive in outlook: the explicit aim is to teach German children to be alert to any totalitarian tendencies. Democracy in German schoolbooks is something which has to be defended and thus appears as very fragile. What is to be feared most is extremism. This in fact is the lesson to be drawn from Weimar. The Weimar Republic failed because it was crushed between the 48

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forces of left and right, exemplified by the telling comparison of election posters from the years 1930 and 1932.

Figure 1 – The centre is squeezed by the ever growing forces of left and right. This is represented graphically with election posters and a chart showing election results from 1919 to 1932 in Die Reise in die Vergangenheit [hereafter RV] 5: 114–15.

The comment on the election posters reads: Four posters produced in the years 1930 and 1932. In the ‘centre’, democratic parties – the Social Democrats and the Centre – desperately point to the forces which are threatening to destroy the republic. But on both left and right these forces are growing stronger by the day. One side is fighting against the ‘class enemy’ and the parliamentary ‘system’. The others are skilfully appealing to the hardship and desperate situation of the people at this time. They point to the ‘strong man’ who is going to change everything for the better. The table…shows the election results to the National Assembly in 1919 and to the German Reichstag in 1920–1932. It shows the distribution of the votes as a percentage. (ibid.)

The table shows convincingly the centre getting smaller and smaller from year to year, being squeezed by the ever-growing forces of left and right. These forces had an easy run, given the background of the economic crisis: The economic crisis was a global phenomenon – there were millions of people out of work in the USA too – but those who declared that the work crisis was a result of democracy were now easily believed. After 1930, despair and hope drove millions of 49

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people to elect parties which were hostile to the republic but which promised work and bread for all. (ibid.: 113)

What is to be defended against the threat of left and right is ‘the centre’ or ‘the middle’. The idea of ‘the centre’ is related to ideas like the common good, the compromise, that every responsible citizen should accept. This is made evident in the following depiction of the Social Democrats in the last century, which describes how they gradually became the party of the centre, as described in the section above: In the years after 1889 the SPD changed in many respects. Her leading representatives sat in the Reichstag and participated in legislation. They therefore learnt to take a responsible part in shaping the present [So wuchsen sie hinein in die verantwortliche Gestaltung der Gegenwart]. Their old radical aims for the future retreated or disappeared completely. Their programme was ‘Reform, not revolution’. (RV 4: 163)

‘Responsibility’ in this quotation is respecting the common good whilst also fighting for one’s own demands. Acting responsibly means first identifying the general good and then defining one’s particular aims against that background. Another example of responsible action is provided by Ernst Abbe, the founder of the Carl Zeiss company. Abbe is the paradigmatic example of the responsible capitalist. According to the text he was the son of a poor master craftsman who made considerable sacrifices to give his son a higher education. Having built up his enterprise, Abbe stopped and asked himself whether it was morally justified to be a millionaire. ‘Did he really work so much more than others?’ (RV 4: 178). He found that it was not his ability alone that had brought him so far: his success was only possible because it built on the work of generations before him. He decided to transform his company into a public foundation in which he himself was just a leading manager. ‘Every worker became a fully equal, but also fully responsible, member in this community of producers’ (ibid.: 179). Abbe formulated the conditions for participation: ‘Nobody may withdraw from the responsibility which is accorded to him by the company…. Co-responsibility integrates and structures the community’ (ibid.). The Zeiss company became one of the great success stories of the world. The responsible use made of property as exemplified by Abbe allows social partnership, which is the basis of success. By turning his company into a foundation, Abbe realised something that was not to be achieved through class struggle (ibid.). The latter receives only a short and summary comment in the book: class struggles were understandable but on the whole failed to attain their goal. The lesson derived from this is, in brief, that reform from above, embodied by the entrepreneur Abbe, was successful, whereas the activities of the labour movement were not. There is a hierarchical undertone in this construction. 50

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Abbe’s enterprise can be seen as a miniature model of the ideal state in which citizens participate in a responsible way for the common good of all. The figure of Abbe shares some similarities with Bismarck, who, by introducing social legislation, laid the foundations of the German welfare state and integrated the workers into the German state. Bismarck is quoted with a statement which embodies the whole philosophy of the welfare state: the risk of misery and poverty, he argues, alienates the worker from society and leads him to hostility. This is quite understandable: ‘As long as the state does not back him, or as long as he does not trust in state support, he will always approach the socialist quack; without thinking further, he will accept promises which cannot be kept (RV 4: 164). The German political vision is emerging here: distributive justice allows for integration. If the welfare of the workers is guaranteed, they will refrain from extremism. Responsibility causes entrepreneurs to give workers their fair share in the wealth of the nation. In turn the workers will become responsible citizens and refrain from violence. The agent of this redistributive justice is the state. National Socialism confronted German society with the fragility of this project. The political right wing took over and engaged in a conservative revolution. Instead of a responsible distribution of fair shares for all, the Nazis imposed Gleichschaltung; instead of responsible participation, they demanded absolute obedience. It is in line with the current political philosophy that the success of National Socialism is to be explained mainly by the economic crisis, which caused the system of distributive justice to break down. The message that pupils should draw from National Socialism is contained in former President Richard Weizsäcker’s speech on the fortieth anniversary of the capitulation, which is quoted extensively at the end of the chapter on National Socialism. There is hardly any state in history which has managed not to get entangled in violence and guilt. The murder of the Jewish people, however, is without example in history. The Jews remember and will always remember. As human beings we are looking for reconciliation. Therefore we have to understand that reconciliation without memory is impossible. A new generation has grown to political responsibility (ist in die politische Verantwortung hineingewachsen). Young people are not responsible for what happened then. But they are responsible for what will grow out of it in the course of history.… Hitler always worked by inciting prejudice, hostility and hatred. Our plea to young people is, do not get drawn into hostility and hatred of others, against Russians or Americans, against Jews or Turks, against alternatives or conservatives, against black or white. Learn to live together, not against each other. (RV 5: 185–6)

In a way, the Federal Republic represents the centre regained. In Volume 6 of Die Reise in die Vergangenheit the presentation of post-war German history is struc51

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tured by a remarkable meta-narrative, a story of gigantic failure, social death and rebirth being told in an almost mythomorphic manner. The history of the Federal Republic starts with a gloomy picture of a Stunde Null (hour zero). The situation in Germany in the aftermath of World War II is depicted as one of passivity: the portrait is one of a ‘community of fate’. Denazification (Entnazifisierung), demilitarisation, dismantling and reparations characterise the situation between 1945 and 1947, when the Americans decided to change their occupation politics. It is a passive, reactive people with no will of its own which is thus depicted. This social death is drastically depicted in a caricature of Germany by A. Paul Weber.

Figure 2 – ‘The German as a weather vane’. Caricature by A. Paul Weber, 1945 in RV 6: 59.

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The comment reads: The German as weather vane: emaciated, impaled and completely helpless, unable to influence his fate, defenceless, exposed to the influences of ‘east’ and ‘west’, fearfully anxious as to whether a new storm might break. The background is a vast landscape with partially destroyed buildings. Above a dark sky looms, with black crows. The image reflects the wretchedness and hopelessness of most Germans after the end of the war. In this drawing A. Paul Weber symbolises German destiny in the year 1945. After the breakdown of Hitler’s dictatorship, Germany became the object of Allied policies.…

Any description of the consequences the Germans themselves drew from the Nazi era and their defeat is noticeably absent. The internal debates about Germany’s possible future, about how to deal with the past, are not mentioned. Thus the image of being at the complete mercy of the Allies is depicted. Rebirth starts with the ‘miracle’ of the new currency, the Deutsche Mark: Overnight shop windows were full of things that, up to this time, had been hoarded. Literally everything was available. People observed this ‘miracle’ with mixed feelings. The black market disappeared from one day to the next. (RV 6: 75) The liberal economic policy of Professor Ludwig Erhard led to an unprecedented effort in reconstruction. The bombed cities grew again within the framework of a social market economy. New and efficient companies grew where old ones had been destroyed. All Germans in the West supported this reconstruction. It took less than ten years until production in the Federal Republic was far higher than in the pre-war period. After twenty years of reconstruction, the Federal Republic became the world’s third industrial power (after the USA and Soviet Union). (RV 6: 97 emphasis added)

Reconstruction meant a change from passivity to activity regained. Agency and collective personhood were regained. Again (as before, in the description of the Kaiserreich) economic success and the welfare state are stressed as pillars of society. The other pillar of agency regained is, of course, the establishment of the political order, marked by the passing of the constitution. The meaning and importance of this act is depicted in the speech of former President Walter Scheel, which is quoted extensively: The fathers of the constitution asked themselves how Hitler was possible, what were the weaknesses of the Weimar constitution, how it was possible that a great nation of culture could fall into the hands of a dictator. They consulted the best constitutions of the world about the best protection for freedom and justice. 53

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The constitution we produced is born out of the suffering and errors of German history. This constitution is a very German constitution. We, the citizens of this state, stand up to our responsibility vis-à-vis the next generation to pass on a state based on the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) which belongs to the most liberal and social in the world – as long as this constitution is alive, as long as people and state maintain the values that are anchored in the premises of the constitution, as long as we are prepared to stand up for these values within and without. (RV 6: 90 emphasis added)

This is a second chance for the German people. This second chance demands all the more responsibility. The construction of the Federal Republic is described as a direct answer to the political failures and atrocious crimes of the Nazi era. The outcome is the best constitution in the world, which must therefore be defended at any price. It guarantees the centre regained and thus is the ultimate and unconditional common platform on which everybody responsible has to agree. By means of the mythical structure of the narrative, which is constituted by the sequence of death and rebirth, the image of a social body – that is, a body politic – emerges. The collective personality of a ‘community of destiny’ is thus constructed.10 The relevance of this construction becomes apparent when a threat to this common project is perceived. This was the case with the terrorism of the ‘Red Army Faction’ (popularly known as the Baader–Meinhof gang). It is in a way conceived of as a regression into the extremism which had already threatened the Weimar Republic: Out of the demonstrations of the extra-parliamentary opposition rose the terrorist actions of some radical leftist splinter groups. They tried to overthrow our liberal and democratic constitution (freiheitlich demokratische Grundordnung) by violent means and armed combat. (RV 6: 104)

The first person plural implies reference to a collective personality of all responsible citizens. It may be mentioned that the ‘liberal and democratic constitution’ is always invoked at points when it is threatened and has to be defended. It thus usually goes hand in hand with the call for a strong state. The same message is again contained in the speech delivered by former President Scheel at the funeral of the murdered Hans Martin Schleyer, which is reprinted as a document in the school book. In it Scheel attacked all those who supported the Red Army Faction, either directly or indirectly. All people ‘capable of reflection’ are called upon to defend democracy. In striking contrast to the treatment of IRA terror in the British schoolbook, the reasons that led the Baader–Meinhof group to violent action are not even mentioned. Even more telling is the contrast in the emotional colouring of the respective passages: whereas the British books are very factual, Scheel’s speech makes ample reference to the emotions that responsible 54

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citizens have or should have regarding terrorism: rage, fury, indignation, disgust, and above all shame. It is as if a community should be forced to give a pledge of allegiance. Just as in the British and the French books, how knowledge is presented is part of the message. In contrast to the problem-oriented approach in British books and the rational, almost scientistic approach developed in French books, German books focus on knowledge about facts. Although they contain lots of information, it is not always made apparent why it is being given. This gives an illusion of completeness and exhaustive treatment. The treatment of historical material thus appears to be encyclopaedic, and the representation claims the authority of a lexicon. Nothing appears to be controversial. A common platform is thus erected, a stock of knowledge that every citizen is supposed to know. Knowledge (rather than reason or rationality) about the past seems to be required in order to build up responsibility. Only the educated who had learnt about the dangers and risks of history can participate in this moral community in a meaningful way. There are (moral) lessons to be learnt from history (in particular lessons about the risks to democracy). One of the most frequently expressed educational aims in the framing of regulations is the insight that power can be abused.11 And this does not allow the open approach to history which is characteristic of the French and British books where a task is given like, ‘Analyse documents; is there a fascist culture?’, as in Histoire, classe de premiére (1988: 262–3). In the German textbook, a certain fear seems to lurk behind the more or less protective attitude. What if pupils came to the wrong conclusions by using their reason? What if they were to be fascinated by fascism or the Baader–Meinhof gang? The messages given in these lessons about democratic civil culture are thus strikingly different from those in French, British or Dutch history textbooks. In France, Britain and the Netherlands, there exists a feeling of trust that the common good will prevail provided only that the social preliminaries are the correct ones – if a ‘rational’ and systematic procedure is followed in France, a reasonable procedure in Britain (i.e. one which respects the particularities of each case), and common ground established in the Netherlands. In these three cases, (1) an affirmation of the rules is demanded, which then permits (2) ordered social competition, which finally results (3) in the formation of the common good. This trust is missing in Germany’s political culture. The commitment to the rules of the game only appears as unsatisfactory, as ‘merely external’: before, and in addition to, the affirmation of the rule, identification with the general wellbeing is demanded. One cannot (and should not) participate in a responsible way until the collective has been internalised. Emphasis is laid on democratic attitudes (demokratische Gesinnung) rather than on democratic practices, that is, ways of finding a consensus, of defending one’s rights with the police (as in Britain) or strategies of civil disobedience (as in the Netherlands). 55

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Even more striking is the fact that hardly any political perspective is defined which might serve as a focal point for these attitudes. Whereas the French, British and Dutch schoolbooks are very explicit about what their respective nations stand for, this message is only formulated negatively in German schoolbooks. It is a ‘never again’ which is clearly articulated: never again Auschwitz, never again war, never again antisemitism. But the positive vision of what German democracy actually stands for is only formulated implicitly. There is a strong underlying idea of social justice being the basis and prerequisite of civil culture – but as this is not made explicit, it is also hardly negotiable. This negative identification has far-reaching consequences as we will see in the next chapters. Some points however already deserve to be mentioned here. The emphasis on collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi era creates a type of moral community which is very strong on the one hand (strong feelings of guilt and responsibility are passed on to generations born long after the war) and very vague on the other (as it is defined by what is not to be done). This correlates with strong feelings about the nation which, however, are not self-aware. In fact many members of this community of national responsibility conceive of themselves as having no national feelings at all. This has consequences for the question of inclusion and exclusion. It is difficult to get included in a community of shared responsibility for the national history. The general vagueness of rules makes it also much more difficult to negotiate them and thus to adapt them to new situations than it is the case in England or France. It is easier to settle open questions if there are national master narratives formulating positive ideals like fairness, tolerance or republican equality. Finally, it is far harder for immigrants to decipher implicit rather than explicit rules. All these things will be discussed in more detail throughout the rest of this text.

Conclusion: Four Imaginaries Civil society is based on the idea of the individual freely exchanging with others. In simple terms, one could say that we are concerned with a form of society that has the market, the forum and the stage as its central institutions. The market stands for the free and rational exchange of goods; the forum for all the institutions of public politics, in which the volonté générale is formed in a free exchange of beliefs and agreement achieved on the bien commun; finally the stage is intended (pars pro toto) to stand for the sites of public culture, where a system of symbolic exchange develops within which (often at a less explicit level) classifications develop and values emerge.12 These institutions can also be found individually in other societies. However, civil society is characterised by the narrow relationship in which it places all three institutions.

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The history textbooks now present different ideals about how this free exchange should be organized – who are the agents who should participate, what are the principles that should be adhered to, which techniques should be used? Britain conceives itself as a nation constituted by heterogeneous parts. Meaningful agreements are only possible on the basis of the recognition of this plurality. Collective rights therefore have to be respected. This also means that people are very sceptical about any ‘once and for all’ decisions which necessarily do not take the heterogeneity into account. Preference is laid rather on individual and pragmatic solutions doing justice to any particular case. This idea corresponds to a strong idea of the inviolability of liberty. In France this would not be acceptable. Meaningful agreements are only possible on the basis of equality. The public is the sphere where this equality has to be realised. Citizens might (and should) be different only in the private sphere. Collective rights are considered to be particular privileges and therefore illegitimate. In other cases collectives might limit the individual’s freedom of participation. The state guarantees the strict separation of the public and the private, therefore making it the framework for the individual’s emancipation. In the Netherlands commitment is given to the idea that society consists of different individuals. Plurality is conceived as strength, as in Britain, and this should be represented in public. On the other hand, identity is less an attribute of the collective than it is of the individual. Thus successful negotiations are possible if differences are admitted but at the same time played down. They are rather the options of individual life-styles than characteristics of the collective. In a way elaborate techniques of finding common ground (which may always be shifting) are developed. The Dutch model seems quite similar to the British in its emphasis on techniques rather than principles; but it resembles the French model in making the ideal an individual transcending his or her culture. In Germany, finally, negotiations should always take into account the common good. One should engage in social exchange in a responsible way – that is, one should never lose sight of the legitimate interest of the other. All extremisms (which take into account only particular interests) are short-sighted. The task of the state is to guarantee this exchange.

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Notes 1. How the historical development of public education entered a symbiotic relation with the process of nation-building has been shown elsewhere. (For the German case see, for example, Giesen, Junge and Kritschgau 1994). 2. State schools in England, other than the Scottish ones, follow the guidelines of a National Curriculum in teaching. 3. See Chapter 4: The Place of Religion in Four Civil Cultures. 4. It should be noted that there is a remarkable gap between these intentions and school practice. In fact pupils were hardly ever asked for their opinions or judgements in Paris. So judging is in practice a final but very remote or somehow postponed aim that comes after years and years of acquiring knowledge. For the time being, French children learn to systematise and acquire the tools of rationality. 5. Recently a debate (both public and political) has been initiated about the status of history teaching at school. It is a debate that is related to the (contested) character of the Dutch nationstate and the issue of multiculturalism. According to some people, the Netherlands have lost their way owing to the influx of people with a different cultural background. One of the ways to cope with this ‘problem’ is to upgrade the status of history in school curricula. By making it an obligatory subject, it is hoped that pupils are provided with a firm historical basis that helps them to develop and understand their national identity. 6. It is not stated how Germany and Japan are classified. The classification, however, seems to follow the established distinction between historically liberal democratic regimes, moderate authoritarian regimes (German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire) and authoritarian regimes (Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire). 7. The other example is the mass demonstrations in the Netherlands in the mid 1980s against Cruise missiles. 8. Owing to the ways in which history, geography and social studies are organized, the topic of immigration is dealt with mainly in geography lessons (the causes of migration) and social studies (the multicultural society). 9. What way of handling these differences is proposed to the pupils will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 on dominant taxonomies. 10. It seems to be less the idea of descent and jus sanguinis which is playing a role here than of a common and shared history. 11. Macht kann missbraucht werden. Rahmenplan A I 6 and 10; A V 3 and A V 4 (5). 12. The relationship of the everyday work of culture and classification in a process of symbolic exchange (and symbolic struggle) has been brilliantly analysed by Bourdieu (1987a). The importance of the cultural level for the analysis of civil society is generally overlooked. However, the cultural level is crucial for developing a consensus of values, always provisional and tentative in society, which precedes the process of forming political opinions (because it establishes the rules of the discourse).

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Schoolbooks Cited in this Chapter Great Britain Brooman, J. (ed.) 1994. A Changing Nation: Britain in the Twentieth Century. Longman History Project. Burnt Mill, Harlow: Longman [ACN] France Berstein, S. and P. Milza (eds) 1988. Histoire, classe de première: De la fin du XIX. siècle au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale. Paris: Hatier Dorel-Ferré, G. (ed.) 1996. Histoire, classe de seconde: Les fondements du monde contemporain. Rosny: Breal Netherlands Beenackers-Heeren, B. et al. 1988. Vragen aan de geschiedenis 4/5 havo. Groningen: WoltersNoordhoff [4/5 HAVO] Donk, R. et al. 1989. Vragen aan de geschiedenis 5/6 vwo. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff [5/6 VWO] Donk, R. et al. 1992. Vragen aan de geschiedenis 3 vh. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff [3 VH] Luijsterburg, C. 1996. Multiculturele samenleving. Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff Germany Ebeling, H. and W. Birkenfeld 1991. Die Reise in die Vergangenheit Band 4: Das 19. Jahrhundert. Braunschweig: Westermann [RV 4] Ebeling, H. and W. Birkenfeld 1991. Die Reise in die Vergangenheit Band 5: Das Zeitalter der Weltkriege. Braunschweig: Westermann [RV 5] Ebeling, H. and W. Birkenfeld 1991. Die Reise in die Vergangenheit Band 6: Weltgeschichte seit 1945. Braunschweig: Westermann [RV 6]

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„ 3„ Taxonomies of Cultural Difference: Constructions of Otherness Sabine Mannitz and Werner Schiffauer

Our investigation of how the national histories are represented in textbooks has revealed ideals and images of the national collectivities that are deeply engrained in everyday consciousness. These are bolstered by routine symbols and habits of language, practice and belief, with the result that nations are horizontally imagined as communities (Anderson 1991, Billig 1995, Shils 1995). The construction of national profiles carries a conception of who belongs to the nation and at the same time establishes a dichotomy. By depicting the traits of the in-community, images of what lies outside its boundaries are also transmitted, more or less implicitly. Inclusion and exclusion are thus both contained in the images of a nation. What implications do these processes have for the conceptualisation of immigrants? What space is defined for them? A key concept in this process is culture and, derived from it, the construction of otherness based on a presumed cultural difference. Although representing just one thread out of the pattern of relevant discourses, the concept of culture is a crucial site for the construction of what a given nation-state stands for. This is where the two complementary dimensions of inclusion and exclusion take shape. This implies a classificatory problem: being liberal democracies, all four states have somehow separated ethnos from demos, yet the emphasis and degree of separation differ in each case. The extent to which they are evaluated as linked constituents of the nation affects the formal status of immigrant minorities as much as their options for becoming citizens and for legitimate representation. Less outspoken, though no less effective, the particular balance of ethnic and demotic membership conveys standards of assessment for the conceptualisation of otherness. Thus the question arises of how such differences should preferably be handled: how can the dominant construction of one’s own distinctive culture be reconciled with the 60

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cultures of the others, and what styles are immigrants expected to develop in this respect?

London: Culture = Community = Identity The analyses of textbooks in the preceding chapter have shown that the British understanding of multiculturalism places diversity at the centre of self-definition and turns it into a task: pupils should develop multicultural competence which goes beyond mere methods, for Britishness itself is defined as plural. Correspondingly, cultural diversity was very much taken for granted at Huxley School. Much more than in any of the other countries, cultural differences were an almost ‘natural’ part of everyday school life. In the school corridors in London one could see many posters, signs and leaflets, giving information in different languages about the teaching programme, ethnic minority rights, ethnic food and religious diets which the school guarantees to cater for at mealtimes. In the school’s enrolment process, it is a standard part of registration for pupils to give their ethnic group, thus reflecting the self-evident assumption that pupils come from different ethnic backgrounds. On this level, the dominant discourse on multicultural Britain depicts the population as consisting of different ethnic groups under the umbrella identity of Britishness.1 The overall rationale is to approach problems connected with immigration in an active and direct manner. At an initial level, this means a strong emphasis on anti-discrimination, for, according to the local borough handbook on the programmatic principles of the education services to which Huxley belongs, ‘Discrimination potentially affects everyone… All forms of discrimination are socially divisive and hinder individual development’ (Haringey Council Education Services 1998b: 1). Cultural background should not result in any disadvantage to pupils. In order to avoid this, the education services are legally bound to consider carefully ‘the identification and assessment of the special educational needs of children from minority ethnic groups… Care should be taken to consider the child within the context of his or her home, language, culture and community… and so far as possible, to use assessment tools which are culturally neutral and useful for a range of ethnic groups (ibid.: 14 f.). By the same token, special consideration was given to the attempt to involve immigrant parents with the school. According to the head teacher at Huxley, Turkish parents in particular felt little commitment to the school: ‘Turkish parents, for example, say, “It is the school that does the job.” It is a cultural difference in terms of expectations’. To cope with this difference, the headship tried to ‘build up trust’ by measures such as hiring translators for parents’ group meetings, having special outside workers contact parents at home, drawing up home-school agreements designed to clarify mutual expectations, and having them translated into Turkish as well as other minority languages. 61

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However, it was clearly felt that compensatory measures cannot be enough. Any definition of immigrant families as problem cases who deserve special attention necessarily implies notions of deficiency and inferiority. This would mean not accepting them as serious participants in the multicultural game. In order to overcome racism, therefore, the positive contributions of different cultures should be emphasised: Culture: Beliefs, traditions, social norms, practices, literature, and achievements of groups which make up our society. A cultural group shares these characteristics which make up a way of life… A curriculum based on the manifestation of cultural diversity…should form part of an anti-racist curriculum. A multicultural perspective should include the positive reference to contributions from many different cultures, and should induce feelings of value and self-respect for the many different cultures within Britain. (Haringey Council Education Services 1998b: 24)

In a similar vein, it is argued in the descriptions of the school programme given in the borough’s brochures that ‘effective equal opportunity includes recognising the profound benefits of a culturally diverse community, rejoicing in it, and making good use of it’ (ibid. 1998a: 0). Real incorporation thus only seems possible if cultural difference is emphatically affirmed as something positive. Culture is to be associated with value and self-respect – in short, with identity. However, puzzlement sets in when one looks more closely at the actual ‘cultures’ or ‘ethnic groups’ which supposedly make a substantial contribution to Britain’s multicultural society. Take, for example, the following definitions: A ‘racial group’ means a group of persons defined by colour, race, nationality, or ethnic or national origins… The term ‘ethnic minority’ refers to groups of people who share historical, cultural, or national origins which make them distinct from others, and who are numerically a minority in this society. The main ethnic minority people in Haringey are Afro-Caribbean people, African people, people of Asian origin, Greek people, Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot people. (Haringey Council Education Services 1998b, 23 f.)

This is a remarkable classification: whereas Greeks, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are considered three ethnic groups with distinct historical, cultural or national origins, ‘Asians’ (including, for instance, mainland Turks, Kurds, Indians and Pakistanis), like ‘Africans’, are counted as ‘ethnic minorities’ in their own right without any further differentiation. This unsystematic way of constructing minorities was the rule rather than the exception. The following passage from Sabine Mannitz’s field notes illustrates this, as it reflects her astonishment about certain other classificatory efforts: 62

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The school’s language department has hung up two lists about pupils’ backgrounds on the wall of the staff room. The first lists the ‘Proportion of Pupils from Different Ethnic background at the Huxley School’, and it looks like this: Kurdish Turkish Somali UK European Greek Cypriot Turkish Cypriot African African Caribbean Indian Asian Pakistani Asian Bangladeshi Asian East African Other Asian Irish Other

268 70 82 290 32 48 95 123 26 9 49 14 30 14 18

including North African

(Mauritian etc.) (Vietnamese, Hong Kong etc.) (South American etc.)

The second list gives information about the 51 languages represented in the school and tells how many pupils have each language as their first one. In both lists, the terminology creates somewhat dubious group boundaries. There are, for instance, the following four Asian ‘ethnic groups’: ‘Indian Asian’, ‘Pakistani Asian’, ‘Bangladeshi Asian’ and ‘Other Asian’. On grounds of the official definition of ‘ethnic minority groups’, one might just as well argue that, owing to their partly common history, people from Bangladesh and Pakistan share a great deal with each other, maybe more than all the different peoples in India; or that all people from the whole Indian subcontinent have more in common in terms of ‘cultural heritage’ and might therefore form one distinct group more plausibly than those who are now embraced under the heading ‘Other Asian’, which possibly puts Tibetans, Chinese, Afghans and Thais together as having one common ’ethnic background’. A similarly inconsistent approach could be observed in a school-wide questionnaire administered concerning school meals. All pupils were asked about their food preferences, to comment on the taste, looks, temperature and overall quality of the school meals, and to fill in what they would like to see improved. At the end of the questionnaire, each pupil was to tick the own ethnic group out of sixteen options given – clearly less than the 51 acknowledged language groups, and leaving out some of the otherwise listed ethnic groups, like, for example, mainland Turks. The remarkable fact is not that these classifications are so heterogeneous but that evidently nobody realised (or cared about) the logical problems which the outside researcher noticed. The ethnic groups were evidently constructed for pragmatic reasons. Given the ‘minority formation’, it makes sense without any 63

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doubt to distinguish between ‘Greek Cypriots’, ‘Turkish Cypriots’ and ‘Greeks’ because the political situation does not allow these particular groups to be classified together. With regard to the school population at large, there will have been similar reasons to sub-divide the Asians (which, according to the Educational Services’ definition, form one ethnic group) into ‘Indian Asian’, ‘Pakistani Asian’, ‘Bangladeshi Asian’ and ‘Other Asian’. With regard to school meals, it made sense to divide the school population into sixteen rather than fifty-one groups for the evident reason of having to handle the results. ‘Ethnic groups’ were thus pragmatically constructed on the basis of topical problems (like empirical animosities or food taboos) and size. It may be added that this pragmatic approach reflects the long-standing British tradition of indirect rule, which implied the politics of classifying a variety of people in more or less ‘rough or ready’ fashion along pragmatic lines, that is, according to some similarity with reference to a particular problem. In the same fashion, the House of Lords agreed that, ‘for the purpose of the Race Relations Act, “Gypsies” are defined as a racial group’ (cf. Haringey Council Education Services 1998b: 6).2 The state, as Soysal remarks, ‘constructs “ethnic minorities” through legal and organisational mechanisms as a means for integration’ (1994: 58 f.). At one level this seems perfectly legitimate – deliberate classifications are, after all, always part of administrative activity. But why should one insist on the nexus of ‘culture = community = identity’? First of all, the deliberate nature of classifications must be concealed in order to serve the purpose they have been created for. If the aim is to integrate a new group by adding it to the multicultural kaleidoscope, it will serve no purpose to admit simultaneously that there is no ‘real’ basis for this classification. An ‘ethnic group’, for example, simply has to have a culture in order to be able to make a positive contribution to multicultural society at large. And again, to make a contribution it is necessary, among other things, to emerge from the defensive: culture must not work to a disadvantage but should be presented as something valuable. Hence it is less important to do justice to every single case than it is to sharpen the consciousness of existing cultural diversity, to make it a matter of routine in a non-stigmatising way. The pedagogical ideal seems to be a self-disciplined style in which one should not get upset over all the differences or lose one’s temper. The favourable methods of pursuing goals consist of reasonable, cool-headed pragmatism; the opposite would be a self-importance that made one lose consideration and selfcontrol. Political correctness consequently allows only positive statements about other cultures. A geography teacher whom Sabine Mannitz asked about her impressions of the different ethnic groups in the school, and whether any particular groups of pupils were, so to speak, ‘notorious’, immediately rejected this approach by saying that any such idea would, of course, be a stereotype. The only assumptions she made about cultural difference were initially restricted to those pupils she knew personally, and then expressed in terms of positive attributes: the fact that some of the extraordinarily successful and well-behaved pupils 64

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on her courses were Turkish could be related to their culture, as she uttered, ‘That’s what they learn, I guess, to be polite and respect elders’. Such monitoring and self-disciplinary sensitivity was very salient – not against collectivising per se but against any connotations of inadequacy. Respect for the other’s culture = community = identity should ideally not only govern relations between teachers and pupils but also relations among the pupils themselves. Anti-racism is therefore an explicit task of the teaching programme, and teachers were ready to apply the theoretical programme to their particular school situation in north London. The following incident took place during an English lesson in Year 10. The teacher heard a Somali boy calling another boy ‘Paddy’, which he had just explained to be ‘a racist term for Irish people’. Teacher (very loudly): ‘When you think you can call another person “Paddy” and consider that a joke, you are completely ignorant, you are no better than the racists and fascists, with their stereotypes that people like you are subject to! … If I called you a “nigger”, I would be called a racist! And you think you can call someone else a “Paddy”?’ Half loudly, the boy concerned protests: ‘But I’m not a nigger’. Teacher: ‘THIS IS SERIOUS!! It’s no joke! You’re at the level of ignorance and fascism! Listen! If I called you a “nigger”, I would be sacked – and THAT WOULD BE RIGHT! We are in a multicultural society in multicultural London and in a multicultural classroom where probably none of you can claim to be 100% English, and this is too serious an issue to let it pass like that!… So this is important and I want you to keep it in mind. Sophisticated people, scientists and others, have dedicated their lives to fighting for human rights and racial equality. Martin Luther King died for this, and you think you can just remain little ignoramuses?!’ (Sabine Mannitz’s field notes, 17.3.99)

After the lesson, the teacher took the opportunity to comment on this incident: he could not let it pass, especially since racism was the topic of the lesson anyway. The course included discussion of a relevant poem: ‘The boy sort of played the card into my hands, so I guess they will not forget this lesson so fast’, the teacher said. Perceptions of the students were oriented towards the recognition of ethnic and cultural differences as often as possible, for the great principles of tolerance and mutual respect can only be inculcated when translated into everyday situations. Ethnic and culture-related categories were thus frequently brought into pupils’ minds on the part of the school as resources from which one can derive pride, emotional security, identity as well as collective rights. And it is in this style that each ‘community’ is expected to make a contribution to multicultural Britain. But does it work? Can a community’s pragmatically constituted from the outside share an identity? In fact it can, although only after a time: first, an 65

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administration defines a group, and then the group itself discovers and also develops commonalities, a common history and so on. However, this is a long process, and for the time being the contradictions between the two aspects of an ethnic group as invented and an ethnic group as ‘having a substance’ emerges, as suggested in the following statement by a teacher: The school approaches us [i.e. the Turkish teachers] whenever there is a problem. They never ask for our views before they go ahead with something that ends up wrong. They are usually unaware of the special needs of Turkish-speaking pupils. I tried to help the school administration; they should understand the cultural specificities of Turkish pupils…. When I have to call the parents of Turkish pupils, I find myself in a difficult situation, because whenever I call, they know that there is something wrong with their child at the school. If the school developed a culturespecific strategy, the number of conflicts would be far fewer.

Asking the school to ‘develop culture-specific strategies, to ‘understand the cultural specificities’ or to become aware of ‘the special needs of Turkish-speaking pupils’ goes far beyond everything we observed in the other three schools regarding the treatment of cultural and ethnic differences. Specific approaches directed at specific groups were considered a taken-for-granted right derived from the diversity of British society that is explicitly one of different cultures. Although the teacher quoted might be correct in this particular case, it might still be doubted whether a multicultural society could be organized in that way. Positive contributions by ‘cultural communities’ that are defined from the outside for particular purposes are after all hard to develop. In the meantime, owing to the artificial character of the classifications, culture comes de facto into play in problematic contexts. To sum up, cultural and ethnic diversity are described as positive collective resources in this discourse with pragmatic solutions and mutual respect being the equivalent skills required to cope with the differences. However, in view of the risk of contributing to the production of stigma in defining problems as originating from culture, there seems to be a certain paralysis at work as well, resulting from the omnipresent anti-discrimination bias. All kinds of interaction might be perceived as potentially touching on legalistic claims, measuring treatment against the sublime criterion of multicultural competence: when there was a conflict at Huxley School between some Turkish pupils and others, the Turkish teachers entirely avoided taking part in its resolution because they feared being involved in a situation that might jeopardise their own positions; they were worried that other teachers might accuse them of favouritism towards the Turkish pupils! Since everyone is expected to contribute to the accomplishment of equal opportunities with monitoring, fairness and alertness towards potential code violations, the fear of failure in front of the observers is an apparent concomitant of otherwise noble aims and ideals. 66

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Paris: Culture ≠ Civilisation The notion that culture ≠ civilisation is radically opposed to the British concept of culture = identity = community. Civilization is a universal project. Progress in this project means achieving more equality and rationality. Particular cultures and religions are invited to participate in it – but as civilization is much more than an individual culture or religion, it has to transcend it. Meaningful identity therefore cannot be grounded in belonging to one particular culture, rather it can be attained by relating to or even contributing to, the civilizing process. The French State gains its legitimacy from referring to these ideals: it is constructed as the institution which translates the general republican principles into practice. It guarantees the framework that is to enable the emancipation of the individuals from their particular groups, thus allowing him or her to participate in the great project. The task of the school in transmitting ‘heritage and culture’ is to be understood against this background. This task is conceived as an ’intellectual education’ in citizenship, leading to a ‘critical and dynamic view of the world’, as the centralised curricula describe the aims of history and geography in the Lycées (Note de Service no. 95–142, Paris 19.6.1995).3 In a geography book for the Première this culture concept is phrased as follows: French culture is a heritage. The French cultural influence is founded on two dissociable pillars: the French language and the persisting creativity of its artists, intellectuals and scientists. (Knafou 1997: 74)

This definition makes it very clear that French culture is equated with the achievements of civilization and that French language is regarded an instrument of this Civilisation. There is however no reference to culture as marking any boundaries between different population groups, nor as shaping a heritage of customs, conventions or values. Whereas allusions to immigrant cultures were omnipresent in London, they were virtually absent in the Parisian school. At Lycée Fernand Braudel, pupils were regarded just as pupils, no matter what social, cultural, religious or ethnic specificities they might have as their private backgrounds at home. The French school aims to create equality by ignoring existing differences, and it would be inconceivable in Paris to inquire into the ethnic background of students as is routinely done in London.4 In acquiring data, the school in Paris differentiates between French and foreign citizens, but it does not ask for any further group membership. Pupils who enrol at Lycée Braudel have to give information about their name, place and date of birth, citizenship, address, name and school type visited before, parents’ jobs, telephone numbers, social insurance numbers and, if granted, family’s benefits, and whether or not they want to eat in the school canteen. Students above eighteen who are not French citizens have to provide a copy of their residence permit. Interestingly enough, asking for parents’ profes67

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sions or benefits is not considered problematic data that could give way to class discrimination, but all aspects having to do with ethnic origin are carefully avoided. There is thus no special category for immigrants of the second or third generation as there is in the Netherlands where the term allochtonen, discussed later, is applied, or in Britain where such a status can be expressed in hyphenated terms like ‘British-Pakistani’. The administration of the Parisian Lycée establishes different files and lists combining different features on the basis of the data gathered about pupils during their enrolment. For instance, every teacher is given a list with information about the students on his or her courses. Citizenship is not included in these lists, because the normative strategy is that teachers should neither know the origins of their students, nor whether they are French citizens or not. For teachers they should all just be equal individual pupils. Most teachers had in fact no idea about the background and origin of their pupils nor were they interested in knowing. Some asked their pupils additional personal questions in the beginning of a school-term such as how many books they had read thus far or what profession they were aiming at; but questions about citizenship, national origin, religion or any other such information that might undermine the policy of ethnic and cultural blindness were not asked. Two history teachers at Lycée Fernand Braudel explicitly said that they considered these private matters. Thus a boundary is drawn between an almost neutral public space of equal individuals and a private sphere where all kinds of particular activities might take place, like following a religion, speaking a language other than French, fostering cultural traditions and customs that might be different – yet all these aspects seem banished from legitimacy in public. When the presence of migrants in France becomes a topic in teaching, for instance in a Première geography unit about ‘the French population’, it is related to statistical information that compares the immigrants, for example their birth rates, with the ethnically French. Like the stress on civilization as a rational concept, the statistical figures also create an impression of rationality. However, the life-style pattern of the French majority is introduced as the instrument of measuring the immigrants’ progress. Their ‘otherness’ is hence not presented as a positive resource but indeed as a negative liability that needs to be transformed. In the Seconde a whole geography teaching unit treats ‘cultural differences’ and introduces the term ‘ethnie’ so as ‘to qualify a population in which the members share the same culture, especially a language or institutions’ (Knafou 1993: 18). However, this terminology is not applied to France in the rest of the course: the topical treatment of ethnic diversity deals with conflict zones, such as South Africa, or with New York’s suburbs of Brooklyn and Harlem. Likewise, under the heading of ‘cultural differences’, religion and language are presented with the message that a separation of the state from culture and religion is essential to prevent dangerous developments. This is said to be generally the case in democratic states: Iran and Algeria serve as negative examples where this separation 68

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is not achieved. Together with the then following textbook chapter which bears the title ‘The main inequalities are social and cultural’ one cannot overlook any longer the negative valuation of culture as an inhibition opposed to egalitarian Civilisation. Whereas in Britain the different religions and cultures are considered a collective asset which must be brought into the public sphere, in France they are evidently considered a potential threat to the civilizing project. However, this clear differentiation is more difficult to maintain in practice than in theory: parents do, of course, transmit some of their religious ideals or cultural values to their children and should do so. It is no less evident that one does not give up one’s ideals and values as soon as one passes the schoolgate. The idealised boundaries between public and private thus become blurred in practice. In order to keep up the separation between public and private, a second difference has to be introduced – the one which defines the distinction between legitimate signs of personal conviction and illegitimate signs of otherness. An attempt to draw this boundary is the background to the ongoing debate about Muslim headscarves which are treated more thoroughly in a separate chapter. In 1994, a circular was issued about this problem by the then Minister of Education, François Bayrou. He formulated the almost indefinable boundary as follows: Inside the school pupils are allowed to wear discreet signs which show their personal attachment to convictions, especially religious ones. Ostentatious signs which are themselves elements of proselytism or discrimination are prohibited. (Directive aux Chefs d’Établissement, Le Figaro, 21.9.1994)

The distinction between ‘discreet signs’ of religious convictions versus ‘ostentatious signs’ requires a subtle competence in the successful use of distinction practices. Displaying some personal style in a playful manner (which indicates as well a certain distance, one may add) would not be considered disturbing, even if it were related to religion. To exceed the limit of discretion is, however, not appreciated, for it can easily be understood to touch upon the crucial separation between public and private. This is perceived as questioning the essential vision of the French Republic, consisting of the ideal that equality is guaranteed in the public sphere as the frame which allows the individual to emancipate his or her self from all primordial ties, whether religious or ethnic.5 In this particular case it was felt to be the French state’s obligation to strengthen the position of girls who do not want to wear a headscarf vis-à-vis their parents. This strategy of protecting the rights of the individual against their ethnic and religious communities motivates the consequent (and sometimes even rigorous) measures against the emergence of intermediate structures. The notion of equal individuals is thereby connected to a definition of citizenship as a formal belonging to a nation-state rather than to a nation. Consequently, French citizenship is the most important instrument integrating 69

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immigrants as members in France and the access is not difficult.6 The republican concept is meant to ‘absorb all the differences and ensure the political and cultural unity of the nation’ (Kastoryano 1992: 59), and the category of the French is supposed to be as universal and embracing as that of the British. However, unlike the umbrella identity of Britishness it leaves no public space for internal ethnic and cultural diversity but aims to rule out differences on this level by ignoring them. As a consequence, the reality of ethnic minorities’ particularities is located in a grey area. Immigrant cultures are not expected to make any positive contributions. The style they are meant to display with respect to their being different can best be described with indifference, at most finding recognition as a playful transformation of their cultures’ symbols into discreet elements of fashion. Against the strong standard of French Civilisation, these ‘other’ backgrounds are practically disregarded.

Rotterdam: Culture = Life-style The Dutch vision of a participatory democracy implies a particular way of dealing with differences: relations vis-à-vis immigrant communities are defined by means of a civil culture of playing them down through ongoing processes of negotiations in order to establish a common ground. The approach to migrants is characterised by a conscious attempt to deal with their peculiarities in a ‘reasonable way’. As long as one does not ‘make an issue’ of them, but plays their presence ‘low key’, one avoids the possibility of their becoming so important that they threaten the reaching of consensus. Basically, this means attempting to view immigrant cultures just like any other sub-cultures. Culture is thus defined as being equated with life-style. Although growing and living in collectivities, it is foremost an issue of individual taste and preferences according to this perception. Their differences are thus understood as a resource that immigrants bring to Dutch discussions about the common good. An introductory booklet distributed by the Nikolaas Tinbergen School to parents in order to describe the school’s policies and to attract pupils, states that ‘the ethnic diversity we see in the street can be found in our school too’ (Tinbergen Lyzeum 1997). Every year a so-called ‘cultural evening’ is held where pupils can perform whatever they wish ‘culturally’: from showing playbacks of the Spice Girls to Turkish folk dances. The school brochure again refers to these evenings as expressions of the cultural diversity represented in the school. This is intended to describe the ideal of pupils being able to make a contribution in terms of the nexus ‘culture = life-style’. The fact that Dutch society is multicultural is made an explicit teaching topic: the last chapter of a textbook on Morocco discusses immigration (Dragt and Maatman 1990). The chapter treats the socio-economic position of Moroccans in the Netherlands, their demographic characteristics, family reunion, 70

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birth rates and the development of a second cultural infrastructure in some quarters of the big Dutch cities. The book ends with a story about a young Moroccan runaway girl who had problems with her parents. She talks about living in Dutch society and trying to be loyal to her family and culture at the same time. The final statement takes the view that, although living ‘between two cultures’ causes sometimes problems, changes come fast: attitudes of Moroccan migrants in the 1970s would have been completely different from their attitudes today. So, the principle of cultural diversity is subscribed to, but the chief goal seems to be the dismantling of differences. The emphasis on the fact that changes come fast sounds as if the different cultures, that immigrants brought to the Netherlands, marked an intermediate stage on the path towards a common future where differences will be overcome altogether.7 This notion is markedly different from the British conceptualisation that defines inner plurality as a genuine trait of Britishness and which historicises this perspective as already having been rooted in British identity for a long time. The Dutch concept apparently focuses more on newer problems arising from immigration to which one cannot close one’s eyes to any longer. The portrayal of issues in another social studies book on the Dutch multicultural society, points to this different tone of arguing as well. In the introduction it reads, ‘the Netherlands are a multicultural society’, and this has meant ‘new societal problems and issues’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 6). The overall message is that one has to accept the reality of a multicultural society, and pupils have to handle the related problems in a way that prevents serious conflicts: On the basis of what we learnt about immigration we must treat the multicultural society as a fact we cannot ignore any longer; it is completely unrealistic to assume that we will in near future have a society again in which the ‘Dutch culture’, whatever that may be, is the only one that counts. (Luijsterburg 1996: 25)

Immediately after this explanation, the text turns to possible problems: living together with different cultures means advantages but brings also difficulties. ‘These problems can be of a socio-cultural or of a socio-economic kind’, as the author states, yet they should not be interpreted as causally due to the fact that as many autochtones as allochtones live in the Netherlands. All the problems could just as well occur within the autochtone part of the population, those defined as having ‘Dutch roots’. The explanation of how this is to be understood follows soon after: social groups receive attention as representing distinct cultures, for example, Catholics, Protestants, hippies, youth culture, Friesian and Brabant culture, working-class culture, intellectuals. The most important aim is obviously to relativise: pupils should bear in mind that cross-cutting cultural differences within Dutch society may be so large that ‘a pig farmer from northern Brabant will probably feel less at ease with a yuppie from the Amsterdam canal 71

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area than a Rotterdam worker with his Turkish colleague. Many workers live differently from intellectuals’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 27). Under the heading ‘Dominant culture and subculture’, pupils are informed that ‘in a society with many cultures, one of the cultures is often the dominant culture. That is then the culture with the greatest influence upon the society’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 26). Yet since the immigrants’ cultures are not the off-spring of the dominant Dutch culture: as with the ‘subcultures’ one does not treat them on exactly the same level, but as somehow further away on an incline of cultural distance. This is what the categorical distinction between allochtonen and autochtonen indicates, terminology that deserves closer attention. Unlike the general fuzziness of public discourses on this issue in the Netherlands and in most school-books, where the term allochtoon tends to be used in relation to cultural differences but without any clear definition – as if everybody knew what it meant – pupils in Rotterdam learn definitions of difference from their textbook on the multicultural society: An autochtoon is an inhabitant of our country who has roots here. His family has lived in the Netherlands for generations. A vreemdeling or buitenlander is a visitor to our country who does not have Dutch nationality. Tourists, political asylum-seekers and buitenlanders who work or study here are vreemdelingen. Most vreemdelingen who stay here longterm come from Turkey (183,900), Morocco (161,100), Germany (53,100), the United Kingdom (43,100) and Belgium (24,100). An allochtoon is somebody who differs on grounds of race or other clearly visible marks [sic!] from the original inhabitants of our country. We do not call Belgians or Germans allochtoon. Children of Turkish guestworkers, who were born here, speak Dutch (of a regional dialect) perfectly (and maybe no longer speak Turkish), and who have Dutch citizenship do, however, belong to the allochtonen. After some generations they will probably not be different any more from autochtonen children. They will have the same habits and perhaps no longer remember that their grandfather came from Turkey. They will then be considered as autochtonen…. Ethnic groups often consist of allochtonen. Minorities are in principle all groups in social life who differ from the population majority in that they are disadvantaged in one or another way. Thus homosexuals, [members of] nonconformist [gereformerd] churches, full-time working women and house-husbands can be minorities… If we speak about our multicultural society, we mean a society which comprises diverse allochtone ethnic minorities without judging the fact, be it negatively or positively. (Luijsterburg 1996: 7)

The allochtonen are hence immigrants of the second (or third or fourth) generation whose differences are still clearly visible, and/or kept alive in their memories. They differ both from real foreigners (vreemdeling or buitenlander), first-generation immigrants and any other non-Dutch visitor, as well as from the 72

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autochtonen, the Dutch proper. The allochtonen are a liminal category: neither buitenlander nor autochtonen, neither members of an ethnic community nor quite Dutch, who might be members of real minorities or subcultures – like the quoted homosexuals, members of non-conformist churches, full-time working women or house-husbands. Although appearing to give a clear definition of terms, the Dutch schoolbook’s attempt at classification seems to be as inconsistent as the British definition of cultures and ethnic groups. Pupils should learn to accept that Dutch society comprises so many different life-styles that any reference to ‘the Dutch culture’ requires the reservation ‘whatever that may be’. How can one further define Dutch culture when describing the gradual development from allochtonen to autochtonen with reference to the prospect that the grandchildren of Turkish immigrants ‘will have the same habits’ as the indigenous Dutch majority population in the future? Taken literally, the quoted definition is even racist: how could anybody with a black skin ever become an autochtoon if ‘race or other clearly visible marks’ are set up as defining criteria? This classification is connected with the Dutch government’s policy of problem-solving in the context of immigration: a group that presumably differs so much that it needs special assistance, that is, positive discrimination policies, belongs to the ‘ethnic groups’8 while those who are not considered to require special policies in this sense are not classified in the relevant categories: Chinese and Pakistanis, for instance, are not recognized as ‘ethnic groups’ because ‘they are assumed to have no problems with their participation in Dutch society’ (Rath 1988:628 cf. Soysal 1994: 48). And somebody from Denmark, Canada or Germany is no allochtoon in the Netherlands but a buitenlander, that is, a foreigner with a different ethnic or cultural background but not a ‘problematic foreigner’, so to speak. The well-meant target-group policy thus creates a hierarchy between different groups of others. In one schoolbook chapter, the conflation of economic and ethnic boundaries is said to be a complex of prejudices: ‘The causes of backwardness and deprivation are too easily located with allochtonen, ignoring the fact that discrimination may be a very important cause of deprivation’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 32). Yet given the categorisations and related targeted policies produced in response to assumed problems, the dominant discourse itself draws lines of crucial difference: being an allochtoon member of an ethnic group implies a background so different from that of the Dutch mainstream that it is seen to impose a handicap on equal participation. Soysal has described Dutch minority classifications as follows: ‘Not all of these categories are ethnic; nevertheless they are defined and organised as ethnicised collective identities vis-à-vis the state. Collectivity in this sense is not cultural but functional’ (1994: 48). Her attempt to structure the official phrasing again reveals how arbitrary and vague the practice actually is, aiming at individual emancipation on the one hand and setting up collectivising categories in order to facilitate this on the other. If the concept were merely functional, it 73

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would also have to cover ethnic Dutch people with participation deficits. But autochtonen Dutch are not perceived as an ‘ethnic group’ (quite unlike the practice we observed in London, where ‘UK European’ was listed equally with, for example, ‘Somali’ as an ethnic background represented in Huxley School). Instead, the problematic definition in the Dutch case is clearly tied to a concept of cultural diversity in which some groups are apparently considered too different to be treated like any of the Dutch ‘sub-cultures’. The liminality of the allochtonen evidently poses a problem. There is always a special risk that they might at any given time fall back on a communal existence, a form of regression that has a name: fundamentalism. The discussion of ‘fundamentalism’ is accordingly contained in a textbook chapter about ‘The problems of cultural difference’. Defined as a way of thinking that translates religious principles into political principles and thus becomes an enemy of freedom of thought, Islamic fundamentalism is chosen as an example. To prevent the creation of a stigmatising image of Islam and of Muslims in general, the authors hasten to add that rather few Muslims live in the Netherlands – and, moreover, they do not belong to radical movements but ‘rather emphasise harmonious cohabitation with other people’. One finds this relativising approach throughout the entire book: cultural differences cause problems, but there is no alternative to finding viable arrangements for the existing diversity of Dutch society. This somewhat bitter pill is sweetened with the thought that ‘culture is not innate’ and might thus be tuned down from being too different to a level where the positive aspects can triumph over the negative: at some point the allochtonen will forget about their other roots and habits. This idea stresses dynamic and constructive aspects of culture and connects integration with the demand that cultural difference should not be made a site of disassociation or separation. One should not make an issue of being different but in the long run rather defeat it. The principle thus applies to all kinds of difference, but it seems necessary to be particularly considerate with differences concerning allochtonen. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School was very anxious not to stigmatise children on the basis of their ethnic background. Generally, therefore, the school does not register a pupil’s citizenship or ethnic-group, but only name, address, gender, date and place of birth, previous school career, and parents’ place of birth, profession and position, information obviously not considered potentially stigmatising. In parallel with the situation in Paris, this programmatic ethnic blindness implies that the number of, for example, Turkish or Moroccan pupils at Tinbergen is officially unknown. Also similarly to France, the precautions taken against stigmatising children were often simply explained as being insignificant: ‘it doesn’t matter at all’ was a standard comment. Wrapped up in the explicit policy of not registering ethnic background because this might cause stigma, an implicitly negative valuation could be seen in respect of all programmatic action directed towards collectivising ethnic groups. 74

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However, pupils’ ethnic backgrounds do play a certain role in the school’s financial situation. In the Dutch educational system, every school receives money per child. This is a fixed amount, meaning that the more pupils a school has, the more money it receives and consequently the more teachers it can appoint. Since school choice is free in the Netherlands, it is vitally important for a school to be attractive enough to parents and pupils to assure its financial position. Apart from the basic amount of money, there are additional funds targeted to specific categories of children, one of which is officially intended ‘for cultural minority groups and pupils speaking a different language’. Schools can obtain extra money for teaching facilities if they have pupils who belong to either the classic post-colonial immigrant groups (Moluccans, Surinamese, Antillians), or Gypsies and other travelling people, or any other people of foreign background who meet certain criteria (regarding their duration of stay and number of years in education in the Netherlands). This additional money is part of the government policies covering minorities, but is not differentially allocated. For a long time, the government simply asked for a list of the numbers of pupils with the necessary characteristics, so that the issue could be treated anonymously in school. More recently official documents have come to be required from both the parents and their children. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School Directorate is strongly against this novelty, for it runs counter to their policy of not using ethnic categories. Because of this reluctance, the school treated all information and procedures pertaining to the extra money strictly separately from the regular registration of its pupils. This strategy again illustrates the desire to play things down: ethnic background might be harmful if treated more overtly and more in such a way that it could become a source for collective mobilisation. The same attitude underlies the way the school staff in Rotterdam uses its money obtained from the funds for minority groups: it is used in an ethnically blind way to offer extra provision for pupils who are having difficulties in catching up, and the programme avoids all cultural or ethnic references. For example, there were homework groups for pupils who have no quiet place to work at home. Although it turned out that allochtonen pupils were over-represented in these groups, the school phrased all these facilities in neutral terms, based on achievement alone. This attempt to break up ethnic patternings was also observed with respect to religious practices. In this sense, the co-ordinator of the school library explained that some Muslim pupils had made use of a quiet corner of the library for their daily prayers for some time: With those carpets and all – they know I don’t mind, but on the other hand I don’t know whether it’s a good development… No harm was done and it did not interfere with our work here, so why not allow it? After a while it faded away: only on special occasions, such as during fasting, do pupils sometimes ask me for a place, and I never say no, because then it might develop into an issue. 75

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Thus everything that relates to religious and cultural particularities was dealt with in a very conciliatory way, not by applying general guidelines but by finding ad hoc solutions. One gives in rather than see people mobilise along collective lines and turn it into a bigger issue. The library co-ordinator clearly appreciated the fact that Muslim prayers in the library gradually disappeared. By granting such small concessions, the school promotes the presumed characteristic Dutch way of accomplishing change by means of reasonable consultation and negotiation. Nevertheless, with this approach a great uneasiness becomes visible as well: conciliatory solutions carry such strong connotations of conflict-avoidance, ‘not to make an issue of things’, that there seems to be an implicit message of an obscure danger – as if serious conflicts surrounding cultural differences were lurking close to the surface of consensus over rules of participation, with the implication that one should be concerned not to let them reach the surface. Culture, considered a legitimate individual resource in the sense of sub-cultural lifestyles, is not only all right but, as long as it stays within these limitations, is accorded a positive place in the multicultural society. On their own, cultural particularities should not prevent people from participating as politically equal individuals – but as soon as culture entails the risk of becoming inhibiting, it is something negative. However, like the internal discrepancies of the prevailing taxonomy that differentiates problematic from non-problematic groups of foreigners in providing assistance for individual participation – and in spite of the declared attempt to break down all ethnic patternings among pupils – everyday terminological practice in Tinbergen School followed the collectivising rhetoric: the most common term of reference used by teachers in the school at Rotterdam when speaking about their Turkish or Moroccan pupils was allochtonen.

Berlin: Culture = Collective Mentality The analysis of textbooks has indicated three characteristic aspects of the postwar German national imagery: first, a strong emphasis on a community of destiny which, as a collective subject, underwent social death and rebirth; second, a sharing by this community of responsibility for the National Socialist past, which is expressed in a commitment never to allow similar developments again (that is, no positive political vision which might express a universal ideal or an explicit political project is formulated in the German case);9 third, identification refers rather to economic success, which has an implicit political project related to it, centred on the value of solidarity, articulated in the idea of a ‘social’ market economy (soziale Marktwirtschaft) and reflected in a comparatively strong emphasis on policies of redistribution. What are the implications of this model for the concept of culture and the construction of otherness? Going back to the 76

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schoolbooks, one is surprised to find in the history textbook only one note, in passing, on the post-war emigration to the Federal Republic. It reads: Other difficulties resulted from the high number of immigrants, of foreigners and Aussiedler of German descent from eastern European countries, who streamed into the Federal Republic. Almost 5 million foreigners lived here in 1990, including 1.5 million Turks. Many came because they expected better living conditions here than in their home countries. Others asked for asylum, because they were persecuted for political or religious reasons at home. They were all looking for housing and work. In addition, there were language barriers, the clash of cultural differences and problems of integration. Severe riots directed against foreigners have led to a fear of new right-wing radicalism in Germany. (Ebeling and Birkenfeld, vol. 6: 109)

Immigration is evidently not considered a significant part of contemporary German history by the authors: immigrants are clearly not seen as members of the German community of destiny. This reflects the creed (only recently declared as outdated) that ‘Germany is not a country of immigration’. Most of the labour migrants are in fact residents but not citizens of Germany.10 This applied also to most Turkish pupils in the Lise Meitner School, and even those who were naturalised were mostly referred to as ‘foreign pupils’. This taxonomy is in accordance with the traditional emphasis on an ethnic rather than a demotic concept of nation. Until the legal reforms of 2000, immigrants who could prove they had German ancestors were systematically privileged by automatically being given German citizenship upon arrival. This reliance on common descent reflected an effective internal exclusivism in the construction of the nation. It was a prime site for debating Germanness in public controversies, because the conditions of belonging to the ‘German people’ were loaded with incoherent meanings.11 These basically incorporated a tension such that the constitutional term ‘the German people’ could be understood in terms of a community of descent and culture, the nexus being a contradiction in itself in which each part could be played off against the other.12 It is entirely in line with these asymmetrical preferences that the contribution of labour immigrants to the German post-war economy is not mentioned in the textbook quoted above, while postwar German refugees like those expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland are in fact represented as having made a substantial contribution to the Wirtschaftswunder. A comparison with teaching trajectories confirms this impression of a lack of balance. Not even an otherwise ambitious suggestion for the advanced Gymnasiale Oberstufe, which proposes treating ‘migrations’ as an overlapping topic in the various social sciences, that is, in political and social science and in history, goes any further in this respect: among other (historical) migrations it lists ‘migration because of poverty’ as the current example.13 In respect of lower courses of compulsory education, the geography book that deals with Turkey in 77

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Grade 9 also treats migration in this sense. The ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘backwardness’ of the country is described.14 Migration within Turkey and to western Europe is briefly sketched as a reaction to poverty and the different stages of development in Turkey, but there is not a single word about industrialised countries’ own interests in the recruitment of an immigrant workforce. This treatment of immigration implies that classmates of Turkish origin represent a pre-modern, backward and thus not really compatible population. To sum up, the push factors of migration (bad living conditions and persecution) are extensively treated, while the pull factors (the labour shortages which led to the hiring of migrants) are completely ignored. On the whole this has three important consequences: (1) Labour migration is associated with poverty. This is reflected in the term foreigner (Ausländer)15 which officially applies to all non-German nationals. In everyday language however, the term is restricted to immigrants from the east and south. An American, Englishman or Frenchman is not really considered an Ausländer but is rather supposed to contribute some enrichment (as we have seen similarly with the Dutch concept of allochtonen where such ‘unproblematic’ foreigners are not included either). Although in the proper meaning of the word they are also foreigners, they are not considered problematic in Germany.16 (2) A certain imbalance of reciprocity is implied in the construction. It seems to be less ‘us’ who profited from ‘them’ than ‘them’ who were and are profiting from ‘us’. Immigrants appear as recipients: they obtain opportunities and shelter from us. This recalls one of the now somewhat out-dated (but from time to time reactivated – at Lise Meitner School too) structural opposition between host and guest implicit in the term guestworker (Gastarbeiter). But it is even worse: to accept immigrants obviously has its price, for they seek houses and work. In one chapter in a history textbook about Germany between 1982 and 1990, we read that although during the 1986 to 1990 boom more than 1 million new jobs were created, the rate of unemployment did not fall in the same proportion because many immigrants took the jobs (Ebeling and Birkenfeld 1991: vol. 6, 108). The alternative reading, that the immigrants contributed to the boom, obviously did not enter the authors’ minds. This strongly asymmetric emphasis is particularly problematic because of the clear exclusion of the immigrants from the post-war community of destiny. The message is that they profit from us although they do not belong to us. This view continues to be maintained even after the immigrants’ legal inclusion, for their profound difference is anyway taken for granted: when we first visited Lise Meitner School in Berlin and asked the headmaster for the current proportion of Turkish pupils, he said that it was ‘unfortunately’ no longer possible to tell; what he regretted was that their ‘being Turkish’ was no longer clearly visible in the school’s statistics due to the increase in naturalisations in the previous years. Nationality is among the information given during enrolment and there is no attempt what78

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soever at Lise Meitner School to treat these data as if they were sensitive or a potential cause of stigma: the immigrants’ otherness is seen as self-evident. Yet given the increasing numbers of naturalised immigrants, it becomes more difficult to classify the school’s ‘problematic clientele’, as the headmaster liked to phrase it. (3) Immigration basically causes problems. One chapter in a geography book on Berlin for Grade 10 gives an unequivocal assessment of immigration. The quoted passage refers to a ‘new right-wing radicalism’, which is, of course, a real threat to the anti-totalitarian ‘never-again politics’ of the Federal Republic: Whether Huguenots, or the foreign workers who have been recruited in the western part since the Wall was built,…the former GDR’s contract workers in the eastern part of Berlin, migrants from central and eastern Europe, or foreigners seeking political asylum – all of them leave their mark in the city. The total of 185 nations bring cultural enrichment but also cause problems…that partly hamper integration [such as] unemployment (every third Turk is already without employment), a lack of vocational training places for foreign youths, the cohabitation of Germans and non-Germans in an economically difficult situation, the lack of modern naturalisation laws. (Fuchs et al. 1994–7: vol. 10, 121)

On the whole, the association of immigration with poverty and problems has far-reaching implications for the construction of otherness by way of cultural difference. After all, just what kind of ‘cultural enrichment’ could seriously be expected from all these problematic have-nots, apart perhaps from fast-food stalls? When looking at the representation of countries of origin in geography, it becomes ever more apparent that we have nothing ‘to learn from them’. The main perspective according to which the world is analysed is economic: culture and politics are treated as issues of minor importance. With regard to the ‘Third World’ the emphasis is on underdevelopment, which against the background of the central role that economic success plays in creating self-esteem, appears somehow as the opposite pole to Germany.17 The culture of the others, however, is brought into view as one of the key factors explaining underdevelopment. Discussing population control, the geography textbook quotes a proverb from India in order to illustrate the culturally different perceptions of birth control: an Indian farmer explaining the preference for sons over daughters by referring to cultural traditions of dowry and funeral customs ends by remarking that a bride fulfils her wishes at marriage by becoming the mother of eight sons (Krauter and Rother 1988: 74). The implied message that this sort of reproduction rate spoils all efforts at development readily finds an audience: when a group of 15- and 16year-old pupils were shown slides of their teacher’s trip to Uganda, a German girl commented at once: ‘They all have so many children! Why is that?’ Another girl added: ‘If they don’t have any means of contraception, they should have less 79

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sex!’ When their teacher tried to calm them down by explaining that, in a situation in which social security and pensions are not provided by the state, children are needed as a provision for old age, two pupils responded simultaneously: ‘That’s not our fault!’ It is thus acknowledged that if others are worse off they deserve some assistance – but only within certain limits. If our efforts remain fruitless because of their strange, different cultures, they have to bear the consequences. This perspective entails a kind of moralising in making up one’s mind for others, who are discredited for not coming up to our standards of success and responsibility. A remarkable causal chain is set up: traditional culture = poverty = backwardness = background of immigrants. Culture thus constructed is conceived less as a pattern of norms, values and concepts than as mentality, by which is meant a general attitude or collective disposition towards the world. This concept functions basically by constructing an opposition between the ‘German mentality’ – which, it should be added, is not seen unequivocally as positive18 – and ‘their’ mentality, which acts as a counterpart or contrast. This has a remarkable consequence: the ‘never-again commitment’ of German politics against totalitarianism has lead to a widespread equation between immigrants and the German Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. One has a particular responsibility towards ‘the other ’. Antisemitism and Ausländerfeindlichkeit (hostility towards foreigners) are constructed as basically the same acts. In a Grade 9 history unit about National Socialism and the attacks on Jews, their shops and synagogues during the night of 9 November 1938, called the ‘night of broken glass’ (Reichskristallnacht) by the Nazis, a Turkish pupil asked why the Jews had not fled Germany. The teacher replied by asking why Turks did not flee from Germany today, following all the murders, assaults and arson attacks! Kenan: Why didn’t the Jews flee from Germany? Teacher: Well yes, why don’t the Turks flee? Kenan: Why should the Turks flee? Teacher: Today there are murders, arson attacks and assaults on Turks; why don’t they flee? … Fedor: Things won’t get that bad. Teacher: Exactly, that’s what many Jews believed as well. And then you also have to consider what it means to go away: the Turks, after all, have property here, maybe a flat, a shop, money in the bank. If someone said, ‘You are only allowed to take with you what you can carry in suitcases – everything else belongs to Germany’, who would want to leave then? It was just like that with the Jews at that time. 80

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The question why Jewish Germans did not flee is not argued with reference to their identification as belonging to the German people but to economic and material aspects. This act of translation means a double exclusivism: following the bias of ethnic and cultural otherness, it treats German-Jewish victims as if they had been foreigners, thus reproducing the idea of their otherness. In the classroom a line is again drawn between Germans and non-Germans: the immigrants are constructed as potential victims. Again an opposition is implied, this time not between benefactor and recipient but between culprit and victim. In a further history lesson the question was, ‘How had it been possible for millions of people to be killed in Nazi Germany?’ Again, it sounded as if Jews had been a separate category of the population: the teacher spoke of Jewish Mitbürger in contrast to ‘the normal population in Germany’. The same term Mitbürger, with its absurd meaning of ‘fellow citizen’ but not citizen in the proper sense, is a common word for today’s foreign residents, used by politicians, trade unionists, the media and others (ausländische Mitbürger). These notional ascriptions too, used to characterise the position of immigrants within German society, were also present in teaching practices at Lise Meitner School. They draw a clear boundary: the ‘us–them’ dichotomy takes the form of Germans versus foreigners and implies a distinction through presumed collective ethnic and cultural traits that shape the basis for conceptual and formal political exclusion of the latter. On the basis of the concept of culture = mentality, immigrants are constructed as others, that is, ‘the stranger’, in a much more radical way than in France, England or the Netherlands. The absence of a positive political project aiming at the realisation of a universal value like liberty or equality has as its consequence a difficulty in developing a positive politics of integration. The immigrants are neither incorporated into a multiculturally defined society, nor are they called upon to participate in a universal project like French Civilisation. The striking neglect of migration in the history textbooks bears witness to a (psychic) suppression of the fact that Germany is in reality a country of immigration and that the others are here to stay. Moreover, areas of the world that stand for cultural mixing and ethnic diversity are not treated at all positively in the curricula. ‘Ethnic and religious diversity and their consequences’ are discussed in the context of the Balkans, where the actual consequences are ones of serious conflict; the syllabus refers to this as ‘a view of current problems’.19 Again this aspect shows up in connection with a geography unit dealing with the Near and Middle East: the learning goal is ‘knowing and classifying conflicts and their causes in the cultural-ethnic and economic fields’.20 Multiculturality is thus treated an aspect that has to do not with Germany, but with typical conflict areas, and it has not been regarded as necessary to modify these syllabi to take account of the actual presence of immigrants. This becomes all the more meaningful when we consider that the unification of the two German republics has occasioned some quick revisions of the geography and history curricula: the 81

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preoccupation with Berlin-Brandenburg is now prescribed as ‘obligatory and having priority’ in geography, while in history the ‘process of growing together’ in Germany is described as a goal to be exemplified by the region of Berlin-Brandenburg.21 The quoted documents are from 1995, which shows that while just five years is enough to adapt curricula to the needs of a unified Germany, the presence of immigrants for up to 35 years has not led to any re-formulation of what should be taught about cultural and ethnic diversity. The heterogeneous factors and sources that have contributed to current ‘German culture’ are not an issue. In a way, this creates the impression that the majority culture encompasses something universal needing no further explanation or evidence: ‘our’ culture is not made subject to critical consideration, while ‘their’ other cultures become a topic only when something goes wrong. The category ‘foreigner‘ therefore remains an empty, nondescript, residual category. In a way there is no (symbolic) space for immigrants in the German construction that allows them a positive role or that invites them to identify with a shared project. They are mainly marked negatively as non-Germans, Ausländer, not positively. And it is difficult to see what somebody with such a different mentality should and could contribute substantially (to a society, one may add, in which commitment and responsibility are writ large). We shall see that this is reflected to a remarkable degree by adolescents from immigrant families themselves in their identity management: in a discussion group involving pupils from Lebanese, Greek, Turkish, Croatian and Tamil families, the participants agreed on the fact that ‘their mentality’ (in the singular!) was different from ‘the German mentality’.

Conclusions Derived from the construction of the nation, different ideals of organizing differences are formulated. However, each way has its inconsistencies and specific problems. The concept of multicultural Britain approaches immigration positively. The hope is to integrate new immigrants by accepting their communities emphatically as participants in the multicultural game. Ethnic heterogeneity is defined as a vital element in self-definition, and group rights are affirmatively acknowledged. The display of cultural and ethnic diversity was enforced in the school in London, and this was not seen as being in contradiction to the national collectivity, which appears as constructed of different communities, be they ethnic, (sub-)cultural, religious, etc. Space is provided for different group identities below the all-embracing identity of Britishness, and, without any risk of being frowned upon, one can be black and British. Such hyphenated identities are legitimate if not necessarily expected on the basis of institutionalised recognition. This requires multicultural competence in respecting the particularities of others and in developing for oneself a sense of belonging to the whole within one’s own community. In regard to the latter, immigrants are understood as 82

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contributing by forming additional communities. Individuals will thus be integrated through the integration of their communities. However, a closer look shows that these communities are to some degree artificial creations of the administration, a process in which immigrant identities are formulated anew. In France the possibility that identity is formed in immigrant communities is also admitted, but here it is seen rather as a danger to, than a chance for, integration. The French concept is to emancipate individuals from these parochial cultures and thus allow them to participate in the sense of ‘culture ≠ Civilisation universelle’. Pupils in Paris are not expected to develop a respect of recognition for the cultural differences of others, as their peers are in London; rather, they should try to forget about all potential differences and perceive each other simply as equal individuals. In order that the republican integrity of the political culture should not be violated, the concept of a French nation ‘above the communities’ demands that all group affiliations other than that of French citizenship should be disregarded. Although incorporating immigrants with normative indifference and easy naturalisation, the necessary skills are also highly demanding and require a lot of analytical competence. Integration means subordination to the ethos of universalist rationality that characterises the French notion of Civilisation, to which immigrants are in effect not thought of as having anything relevant to contribute. In practice this leads to a clear separation between the private sphere (where the British nexus ‘community = identity = culture’ is allowed to play a role) and the public sphere (where it is strictly banned). This involves a complex process of drawing boundaries which, in recent years has, among other incidents, provoked the series of ‘headscarf affairs’. In the Netherlands one finds the conviction that different cultural backgrounds should be tolerated as empirical plurality. Although being rather a matter of strategic policies here than a principle in the construction of the nation itself, the general acceptance of ethnic and cultural heterogeneity holds true for the Netherlands as for Britain. The situation that pupils face in London or in Rotterdam is similar in that a cultural difference displayed in public does not provoke any questioning of their belonging to the Dutch or British nation. As umbrella identities that just hold disparate groups together, being Dutch or being British can easily be reconciled with, for example, being Turkish. Yet while developing an awareness of one’s own community seems to lie at the heart of expectations to become an integrated part of multicultural Britain, the Dutch concept of multiculturalism favours an approach that plays these original identities down in favour of the larger collective identity of the Dutch. Social consensus and participation shall rank higher than particular group belonging. This understanding individualises the culture concept and aims to cut off links with communities as sources of collective identity that are characteristic of the British example. In Rotterdam, the idea is that the equation ‘community = culture = identity’ should rather be transformed to a sub-cultural level (on an 83

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equal footing with gays, lesbians, househusbands and so on). The term allochtoon is now used to denote groups that are neither one nor the other. The process of individual emancipation is supposed to follow from treating one’s background as if it were just a sub-cultural life-style. Yet one must be careful, as there is always the danger of a regression into fundamentalism. In contrast to these three countries, there is a noticeable lack of any positive strategies of integration in Germany. As in France, the national self-conceptualisation goes against the image of multiculturalism; yet while in France this is due to a universalist motivation to remain indifferent when faced with particularities in order to assimilate them, in Germany the rationale consists of an ethno-tropic homogeneity that does not involve any proposal for the integration of others. Thus, the dominant discourse differentiates between Germans and foreigners, and constructs the latter as a residual category. Immigrants are defined by deficits and discrepancies, and are not expected to have anything remarkable to contribute. In this taxonomy, it is almost impossible to describe the presumed cultural differences in positive terms. Immigrant cultures are hardly symbolised – in a sense, they are empty spaces.

Notes 1. The idea that Britishness may come ‘on top’ is also expressed in the regulations concerning naturalisation: after five years residence, and without having to give up one’s previous nationality, one can obtain British citizenship. Dual citizenship is generally possible and is understood as a political principle in Britain. The jus soli is automatically applied to children who are born in the UK. 2. A peculiarity of the dominant discourse in Britain is that the key term for integration and for the analysis of representations of the others has been race rather than culture. Post-colonial and labour migration was interpreted as having stimulated a process of ‘racialisation’ in Britain, which was then responded to by discourses of anti-racism (e.g. Cohen and Bains 1988; Miles 1989). Several ‘Race Relations Acts’ have been passed since the 1960s as anti-discrimination laws. Recently culture and religion have been taken into consideration more and more in the context of the political recognition of cultural differences. 3. These two subjects are particularly important because there is no more education civique in the French Lycées. Instead, history and geography are supposed to help discover the relevant foundations and principles of human social life. 4. Not only the school programmatically refrains from taking cultural plurality into consideration. Due to the strong principles of centralism and republicanism in France, a normatively cultureblind approach to immigration was the most favoured in the whole academic attention paid to this issue for a long time. Cultural specificities were interpreted as a particularism that encourages discrimination and obscurantism by leading intellectuals (Meillassoux 1980; Taguieff 1985; Balibar 1989; Finkielkraut 1989; Costa-Lascoux 1992). Only since the beginning of the 1990s has this approach been countered by more differentialist views in social research. The staff of the centre d’inalyse et d’intervention sociologiques have postulated that the French

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republican integration model is in crisis and have presented surveys in different spheres of society to demonstrate this (Dubet and Lapeyronnie 1992; Wierviorka 1997; Dubet and Martuccelli 1997). The tendency to consider the influence of cultural background as well, marks all those more recent studies that focus on a particular group of immigrants or ‘communities‘ in France (Kastoryano 1986; Simon and Tapia 1998; Lepoutre 1997; Vieillard-Baron 1996). For the French setting, this marks a paradigmatic change. 5. This state-centric notion of individuals’ equality vis-à-vis the state is part of the declared aims to be carried through with the education system. To apply the same programme to all pupils with centralised teaching materials lies at its heart. All who pass the Baccalauréat in France should have learnt the same: at least formally they will have been exposed to contents of knowledge that are supposed to be exactly alike throughout the whole country, no matter what school or teacher they happened to have (see Monchablon 1994; Soysal 1994). 6. France applies a composite of the ancestral and the territorial principle: children with a French father or mother get French citizenship regardless of their place of birth. Children of foreigners get French citizenship at the age of 18 when they have lived in France for the previous 5 years. Until recently they had to apply for it. Prime Minister Jospin’s government issued an alteration to this in March 1998: naturalisation takes place automatically, after at least 5 years of residence, at the age of 18 – as it did already before Pasqua’s law of 1994. Naturalisation is also easy by marrying a French person: after one year of marriage one can get French citizenship, and in all cases of naturalisation one can also keep one’s former citizenship. 7. The naturalisation conditions in the Netherlands describe the same idea: it is easy to get Dutch citizenship after 5 years of residence, and dual citizenship is generally possible – with the connotation of being just a political tool for the process of integrating minorities into Dutch society. The recognition and management of heterogeneity in society is seen more as a matter of ad-hoc policies than one of nation-construction itself, for ‘all of these measures are designed to provide a bridge between migrant groups and Dutch institutions, which are presumed to be in natural disparity‘ (Soysal 1994: 50). Societal consensus is hereby rather restricted as to methods, and this emphasis can likewise be seen in the favoured modes of discussion in school (see Chapter 8: Argumentative Strategies). 8. For a long time, self-organized bodies of ethnic groups have played an important role in the consultative processes with institutions of the intermediate layer between the state and the public (maatschappelijk middenveld) that are quite typical of Dutch political decisionmaking. These grassroots groups were then merged into one overarching body for allochtonen and accompanied by a categorisation according to participation deficits. In a government report that was issued in1990, the term was, however, rejected and replaced by ‘ethnic minority’ with the argumentation that the latter would refer to the unequal position in society and would thus be more appropriate than allochtoon, which just meant ‘from elsewhere’. In spite of this official statement, the vague and liminal term allochtoon is still more popular not only in welfare circles but also in government documents, and as we could note, in school. 9. In her survey into national identity in West Germany, Sigrid Rossteutscher stresses as her general finding the fact that ‘if there is something special about Germany it is not its frequently discussed lack of national identity, but the strong push in a negative direction… About 30 per cent of respondents in our sample have an indifferent or predominantly negative attitude towards the German nation. Another…14 per cent reject the concept of pride and retreat to the softer categories of happiness and contentment’ (Rossteutscher 1997: 624). 10. Until recently, conditions for naturalisation were mainly based on the jus sanguinis, which defined ancestry as the decisive factor. The naturalisation of immigrants without German ancestors was thus exceptional, even though it had become easier in the 1990s. A law issued

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in 1990 gave immigrants of several years legal residence the right to naturalisation, where before it had been a matter of discretionary decision. In 2000, the jus soli was introduced for the children of immigrants, who now automatically receive German citizenship by being born in Germany, whether a second citizenship is automatically aquired through their parents or not. When they become adults, however, they must decide which citizenship they want to keep, because dual citizenship is only allowed under exceptional conditions. For those who have not been born in Germany, conditions of naturalisation have been modified but not made easier: such people can be naturalised after eight years of residence if they meet certain conditions, like passing a German language test and being able to support themselves. The latter condition, for example, is not met in the case of unemployment, meaning that an obstacle has been created which did not exist before. 11. The fact that historically the consciousness of a German nation preceded nation-state formation seems to have led to the characteristic style of being on affective or romantic rather than rational terms with the nation. Since the naturalisation of foreigners without German ancestors is also possible, even though the conditions are comparatively restrictive, one can in fact join the German demos without being part of the ethnos, but this aspect is not brought into awareness with adequately clear regulations and terminology, the tendency being to equate the two aspects. According to Hoffmann (1996: 253), the ethnos is moreover regarded as ranking higher within this composition. 12. The descendants of Huguenots, nineteenth-century Polish labour migrants and Bohemian refugees from the Prussian peuplement period, for instance, are not exposed to any doubts about their Germanness nowadays and have evidently been able to ‘become Germans’ through enculturation over generations. When Poles migrated one hundred years ago, this was deplored due to their presumed otherness, and there was a flourish of rhetoric against the ‘foreign infiltration’ from the east that in many respects parallels current discourses about labour immigrants from the south of Europe (see Bade 1992, Budzinski 1999). 13. Cf. Rahmenplan Berlin für den Fundamentalbereich der Einführungsphase der Gymnasialen Oberstufe: Geschichte und Politische Weltkunde, Berlin 30.3.1993. 14. Cf. Krauter and Rother 1988: 56 ff. The newest edition of this geography textbook series ‘Terra’ does mention the fact that the lack of workers in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s made German employers look for workers in Mediterranean countries (Fuchs et al: Terra 9, 1996). However, this book was so new that it was not yet available at Lise Meitner at the time of the research. The 1988 edition was being used and is cited above. 15. Because of its exclusivist connotations, this term is no longer used by social scientists as an analytical concept. Politically correct word-monsters exist that were designed to avoid such implications: the term that has been developed in Berlin in this sense is ‘pupils of non-German original language’ (Schülerinnen und Schüler nichtdeutscher Herkunftssprache). However, this not used except in official school authority documents, and ‘foreign children and teenagers’ (ausländische Kinder und Jugendliche) is still used by the same authorities. 16. This difference is brilliantly expressed in an anecdote that Andrei Markovits reported from Berlin while he was in receipt of a fellowship there. His wife is from Vienna, has black hair and a ‘Mediterranean’ appearance. After entering shops in Berlin and saying a sentence in German with her Viennese accent, she was apparently told more than once: ‘Oh, you’re from Vienna, how nice – we were thinking you were an Ausländer’ – which is, of course, what she is in not holding German citizenship (cf. ‘Wenn aus Mit-Bürgern Bürger werden’, in die tageszeitung, 23–24.1.1999). 17. This positive self-image in terms of economic success is not restricted to post-war West Germany. From their history textbooks, pupils in Berlin learn that, within twenty years of the war,

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and thanks to Western assistance, the FRG became the third largest industrial power after the USA and USSR. And even without such economic aid, the Germans in the GDR attained the highest living standards out of all countries belonging to the Eastern Bloc, so that by 1970 they could claim to be the tenth most successful industrial country in the world (Ebeling and Birkenfeld, vol. 6: 132). ‘The people were proud of their achievements, and rightly so, for conditions had been more difficult than in the West’ (ibid.: 155). Within either power bloc, Germans managed to climb economically out of a situation of complete destruction within a quarter of a century, which intimates some collective mentality of industriousness. 18. Many of the teachers at Lise Meitner were influenced by the 1968 revolts, and the related discourses have left a deep ambivalence about everything to do with ‘German culture’ or ‘national identity’. The implications of ‘Germanness’, especially German industriousness, produce an extremely bitter echo in this context. Due to this uneasiness, and to the fact that it is this generation that dominates the teaching staff at Lise Meitner, open promotion of ‘German culture’ was quite rare at the school. The prime site for drawing boundaries in terms of culture in this school was the field of disciplinary expectations, where, in brief, many teachers referred to cultural differences as reasons for ‘deficient behaviour’. This issue is treated in more detail in a separate chapter. 19. Cf. Rahmenplan Berlin für das Fach Erdkunde, 7. Klasse, Berlin 1995. 20. Cf. Rahmenplan Berlin für das Fach Erdkunde, 9. Klasse, Berlin 1995. 21. Cf. Rahmenplan Berlin für das Fach Geschichte, Klassenstufen 7–10: Vorbemerkungen; and Rahmenplan Berlin für das Fach Erdkunde, 10. Klasse, Berlin 1995.

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„ 4„ The Place of Religion in Four Civil Cultures Sabine Mannitz

By way of locating religion in state education, the state suggests an ideal place for religion in its citizens’ lives. The place of religion in school evokes several questions. Is religion a legitimate ethical resource at all? Why and what should one learn about religion, and who should teach it to whom? Is it more important to obtain religious instruction or to study the plurality of different belief systems? In all the four countries of our research sample, general principles of secularisation are commonly subscribed to. On the one hand these are supposed to represent modernity in a wide sense, on the other hand the religious freedom is also recognised as a norm that has originated in the states of northwestern Europe. In the context of boundary construction, this supranational heritage of the Enlightenment forms a large part of the assumed ‘cultural stuff ’(Barth 1969) that makes a difference between west and east, for example. The Western ideas of secular liberalism – meant to protect the individual from the state – are supposed to differ radically from a conception of the political and the religious as union, which is often considered characteristic of Islam or Orthodox Christianity. However, even though the rise of secular principles emerged within a comprehensively European field of discourse, marked by close interaction of political philosophy with Jewish and Christian narratives (Habermas 1992: 23), the actual developments of how the ambiguous tensions between state and religion were resolved took different paths in each particular case. As a result of the different national histories and related political cultures, states may treat religion(s) quite distinctly. For instance, there might be variation in the extent to which (the Christian) religion is considered a value system linked inextricably with its own nation and its characteristic culture. In the context of nation states, the core question concerns the relation between the conceptualisation of the 88

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national collectivity and religion: is a deconstruction of religious orientations required? Is there any support in favour of certain dominant convictions, or for something that sustains the state through all faiths, including those of religious minorities and immigrants? These options affect the normative contents of national self-construction. They thereby also regulate the conditions of access to the ‘imagined community’ of the nation (Anderson 1991: 7). Since internal differences need to a certain degree to be handled strategically in all nation states in order to create and as well reproduce the envisaged communion, to what extent is adaptation necessary, and who must initiate it? Since we investigate education under state authority, the crucial question can be phrased as, what does the place of religion in school tell us about the normative interpretation and assessment of religion(s)? As this appears to represent ‘a principal site of contentious debates over inclusion and exclusion’ (Zolberg and Long 1997: 5), what impact does the characteristic scheme have on the scope for religious difference, and, given our research focus, on Islam in particular? Applying these questions to our four cases, I will argue that they each represent distinctive models. The different concepts of handling the relationships between the state and religion(s) imply correspondingly different schemes of expectation for minorities.

Religion as a Private Pursuit: The French Model of Secularist Citizenship Of our four research sites, the French school appears to represent the clearest and most radical position: it offers no religious education at all – religions only receive notice in history and philosophy lessons as abstract systems of ideas and belief. This set-up is not a specific choice of the Lycée Fernand Braudel. Confessional education is generally absent in French state schools, a policy derived from the republican principle of secularism (laïcité). This aims at absolute neutrality towards religious convictions and implies that no religious symbols whatsoever should be found in public institutions. This means that there are no crucifixes in state buildings or classrooms, no common prayers, and no religious education lessons in school. Hence, religion and the state seem to be placed in opposition to each other. All religious identifications are strictly set apart from the public sphere and also have to be kept private. The long reach of this notion became visible in the well-known series of affaires des foulards in the past ten years. As a characteristic manifestation of French civil culture, the first headscarf conflict in 1989 promptly led to a public debate on republican principles. Five prominent French intellectuals published an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for his intervention and arguing against the wearing of headscarves with explicit reference to the meaning of laïcité: 89

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Laïcité is and principally remains a battle, like the public school, the republic and liberty itself… Pupils shall find the possibility of forgetting their community of descent and thinking of something other than what they are, in order to learn to think independently. If teachers are supposed to help with this and the school to remain what it is, a place of emancipation, affiliations must not be the decisive factor at school. (Debray, Badinter, Finkielkraut, de Fontenay and Kintzler in Le Nouvel Observateur, 2.11.1989; cf. Baier 1993: 112, 120)

Beside the immediate interpretation of headscarves as religious, this view supposed that affiliations of descent or religion would become ‘the decisive factor at school’ if they were allowed to be worn. By linking the ideological battle for the republic, and even liberty itself, to the demand that it should not be legitimate to display signs of religious belonging in a state school, this (radical) position phrased religious affiliations as a contradictory obstacle to all the principles that the French republic stands for. According to this reading, the state school has to function as a safeguard of the secularist political system. Not only should religion not be decisive there, it should be forced back into invisibility. The basic idea, apparently taken for granted by the five prominent defenders of laïcité, is that school needs to create a quasi-neutralised public setting before it can offer equal access to the republican projects of rationality and liberty in the form of education and unbiased interaction. The strengthening of schools against all possible influences and signs of religion belongs to this egalitarian programme. Although the issue of girls wearing headscarves is in fact more complicated and has therefore also remained a topic for juridical processes, negotiations and public discussions in France ever since, the heads of most state schools decided to forbid the headscarves in 1994 in the name of the republican principle of guaranteeing a neutral public space. Headscarves were not tolerated in Lycée Fernand Braudel either.1 The fact that laïcité was interpreted in this strict sense in many schools reflects an ongoing ideological battle over the contents of education and the particular influence of the Catholic Church since the setting up of state education in the nineteenth century, when the French Republic founded schools to provide non-religious education against the existing religious schools. In fact, at that time laïcité did not mean neutrality at all, but the taking of a definite position in favour of one of the two competing ideas about the relationship between the state and private life: it was an explicit decision against the opponents of the civic principles of 1789 as represented by the Catholic Church in France (Prost 1992; Baier 1993). The representatives of the Republic were in open political competition with the Catholic Church, and the role of the laïcist state school, instituted by Jules Ferry, was to teach citizens republican tenets. This programme was not rooted in ideas of founding a moral community but drew up an agenda of rationality on behalf of the French nation. The history textbook used 90

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for the Première at Lycée Fernand Braudel quotes Jules Ferry’s speech, outlining this programme: The religious neutrality of the school, the secularisation of the school…is in my opinion and in the opinion of the government the consequence of the secularisation of the civil powers… It is important for the Republic, for the civil society, it is important for all those who carry in their heart the tradition of 1789 that the direction of the schools, that the supervision of the schools should not be in the hands of priests who have, with regard to issues which are valuable to us and on which our society is based, opinions which are separated from ours by a deep abyss. (Berstein and Milza 1988: 85; emphasis added)

In her analysis of the different meanings of laïcité, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux has distinguished three stages: first, the historical separation of the religious and the political spheres took place, which was marked by real hostilities as can be seen in Ferry’s comment. The second phase established a kind of peaceful co-existence of the two spheres and was followed by a third understanding: nowadays, laïcité tended to define religious particularities as a fundamental liberty (CostaLascoux 1996). According to this view, the relegation of all confessional matters to the private sphere has been reinforced even though the state no longer opposes religion. Regarding the space left to individuals’ religious practice, particularly in view of the fact that pupils spend a lot of time at school in France, the very concept of a strictly neutralised public institution implies a relatively small private sphere: religious nurture in state-run schools is inconceivable in France, and matters of belief should absolutely be left behind at the school-gate. Consequently pupils receive no religious education at all in state schools; nor does the question of integrating confessions other than majority Catholicism into a programme of teaching exist on this level. Religions do, on the other hand, receive recognition in lessons in history and philosophy. The national curriculum contains a unit on ‘Religion, culture and arts’ in the programme of the Première, and another one called ‘Cultural, economic and social changes in France since 1945’ for the final lycée grade, the Terminale, which both deal with religion. However, it is not the contents of religions that are treated in this context but their contributions to the civilizing process. In this respect there is no difference in the presentation of Christianity and Islam: Islam becomes an issue in history during the Seconde. The textbook makes no references to present-day Muslims in this chapter but portrays Islam as a historically important religion that included political development and also spread knowledge of algebra, astronomy, medicine and geography, and commercial as well as agricultural techniques, around the Mediterranean world. The presentation is affirmative, stressing economic prosperity and artistic, cultural and scientific progress. Pupils consider the achievements and mutual influences 91

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of different religions in history. The same attempt to treat different religions in an equally value-neutral manner as historical agents becomes even clearer in another chapter, which is about the Crusades: two documents are presented on the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, one giving a Christian view, the other a Muslim view of the events that are characterised as massacres and acts of colonisation. The previous coexistence of Muslims and Christians is depicted as a characteristic trait of oriental life before the disruption brought about by warfare. The task is to look at the Crusades as a disastrous confrontation that resulted from the conflation of religion with politics on both sides. Thus religion is not taken into view in terms of its possible relevance for personal belief, nor taught as comparative religion studies, but is treated in its most purified form as a force that has contributed to human civilization. It is an analytical way of presenting religions which expresses rational distance and relativity. At the same time, since religion becomes a topic in history lessons, it is also historicised. The implicit message is that faith belongs to an outmoded age: separation is not only spatial in terms of the boundary between private and public, it also marks epochs. One finds no positive assessments of the potential contributions of religion to contemporary society: religion obviously played an important role in the past but it is no longer relevant. The hidden assessment is that nowadays public adherence to religion means regression. When treating ‘cultural differences’ in a geography unit of the Seconde, this message becomes an explicit criterion for evaluating the crucial difference: Everywhere in the world, religions have influenced the life-styles and developments of societies. Even if actual religious practice is small, its influence is a heritage. In some countries, religion is the basis of state organization and of the whole country’s life: since the fall of the Shah’s regime (1979), for example, Iran has been an Islamic Republic. In Algeria, where Islam is the state religion, the Islamic Salvation Front wants to establish another Islamic Republic. In democratic states, religion is generally separated from the state. (Knafou 1993: 20)

This makes it very clear that good citizens in France are expected to keep the private pursuit of their religion strictly separate from all public matters. Religious identification in the public arena might indicate that one is stuck in an outdated mode of life and unable to come up to contemporary standards. What is more, religion appears as an antagonist of liberty in showing a tendency to abolish democratic orders and installing totalitarian regimes. The same sort of suggestion is argued in a history textbook for the Première, which discusses ‘Religions in the modern world’ and states that modernity, involving the progress of science, liberalism and urbanisation, posed a problem for religion which ‘remained pertinent: do religions have to take notice of these new developments or must they oppose them? Despite all the problems mentioned above, the churches remained important spiritual forces which were supported by millions 92

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of believers’ (Berstein and Milza 1988: 42; emphasis in the original). In brief: if religion is still adhered to it is not because of any substantial contribution to the present but in spite of its actual inability to face the challenges of modern times. To know that the French state installed civic instead of religious education sustains the attempt to discredit religion. The historic decision against religious education did not in fact lead to a complete absence of moral education: the Republicans developed a whole new programme of ethical education instead, grounded in the view that social life is not subject to belief but to reason (Déloye 1994). This change to the programme defined the valid standards of civic socialisation in the republic to enable emancipation from pre-modern ties of religion and cultural affiliation. It meant replacing God as a moral resource by establishing a new universal reference scheme which must be subscribed to in public. Éducation civique still exists in French primary schools and continues up to the level of the collège. It connects civic equality with the state’s guarantee of maintaining a discourse of rationality against obscurantism, but in doing so also defines conditions of adaptation. As with matters of discipline, spatial organization or language policy,2 so with respect to spirituality, the state school seems to fulfil a clearing task in France: it leaves an impression of having been purified of all factors symbolising personal particularities as if they were ‘obstacles on the path to universal equality’ (Baier 1993: 119 f.). Like the system of externalised order, which we observed as being characteristic of the concept of discipline in Paris, the strict separation between a private space of heterogeneous subjectivities (amongst which can be religious practice) and a public space that is homogenised according to the republican principles of the state is also significant for the role of religion. When considering the implications for immigrants, and more generally, followers of faiths other than Christianity, the French model of secularist citizenship is principally open to participation by anyone. Yet it links this inclusion to the condition of leaving primordial ties of religion and culture behind, even though this might be at the cost of alienation. Since cultural alienation is a hot intergenerational topic in migrant families anyway, the French state’s expectations on this point do not necessarily create the equality that lies at the heart of its intentions. Although aiming at a sense of integration in neutral terms, the concrete historical conflict of secularisation that has affected the Catholic Church in the emergence of the French Republic and its education is unmistakably visible in the strict relegation of all religious activity to the private sphere and the intense watchfulness against any expressions that might be interpreted as religious. To define religion as an antiquated private pursuit sets limits to social recognition too: if you do not come up to the civic demands of a secularist attitude, you must be pre-modern and unable to recognise the superiority of reason over belief. In terms of power relations, you then become a minority. 93

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Religion as the Guardian of One’s Conscience: the German Model of Religious Education under State-control Unlike France, religious instruction is not absent from state schools in Germany but is a standard element from primary school onwards. The preamble to the German constitution cites trust in God as a common moral basis3 and guarantees religious education to be provided as a regular subject in state schools, put into practice by the Churches in the framework of subsidiarity (Grundgesetz Art. 7 (2), (3)). Berlin’s School Statutes (Schulgesetz) refer to this principle in the first preamble-like paragraph under the heading ‘Task of the school’: ‘…antiquity, Christianity and those movements in society that have been significant in the development of humanism, freedom and democracy should receive their appropriate place [in educating individuals with a consciousness of their responsibilities]’ (Schulgesetz für Berlin, Abs. I §1). The contribution of religion to social progress is mentioned here, but unlike the division into a merely analytical treatment of this development in school, and the carrying out of all religious practice in strict privacy that is so characteristic of the French school, the Christian churches and other established religious and ethical communities are named as educational partners in the German school system. The rationale behind this must necessarily be different from the assumptions we analysed in relation to the school in Paris, namely religion as signifying a premodern and therefore transcended mental state. Despite the fact that Germany is also secularised, the Christian churches’ recognition by the German state and vice versa are comparatively far-reaching. One historical reason is that religious and political power were not separated as early as elsewhere, so that the Christian churches, especially the Protestants, maintained a say in public initiatives that in France would have belonged exclusively to the sphere of the state (MaxPlanck-Institut für Bildungsforschung 1990). The churches were especially involved in the construction of the German national education system in the nineteenth century. Thus lessons in religion have become a regular part of the teaching programmes in state schools throughout Germany,5 rooted as a right in the constitution. However the lessons are not compulsory. To provide religious education, schools in Berlin are legally bound to arrange two lessons a week in their timetables and to offer a room with light and heating free of charge (Schulgesetz für Berlin, §§ 23 and 24). Lise Meitner School offered instruction in Protestant and Catholic Christian belief under this regulation. Additionally, pupils had the option to choose an agnostic cross-confessional subject called Lebenskunde. The teachers of Protestant religion and of Lebenskunde were regular teachers of Lise Meitner School who had an additional qualification to cover these subjects alongside others. Catholic religion was taught by a parish priest who holds an extra qualification for teaching. The latter is necessary to register as a teacher: instructors of Christian religions are educated at regular universities in Germany according to state94

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supervised curricula and not in clandestine priestly seminaries. Thus, although lessons in religion mean denominational education in the German case, religion taught at school under state supervision has to comply with the requirement to favour a common civic and constitutional agenda.6 A dialectical relationship is thus set up: religious instruction is appreciated, if not considered necessary. On the other hand, religion is domesticated, as it is under the control of the state. The aim is to reach a balance in the form of a state tamed by religion and a religion tamed by the state. A ‘responsible religion’ is the ideal (Schiffauer 1997a). When considering institutionalised religious education in state schools, the established Christian churches are clearly privileged above others. They have evidently come to terms with a concept of secularism that is not non-religious but that calls religion to account before society while satisfying spiritual needs.7 They are treated as reliable partners who have proven their responsibility vis-àvis the democratic agenda. Berlin is one of the German states where pupils are also offered an ethical subject. The German Humanist Association is responsible for these rather phenomenologically oriented lessons of Lebenskunde in Berlin. It deals with questions of life and spiritual matters on a more informative and agnostic8 level. Not all Christian pupils in Lise Meitner School preferred the denominational Christian education but many opted for Lebenskunde classes instead. The pupils who attended these lessons were thus denominationally mixed, and not just a residual pool of the non-Christians. The curriculum provides information about different world religions and strives to enable adolescents to judge matters critically and find their own ethical positions in a spirit of enlightenment (Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands 1993). In order to obtain the required permission to conduct such lessons in state schools, the Humanist Association had to undergo a procedure in which the competent state authorities checked whether the ethical content was in accordance with the constitution. This gatekeeping administrative procedure of acknowledgement is to substantiate the applicants’ responsibility towards the social whole. Unlike the strict boundary between a particular private sphere and a public sphere that is neutralised as regards faith, which pupils encounter in Paris, the programme of religious or likewise ethical education under state control in the Berlin school evokes a demand to insert private subjectivity into the public interest and vice versa. This model appears to favour a sense of committed particular moralities that contribute to an integrated whole. If this is subscribed to, non-denominational ethics as well as non-Christian religions can be offered in the same structure, thus guaranteeing that one may grow up in the tradition of one’s own belief in the framework of state education. Yet even though only ‘state-acknowledged’ institutions are allowed to teach their morals in schools, the ethical subjects are a highly controversial matter. The same holds true for the question of Islamic religious instruction in state schools. 95

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Several Muslim Associations have been founded in recent years for the purpose of obtaining the needed state acknowledgement to offer Islamic religious education within the German school system. In November 1998, the Administrative Court of Berlin (Oberverwaltungsgericht) gave the first positive decision to the Islamic Federation, which had applied for the right to teach Islam in Berlin schools. This court decision soon came under heavy attack, for some of the member associations in the Islamic Federation were suspected of spreading anti-constitutional ideology. Many Turkish residents who did not feel represented by this Islamic Federation and would not have felt comfortable having their children instructed by them, founded a further association which also applied for the right to teach Islam in Berlin schools, without success.9 Such cleavages between competitive representations have repeatedly hindered permission to teach Islam at German schools. In the continuing discussions about this issue doubt has also repeatedly been cast on whether the Muslim organizations involved are able to compromise: while Catholics and Protestants respected each other and did not defame each other’s followers, Muslim representatives could not even come to an agreement within their own religion – how could it be assumed that their religious instruction would lead to mutual respect and tolerance, which is after all, the main aim of moral education, that is, to ensure peace in society. A different approach is used in North Rhine-Westphalia, where applications from three Islamic organizations to conduct their lessons in state schools initiated the development of an Islamic curriculum in charge of the local Ministry of Education. A group of mixed experts was set up with the task, thus finding a pragmatic way of solving the dilemma instead of using it as an argument against Islamic education. Although exceptional thus far, this might well be considered ‘a very German story’ because it tries to do justice to the ideal that religious conviction and constitutional principles should not exclude each other but rather be reconciled to enable co-operation (Schiffauer 1997a). If carried out in the state’s schools, religious or any other form of spiritual education has to support this ideal of dialectical balance. What might be the rationale behind this concept? Seen from the angle of the churches, access to schools free of charge to spread their message is a definite privilege; but in what sense could the state possibly profit from this arrangement? In France, the logic of secularist citizenship revealed itself most clearly in cases of conflict that were challenging republican principles, exemplified by the headscarves affairs. The implicit expectations connected with the taken-forgranted position of religious nurture in German schools might also become most visible when the state finds itself in a position where it has to defend itself against violations of principles. Cases of conflict between the individual freedom to exercise one’s religion, and legal obligations or constitutional claims like general compulsory education,10 make such outcomes likely: infact more and more Muslim parents have been making use of legal measures in the past years to obtain releases and adaptations to the contents of teaching for their children on 96

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the basis of damaged religious sentiments. In 1997, for example, Muslim parents took legal steps in Berlin against compulsory lessons in sex education, which are listed in Berlin’s Schulgesetz as one of the school’s compulsory tasks (§ 22). The parents protested at the fact that their daughter was forced to look at photographs of naked people in school lessons. By the time the court finally decided the case, the crucial sex-education lessons had already been over for a long time, but its opinion on the case was that the only unobjectionable decision would have been to grant the girl leave of absence during the lessons. In fact this meant the successful abolition of certain contents of teaching: the court valued parents’ educational rights and the implications of religious freedom more highly than the state’s principles of education.11 Another example regularly leading to judicial proceedings is Muslim girls’ (non-) participation in swimming during primary education. Parents who do not want their daughters to take part in swimming lessons for religious reasons – namely the wearing of bathing suits in co-educational groups, which goes against Islamic ideas of respectable girls’ modest clothing – ask the school for her to be excused. The schools never concede this point, because they have to enforce the tasks laid upon them by the state in respect of compulsory education. The next step is for the parents to address the local school administration to ask for a dispensation from the obligation, which is usually not granted here either, and for the same reason.12 The parents can then take legal action before the Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtsverfahren). For all such cases, German law courts carefully avoid precedents and do not issue a general legal opinion: every single case has to be examined individually. The legal procedure involves investigating in each specific instance whether the persons involved can substantiate that they are living up to the principles of their religion. This evaluation becomes the grounds for the court to decide whether it can recognise an individual’s moral dilemma as a legitimate reason for the legal decision to grant a dispensation from compulsory lessons. Enquiries are then made about aspects like the general style of clothing of the girls concerned, whether they have regularly taken time off for the Muslim holidays13 and whether they normally participate in fasting. The main concern of the court is whether the religious attitude parents give as their reason for the existence of an inner conflict if their daughter had to participate in swimming lessons or look at naked people can be substantiated with reference to a coherent argument and life-style.14 This refers to the so-called ‘examination of conscience’ (Gewissensprüfung). It means that in such major matters of a conflict of interest between individual and state, the responsible individual must be able to produce an internalised conviction coherently in order to prove his or her credibility. This claim indicates a particular perception of the relationship between the individual and the common good: each individual should reconcile his or her own particularist interests and the interests of the collectivity within his or her own conscience. Self-reflective moral commitment would then characterise the 97

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ideal balance between the common good and one’s own conscience, which the Gewissensprüfung refers to. This reading also explains why religious nurture is a regular element in educational programmes at public schools: associating civic freedom with social and moral responsibility for the social whole means that building up conscience on the grounds of religion plays an analogous role to the civic education programme in French schools. The German court procedure of treating all these cases of conflict individually instead of applying a general regulation sustains this interpretation: if the ideal way of arranging the relationship of the individual to the whole is established as a process of internalising responsibility, the state has to ensure that justice is done to the individual case; otherwise the citizen’s personal integrity may be violated. This organic ideal of a moral community arranging socialisation in the tradition of one’s own belief as a civil right under state control has been shaped in a close interrelationship with Christian concepts. The model is therefore not only challenged by an increasing religious diversity due to immigration but also by the growing number of people who are either not practising Christians or in favour of a stricter secularist separation of state and religion. The related public controversies sometimes produce arguments that look contradictory at first sight: in the Bavarian ‘crucifix case’, the defence of crucifixes on classroom walls were legitimised with reference to the Nazis, who, in an anti-Christian move, removed crosses and replaced them with swastikas (see the detailed analysis by Caldwell 1996). These voices drew upon the idea of Christian values such as human dignity, individuality, and freedom as universal and as no less an effective means of countering totalitarian ideology:15 ‘The adjective “Christian” was thought not to exclude but rather to include all members of society’ (Caldwell 1996: 263). The counterposition argued that crucifixes symbolised a Weltanschauung and likewise referred to the Nazi swastikas when demanding that crucifixes ought to be removed from public institutions. This conflict relates to the drawing of boundaries between legitimate and positively valued religion on the one hand, and illegitimate and negatively assessed ideology on the other.16 Apart from different positions over Christian symbols, both accounts entail unease as regards other religions’ representation in public: if shared Christian values are constructed as a basic consensus in society, pluralism is only appreciated within these boundaries. The view that such a consensus of values is crucial implies that dissenting minorities are perceived as a potentially weakening factor, not enriching but endangering the balance of social consensus. On the other hand, a perspective that favours republican neutrality affects not only Christian but all religious symbols, as the situation in France demonstrates. The latter position was adopted by one of the Lise Meitner School teachers during a classroom discussion about Muslim headscarves in Grade 12. He argued the headscarves symbolised an ideology implying an unequal relation between men and women, thus contradicting the constitutional principle of equality. They could hence be forbidden in German institutions like in Turkey 98

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or France. Would they not take offence at a crucifix being hung up on their classroom wall, he asked the class? One Turkish boy replied that he wouldn’t mind: a symbol on a wall would not change his mind. He asked what the Germans were so afraid of. The teacher then referred to the Nazi past and recalled the swastika. Symbols such as headscarves should not be treated as something harmless either. The teacher thus pointed to the ideal of republican neutrality, declaring not only headscarves but also crucifixes as undesirable symbols, as in France. Second, a possible incompatibility of Islam with the German Constitution connected the discussion with anti-democratic symbolism. The class was thus introduced to the fact that basic rights such as religious freedom and the constitutional principle of equality between men and women – both being vital parts of the democratic agenda – might conflict with each other if religion is not tamed by way of loyalty to the liberal democratic constitution. Symbols of Christian belief do at least not cause comparable concerns any more because Bismarck’s Kulturkampf is supposed to have resolved the power relations between the Christian churches and the state in a satisfactory way. This, among other things, is what pupils learn in history classes about the process of secularisation. As in Paris, so too, in the course of secondary schooling in Berlin, religion is a recurrent topic in history lessons. Christianity and Islam are both treated as historically important forces. However, the way of presentation is markedly different from the approach taken in France. The textbook series used in Lise Meitner School treats Christian religion as a rather self-evident ingredient of ‘our culture’, which should be remembered in its temporal depth. The respective treatments of Christianity and Islam strike remarkably different tones: as regards the beginning of Christianity, no basic information is given about the historical person of Jesus or what he preached. Apparently it is taken for granted that pupils will already possess such knowledge in a German classroom. This same expectation, that one is writing mainly for a Christian audience, could also be why the text clearly evinces empathy with the Christian victims of persecution in ancient Rome. The Apostles are reported as having announced their ‘good news’ of the unique, almighty God, ‘who loves all human beings like a good father, bringing the message of the resurrection, of the equality of all humans before God and of brotherly love’. Not surprisingly, according to the textbook, this message was taken up by more and more people ‘with joy’ (Ebeling and Birkenfeld, 1991, vol. 1: 132). As regards Mohammed, here the authors consider explanations to be necessary, for example, how he came to claim that he was God’s prophet. Islam is characterised as a strict doctrine, which, moreover, was apparently not taken up with so much joy by many people – no wonder, given that it demanded the ‘obedience of strict rules’ like praying, fasting, supporting the poor and going on pilgrimage. As a result, the Arabs had to spread it ‘with fire and sword’(ibid., vol. 2: 33). Further on in the course, Arabic civilizing achievements are mentioned, and Islam is said to be a political factor as well: ‘Islam also plays an important role in politics. Almost every day we 99

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watch reports of events in Islamic countries on TV. In some of them people’s whole lives are regulated by the Koran.’ In other words, political Islam is equated with Muslim belief here and characterised as totalitarian. The authors go on to state that ‘a great deal of the oil that we depend on nowadays comes from Islamic countries’ (ibid., vol. 2: 36). Yet there is another reason why one should learn about Islam, namely the presence of Muslims in Germany: ‘more than one and a half million live among us, mostly Turks who came to Germany as guest workers and their families’(ibid.). The position of women in Islam becomes a topic for discussion, and pupils are finally asked to consider possible difficulties in practising Islam in Germany. Altogether, this historiography speaks without any doubts to pupils who are expected to be ethnic Germans and Christians: Muslims have in the meantime come to live ‘among us’, but ‘we’ are Christians. This topic follows indeed immediately after the chapter on the expansion of Islam: ‘Europe comes into being: the Teutons become Christians’. Unmistakably, the spread of Christianity is evaluated positively, while the spread of Islam is made to sound rather negative. The Christian missionary colonisation of ‘the East’ during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is described in this sense: just like the first Christians, who were depicted as having taken up the religious message ‘with joy’, medieval monks and nuns are said to have chosen their lives in monasteries out of their own free will because they wanted to be servants of God, pray and work, and do good and useful labour. In this way, the book says, monasteries became model farms where the monks taught farmers how to grow plants and breed animals: ‘due to their motto of changing inhospitable wasteland into fertile farmland, they also established many monasteries in the East’ and ‘at the same time preached to the Slavs who lived in the surrounding area’ (ibid.: 89). In paraphrase, the Christian mission was a movement driven not by force but by enthusiastic idealists who established culture so that finally ‘Slavic rulers from more distant areas also wanted to attract German settlers to cultivate their land’(ibid.: 133) – profoundly different from spreading a religion ‘with fire and sword’! In contrast to the attempt we observed in the French schoolbooks to treat these topics in a balanced, scientifically abstract way by choosing an analytical vocabulary that expresses distance, the tone in the books used in Berlin treats the Christian religion as the common standard of ‘our’ side, without any inhibitions. It is not the contributions of different religions to the process of universal civilization that is stressed but the relevance of the Christian religion for the emergence of German culture. The same notion as well as its implication that Christian symbolism, practices and festivals are an essential cultural ingredient of Germany, is accorded significance in many more respects throughout the school term. The major Christian festivals are state holidays and are also being prepared for in schools. All over Germany, school classes prepare for Christmas or Easter by rehearsing poems and songs that refer to the events in lessons of music and the German language, and they decorate classrooms and 100

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do special handicrafts together in arts lessons. In Lutheran areas, school classes jointly attend religious service on Reformation Day. Particularly before Christmas, schools may well organize celebrations in class from ritualised forms of present-exchange up to explicit nativity plays. The impact of these activities on Turkish families whose children attend German schools and kindergartens has been neatly described by Lale Yalçin-Heckmann in terms of shaping a need for accommodation (1993: 207–9). What she also encountered is a taken-forgranted view among many Germans that ‘the celebrations and paraphernalia relating to Advent and Christmas mainly have to do with German culture…and have less to do with the “essentials” of religion’ (ibid.: 210). In fact, many courses at the Lise Meitner School did arrange a small so-called Christmas party, and did so without protest from Muslim pupils – indeed, in part it was they who asked for it: ‘Miss, won’t we have a Christmas party this year?’ This could be regarded as an over-identification with the dominant culture, and in fact the fashion of celebrating a ‘Christmas party’ as a standard cultural event without ever referring to the specific religious contents made this possible: in most cases one of their tutor’s lessons was set aside for the Christmas party. Everybody was asked to bring some special food for collective consumption, and candles were set out on the desks. In one of the groups in Year 9, where Turkish girls were strongly in favour of the event, it was also they who brought the most carefully prepared food. While some of the Christian pupils simply took out their normal everyday school lunch packs and had nothing to offer anybody else, and most others had brought ready-made biscuits, chocolatebars or cakes and pastries from supermarkets, two of the Muslim ‘headscarf girls’ on the course had met the afternoon before in order to bake cookies, pancakes, brioches and slices of polenta. In another group, it was Turkish boys who were particularly active: the class had agreed to organize a common breakfast during a lesson for their Christmas party, and two Turkish boys had volunteered to be responsible for buying the bread rolls in the morning before school started. Thus, deprived of their religious meanings, Christian traditions were shared as a social routine of the dominant culture, and many Turkish pupils obviously enjoyed being included and given an opportunity to contribute on this level. However, from the standpoint of several teachers at Lise Meitner School, the development that genuinely religious traditions that are intertwined with cultural routines, escaped their religious contents and became subject to syncretic practices did not conform to the ideal. Some of them expressed regret that they could no longer teach as they should because of the high rate of Muslim foreigners: to the disadvantage of the German pupils, reading German Christmas carols and poems or Christmas verses from the Bible as part of German lessons in December would involve a struggle in some classes that had a number of Turkish pupils. This development was eventually seen as signifying a ‘decline in German culture’ in education, which also points to the concept that constructs 101

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German culture as being of Christian genealogy and values a Christian socialisation in terms of fostering social cohesion. These meanings of religion in school are profoundly different from the consistent separation of state education and denominational instruction that marks French secularism. Rather than historicising its contribution as is done in France, religion is appreciated as a moral source for the creation of social consensus in Germany. Not only is the Christian religion dealt with as unequivocal cultural heritage in textbook narration, but religious nurture is standard in state schools. As long as an institutionalised religion acknowledges the privileged role of the state, it is not only tolerated but even positively integrated into public education. Religious instruction, if conducted in this sense, is perceived as being co-operative. The ideal role which is suggested for religion is to act as the citizen’s guardian of conscience, enabling people to engage in social and political participation in a responsible way. That members of parliament in Germany are exclusively bound to be ‘responsible towards their conscience’ (Grundgesetz Art. 38) signifies the very relevance of this normative concept. Secondly, and maybe even more importantly, religious conviction is considered a personal resource that, if necessary, provides a means of resistance, driven by conscience and responsibility towards the social whole, against dictatorial ideology. In this sense, the German model of religious education in state schools can be interpreted as aiming at a kind of civic competence. It is meant to link the individual conscience with obligations towards the liberal-democratic public order – ideally a relation of symbiotic compromise. The German state does not try to purify the public from religion but it domesticates religion in the public. However, the particular relationships as they developed between the Christian churches and the state shape the standards of recognition and might therefore render effects of exclusion from certain privileges: religious minorities are not excluded from the right to teach their belief in German schools because religious affiliations were considered illegitimate in public – as was suggested in France – but because of the necessity to adjust to the terms of state supervision. Islam will be measured against that criterion of willingness to compromise.

Religion as Each Community’s Own Path to the Common Good: The British Model of Communalist Convergence At Huxley Comprehensive School in London, the school day regularly starts with morning assembly, which, in the words of the school’s head-teacher, ‘won’t necessarily be moral or spiritual, but it can be’. Participation in these gatherings is compulsory for all pupils, yet since the school assembly hall is not large enough to contain all pupils at once, the assemblies are organized in turn for different groups of years, and the respective heads of year organize the programme. If they consider it useful to have a discussion about, for example, course options 102

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of the forthcoming term, they make use of the assembly for that purpose. Otherwise, if there is nothing formal to be discussed, the assembly can consist of a collective act of spiritual meditation. For instance, on 17 March 1999, the major event in assembly was St Patrick’s Day. After some formal explanations and announcements and an extra-curricular dance group performance, a teacher, who in the course of his speech turned out to be Irish, presented the programme: Teacher: What special day is it today? Does anyone know? A pupil from the audience: St Patrick’s Day! Teacher: Yes, it’s St Patrick’s Day! Is anyone here from Ireland? (A few pupils raise their arms, as does one of the teachers present.) St Patrick’s Day is a special day in Ireland, because St Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland and because Irish people celebrate the fact that we have a culture of our own that we are proud of. Therefore it is a special day for Irish people all over the world, not only in Ireland, but especially for Irish people in the USA: being in a foreign country is not always easy, and St Patrick’s is the day when we think about the people back home, where we have come from. And also, in remembrance of Ireland, we colour the rivers green. You will hear a piece of music now about an Irishman in America who is fantasising about Ireland. (The teacher sings a verse, followed by a pupil playing the tune on the flute.) The other Irish teacher unexpectedly comes to the front and announces an extra performance, a song about an Irishman in London. He explains: ‘Many many people had to leave Ireland due to a famine; that’s why there are so many Irish people in America, and some also came to London. So now I will sing a verse of a poem about an Irishman who is in London.’ Another verse, which he sings, and walks back to his seat afterwards. Having finished, his colleague thanks him and announces another performance: ‘I don’t know if you can imagine, Joe [a 17-year-old black pupil] is an Irishman who is about to leave for America. And he imagines how it is going to be there. But I don’t ask him to do that in an Irish accent but in his own, because this could be anywhere in the world; he can be from any country in the world. You see, many people come here from other countries with dreams in their heads about how it is going to be to live in this country.’

Although not an explicitly denominational collective act of worship, the character of this assembly did recall a Christian church service, and in this respect had no counterpart in any of the other three schools. Particularly the oscillation between preaching the gospel and having it sung, which appeals to individuals to make up their minds and open them up towards their fellow community members, made the assembly resemble a religious service. After it, the head of year said with delight that this was an assembly as it should ideally be: 103

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That was great. It’s like a community, isn’t it? Like in a pub in Ireland, where everybody can just join in and contribute with something personal. Of course, the assemblies are not like that every day, there are not always performances, and we had a lot of them this morning – you were really lucky today. We don’t like to spend too much time over formalities, but sometimes it’s necessary. Well today, it was really very nice.

Thus, a strong community orientation is favoured: pupils are asked to direct their attention towards the other members of the group and preferably to offer something like a performance as their particular contribution. The idea that everybody has something very special and particular to invest in the group was an explicit motif during the St Patrick’s Day assembly: Irish people were said to celebrate the fact of ‘having a culture of their own that they are proud of ’. This invokes an awareness of one’s own peculiarity within the British mosaic of communities: caring for one’s own distinct tradition, and thinking about ‘the people back home’, are defined as sources of identity. Pupils learn that emotional bonds to where one’s own particular group came from, as well as the problems of living in a different country, are very normal, if not universal: as their teacher said, the fantasy Joe performed for them ‘could be anywhere in the world’, so it does not just affect the Irish people but migrants from all over the globe. As well as acknowledging the emotional and practical problems that go along with migration, the assembly offered a possible solution: the need to realise that not everything goes smoothly, that some dreams might not be matched by reality in a foreign country. Disappointed dreams should however not be mixed up with legitimate sentiments connected with ‘remembering the people back home’. The message is that one should in fact cherish one’s own traditions, but also concentrate one’s attention on the actual society one is living in and invest efforts in it. This perspective makes the experience of migration and the resulting diversity in British society a topic that concerns everyone. It is exactly this image of multicultural Britain which was also drawn in the textbooks that were used in history and social studies in Huxley School. The same idea characterises the subject of religious education, which is compulsory under the national curriculum. Neither the 1944 Education Act nor its reform in 1988 specified the religion to be taught as part of this obligatory subject. Together with the 1988 Education Reform Act, every local school authority became responsible for establishing a ‘Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education’ (SACRE). The Act states that the role of the Council is ‘to advise the authority upon such matters connected with religious worship in county schools and the religious education to be given in accordance with an agreed syllabus as the authority may refer to the council or as the council may see fit…’. The general purpose of the reform was to centralise the curriculum and draw up a binding national canon of syllabi to be implemented. Yet in contrast to this trend and to the other compulsory subjects of the national curriculum, the guidelines for 104

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religious education were not prescribed in detail. Through the institutionalisation of local advice in the form of SACRE, the contents of religious education were in fact decentralised, thus acknowledging the diversity of religious convictions in Britain. The formation of the ‘Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education’ was supposed to lead to locally agreed syllabi that accommodate other religions in addition to Christianity. There is a requirement to find a consensus that reflects the existing plurality of religions within the local committees, for the communities who are represented on the councils influence the teaching programmes. On the other hand, the 1988 Education Reform Act also requires that the syllabi ‘must reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain’ (section 8 (3)). This strong emphasis on the Christian faith needs to be seen in the context of the close relations between the state and the Anglican Church in Britain,17 which apparently should not be loosened. Thus, in spite of the aim to do pragmatic justice to the fact that, through immigration, British society has become multi-faith, Christian hegemonic claims are still being made by prescribing the ‘mainly Christian nature’ of religious education and the daily act of worship. As we saw when considering the St Patrick’s Day assembly, this Christian nature might just affect the character of the gathering; but, depending on the teachers in charge and the local school governance, it can equally well take the shape of an explicitly Christian act of worship. The senior teacher of religious education at Huxley School stressed that ‘We teach pupils different faiths and expect that they respect other people’s religious values’. Unlike the German concept of religious education, the idea in London is obviously not to build up a ‘conscience’ on the basis of devotional care but rather mutual recognition on the basis of multi-faith teaching. Acceptance of the fact that society consists of different religious groups is at the heart of the moral obligation. At Huxley School, religious education covered Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. These six religions form the standard programme in preparing pupils for the nation-wide GCSE examination. As a result of this particular orientation in the examination, factual knowledge about different beliefs played an important role in the lessons. For example, a lesson in Year 11 about Islam proceeded as follows: Teacher: In the lesson today we will carry on with Islam. You learnt about the ceremonies a Muslim family carries out when a child is born last week. Now, ‘What does a Muslim family bring a child up to’, is our topic today: What does a Muslim family bring a child up to? Any ideas? Matthew: Worship Allah. 105

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Teacher: Yes, worship Allah. What does that mean, to worship Allah? Matthew: Pray. Teacher: Yes, the children will be taught Muslim prayers, they will grow up with Muslim prayers. What does that involve? Matthew: Go to prayer. Teacher: Yes, what else? Matthew: Fast in Ramadan. Teacher: Yes, what else? What are we actually going through here? (Silence)…the five pillars! You should have them at your fingertips now!…You must know this. It’s just revision today, there are always questions on the test sheet that ask for the five pillars of Islam. You should know that, for other reasons as well: it’s part of the Muslim way of life! It would be a shame in your exam not to know this.

Although the teacher apologised for the lesson’s low intellectual level afterwards and said that there was another group which performed much better by introducing what they knew into the discussions, she also admitted that the fact-oriented style was a consequence of the subject’s status: being compulsory and part of the central GCSE examination, the requirement to convey sufficient knowledge to pass the examination must be met. Nevertheless, the ideal clearly goes beyond that: Sabine Mannitz: How would you describe the aim of this subject? Mrs M.: To make them think about themselves. And to respect others. In that other group it really is like it should be: they discuss the topics I propose and it’s really nice… I also treat some moral questions derived from Christianity: abortion, euthanasia, sex. They need to know about these and should start to think about them. Of course, there is some morals in other subjects as well, but they can’t cover it all. Sabine Mannitz: Would you say that cross-religious convergence would be a good result of teaching RE? Mrs M. (becomes upset): No! Definitely not! We teach them that there are differences and they should learn to respect that. After all they are not all the same, these religions, are they? That’s why we tell them the differences.

One of Mrs M.’s colleagues expressed the same idea in front of his Year 11 course in religious education like this: ‘In every religion there are different ideas and different opinions. Everyone should think about that, think about his or her own religion. We need people who think critically’. The goal is thus directed towards mutual recognition in a society with coexisting differences, and becoming aware of the diversity as much as of one’s own position within it is part of the programme. The fact that religious education is obligatory in the state 106

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schools and instructs pupils of different faiths together can thus be interpreted as a tool to recognize the empirical plurality as legitimate and to accommodate religious differences as equally valid community rights. The aim of the subject is hence not to establish religious conviction – which remains a matter of parental or religious community education, e.g. is the form of Sunday school – but to further pupils’ reflections about their belief while also respecting religious sentiments of others (Fischer et al. 1996). In other words, it does not advocate a completely abstract and scientific approach to comparative religion studies but a pragmatic and empathetic answer to the existing diversity within the local scope for action. The opportunity this scheme creates for pupils to learn about the beliefs of their classmates, with whom they interact on daily basis, implies a significant instance of civil enculturation: although different religions are not taught in the comparative perspective of religious studies, pupils can learn from each other where pupils who adhere to different religious convictions meet in the classroom.18 This way of organizing religious education aims to reduce stereotypes, promote mutual respect, and contribute to a sense of tolerance by offering knowledge about all the faiths that coexist within one’s own borough.19 This notion of moral education in accordance with the heterogeneous characteristics of a local part of society can be characterised as multicultural communitarianism: I have the right to have my religion respected and have it taught at school in a face-to-face setting with others. Religions thus serve as the criteria for distinction in the rhetoric of multiculturalism. Religious education is insofar an important element in institutionalised antidiscrimination policies. As elsewhere in Britain, the local education authority in London has set up an extensive system of committees to monitor the policy of ‘equal opportunities in education’. In its booklets giving guidelines for the respective legislation, an inclusionist approach is emphasised as being of profound benefit to the whole community. The Director of Educational Services puts it like this in her introduction: For some in our community, there are barriers to joining in. We will dismantle the barriers of discrimination, negative stereotyping, low expectation, harassment, and routines and behaviours that exclude and damage some of us. In the end, our whole community will benefit… I want to be confident that not only is there justice and fair play but also a passionate promotion of inclusiveness, a dedicated pursuit of achievement for all, and appropriate, helpful ways of measuring and reporting our progress towards our aims. (Haringey Council 1998a: 0)

On the basis of several legal acts from the mid-1970s, local education authorities are obliged to ensure a non-discriminatory service. Repeatedly in its brochures, Haringey Borough Council lists the sorts of indirect and direct discrimination that are to be eliminated, namely those ‘on the grounds of age, 107

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colour, disability, ethnicity, gender, HIV status, marital status, nationality or national origins, race, religious beliefs, responsibility for dependants, sexuality, or unrelated criminal conviction’ (Haringey Council 1998a: 2). However, in spite of this catalogue of positive action and of the fact that the multi-faith society was recognised by the 1988 Education Reform Act and its introduction of standing advisory councils, many Muslim parents in Britain are worried by the daily act of collective worship – which is still to be predominantly Christian in character – and also by the corresponding contents of religious education. One of the responses to this topic all over Britain has been an increasing attempt to establish private and independent Islamic schools, with a programme covering secular, cultural and religious subjects. The Union of Muslim Organizations (UMO), the UK Islamic Mission and the Muslim Educational Trust were all established to address such educational concerns at organizational level (Nielsen 1989). Several Muslim organizations have applied for the sorts of state funds that are available to denominational schools in Britain, and a growing number of private and state-funded Islamic schools have opened since then, with the intention of counterbalancing the presumed negative effects on younger generations otherwise exposed to a form of state education that still treats Christianity notably preferentially. Some Muslim parents have come to regard these separate schools as essential not only for the religious instruction of their children but in terms of their ‘cultural survival’ (Haw 1994). In view of this strong opposition, the right of parents to withdraw their children from religious education and acts of worship in the state schools was included in the most recent Education Act of 1996. Indeed, already when it comes to teaching staff, the task of religious education has given rise to practical problems to do with the teaching obligation to take the composition of a multi-faith community into account. Christianity is still centred within religious education, but there are now a number of other religions that must be taught in the schools. Obviously, the extent to which teachers without specific skills in teaching a multi-faith subject manage to master a knowledge of other religions to balance their teaching performance varies. A report on The impact of agreed syllabuses on the teaching and learning of religious education (HMSO 1997) made it very clear that there was a wide variation in the knowledge and confidence of teachers to cover several religions in depth. The same report also found that none of the schools surveyed were prepared to consider the recruitment of teachers with specialist expertise in taking classes on beliefs not represented by teaching staff. Even though the British concept of religious education aims at multi-faith learning instead of religious nurture, as it does in Germany, these questions continue to cause serious concerns for parents who are not Christian and who fear that their own beliefs may be presented in a distorted fashion in front of their children. At Huxley School, some pupils wanted to have their Alevi belief integrated into religious education, but their teacher simply did not know enough about 108

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Alevism to be able to fulfil that demand. And as the school library had no books about it either, the idea was quickly dropped. Integration in the teaching programme requires undergoing a formal procedure: Mrs. M: Of course, we have many Alevi pupils, and they don’t agree with what we teach about Islam, so they don’t become active in the lessons. Sabine Mannitz: As far as I understood the organization of the subject, the standing advisory councils make sure that RE reflects the local composition of religions. Mrs. M: That’s generally right, but we teach according to the GCSE, and Alevism is not common enough to be part of that standard programme. And then it would mean that we would have to produce all the teaching material ourselves because it is not contained in the GCSE programme – we can’t do that. Sabine Mannitz: So there is in fact a need to become formally organized and institutionally represented to be respected in the syllabi? Mrs. M: Yes, that’s how it works.

Thus, obtaining representation of one’s own faith in religious education can only be achieved by passing through the institutionalised channel of the local standing advisory council, and such representation implies the need to shape a community in the sense of a corporate body. The fact that the term ‘community’ covers the three meanings of an ethnically or culturally defined group, a parish and a municipality suggests such an understanding as well. Like the multiple meanings of Gemeinde in German, this notion identifies religion with culture and expects corporate representation. This scheme exerts pressure to adapt on at least two dimensions. The first concerns the value of religious difference in the political arena, given that ‘religious distinctions, differences and disapprobation are of the greatest impact on “community politics” as on the competition for civic resources’ (Baumann 1993: 32). The second, related consequence is that, in order to be effective in the competitive arena, it pays to draw the boundaries between religions in a reifying manner.20 In this sense, the policy of multiculturalism produces minorities. With its impetus to do justice to the existing plurality by means of group representation, it creates a need to be different in order to make claims and be recognised. The condition of becoming formally organized for purposes of representation discourages internal differentiation and effectively devalues cross-cutting phenomena of syncretism as well as ‘sects’ that do not constitute any corporate structure: as we saw, Alevism is not common enough and not institutionalised enough to be part of the teaching programme in religious education. Religion is thus intertwined with the civic discourse of cultural diversity in British society. By linking these two, each religion’s contribution to the common good is respected as long as all converge on the communalist path. In view of the implications for followers of other than Anglican Christianity, the British 109

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model is in principle open for participation. Yet inclusion is connected to the precondition of a specific organizational form. Convictions that go against the idea of corporate institutionalisation will not be represented in a standing advisory council, will therefore not influence the syllabi of religious education, and will thus retain the status of an unacknowledged minority. Structurally parallel to France and Germany, where the particular secular(ist) relations that were developed by the Christian churches and the states take effect as models of adaptation for all religions, the situation in Britain is unbalanced in favour of the Anglican Church: since its high degree of corporatism becomes what other denominations and faiths are measured against when it comes to representation, the Anglican Church sets the common goal of convergence. The explicit demand that religious education should be predominantly Christian in character supports this imbalance with respect to content. Because of this, all non-Christians are obliged to direct their attention towards Christian belief, even if there are no Christians in the neighbourhood. Conversely, other faiths are not necessarily recognised to the same extent: only if there are enough like-minded people in a particular borough who are willing to become organized as a religious community and join a SACRE might their own belief eventually come to be represented in the teaching programme of religious education.

Religions as Tolerable Ways to Make People Good: The Dutch Model of Supra-religious Consensus The Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam is a state-run school, which, in the Dutch system, means that there are no compulsory religion lessons. The history of pillarisation in Dutch society has made it possible to leave out religious education completely at non-religious schools. There is no general obligation to pay attention to religion, but state schools are free to offer religious education if they consider it useful in their pedagogical agenda. Formerly it was not unusual to opt for this possibility, but with the decreasing significance of religion for most of Dutch society, religious instruction has likewise disappeared from most state schools. The right to found denominational schools on the basis of the pillarised model of society has liberated the state school from the expectation of covering religion. Whoever does not agree with a teaching programme that leaves religious education out can look for another school. The choice of a school is free, and a variety of denominational schools, such as certain Protestant or likewise Islamic schools do exist alongside the state-run schools. For this reason, discussions about the ways of integrating other faiths apart from Christianity into teaching do not really exist any more, while at the same time the presence of these other religions is accepted as a matter of social fact. Denominational schools offer explicit subjects like Bible knowledge, and in 110

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many such schools there is also a kind of religious start to the day, where pupils and teachers come together to pray before lessons begin. The staff of Nikolaas Tinbergen School has chosen to offer no subject that relates to religion. With this decision, the view is expressed that religion is not forming an indispensable ethical standard. However, religions were taken into account in showing pupils how varied human societies can be: for example, Christianity formed a typical topic in history lessons. This recalls the approach observed in the school in Paris, of treating religion scientifically as an agent in the historical progress. Yet, unlike in the French case, where relativising terms signify the aim of creating objectivity, all chapters of Dutch history textbooks that deal with ‘our’ world and ‘our’ civilization have a positive emphasis on Christianity. A chapter for VWO 5 and 6, called ‘Roots of Western Culture’, is a telling example of the transmission of this message: a section on ‘Greeks, Romans and Christians’ treats the origins of Christianity and its eventual victory over the beliefs of ancient Rome. The reason for this unit being called ‘Roots of Western Culture’ is apparently considered so obvious that the relationship between the contents of the chapter and the present-day ‘Western’ hemisphere needs no explanation at all. There is thus no comparable urge to purify and correspondingly no assessment of religion as something that has been overcome, as was recognizable in the French textbooks. At this level, the importance of Christianity is rather acknowledged in a fashion that reminds one of the tone of the textbooks that were used in Berlin: the Christian religion is portrayed affirmatively as a major element of Dutch history and culture. The role of Protestantism and of pillarisation in Dutch political and social history is the topic that treats Christianity most explicitly in this sense. Yet where the empathy in the German case was clearly biased towards supporting the image of an essentially Christian German culture, the Dutch representation limits Christianity to the status of being just one of the valid ethical standards within the nation, albeit that of greatest significance in terms of historical roots. It is not made part of any negative contrast when other religions are being discussed. Of other religions, only Islam is made a separate unit in the history textbook: after some basic information about the religion’s principles of belief, a political history of Islam is presented that starts with Arab civilization and ends with Khomeini, the First Gulf War and the relationship of Israel with the Arab world. This chapter on Islam is structurally similar to another one in the same book which is occupied with India. Hinduism occurs in that section as the basis of an ‘age-old culture’. Both chapters are phrased in the same value-neutral terms of cultural and religious contrasts with ‘the West’: in other words, with respect to a number of issues and aspects, other parts of the world are simply different. The part on Islam links some of these differences to the diversity of subjectivities within Dutch society: the migration of Muslims to Europe shows that one can find Islam around the corner; there may be a mosque or an Islamic butcher’s shop. Thus cultural and religious contrasts are not merely somewhere 111

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‘out there’ at a distance but might also be found behind the doors of one’s neighbours. The relatively extensive attention given to Islam, as compared to other nonWestern religions, is clearly due to the presence of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands. This becomes very obvious in the subject of social studies where Islam in contemporary society is also made a topic. One book on the ‘multicultural society’ comes to speak of Islam in a section about ‘problems of cultural difference’, under the rubric of ‘fundamentalism’. Fundamentalism is described there as a way of thinking that translates religious principles into politics and by doing so threatens open discussion and democracy. Although referring particularly to Islamic fundamentalism, the textbook author comes to speak of every fundamentalism as an enemy of open thinking. The chapter ends with a list of prejudices against Islam, which it then immediately counters: it rejects the idea that Muslims are taking over the Netherlands by referring to their small numbers; the image of Islam as violent is countered by the fact that Muslims in the Netherlands do not belong to radical movements. Muslims in the Netherlands are said ‘rather to emphasise harmonious cohabitation with other people’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 37). According to the schoolbook, it is not the Koran that demands a lower status for women. Rather, this was because of culture, and apart from this, we should ‘read in the Bible what it says about women!’ As to intolerance and the unwillingness of Muslims to adapt themselves to new circumstances, the text says, ‘Look at some Christian groups and convince yourselves of the fact that most Muslims use the Koran in much the same way as most Christians use the Bible: quite normally and moderately’ (ibid.: 38). Although not going so far as to state that Islam should be seen as integral part of Dutch society, the message is that the influence of the Islamic religion on society should neither be over-emphasised nor seen in terms of negative stereotypes. Pupils are thus told to be cautious in their opinions about different cultures and religions, and refrain from rash judging. One should instead be very careful with conclusions concerning ‘the other’, even more so in one’s own society. By suggesting that some negative aspects like ‘the lower status of women’ might not be due to Islam but rather result from culture, religion and cultural traditions are set apart, with religion being cleared of suspicion. Muslim pupils at Tinbergen were not discontented with these portrayals of their religion but actually applied the same strategies of appeasement whenever their religious belief came up for discussion. On the whole, religion was presented as an aspect of the cultural heritage of peoples in the world that renders certain effects on society. This idea was also characteristic of a book about ethics which teachers of history and social studies wanted to introduce at Tinbergen. This book discusses various ethical dilemmas and presents both religious and non-religious ethical concepts in an overview. Instead of information about religious contents there is a problem-oriented approach to ethical aspects: human rights, the use of violence, abortion, 112

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in-vitro fertilisation and adoption are some of the topics covered. This very much resembles the Humanist Association’s programme of ethics in Berlin, though its place within civil culture differs. The Dutch book on ethics was to be used as part of the teaching of either social studies or history, for the motive was not to inculcate individual responsibility on the basis of a particular religion or philosophy of life. The pedagogical agenda was in Rotterdam to make adolescents reflect on ethical conflicts that are to be dealt with in social cohabitation. Since explicit religious issues and principles themselves are not considered relevant for the necessary consensus-seeking, the morality of the concept is evidently situated on another level: learn to live with differences. If your religion helps to develop this kind of tolerance – as long as Bible or Koran are used in a ‘normal and moderate’ way, as the schoolbook phrased it – that is fine; yet it is not the only possible way. When compared to the situation in London, this multi-faith lesson is detached from religious education as such to a greater extent. Although school education takes religious plurality in Dutch society into account, the efforts to disentangle church and state seem to have gone further, given the virtual absence of religious instruction in state-run schools of the Netherlands. Religious variation is accepted to find adequate expression in specific schools, but despite all diversity, the moral obligation to reach a supra-religious consensus is binding on all groups of the population. A school like Tinbergen that leaves religion out from its range of subjects treats religion as a private pursuit similar to what was observed in Paris. However, the separation between the private and the public is less narrow in the Netherlands and thus leaves the impression of being just a practical strategy in order to cope with reality, unlike France, where the boundary is strictly maintained as a matter of state principle. Unlike the French concept that one could and should ignore the empirical differences at school, they received attention in Tinbergen as factual conditions of society. In the Dutch case, religion was not related to any negative assumptions associating religion with a previous stage of development but it appeared as a variable contribution to human life. Immigrants and their children do not therefore face any pressure to conceal their particular religious affiliation in public. Emphasis is located on a different level and concerns rather the competence to lower one’s sights and reach a consensus, despite existing plurality: of course, everybody has a particular background, which can legitimately be referred to and displayed in public – yet it should not be made a resource for encouraging fragmentation. The relativising credo is that living together involves a moral duty to respect an overarching system of inter-subjective tolerance. Participation and social recognition in Dutch civil culture depend on this agreement, not on either the emphatic awareness or the denial of the differences. 113

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Conclusions We have examined four cases from secularised states that all subscribe to the Enlightenment principle of religious freedom. However, in spite of the overall separation of religion and state distinctive models have emerged of locating religion in civil culture. All the four states ensure the reproduction of spiritual resources that people might require in order to cope with the claims of modernity, yet each does so by maintaining a particular balance. This takes effect in the state school systems. The French scheme is one of secularist citizenship that restricts religion to being a private pursuit and banishes all religious manifestations from state institutions. In order to enable freedom, religious orientations shall not enter the public space. In one way, what people believe in remains unprocessed in the French school in favour of raison as the integrative horizon. The only recognition of religion at school consists of scientifically rationalised considerations, abstracted from all denominational contents: religions contributed to the process of civilization in the past, and Islam is treated like any other major religion in this respect. Religious instruction no longer has a place in current-day state schools in France. The secularist answer to the world’s disenchantment with modernisation is to establish a new universal scheme of reference. The central point of departure which has replaced God as the common moral ground is rationality, which the supposedly faith-neutral state guarantees to maintain in its institutions. The German model of integrated religion demonstrates an almost opposite balance: it is considered essential for the development of social ethics that one grows up in the tradition of one’s belief. Ideally, religion should be the guardian of the citizen’s conscience, for the aim is that a responsible citizen must be able to appeal to moral principles in an autonomous fashion. Building up conscience on the grounds of religion can thus be interpreted as a form of civic education. Because of this esteem, religious instruction is a regular element in the German school system as an optional subject. The model we derived from the study of the German practice is antithetical to the French one and connected to a basically different tradition of liberalism (discussed as ‘liberalism two’ by Walzer 1992): the German state clearly takes sides with particular religious traditions that are supposed to have proven responsibility to the liberal-democratic state order. The legitimacy of religion is thus tied to social circumstances, which makes it ambivalent, for it remains a matter of negotiation and individual case constellation. This means a dialectical relationship: religious nurture is appreciated in inculcating ethics, but religion needs to be tamed by state control in schools. Although, at least in principle, all religious communities can attain equal recognition in conducting religious education, a gate-keeping regulation ties the right to offer religious instructions in schools to state acknowledgement. The inherent ideal aims at a religion that is loyal towards the constitutional agenda, and the general distrust of Islam is derived from this point of departure. Given this procedure of con114

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ferring (or denying) formal recognition by state authorities, religion can become an effective site in constructing the otherness of immigrants whose religions do not meet the required standards. This effect is furthermore assisted by the fact that Christianity is widely understood as a vital trait of German culture. In London, religious education is a compulsory ingredient of the curriculum. Like the German educational scheme, this option recognizes religion as an agent in the development of social ethics and cultural identity. Yet in Britain, the idea that religious values should be imparted to pupils is not meant to encourage conscience but to build up mutual respect within the fabric of diversity. This places the main stress on skills one needs for living in a society which declares itself to be a mosaic of different communities. Rather than aiming at mere toleration, esteem of the others shall be inculcated so that religious education is not taught in the fashion of comparative religion studies. The different religions are taken seriously and taught as belief systems. Although still predominantly Christian, religion lessons are bound to local education boards’ syllabi which lay down the range of other faiths that shall be taught. This conforms to the idea that each community has the right to be represented, and that all children shall be educated for their living together in multicultural Britain. Despite the local differences with respect to the spectrum of religions, the subject is therefore obligatory for all pupils and they are instructed together, not separately in accordance with their different beliefs. This arrangement expresses the notion that it should not be left to individual choice whether the religious heterogeneity of one’s neighbourhood is taken into account or not. The rationale is principally anti-discriminatory and inclusionist, but it demands corporatist organization as a prerequisite for representation. The Dutch orientation towards the formation of a supra-religious consensus resembles the British approach inasmuch as it also takes religious plurality in society into account. Yet unlike the British practice of teaching compulsory religious education to all, in the Netherlands the question is left to school profile and personal choice. There are hence no such concerns about representation as is the case in the British understanding of multiculturalism. Dutch schools are diversified and supposed to represent the ideological variation in society. In terms of the idea that a moral duty arises from living together, everybody in the Netherlands should accept the overarching system of consensus but does not necessarily need to know about all the existing differences in detail to attain that inter-subjectivity. Religious convictions are treated as legitimate sources for the development of tolerance and identity but there is no state-formulated need for religious education. Religion and state are thus kept separate, and the approach at this level is conciliatory: faith is entirely acceptable among many possible paths towards forming a social consensus of toleration. The very relevance of religions in human life is acknowledged in history and sociology lessons, and all confessions are treated equal in that respect. But the particular contents of belief should rather be taught within one’s own pillar of society rather than in the state-run 115

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school. Unlike the British provision of obligatory religious education, the latter is thus only offered at some Dutch schools, mostly at the denominational ones. The concepts found in Rotterdam and London are related to the religious diversity of society. Opposed to the German and French cases, that both place one standard applicable to all citizens above others – that is, Christian-humanist values in Germany and rationality in France – the British and Dutch examples represent programmes of multiculturalism, though the latter is understood differently from the former. Cross-religious convergence might be an unexpected concomitant of religious education as offered in London, but in the Dutch case it is the implicit aim. While pupils in Rotterdam shall learn to tolerate the multi-faith character of Dutch society, pupils in London shall learn to appreciate Britain’s multi-faith character positively and to respect the differences involved. When we look at Muslim pupils, the four different models each have their particular impacts. The French demand to keep all aspects of belief strictly separate from the neutral public sphere implies a need to refrain from religion outside the narrowly defined private space. Practising Islam to the letter is impossible in this set-up because religious rituals and prescriptions are granted no legitimacy whatever in state institutions due to the norm of secularism, this being a crucial criterion of definition for the French citizenry. Hence, if Muslims insist on their daily religious routines, they risk exclusion; social inclusion is tied to the condition of religious alienation. In Germany, Muslims are similarly constructed as others but under a different rationale. It is not religion as such that is banished from state schools as carrying negative potential; rather Islam is mistrusted as infringing upon the fragile balance of mutual control which has been established by the liberal-democratic state and the Christian churches. On top of the assessment that their religion is potentially incompatible with the constitution, Muslim pupils are also faced with the prevalence of Christianity in terms of culture. Albeit the notion of German culture entails a certain ambivalence as well as allows internal plurality, for example, in the form of regional, sub-cultural and also a number of Christian varieties, Islam has as yet no place in the conceptualisation. The idea of a Western culturearea of Christian genealogy is quite strong and means that practising and displaying one’s Muslim religion in public, although in practice easier than in France, is no less connected to exclusion from the imagined in-community. Neither in Britain nor the Netherlands are Muslims exposed to this sort of non-recognition. Although Christian predominance is still present in implicit textbook messages in the Netherlands and in the syllabi of religious education in Britain, practising one’s Muslim beliefs does not interfere in the least with being an integrated member of the British multicultural nation of communities, or of the Dutch nation, despite such communities. The degree of conceptual recognition reaches farthest in Britain, where religious differences are not only tolerated in the imagined community, as is in the Netherlands, but normatively integrated into it. 116

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Notes 1. See Chapter 5 on this topic. In some cases, girls were in fact successful in going to court and winning the right to wear headscarves in school. Some schools also chose to not ban them. 2. See more on these topics in the corresponding chapters of this book. 3. Attempts to abolish this reference to God were repeatedly made by the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), without success. Among the voices against abolition were Christian, Jewish and also Islamic institutions. The latter stressed that it would be better to live in a state where the population felt responsible towards God than to live in a godless state (Spuler-Stegemann 1998). 4. For instance in the statutes for Berlin, in Rahmenplan A I. Die Berliner Schule, Abs. 12. 5. The educational system and approach in the GDR was, of course, fundamentally different. In many respects, it paralleled the French school system with its centralised structure, an impetus to create equality and the complete absence of religious education in schools. The goal was the ‘universally developed socialist personality’ (Lehmann 1994). In the course of the unification, however, the West German structure was established in the former GDR as well. Given fewer church members there, discussions about alternative ethical subjects such as LER (Lebenskunde-Ethik-Religionen) as in the state of Brandenburg play a more prominent role than in the states of the former FRG. 6. This dialectical balance implies a difference between religion lessons at school and religious Sunday schools. This was discussed in detail by Schiffauer (1994). 7. That spiritual reflection remains an important element in coming of age, even in secularised societies, has been emphasised repeatedly. Among others the ‘Comenius Institute’ – that takes care of curriculum development and pedagogical research for Protestant religious lessons in German schools – state their view that religion has changed but not lost its meaning (Fischer et al.1996). 8. The agnostic attitude is often used as an argument against teaching this subject, and is turned into a suspicion of atheism. Lutheran Protestants, especially, have argued that religious education, even with a multi-faith teaching programme, needs believing teachers, otherwise religious contents become arbitrary. On the grounds of this argument, Protestant religious lessons in primary schools, for instance, in Hamburg have been opened up to pupils of other faiths and are now conducted in a fashion of general religious studies in which pupils should learn from and about each other. 9. However, this application of the Türkische Union was rejected in December 1998 with the argument that they were not a religious community but an interest pressure group. The Federal Administrative Court will now have to clarify what the constitution means by a ‘religious community’, because the Türkische Union appealed against this rejection. An alternative is the foundation of their own denominational private schools, as in the other three countries. Private schools have to be approved by the local school authority, and as their statutes have to be in accordance with the German Constitution as well, this is a procedure comparable to the acknowledgement needed for teaching religion in state schools. One Islamic elementary school does exist in Berlin as a private denominational school. It took six years to obtain the approval of the Berlin Education Authority. Many Turkish parents in Berlin appreciate this alternative because their impression was that German schools still functioned as if they had only Christian pupils of German origin (Hartig 1997). 10. Two paragraphs of the German constitution (Grundgesetz) contradict each other in this respect, one ensuring religious liberty, the other placing school education fully under state authority (GG, I Grundrechte, Art. 4 (2) and GG, I Grundrechte, Art. 7 (1)).

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11. This corresponds with strong parental rights embedded in the German constitution, that belong to the fundamental rights directly in force and thus enjoying priority in the constitutional hierarchy (Grundgesetz Art. 6 (2)). 12. The city of Cologne has found another solution to the conflict: extra swimming lessons for girls alone with female teachers have been instituted to make sure that Muslim parents cannot exclude their daughters from the lessons because men are present. 13. In ordinary state schools, the only concessions made to religious practice are religious holidays. Those for Jewish and Muslim pupils and teachers are centrally regulated by the Berlin Education Authority: Passover, Schawuot, Rosch Haschana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Schemini Azeret and Simchat Thora (one day each) are the holidays for Jewish pupils and teachers, and Seker ‚ Bayramı and Kurban Bayramı (one day each) are the holidays for Muslim pupils and teachers. 14. Quoted from one of the Berlin court files in question (in the possession of the author). 15. With the fall of the GDR, the notion of anti-Christian Communism also confirmed to the idea of Christian values serving as bulwarks against totalitarianism. It was not only politicians from the former GDR who have drawn on that background for legitimacy, that is, deriving political respectability from having been a churchman or churchgoer in the Socialist Republic. References to the Nikolai Church in Leipzig, where regular gatherings played an important role in the final fall of the GDR because it offered a public space for the opposition, also belong to this narration of religion as enabling resistance. In the arguments over crucifixes in Bavarian schools, reference was thus also made to the situation in the GDR (Caldwell 1996: 262 f.). 16. The question was brought before the highest constitutional court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) which decided that school-imposed belief symbols would not be in accordance with the state’s obligation of neutrality with respect to religions: crucifixes had to be removed from classrooms. Bavarian politicians in the governing Christian Social Union called for ‘resistance’ against this decision, arguing that the cross represented shared Western values and that the German majority’s religious feelings should be respected (Caldwell 1996). The final ‘diplomatic’ solution was that a crucifix must be taken away when somebody takes offence, something which appears to be prevented by local intimidation (Hippler 1997). 17. The Queen is head of state and head of the Anglican Church. The Church of England is represented in the House of Lords (for further details, see Rath et al. 1991). 18. Cross-religious convergence, although not a declared aim of the model, is one of its eventual effects (see Baumann 1992; 1996). 19. A research report by Verma et al. (1992; cf. Skinner 1993) confirms the tendency that pupils were most likely to learn about each other’s cultures or religions and to discuss these issues in an open manner as well as building up cross-religious friendships and countering prejudice. 20. This implication can be seen in the contributions, which Gerd Baumann (1993) reported as follows, made to a town council conference in Southall, London, where local politicians, school teachers, civil servants and local religious representatives discussed options for morning assemblies in Southall schools: ‘A striking feature of the entire day’s discussion was the unquestioned assumption that single-faith assemblies and even single-faith acts of worship were possible at all. The deliberations proceeded, not only as if all children were Sikh, Hindu, Muslim or Christian; but indeed as if there were no complications at all in delineating “who” was “what”… Throughout the discussions, religious identities were thought to be bounded clearly, unequivocally, and consensually’ (ibid.: 39f.).

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„ 5„ Muslim Headscarves in Four Nation-states and Schools Beate Collet

In a schoolyard in Neukölln, Berlin, a number of girls are strolling arm-in-arm. Although dressed rather differently in either long black skirts or jeans and trainers, each wears a black, white or coloured headscarf. On the same day, in the corridor of a school in Rotterdam, girls in headscarves are quietly reading their textbooks. In North London, girls in school uniforms and colour-matching headscarves are moving between classrooms. And at the end of the day at a school in a Parisian suburb, girls leaving the schoolyard pause to take headscarves out of their bags in order to put them on and begin their journey home. How do these observations reflect school policies and practices, and are these emblematic of the place of religion in the four respective civil cultures? Certainly the treatment of headscarves at school questions principles of religious freedom and of the equality of women and men, which, as core human rights, are guaranteed in the democratic constitutions of the four countries. It may also be seen to highlight different modes of separating the state and religion, the nature of multicultural and multi-faith societies, and how each country conceives of social integration. Here, we shall distinguish policies, practices and attitudes towards the place of Muslim headscarves in schools on three levels, from official treatment on the national level through specific schools to pupils’ own views on the subject. While the official level in each country is not free from contradiction, it nevertheless indicates the dominant discourse in each context. How the issue is treated and discussed by the teachers and the administrative staff in the specific schools shows how the dominant discourse is incorporated into practice. Finally pupils’ experiences or attitudes – whether it is they who are wearing headscarves or not – illustrate very clearly that although pupils’ discourses might be at odds 119

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with the dominant discourse, they show how the dominant discourse influences pupils’ views.

The Dominant Discourse: Equality, Religion and Muslim Headscarves The headscarf discourse in France is of a rather unique nature. Following the expulsion of three Muslim girls from a state school in Creil, near Paris, in 1989, there was tremendous public debate in newspapers1 and schools, and among teachers, politicians and intellectuals. It was called ‘l’affaire des foulards’ and was compared with the ‘Dreyfus affair’ of the nineteenth century in some news magazines. Central to the debate was the meaning and place of laïcité (secularism) and Islam in France. A series of judicial decisions (judgements, decrees and legal advice) followed. One of the highest judicial institutions, the Conseil d’Etat, took the tolerant position in November 1992 of stating that ‘Religious signs in themselves cannot produce exclusion from school’. However, public debate and periodic conflicts in French schools continued. In October 1994 the Ministry of Education issued a far stronger circular to all directors of public schools, stating that: ‘Inside the school pupils are allowed to wear discrete signs which show their personal attachment to convictions, especially religious ones. Ostentatious signs, which in themselves are elements of proselytism or discrimination, are prohibited.’. The 1994 circular does not directly mention headscarves, but it was inferred by most observers that these are intended to come under the rubric of ‘ostentatious signs’ (cf. Costa-Lascoux 1996). It is important to add that the ministry’s circular also recommends headteachers to be guided by educational pre-occupations, and it would be better to convince the pupils that they should co-operate by informing and explaining to the pupils and their families, than to enforce the rule.2 Consequently many girls have indeed accepted the official position and desist from wearing headscarves inside school.3 A number of girls who did not agree were expelled from school and directed towards correspondence courses. In some cases the girls who were expelled have been allowed by the courts to return to their schools: by September 1995 the administrative courts had annulled no less than forty-four school expulsions (Le Monde, 14 September 1995). There are also schools in which, by agreement with the teachers, girls wearing headscarves have not been excluded (Liberation, 12 February 1999). French policy seeks a judicial ‘solution’ of the conflict by proscribing proselytism on the one hand but respecting freedom of religion on the other. In 1989 the first advice of the Conseil d’Etat defined laïcité as the neutrality of the school, which involves respecting the individual freedom of pupils. This freedom means that they have the right to express and show their religious beliefs 120

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inside school while respecting pluralism and the liberty of others. Pupils wearing headscarves can protest against their exclusion from school and obtain respect for their religious convictions. In July 1995 the Conseil d’Etat examined two documents, the decision of the administration court of Strasbourg, which had rejected the expulsion of some eighteen pupils wearing headscarves, and the 1994 Ministry of Education circular. The Conseil d’Etat did not annul the decision of the court, but accepted exclusion only in cases of the ostentatious and demonstrative wearing of headscarves. It still proclaimed a guarantee of freedom of conscience. As regards the ministry circular, the Conseil d’Etat cannot interfere. A circular is not a law but only a kind of explanation from the minister to his administration. Headteachers and boards of directors have some flexibility in deciding what is ostentatious and what is not. The preferred solution of the Conseil d’Etat is for a case-by-case examination. Individual behaviour or the attitudes of headscarved Muslim pupils should be treated as public order issues, with a view to ensuring that there should be no disturbance through discrimination nor religious propaganda in schools (cf. Rude-Antoine 1997). As described below, the ministry’s circular has had a strong impact on the dominant French discourse as well as in schools, where many headteachers apply it directly and strictly. No major public debate on the issue of Muslim headscarves in schools took place in Germany before the summer of 1998, when a Muslim student teacher insisted on wearing a headscarf in school (see I.4 Chapter). Prior to that event, the issue only arose in rhetoric. For instance, in April 1997 the president of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Peter Frisch, said that Islam would probably become the biggest problem for Germany’s internal security. Wearing headscarves, he said, could be interpreted as a sign of Muslims’ deliberate self-exclusion from German society. Therefore, Frisch asked all Muslims in Germany not to send their daughters to school wearing headscarves (Der Tagesspiegel 12–13 April 1997). Headscarves are not a frequent matter of concern at the Department for Schools in Berlin, except for their being worn during sports lessons. The Bundesverwaltungsgericht or federal court decided in 1993 that Muslim girls cannot be forced to take off headscarves during co-educational sports lessons. Schools can offer segregated physical education lessons to solve this dilemma. Schools do not ask for a general rule, as they did in France, but tend to adopt broad pedagogical aims to address the specific situations they are confronted with. In physical education, for example, the usual concession is that girls who insist on wearing headscarves are excluded from those activities that their teachers do not wish to take responsibility for. But girls wearing headscarves have to join in exercises that are considered less ‘dangerous’, such as jogging, volleyball and other track and field sports. It seems that the German way of dealing with these questions puts a high emphasis on respect for personal convictions, possibly even more so if they are 121

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religious. Individual rights may be valued more highly than the legal obligation regarding compulsory education. The legal procedure in cases of specific requests for non-participation in swimming lessons for Muslim girls in primary schools, which in a sense are comparable to the headscarf question, shows this very clearly. The courts want to avoid precedents and check every single case individually.4 If parents can argue their religious convictions in a coherent way or can, for example, describe precisely their inner conflicts, the court may agree to the request. If a sound conviction can be proved, exceptions to the general rule of educational obligations may be granted, whereas reasons of lifestyle or fashion would not be accepted as arguments. It might be said, therefore, that headscarves are tolerated in school because they express sound personal convictions. In the Netherlands the school system is completely decentralised, so that a standard regulation on headscarves is practically inconceivable. Every school has to decide for itself. The wearing of Muslim headscarves is generally authorised in public schools, but there are also some schools that do not allow them. Social position and the treatment of the minority religious groups can be understood through the general relationship between religion and the Dutch state. Sunier and Meyer write that this relation is: … governed by three principles: freedom of religion, equality of all religious groups, and separation of church and state. Moreover, regulations dating back to the ‘pillarised’ (verzuild) denominational system still enable religiously oriented institutions such as schools and broadcasting corporations to obtain public funding. The emphasis placed on the principle of equality in the 1983 constitutional revisions has strengthened the negotiating position of Muslims and Hindus in the Netherlands. The authorities can hardly deny facilities to Muslims and Hindus that they provide to other religious communities. (1997: 118) (Author’s remark : pillarised is in the original reference, it means on several religious pillars.)

Headscarves are considered part of the normal public expression of Islam in the Netherlands, and their place in schools is viewed in light of this fact. Excluding pupils on the grounds of showing such public expression would be contrary to the core value of equality. Furthermore, it would be against the principle of participation, one of the main school goals in the Netherlands, to refuse or expel pupils for wearing headscarves. In Britain official recognition of Islam is not as that strong as in the Netherlands. There is no written constitution, and the status of the Church of England as the ‘established’ church can be seen as acting as an impediment to equal treatment of Muslims and other religious minorities (Vertovec and Peach 1997). Nonetheless, religious diversity is commonly accepted in daily life, and a range of accommodations for religious expression in the private and public spheres are regularly adopted by public authorities (Vertovec 1998). But it seems that 122

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accommodation and tolerance of other religious groups are only indirectly based on a general respect for religion. The main argument for non-discrimination seems to be that religious beliefs are cultural and specific to ethnic groups. Vertovec and Peach note that the very elaborate legal framework surrounding discrimination with regard to gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity does not protect Muslims as Muslims from discrimination by the law (1997: 35). They are in fact only protected indirectly, because they belong to specific ethnic communities (most Muslims in Britain being of South Asian descent).5 The tolerance of headscarves in government-funded schools should be interpreted in this context. They are accepted as long as they complement the school uniform. But it seems that they are tolerated not because they express religious beliefs, but because they are part of the cultural customs of certain ethnic groups. The previous section describes how each of the four countries respects equality and religious freedom, although they define and combine the two principles differently. In France, the equality principle is dominant. Here, equality appears as a kind of abstract conception that takes no account of cultural and religious particularity. French policy seems to be to establish a normative general rule first, promoting the equality principle according to the strongly centralised republican tradition. This seems to introduce the possibility of examining individual choices only later in the process. In Germany, the impression is that it is just the other way around. Political culture seems to place a high value on individuality and personal convictions. As a result, drawing up general rules is avoided, and individual choice may only be examined in cases of conflict. By doing so, individuality seems to be constructed as a question of moral conviction. Unthinking followers or narrow-minded believers are accorded less respect. In Britain equality seems to be defined at the level of communities. Every ethnic community should have the right to express itself through its culture and religion. In the Netherlands equality is defined as an individual right, but the socalled ‘pillarised’ tradition gives recognition to the religious convictions or beliefs of these individuals. A highly simplified summary suggests that headscarves are forbidden in France because they question the abstract equality of all pupils. Showing religious convictions in public seems to be against the principle of laïcité, which imposes public neutrality. In the other three countries headscarves are tolerated in public schools because they express individual, cultural or religious choices. In Germany they are respected as inner convictions, Dutch tradition emphasises the individual’s right to express his or her religion, while in Britain religious beliefs are respected as part of the cultural affiliations of individuals. 123

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The Dominant Discourse and School Practice Our research indicates that the practices of the schools chosen as case studies in many ways embody and exemplify the respective national dominant discourse on equality, religion and the place of Muslim headscarves. As we have already suggested, aspects of religious and cultural diversity are treated differently in each of the schools. Details of the local administration’s or teachers’ discourses reflect how these differences are constructed in daily life and how they are ultimately imposed. In the Parisian case headscarves at school are officially prohibited. The Education Ministry’s circular of September 1994 was integrated textually into the school rules (article 13) and voted by the board of directors, 80 percent of whose members voted for it. Of seven teachers, five agreed with the new rule and two opposed it. In the headmaster’s view the headscarf question has been properly resolved in his school. Decisions have been taken according to a general rule, discussions have been held with the pupils concerned and today the rule is observed without discontent. According to him, headscarves are no longer a problem in his school. No girls with headscarves are to be seen inside the school, and the topic is not even discussed among the teachers. The headmaster explained the official school position and the procedure in his school. He has become a sort of specialist on this question because he has collaborated with the headteachers of other schools and has even spoken on the radio about these questions. The problems first arose in the 1980s and then again at the start of the 1990s. Several headscarf cases were observed and were thought of as potentially leading to other problems concerning the co-education of boys and girls, sports education, swimming lessons and even natural sciences. The principle of laïcité in state schools was questioned, as was the responsibility of the lycée and the teachers involved. It was a conflict between individual rights and interests, and collective or general rights. Teachers had different positions: some were strictly against headscarves, others thought it did not matter, and still others defended the girls’ right to wear them. The headmaster explained that there was a need for a clear school position, that there was a real expectation that the situation should be cleared up. Decisions should not be taken by each teacher personally but should be subject to a general rule. Seven girls were wearing headscarves at the moment of the minister’s circular. What happened as a result in this lycée? The circular was integrated into the school rules and negotiations started with the pupils concerned and their families. Following discussions with the families, three of the girls removed their scarves without any difficulties. The four pupils who refused to remove them had to face the disciplinary committee one by one, which had the power to exclude them. Two girls gave up at this stage, but the other two were expelled from the school. At this school the question of headscarves was treated entirely with respect to the procedure and the general rules. 124

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This case illustrates three points which may be considered characteristic of the position in French schools regarding the headscarf question. First, headscarves are seen as the beginning of a series of confrontations between religious beliefs and pedagogical aims. In other words, as the headmaster expressed it, ‘If we were to be tolerant of headscarves, tomorrow we should be faced with other religious demands, which would be much more serious.’ Are we to understand that the headscarf has been banned as a preventative measure? If headscarves had been tolerated, and this is the second point, the resulting problems would rock the institution of laïcité and with it the whole French republican school ideology. The third point also seems to typify the dominant French conception of schooling. The headmaster mentioned as a difficulty the fact that teachers had different positions on the headscarf question and that these kinds of decision should not be placed on their shoulders. Each particular school is part of the whole French school system, which is strongly centralised. General rules, which are applied to all parts of the system, are a central means of integrating the school as a system. According to the school rules, it is the disciplinary committee that takes the decision whether or not to expel a pupil. The committee listens to the pupil and to a representative of his family, to the senior teachers of the class and even to the pupil’s representatives. The specific case is discussed and a decision is taken by vote. One of the disciplinary committee’s reports (of 17 February 1995) states: Negotiations with the girl ran from October 1994 to February 1995. During the committee meeting she was assisted by her elder brother, who mentioned that she had French citizenship and was integrated into French society. He also said that she was a good student and that she did not do any proselytising. The girl herself said that she wanted to stay at the school, but also that she wanted to preserve the right to express herself. She asked whether she could wear a kind of cap and keep it on during lessons. This solution was refused. The pupils’ representatives presented a pupil’s petition, asking for permission to continue until the end of the school year and to apply the rules afterwards. The report concludes that the disciplinary committee had to choose between two difficulties, and nobody really wanted expulsion. Fifteen members of the committee voted for expulsion, four against.

The report does not specify exactly what is meant by ‘two difficulties’, but it seems that they are expulsion on the one hand and respect for personal religious convictions, which is against the school rules, on the other. ‘Nobody really wanted expulsion’, but the committee chose it nonetheless. It is interesting to note that the headscarf question is no longer treated as such, but as a lack of respect for school rules. The Ministry’s circular made it possible to treat the question as a ‘normal’ disciplinary case. The Parisian school, finally, is an example of the strict observance of the Ministry’s recommendations. Even in other situations that were observed, the lycée seems to follow the same disciplinary 125

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logic: a strong and applied regulatory frame, accompanied by intensive supervision of pupils. In the school year 1996 to 1997 four girls at the lycée wore headscarves outside the school grounds. When they arrived in front of the school they took them off, and when they left school they put them on again. Their clothing style is no different from that of the other girls: trousers, a pullover – perhaps worn more loosely than the other pupils – and sports boots. Inside the school they do not form a particular group but are in different class groups, and they do not stay together in the school yard. Observations confirm in a way the French conception of equality, which seems to be more a question of ‘making differences equal’ than of ‘treating pupils equally despite their differences’. It was not possible to observe any group behaviour or distinguishing element by these particular girls inside the school. Another school rule in the lycée seems to be directly related to the headscarf question. One Monday in March 1997 a large poster was put up in the entrance to the school stating that ‘The wearing of any kind of hat is forbidden inside school!’. Supervisors in the area of the entrance have, since that morning, been on the lookout. According to one teacher, hats had been forbidden for a long time prior to that day, and the poster was just a reminder of the school rules. An examination of the school rules revealed that hats are not explicitly mentioned. Nonetheless, the same article in the school rules (article 13) that is used to ban headscarves also calls, in a second paragraph, for correct clothing inside the school. M.V. (an English teacher), who was asked about the significance of the rule, commented as follows: By doing so our school wants to establish a difference from the outside. Fashions from outside should not easily come inside. The lycée is against any ‘prison look’ and against ‘ghettoisation’… It is easier to declare that it is forbidden in general than to leave the responsibility to the teachers, who would have to convince their pupils in the classrooms to remove their hats. As headscarves are forbidden, why allow hats?

This ready parallel with headscarves suggests there might be a real boundary between the values existing inside and outside French state schools. For François Dubet (1997), laïcité is a neutral rule that makes school a pacified area lacking conflicts or social differences. Writing about a specific school (a collège, covering the first years of the secondary school) in a Parisian suburb, he commented: Laïcité appears here as a rule to keep the housing estate out of the school. Without that rule the collège would been consumed by social problems. In this collège, headscarves inside the school would have been less a symbol of integrism or female domination than a sign of the invasion of the school by the surrounding housing estate. (ibid.: 101) 126

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Teachers in French state schools easily become concerned by questions of laïcité. It seems that they opt more easily for a laïcité-separation model than for the more neutral one.6 Furthermore, as a well-organised pressure group, they may have had a real influence on the current political definition of laïcité. We also have the impression that their secularised values and life-styles make them feel strange in front of girls wearing headscarves for religious reasons. There is a tendency among teachers to be happy about the fact that there are no headscarves any more and even that there are no discussions about them either. One teacher remarked on the current situation: Really, it seems that we came to a kind of modus vivendi and nobody wants to live through it again or even speak about it again. It’s over…! But you should have seen it at the time, it was a crazy situation: pupils went on strike, some put on headscarves. One girl, who in normal times doesn’t worry about wearing very short mini-skirts, put on a headscarf. You should have seen them, under the covered part of the yard over there, especially the first day, when the headmaster was absent. The day afterwards, all the excitement disappeared very quickly. But, even now there are mothers who come to school with scarves on, you know, at the Saturday meetings, when parents can meet teachers. I don’t understand why they don’t do something. That should also be forbidden, but as I said at the beginning, we came to a modus vivendi and nobody wants to bring it up again.

The book by Elisabeth Altschull (1995), entitled Le voile contre l’école (The Veil Against the School), is a good example of the radical French objection to headscarves. The author is a teacher of French language and literature in a collège in a Parisian suburb. She was confronted with a girl wearing a headscarf in her lessons and demanded that she remove it. The girl refused and the teacher was torn between excluding her from lessons or accepting her behaviour. In the subsequent book, Altschull pleads for a conception of laïcité that would not allow any religious signs or symbols inside schools. For Altschull the headscarf is undeniably a sign of women’s submission to men and an exclusive suppression of women in the private sphere. Among teachers in the lycée, there are also more moderate positions concerning headscarves. These teachers regret the pupils’ expulsions. One of them, who himself has a Muslim cultural background, explained to his colleagues and to the researcher that not all schools have banned headscarves. There are some that did not expel the pupils concerned, and he also noted that the Conseil d’Etat did not take the same decision as the Ministry of Education. Then, as a kind of conclusion, he said, ‘You have to relate this circular to the political situation in France at the time and to events in Algeria [where Islamicists were engaged in acts of terrorism].’ During a one-day school trip, this teacher and one of his colleagues made nothing of the fact that one of the girls was wearing a scarf, although she normally had to take it off at school. The fact that, although on a 127

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school activity, they were not inside a school building probably mitigated the teachers’ concerns. To conclude this discussion of teachers’ attitudes at the French school, we might say that the moderate position on headscarves is rather marginal. Or, seen another way, it is the teachers who agree with mainstream policies who express themselves more readily on the issue. In this way the discourse of most teachers reproduces the dominant discourse on civil culture. In the case of the school examined in Britain, policy appears to be wholly opposite to the French way of dealing with the problem of headscarves. In 1998, the Local Education Authority issued a Handbook on Rights and Responsibilities under equal opportunities legislation. This is mainly a reminder of the legal framework and of the school’s and of teachers’ obligations towards it. The imperative to avoid discrimination against religious beliefs is clearly mentioned several times. For example, it is recalled that the Children’s Act (1989) ‘makes specific reference to the needs of a child arising from religion, culture, language and ethnicity, and the duty of those who have children in their care to satisfy these needs’. The whole message of the handbook seems to be that all pupils are different in many ways, so in order to ensure equal opportunities in the school community, it is important to take account of these differences. Headscarves are allowed in the British school, and teachers’ opinions on religious issues reflect a generally tolerant attitude towards them. A female physical education teacher comments: Everybody is used to seeing Muslim girls wearing headscarves, and you may notice that this doesn’t stop girls playing together. It is true that, most often, Somali headscarf girls form their own group, but I would not say that this is a sign of withdrawal. You can see similar friendship formation among Turkish or black girls, but they talk to each other. I would imagine that most of the girls would defend Muslim girls if they were excluded or punished for their headscarves because this clothing style is represented in society. I expect that similar reactions would come from the teachers as well because diversity is part of the school. If you read the school prospectus, you will see that the school is proud of this diversity.

Comparing the British situation with the strong secular tradition in France and the prohibition on exercising particularistic and religious identity in schools, another teacher (a female senior teacher in religious education) offered an overall view of British society: There was a similar case in Manchester a few years ago, but the issue was resolved in a short time. The Manchester ban was ridiculous. Given the multicultural and multi-faith characteristics of the British society, these kinds of prohibitions are very unusual, and as I remember there was an instant reaction from parents and the Muslim community. We teach pupils different faiths and expect that they respect other people’s religious values. Isn’t it self-defeating to include the teaching of Islam 128

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on the one hand and to ban one of the requirements of Islamic behaviour as believed by its adherents on the other?

When asked if the British way of dealing with different religious beliefs serves to promote particularistic behaviour among pupils, the same senior religious education teacher responded: Certainly it promotes multiculturalism but not necessarily particularism. There is no competition among faiths, no proselytising and no evangelism. In my view it promotes respect for others and tolerance for co-existence. In my whole teaching career, I haven’t come across pupils fighting or insulting each other for their beliefs. Among pupils, religion has not been a source of conflict, at least so far. Yet I saw many conflicts of an ethnic or racial nature, and insults for that matter.

A similarly tolerant attitude to religious beliefs has been observed towards prayer facilities in the school. The same teacher related how the question was resolved in their school: As far as I remember there were two or three pupils in the sixth-form who said that they did not want to miss Friday prayers because there is not a mosque nearby. We have a Muslim science teacher who volunteered to lead the prayers. Then a classroom was designated as a prayer area on Fridays only. These students finished the school. I am not aware if anybody is using it nowadays.

The researcher checked on a number of successive Fridays to see if the prayer room was being used, and generally it was not. However, the Friday prayer issue offers a clear example of how the recommendations of the Local Education Authority Handbook, referred to above, are put into practice. There is no general provision of facilities for the different religious or ethnic groups which are present at the school, but if there are special religious demands, the school seeks to satisfy them. If there is no longer a need for a prayer room or the organization of Friday prayers, the offer of the facility can easily be withdrawn. This also means that if, in the future, other pupils ask for a prayer room, their request will be satisfied again. The same school attitude prevails in physical education lessons. If pupils or pupils’ parents present any special requirements for cultural or religious reasons, the school generally tries to accommodate them. As a physical education teacher remarked: I have not received any formal request for exemption, but some Somali parents talked to us during our meetings with them, reminding us that their children should follow a code of Islamic clothing. We never ask them to take their headscarves off in physical education and try not to mix them with boys. So far we have not had serious problems. This was a kind of consensus and understanding. 129

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Teachers in this British school broadly agree with the general policy of religious tolerance, and in doing so they take the dominant discourse into account. The situation appears to be similar in the Dutch school. In the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam, observations during the research period showed that about ten girls wore headscarves out of some thirtyfive pupils with an Islamic background. According to members of staff, there had been a slight increase in the number of headscarves in the past five years, but this might be due to the absolute increase in pupils of an Islamic background. Headscarves are tolerated as a part of clothing style and no one seems to care about them. As observed in the British school, headscarves are not a matter of concern, but a part of normal daily school life. But respect for minority religions is not as outspoken as in Britain. Discussions with teachers at Tinbergen indicate that headscarves are treated as being an entirely personal matter, of the same order as punk hair-styles or sports caps. They do not seem to be considered so much as a matter of personal religious conviction. It would appear that common secularised values reinterpret the religious sense of veiling as merely a matter of personal life-style. We can qualify this attitude as a ‘low-key approach’, because it helps to subdue conflicts over values concerning religious matters. This approach was very evident in a discussion about the French ‘solution’ to the headscarf question. The teacher, who tried to find arguments in favour of the ban in order to enrich the discussion, did not argue from principles but merely mentioned that a physical education teacher might regard headscarves as hindering some exercises. One negative comment heard in the staff room did not refer to arguments concerning male–female equality or culture and religion, but merely offered the opinion that ‘It’s a pity that such nice[-looking] girls cover their hair’. It comes as no surprise that issues relating to religious particularities other than dress are also treated in a low-key manner. Special religious demands may be granted if they can be satisfied without invoking any exclusive rights. They should be made by appealing to a consensus of individuals. For example, a Muslim pupil asked for halal meat to be available at the end-of-year school party. He did not request special food for Muslims, but asked that the meat for the entire party be bought from a Muslim butcher. That way all the participants in the party could eat it, whereas otherwise Muslim pupils would have to eat the vegetarian dishes. In this case the demand was made too late, since the meat had already just been ordered, but given his way of presenting things, his request could have been granted. In contrast to the situation observed in Britain, the Rotterdam school will not be swayed by outside pressure groups or special interest organizations. When a representative of the Rotterdam Platform of Islamic Organizations (SPIOR) made an inventory of provisions for Muslims at different schools, the school administration did not like it. It was considered an attack on the autonomy of the school. 130

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We may suppose that the Rotterdam school’s pedagogical goal of ‘participation’ demands a tolerant solution to the question of headscarves and of different religious beliefs in general. It seems that the Dutch search for consensus has to find a level that is mutually acceptable to all the participants of the school community. Cultural and religious heritage seems to be treated not as ‘culture’ or as ‘religion’, but as a question of individual choice. As a result, value conflicts are avoided. The constant emphasis of teachers on personal choice and pragmatic solutions may help pupils affirm their individuality while remaining part of the overall community. In the research project’s school in Berlin, the administration does not apply a specific policy on headscarves, nor does it specifically take into account the pupils’ cultural background (apart from the offer of Turkish language courses; see Chapter 6, on mother-tongue teaching). In general, we may say that the Berlin school does not interfere with dress codes, so that in this sense headscarves are accepted as a part of the personal clothing style of everyday school life. Nevertheless, teachers’ comments on the issue show that girls with headscarves bear the brunt of the negative image pupils from migrant family backgrounds tend to have. Cultural stereotypes are applied in gendered terms to girls who wear headscarves. It appears that many teachers would be in favour of a legal regulation of the sort enforced in France, although they know that this would be rather difficult in the decentralised German school system. Stereotypically, headscarves are related to the presumed increasing influence of fundamentalism, which seems to endanger the principles of the secularised society and make living together difficult. This attitude is not restricted to the teachers of the project school. In a newspaper debate in the autumn of 1997, the headteacher of an elementary school in Neukölln (a Berlin suburb) published a letter to the editor. She wrote, ‘If all marginal groups, such as lesbians, gays, blacks et cetera, stressed their being different and asked for special treatment, society would come to lack common traits and identity. Separatism and exclusion would be the consequence’ (Die Tageszeitung, 24 September 1997). Implicitly, the ideal of a homogeneous nation is being expressed here: why should one think of lesbians, gays or blacks as ‘marginal’ others? Apparently, the ‘normal’ German is neither black, nor homosexual, nor Muslim. Heterogeneity and even minority rights are not considered as enriching but as endangering the identity of society. Teachers’ comments appear to stigmatise these girls because they are frequently taken as representing the miserable situation of young people from immigrant families being torn apart between two clashing cultures. The girls are perceived as paralysed victims of a backward family orientation, which is constructed in opposition to the German concept of developing an independent personal identity. It seems that teachers do not regard the wearing of headscarves as a personal choice, but only as one being enforced by parents. As individual 131

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emancipation is asked of all young people, the ‘headscarf girls’ are not taken seriously. This reflects on other traits attributed to them, including lack of academic abilities and, more broadly, their reluctance to participate in German society. Despite some consideration of differences in the girls’ motives, they are all subsumed under the outsider category of ‘the headscarf girls’ and held responsible for problems that actually have many more aspects. Muslim girls’ (non-)participation in school trips is one such issue, since it seems that they prevent whole classes from going on school trips. A more detailed analysis of the question shows that this is mainly a pretext. In a school that has eight classes in each grade, it should be possible to find enough pupils to participate in school trips and to organize lessons for those who do not wish to join in. But in general school trips rarely occur at this particular school. The main reason seems to be the economic difficulties of many families. The unemployment rate for the parents is so high that few of them, irrespective of ethnic origin, could afford any school trips for their children. Under these conditions the organizing of school trips demands a high level of initiative by parents and teachers, for example, finding good but cheap opportunities, finding subsidies or collecting money through extra-curricular school activities. It has been observed that the commitment of all members of the school community is very low and that it much easier to invoke economic, and even cultural, reasons. In the Berlin school, it emerged that the apparent tolerance of headscarves translates more into an absence of their political treatment and of tolerating minority religion in the school than into respect for personal religious convictions. The absence of political discussion in the school, which merely reflects the lack of discussion of immigration and minority questions in German society in general, gives free rein to all kinds of negative images. Thus teachers may give voice to a generally negative mood and may contribute rather to the marginalisation of girls who wear headscarves without having to fear any official control of their pedagogical role or their obligation to the principles of German constitution. Of course everybody has the right to express personal religious convictions, but this does not prevent marginalisation or exclusion inside, or even outside, the school in a wider social context. Observations of the treatment of Muslim headscarves in the four different schools, representing four different national imaginaries, disclose interesting differences not only in dominant civil cultural discourses but also in the possible ways in which such discourses may be taken up locally. It is in the French and British schools that the consequences of the dominant national discourses are most visible. In these schools the administration and the teachers tend to apply the overarching political ideology directly with regard to headscarves. But whereas in the French school no ostentatious religious signs are tolerated by ministerial decree, in the British school their acceptance is part of the multicultural concept of British society. British schools are generally obliged to integrate 132

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and bolster the multicultural vision in school practice. The Dutch case appears as a kind of intermediate solution between the French and British models. The reinterpretation of a religious sign as a matter of personal choice makes it possible to treat religious issues in public schools in a way that is meant to reflect a secularised tradition. In the German case, we can observe the consequences of a notable absence of any real political engagement with these questions. Daily school life staggers between apparent tolerance and underlying stereotypes and discriminations. Although the local treatment of headscarves is different in the French and German schools, the stereotypes applied to the girls involved are quite similar. Whereas in the French case discrimination leads to the expulsion from the school of girls wearing headscarves, in the German case pupils have to confront hidden discrimination inside the school. One interpretation of the French situation points towards a more external logic of the creation of social and political values: rules and decrees clearly define the consensus regarding values that is imposed from above. As a consequence, conflicts over values can be transformed into disciplinary questions (namely, respect or non-respect of rules). Compared to this, if the German logic of values seems to be more internal, value consensus is weakly imposed and gossip might be an unintended consequence of this. Different practices by school administrators and teachers serve to demonstrate ways in which the treatment of headscarves reinforce core aspects of the respective dominant civil-cultural discourses. In France the main goal seems to be to establish rationality and value-neutrality, exhibited above all in the concept of laïcité. Wearing a headscarf clearly symbolises opposition to adopt a neutral position and making a choice according to religious convictions (which therefore challenge the educational goals of French civil culture). The ‘judicial solution’ of the public political debate finds a response in the school practice of keeping headscarves out of school. According to many teachers and others, the problem is regarded as having been resolved and as not needing to be discussed any longer. The more moderate positions tend to become marginalised, only being expressed in more private situations. In the British school it seems to be impossible in practice to put forward critical positions about the practice of some Muslims in covering women. In the Dutch school all kinds of opinions on headscarves are phrased in terms that basically refer to individual issues, such as style or aesthetic choice. In the German school the emphasis on conscience seems to reinforce a more negative image of those who do not wish to assimilate to the dominant German model, which is based on German-Christian culture. It is clear that school administrators and teachers tend to reflect the dominant patterns of attitude and policy towards Muslim headscarves. In what ways do pupils themselves take part in national civil-cultural discourses concerning headscarves? 133

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Pupils’ Experiences and Attitudes Concerning Headscarves Throughout their daily routines at school, pupils are faced with the dominant discourse, albeit one usually filtered through school policies or teachers’ dispositions and actions. Pupils’ own personal attitudes and behaviour towards headscarves, both in and out of school, are shaped in important ways by school policies and personnel (not least through their explicit acceptance or rejection). Opinions and behaviour might differ according to their implications for the pupils. There are, of course, the veiled girls, who will have distinct views on the issue, alongside other students with Muslim or migrant family backgrounds, as well as pupils representing the specific majority cultural background (French, English, German or Dutch). As we saw above, in the French school two girls were expelled at the beginning of 1995. The school administration insists that the problem has been resolved, but what about the girls concerned? How did they experience their expulsion from school, and what about their participation in social life today? An intensive interview with one of the girls who was expelled produced information about the negotiations with the headteacher and the teachers, and throws light on the procedure from the pupil’s point of view. Fatima said that she was called into the headmaster’s office for the first time after Christmas holidays in January 1995 and two or three times thereafter. The headmaster explained to her what the school planned to do. She relates that she was so astonished, as well as being upset, that she could not believe it. She experienced a feeling of injustice, yet the headmaster did not give her any chance. The choice was stark: remove your headscarf or be expelled from the school. She was very confused, but still could not imagine for a second taking her headscarf off. She said that it was a part of herself and she could not just leave it off like a pullover. She also explained that she only realised the day after the initial disciplinary committee the significance of the expulsion – that she will never go back to school again. In fact the Ministry of Education’s circular and the headmaster both mentioned the possibility of negotiation. But the so-called negotiations simply involved two individuals in completely different hierarchical positions: the headmaster and the pupil concerned. The outcome of these ‘pseudo-negotiations’ could not be compromise, but only one solution or the other. Basically the pupil had to make a concession and the school take the final decision. Pupils who have been expelled may continue their school careers through correspondence courses. In France it is possible to prepare for many kinds of diploma through these courses. Indeed, for two years Fatima tried to follow such courses, but she found it very difficult. The school paid for her courses until the end of the school year, but the following year (when she passed the age of compulsory education) she had to pay for them herself. In the first year she did not work enough, so that she had to repeat the year. The second time round she 134

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worked much harder but could not manage to pass the year. She complains about the difficulties she had in learning and doing exercises on her own. Fatima describes herself as a good pupil who enjoyed school and learning. She feels punished because of her personal religious convictions, but she could not accept the terms of the negotiations and so she refused to go along with them. As a result her school career has been interrupted in a rather rough way, and it is not at all sure whether she will be able to find another school. Her older sister, who also wears a headscarf, was not expelled from school (she finished before the circular in 1994) and is now going to university. Fatima is still in touch with the other girl, Hassia, who was expelled at the same time. Fatima remarks, ‘Hassia did not finish her school term either. Like me, she has taken correspondence courses. She finished the Seconde and then continued in a Première with success, but she did not manage the baccalauréat. Actually she is eighteen years old and she told me that she will marry in a few weeks time.’ Pupils who have been expelled may take the decision to an administration court to have it examined. To the question whether she thought about going to court, Fatima replied, ‘Of course, I want to go to court, but not alone. So I waited for the other girls who had been expelled and I would have liked that we all went together. But finally we did not manage it: everyone stayed alone at home. By myself, I do not want to do it. I felt so depressed after the school’s decision that I have not had the energy to go on.’ It seems that, prior to its circular, the Ministry of Education consulted some reports about the revival of fundamentalist Islam in France at a time when people of French origin were being killed in Algeria. Fatima says that she felt like a victim of this political situation: ‘They have taken revenge on us’, she believed, although it was not very clear whether ‘they’ meant ‘the politicians’ or ‘the French people’, or whether ‘us’ referred to the ‘veiled girls’ or to ‘Muslims’ in general. There was a general tendency among the other pupils in the school to defend those pupils who wore headscarves. As mentioned above, many pupils organized a two-day strike and a petition against the expulsions. During the strike some girls put on headscarves as a symbol of solidarity. But, as Fatima and others admitted, the protests amounted to little in the face of pressure from the government, school administration and teachers. The current situation is rather different. No more headscarves can be seen inside school, and pupils seems to be more and more influenced by the dominant French discourse. There is now also a tendency among pupils to agree with the ban on headscarves outside school. When one of the girls who had been expelled recently wrote an article for the school magazine, members of the editorial staff refused to print it. Reacting to this article, the comments of a Turkish pupil, who was one of the editors, reflects the manner in which she has adopted the dominant French idea on headscarves: 135

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The beginning of the article was not so bad: she’s writing about the fact that she is more isolated now and that she would like to go to school. But she somehow continues only talking about religion. I know her: she lives near my house. Her parents agreed with her removing her headscarf, but she did not want to. She is a real integrist.

It is at all not sure to what extent the girl is ‘a real integrist’, but the judgement of such a pupil shows how the confirmation of a religious position may be perceived by a female pupil from a Muslim background who has decided differently for herself. In the Nikolaas Tinbergen School none of the girls interviewed who wear headscarves have had bad experiences at school relating to their dress, which, as noted earlier, ranges from long loose skirts in modest colours to fashionable colourful dresses to jeans. They confirm that headscarves are not at all a problem at the school. They are even aware of a certain difference inside and outside school. Saadet from grade 6 VWO at Tinbergen expressed this very clearly: When I walk around in my neighbourhood, people sometimes make remarks about my headscarf. There is sometimes violence against us. At school I am able to behave the way I am. I feel at ease, I can work and prepare for my exam. The teachers protect you against ill-treatment. For me the school is a safe haven. That is what I feel all the time.

Of course, outside school, stereotypes and even discrimination are a recurrent concern. Pupils who wear headscarves are confronted with the prejudices of Dutch society. School appears to protect the girls against current stereotypes, and the project school especially seems to have a good working atmosphere. Serife, grade 6 VWO at the time of the research, experienced another school before and compared it with Tinbergen: What I like about this school is that it is more organized in a way. The teachers are closer to the pupils and they do not mind whether you are Turkish or Dutch. You know that many Dutch people expect girls with a headscarf to become housewives, standing behind the sink. At this school they don’t. The teachers stimulate you to achieve more. Not all of them, of course, but most do. After HAVO I went to the VWO and now I feel proud – of course, because I am doing better than they told me I would initially… I have the feeling that when there are too many foreigners in a school they act differently, they treat you more as a member of a group, not as a person.

In a sense the pupil’s remark confirms the general discourse of the school and its teachers. The strong emphasis on individuality really is experienced by the pupils. The Rotterdam school seems to achieve an individualised approach to the equality of all its pupils while respecting their cultural and religious choices. 136

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Nevertheless, girls with headscarves have a reputation for associating together at the school. Observations indicate that the picture is actually more complex. Although there are places where one hardly ever sees headscarf girls, like ‘Rames’, the pupils’ canteen, they certainly do not form a united front. A larger group of friends, observed several times, was composed of girls who dress very differently, ranging from Islamic dress to international fashion. They say that dress is an important issue, but not really a relevant criterion for socialising. A common background, in the sense of having the same sort of belonging to the Allochtones, seems to be more reason than personal choices such as whether to wear a scarf or not. Nezife (grade 5 HAVO) said, ‘I socialise with Turkish and also with some Surinamese girls because I have the feeling that we understand each other better, because we have the same background. This has nothing to do with Islam and besides I am a Muslim too, although I do not wear a headscarf.’ The respect for personal choices, whether they are religious or more fashionoriented like haircuts or piercing, seems also to be shared by pupils of nonIslamic origin. During a short presentation of the research project at the Rotterdam school, the question of the different attitudes towards headscarves in the four countries researched was raised. Pupils were concerned by this question and openly criticised the French way of dealing with the issue. Several ‘nonMuslim Dutch’ pupils defended the right to wear headscarves according to the Dutch constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, whereas the girls who wore headscarves listened quietly to the discussion. While the Dutch pupils placed a high emphasis on the absence of discrimination and tolerance, the girls who wear headscarves know that the opinions expressed in the school do not reflect what they experience outside school, in the neighbourhood. In the London school, attitudes among pupils seemed to be quite similar to what had been observed in Rotterdam. A group discussion involving four pupils in the sixth-form illustrates this very well. Seher, a Turkish girl, Tasan, a Turkish boy, Aliyah, a Somali girl with a headscarf, and Marcus, a black youth of Caribbean parentage, had the following discussion with the researcher (R): R: Do you think your parents are too restrictive? Seher: Very much. They even interfere in my clothing. My mother always tells me not to put on make up or wear tight trousers. Honestly sometimes it’s too much. Gossip, gossip! Everybody gossips about what people wear, what they buy. Honestly, sometimes I can’t stand it. Aliyah: Yeah! But my parents are also concerned. I have got simple clothing. They’ve never forced me to wear hijab. My father used to tell us to pray and fast but not every day. I grew up in a family where everybody was praying, fasting and going to mosque. 137

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R: If Aliyah wanted to go to school in France, she would not be allowed to enter school with her headscarf. Can you imagine this happening here? Aliyah: So far nobody told us to take it off. And none of my teachers and friends has said anything bad about it. Marcus: I am not religious at all, but this is ridiculous. Here Sikhs and Jews can also wear their religious things. Tasan: But there are extremist Muslims. They force women to wear headscarves. Aliyah: That’s wrong. If you force someone to do these things, it is not coming from your heart. Seher: My mother wears a headscarf as well, but she does not pray regularly. R: What would be your reaction if any of your friends were forced to do something? I mean, if someone forced Seher to wear hijab or forced Aliyah to take it off? Marcus: I don’t think this will happen here. I think people respect all religions. Seher: I don’t wear hijab if someone forces me. I feel the same as Aliyah. People should choose their own way. Aliyah: The imam in our mosque always reminds us that compulsion is not good. I do not have any problem with people like Seher who does not wear hijab. They should not have any problem with me. But I feel bad about the girls in France if they are forced to abandon their hijab. This is disgusting. Tasan: Even in Turkey some girls are not allowed to wear hijab in school. We have satellite TV; I hear in the news that especially universities do not allow it, like in France. Marcus: As I said earlier, people learn to respect their beliefs because there are lots of people with different religions.

The Somali girl, who wears a headscarf, has attended the school for several years and has clearly never felt discriminated against in school because of her religious choice. The other pupils also show that headscarves are not an issue at their school. Everybody should be able to express his or her religious beliefs. Pupils, like teachers, seems to reproduce the dominant discourse regarding the expression of minority culture and religion. It appears that there is a widely shared social consensus on this issue: a common social life is possible because everybody is part of the community through his or her community belonging. In the Berlin school, there seems to be rather less consensus on these issues than in the British or Dutch schools. In one of the grade 12 courses, the ‘headscarf question’ triggered off an interesting discussion, which turned into a confrontation between the teacher and some of the pupils with Muslim backgrounds. The research project had been explained to the students using as an example the question, ‘How are headscarves dealt with?’. 138

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The students could hardly believe that headscarves were not allowed in French schools. As a result, the concepts of laïcité and equality were discussed. When the pupils doubted whether in principal a similar regulation would be applied in Turkey, their teacher commented that in fact the same would be true in Germany. He said that since headscarves symbolised an ideology implying an unequal relation between men and women, they would be in contradiction with the principle of equality in the German constitution and therefore would also be undesirable symbols in public spaces like the school. A Palestinian girl, Ranya (not wearing a headscarf), protested immediately that the German constitution also guaranteed one’s right to exercise one’s religion. She wasn’t going to get annoyed by her friend’s Christian symbol, either. Her friend, a Croatian girl wearing a crucifix, agreed. The teacher explained that everybody had the right to have his or her religion, but the constitution did not imply the right to demonstrate this by using religious symbols in public. The question would be whether someone complained because they felt offended by the demonstration of someone else’s religious attitude. Wouldn’t they also probably take offence at a large crucifix on the wall of their classroom? A Turkish boy, Ümit, asked why the teacher would generally not allow them to wear headgear during lessons and wanted to know if the teacher would also force a Muslim girl to take off her headscarf during the lesson. The teacher answered that it was part of the general conventions of courtesy in central Europe that people took off their headgear inside. He added that he was not going to discuss hypothetical cases and that there hadn’t been any girls wearing headscarves at the Oberstufe so far (at the moment there is one). Ümit insisted that Germans also wore headscarves for religious reasons. His teacher insisted that German women would have no problem with the rule that headscarves would have to be taken off inside. Once again he expressed the view that Muslim headscarves should be regarded as being opposed to the German constitution because of the inequality between men and women they imply. He himself had read the paragraphs of the Koran on which the wearing of headscarves are based. A girl from Sri Lanka agreed and said that headscarves should at least be forbidden in elementary schools because girls of such a young age could not choose what to wear for themselves. Later, she suggested, they could decide for themselves if they really wanted to wear a headscarf. Ranya, the girl from Palestine, became upset and protested. Ümit supported her: ‘Let everybody wear what he or she likes!’ A German boy pointed out that since migrant workers (he used the term Gastarbeiter) were guests, they should adapt to German conventions. Ranya replied, ‘This is discrimination against girls; I thought Germany was a multicultural society.’ The teacher answered that the ‘multicultural society’ was not part of the German constitution. However, as they all knew from their experiences at school, the Berlin Government would have given in instead of enforcing constitutional 139

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principles These girls could not be excluded from lessons so easily because of their right to compulsory education. Ümit wanted to know whether or not it would be possible to exclude girls wearing headscarves from German schools. The teacher became annoyed at this question. He answered that of course he himself did not regret the School Department having given in, because otherwise the right wing in Germany would have got the upper hand in these matters. It would have been a great success for them for Muslim girls to be thrown out of German schools! A German boy acknowledged the teacher’s competence: he was right to say that the headscarves are against the constitution. Ümit then wanted to know what the Germans were afraid of. The teacher pointed out that, as regards ideological symbols, Nazi symbols should not be forgotten, especially the swastika, in order to understand what Germans were afraid of. Ümit said that he could still not understand this fear: he would keep his opinion, which would not be changed by the presence of the symbols of other ideology, not even the swastika – he wouldn’t take offence at that. This upset the teacher: ‘I hope that this is not your real view, Ümit, that you would not take offence at a swastika on the wall!’ Ümit felt he had been misunderstood and left the room in anger. Shortly after this, the lesson ended. What the teacher did can be situated at two levels. First, he pointed out why they should all feel concerned with the question, because it entails possible conflicts between different basic democratic rights. At this level his statement was an explanation of how one could interpret headscarves as ideological symbols that are against the German constitution. This is not the unequivocal answer of the German state to the headscarf question: it is just one interpretation, which serves to illustrate the possible implications of headscarves to the class. It is interesting to note that headscarves are seen as symbols, finally situating the discussion on the level of ideology. The second level of the teacher’s explanation cites ‘conventions of courtesy in central Europe’. One of the German boys radicalised this aspect and claimed that ‘German conventions’ provided the guidelines for behaviour and dressing codes. The clear message for the immigrants was that adaptation is required. Ranya’s reply, that she had thought Germany was a multicultural society, was rejected by the teacher with the argument that the multicultural society was not part of the constitution. He brought extraordinary authority into the play to reinforce his position: of course the actual German constitution does not directly provide any extra rights and regulations to ensure the practice of a multicultural society. All opposing voices were rejected with this powerful argument. Two pupils from Muslim backgrounds, Ranya and Ümit, felt quite upset about the teacher’s explanations and positions. They know and feel in everyday life that they are surrounded by Christian symbols as German standards and demand the same right to make use of symbols for other religions as well. What 140

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they are requesting is an interpretation of equality that grants the right to be different equally. Moreover they do not accept the teacher’s interpretation that headscarves symbolise an ideological attitude against the German constitution. What they refer to is their own daily surroundings, in which female relatives wear headscarves because it belongs to the habits or religious choices of everyday life, although they are not necessarily connected with fundamentalist Muslim views. The Muslim pupils were the only ones who felt provoked to defend the right to wear a headscarf. The contribution of the Croatian girl was an exception. Her close friendship with the Palestinian girl was obviously the reason for her conciliatory contribution to the argument. German pupils were rather cautious, apart from one German boy who openly defended the dominant German assimilationist discourse which demands the adoption of German conventions. In the German school it appears that positions regarding headscarves are more polarised than in the other countries. The teacher argued in terms of the principle of equality in the German constitution, which itself can be interpreted as a rather ‘French way’ of considering the question. The pupils themselves seemed to be divided, their discourse reflecting the absence of a general discussion of values regarding these issues in the school, or even in the wider context of German society. This section on pupils’ discourse can be concluded by pointing to the general impression that pupils in all the countries involved in the research are more or less tolerant towards the wearing of headscarves. Their attitudes range from a kind of indifference – they simply do not care about it – to the acceptance of personal choices and even the defence of religious freedom. In fact they accept different life-styles and convictions. Pupils in all the countries who were from a Muslim background especially argue in favour of freedom of conscience. Respect for others’ convictions seems to be one of the main conditions of equality in social life. The tolerant attitude also seems to be extended to girls wearing headscarves. In all the countries they pointed out that they have decided to wear headscarves for themselves. Observations indicate various differences from one country to another. In the British and Dutch schools, there is no contradiction between pupils’ tolerant attitudes and the official discourse of the school and the state. We might say that the British school emphasises a little more the right to practise one’s religion, whereas in the Dutch school the main argument seems to be centred on personal choice. In the French school, and to a certain extent also in the German school, on the other hand, an important divergence between the dominant, official discourse and the pupils’ discourse can be observed. However, recently we have seen pupils at the French school progressively absorbing the civic values of the French state, while convinced Muslims have agreed to take off headscarves inside school, and pupils have begun to consider the ban on headscarves as nor141

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mal in public schools. In the German school positions seems to be divided according to the usual boundaries between Germans and foreigners.

Civic Values : Religious Freedom and Equality of Rights The headscarf worn by some Muslim girls is obviously constructed as one of the most visible signs of otherness in west European societies. In recent years this cultural and religious custom, considered as having been introduced from the outside, seems to question the core civic values of these societies in a new way. Religious freedom, but also equality between women and men, are the civic values generally evoked. It appears as if each country combines and interprets them differently. The question of the wearing of headscarves seems to bring these two rights into contradictory tension. This question is not simply theoretical: observations in the schools, together with interviews and discussions with teachers and pupils, confirm that these values influence the discourse of the different protagonists. Political conceptions are adopted into practice inside the school, and they exert a real influence on teachers and pupils. Teachers obviously act as agents of transmission, guiding pupils throughout their opinion-making processes. Pupils in the four countries seem to be very attached to the argument in favour of religious freedom. This may be a question of youth, of this specific period in life, where youngsters progressively affirm themselves as individuals. They may be much more involved with questions of personal choices than with more general preoccupations which concern the whole community or society. In the French official discourse equality seems to be more important than freedom of conscience. But a general question is, can a democratic society oblige people to enact equality? There are so many other examples, in professional and political life, where the principle of equality between women and men is not observed at all. While policies have established equality in a strongly normative way inside schools, it could be said that they produce social inequality for people who do not want to follow the main civil-culture project. In Britain freedom of consciousness seems to be the important value. This does not mean that the ‘equality’ principle does not come into play, but equality appears as equality between communities. If the Christian community has its rights respected, all the other religious communities should have that right too. In the Netherlands, the new constitution stresses individual rights much more, but a strong tradition of respecting different religious convictions turns respect for religious beliefs into an individual right, which seems to be the basic condition of furthering equality. In Germany too, freedom of religion is a primordial civic value, and religion is recognised as an important agent of social ethics in society. In cases of conflict, especially when constitutional principles are involved, individual exami142

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nations of conscience have to be undergone in order to claim conviction-based privileges. The principle of subsidiarity, which means that communities should be integrated and institutionalised into the German state structure, sets up the framework for religious freedom. Nevertheless it emerges in day-to-day school life that this specific German conception does not prevent discrimination, and will not do so long as there is no public debate on the multicultural reality of German society and its implications. France and Germany, finally, seem to be the two countries which impose normative values on the national state level. In Germany, community is constructed as a homogeneous community of Germans or Germanised people. France officially constructs a nation of citizens, who then adopt the new republican values. But in daily life these new abstract values hide a strongly emphasised normative message of assimilation, which emerged especially with regard to the headscarf question. Actually the dominant value-creation against the wearing of headscarves is so strong that it becomes quite impossible to defend contrary positions. Of course, modern societies do not have a common stock of values. Values and norms are more and more group values: there are economic and social classes and groups, ethnic and religious groups, more radicalised factions of these groups, and also self-chosen groups who define new values or reinterpret old ones differently. The question is, how do these modern societies find a kind of consensus at the general level? A mosaic-type project, integration according to universal values, or adaptation to main group values – which will be able to manage the challenge in the most equitable way? But national traditions also exert their influences, and processes of modernisation always integrate ‘old stuff ’. The question is also how visible cultural and religious differences are treated, and how and where are they discussed. Whether there are controversial public discussions or not shows, in a way, how the multicultural reality of these societies contributes to a continuous interrogation of modern civic rights and principles.

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Notes 1. Costa-Lascoux (1996: 70) mentions a document edited by ADRI (Agence pour le développement des relations interculturelles) in four volumes consisting of about 500 pages of newspaper articles just from the period October to December 1989. 2. At the beginning of the school term in 1994, the Ministry of Education named two mediators whose task it is to intervene in schools and help pupils and teachers to find solutions to headscarves and similar problems (see Hommes & Migration 1996). 3. Costa-Lascoux refers to 2000 cases in which an amicable solution has been found. She also mentions that many Islamic authorities have declared that the wearing of headscarves is not a religious obligation and that it is very important that Muslim girls have equal educational opportunities (Costa-Lascoux 1996). 4. Schiffauer (1993) notes that the specific German understanding of individuality means taking every single case into account in a fair way. 5. In 1992, the Commission for Racial Equality advocated measures to redress the situation and proposed special laws against religious discrimination and incitement to religious hatred (Vertovec and Peach 1997: 36). Although proposed by the more recent Labour government, to date the legal framework has not been altered. 6. Costa-Lascoux speaks about two concurrent definitions of laïcité: laïcité-separation, which keeps all religious symbols out of school, and laïcité-neutralité, which means that while the curriculum and the teaching should be neutral, the pupils can be as religious as they want (Costa-Lascoux 1996).

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„ Part II „ CIVIL ENCULTURATION AND DISCURSIVE ASSIMILATION

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„ 6„ National Language and Mother Tongue Thijl Sunier

Mother tongues and national languages are linked to civil culture in more than one way. In the first place language belongs to the field of minority policies. Knowledge of the national language serves as a standard by which integration into the host society is measured and as such pertains to the sphere of cognitive skills and social competence (Appel, Kuiken and Vermeer 1995; Broeder and Extra 1998; Byram and Leman 1990; Fase 1994; Grillo 1989; Klein 1994; Leeman 1998; Rampton 1995; Wagenaar 1990). In the second place it belongs to the field of cultural politics. Language is generally considered one of the main ‘ethnic markers’ by which ethnic groups may distinguish themselves or are distinguished by others (Billig 1995; Eriksen 1993; Smith 1981; Zolberg and Long 1997). One’s mother tongue can be a subject of identity politics and enter the negotiation of cultural rights. As such the use of mother tongues by minority groups, just like the right of religious expression, can become part of the specific cultural politics of a nation state. The extent to which a state facilitates, discourages or absolutely forbids minority groups from using their mother tongues in the public space, and more generally the status minority languages have in a nation (and consequently the status of the national language), thus tells us something about the self-perception of that nation (Brubaker 1991). The dominant status of the French language in the French republican project when compared to the status of ‘community languages’ in the proverbial mosaic of the British nation are good examples of this. In the third place, language structures patterns of communication (Hewitt 1986). As such the use of one’s national language or one’s mother tongue serves as a standard by which attitudes in daily interaction are measured. This is particularly relevant in everyday school life, since every school expects pupils to 147

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behave in accordance with implicit or explicit rules of politeness and social contact. Although these three dimensions are related to different sorts of situation, create different types of discourse and invoke different kinds of argumentation, they all refer to ideas about how proper citizenship should be pursued in each civil culture. This chapter will show how attitudes towards the use of mother tongues in the four schools, or more precisely how arguments in favour of or against such use, consist of a specific mixture of the three dimensions mentioned above, which clearly reflects the logic of each of the four civil cultures being discussed.

Language and Communication: Daily Routines and Practices Although Turkish pupils in all four schools (must) have a reasonable command of the national language of the host society in order to be able to follow the curriculum, Turkish could be heard on many occasions at school. However, the extent to which Turkish pupils used Turkish at school differed from situation to situation. At Huxley Comprehensive in London, there was constant language switching among Turkish pupils, depending on situation and context, both in the classroom and outside. Turkish Cypriots preferred to speak English most of the time, whereas when ‘mainland’ Turks talked to one another the dominant language was Turkish, but with frequent insertion of English words. Turkish pupils in the lower grades especially spoke to one another in Turkish almost exclusively. In the sixth form the tendency was a little different, and switching between Turkish and English became more frequent. Such practices could be observed both in and outside the classroom. Although most Turkish pupils had a reasonable command of English, knowledge of English among Turkish pupils ranged from very poor to above average.1 At the Lise Meitner School in Berlin we saw roughly the same situation. Turkish was used very frequently in and outside the classroom. When examining knowledge of Turkish we found that it was the language of the family and of one’s peers but was hardly standard Turkish. As compared to the situation in the Netherlands or in France, knowledge of the second language, in this case German, tended to be worse. Turkish pupils at Lise Meitner School showed considerable variation with respect to the age and generation of immigration. Roughly one third of them had been born in Berlin, while another third had migrated before entering primary school. Thus, about two-thirds of Turkish pupils were so-called Bildungsinländer, meaning that their schooling had taken place in Germany from the beginning. These pupils mastered the German language quite well. The remaining third came to Berlin during the period between the end of Turkish ilk okul (primary school) and the age of sixteen, which lim148

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its the possibility of family re-union. They faced more language problems. On the other hand those Turkish pupils who attended schools in Germany from the start did not master their mother tongue systematically enough to be able to obtain good marks in Turkish. Thus, ‘broken’ Turkish, with a lot of switching between German and Turkish, was also the norm at the school in Berlin. Turkish pupils at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam also admitted the problem of ‘broken’ Turkish. Most of them had been born in the Netherlands, and they did not have any Turkish education expect for a few lessons in their mother tongue at primary school. Most of them admitted to speaking better Dutch than Turkish, although most did speak Turkish with their parents in the latter’s accent and with a very limited vocabulary. Among their Turkish peers they routinely skipped between Dutch and Turkish, even within the same sentence, sometimes being unaware of it, but in general Dutch was used slightly more frequently than Turkish. The result was a typical hybrid vernacular common among their peers. The Dutch vernacular was thus typically the language learned on the street and with their peer group, whereas Turkish was mainly the language of the home, and used in specific circumstances. On the whole use of Turkish was less common at the school in Rotterdam than at those in Germany or Britain. In the classroom we hardly observed any Turkish pupil speaking Turkish, apart from some short remarks. Sometimes Turkish was indeed used deliberately by pupils in specific situations. At both the Lise Meitner and Tinbergen Schools, Turkish pupils indicated that Turkish is useful when one wants to exchange confidences or to refer to a specific cultural field that is only relevant to Turkish pupils. For example, during a mathematics lesson at the Lise Meitner School, a teacher asked Fatma, a Turkish girl wearing a long skirt and high-heeled shoes, to draw a circle on the school yard pavement with a piece of chalk and a thread. Not only is it difficult for anybody wearing high-heeled shoes to draw in a squatting position and move slowly forward, it also involved the personal risk for the girl of finding herself in the embarrassing situation of appearing improper, because she had to watch that her skirt did not rise up as well. A second girl, Senem, who was from a Turkish Alevi family and was very open, always dressed in tight jeans and assimilationoriented in her views and choice of friends, intervened immediately, asking one of the boys to take Fatma’s part. She asked him this in Turkish, referring implicitly to a moral code that, as she knew, he would immediately understand. A similar situation occurred at the Tinbergen School in Rotterdam. A Dutch boy, being provocative, complained about the massive influx of refugees, who according to him were only after money. One of the Turkish pupils tried to put forward arguments against this and entered the discussion very seriously, not noticing that he was pulling her leg. When another Turkish pupil realised that the boy was making a fool of her, she addressed her in Turkish, saying, ‘Bırak bu budala herifi, sana ciddi konusmuyor, aldatıyor seni’ (‘Leave the stupid ass alone, he’s pulling your leg’). 149

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At the Lycée Fernand Braudel in Paris the situation was different. When observed from the outside, it seemed that most of the Turkish pupils refrained from using Turkish. Inside the school no Turkish was to be heard, not even during breaks. When Turkish pupils were asked, they said they never spoke Turkish. Turkish girls especially insisted that they always spoke French, not only with school friends, but even with their brothers and sisters. Emel (twenty years old, born in France, French citizenship, Première) confirmed the predominance of the French language: ‘With my friends and my brothers – I have two older brothers – I speak French; even with my boyfriend, we are used to speaking French, except for the gentle words. It is better to say those in Turkish’. Their mother tongue was used to speak to their parents only, particularly their mothers, who spoke less French. Standard French was the ideal language in all situations. Whereas in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands the boundary between Turkish and the national language seemed to be blurred through the use of broken Turkish, in France there seemed to be a sharp dividing line between the two languages, in which the use of either was confined to specific situations. Apart from that it seemed that Turkish pupils mastered French far better than Turkish in comparison to pupils at the other schools. But at the same time there was a desire to learn Turkish properly. Some pupils in Paris took private Turkish lessons organised by the Turkish embassy to improve their Turkish. However, this was considered to be a purely private matter which had nothing to do with their commitment to republican ideals and conventions. During the research there was no request to put Turkish on the curriculum (which, as we shall see, was considered to be an ordinary modern language). Although the picture remains necessarily incomplete, since it is hard to obtain definite information about the use of Turkish in public and private situations, it is clear that speaking Turkish was most widespread in the British and German schools, being used both inside and outside the classroom. At the Dutch school the classroom seemed to constitute a public space where pupils refrained from spoken Turkish (apart from minor exceptions), whereas the corridors and the rest of the school building were considered a space where the choice was up to them. At the French school the whole building seemed to be accepted as a public space where Turkish pupils refrained from using Turkish. Thus, in general, the extent to which Turkish was used at school depended on the circumstances and the level of knowledge, but in addition also it depended on the status of Turkish at the school and on how rules were imposed.

The Status of Turkish at School: Rules and Principles Huxley Comprehensive School: Coping with Contradictory Requirements? Let us now examine the conditions in each of the four schools with respect to the status and use of the mother tongue. Huxley Comprehensive, like any other 150

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school in Britain, is expected to a certain extent to reflect the multicultural nature of British society. In the school building there were notices in the main languages represented at the school, and leaflets and brochures were produced in those languages. Pupils were even classified according to their mother tongues rather than nationality. Although the school officially discourages the use of other languages than English, the staff realised that in a school where fifty plus languages were spoken and where there was a considerable number of pupils from countries like Vietnam, Albania, Romania and Somalia, with whom nobody on the staff could communicate, language was an important issue. On the one hand, reference was made to the actual (multilingual) situation they said they had to face. Much of the additional money for ethnic minorities, the socalled Standards Fund Ethnic Minorities Achievement Grant, was used for additional English lessons. On the other hand, speaking one’s mother tongue is the right of all members of an (ethnic) community, which should not be violated. The use of Turkish (and other mother tongues) is a matter for the public domain. Recognition of difference covers linguistic diversity in Britain generally: in Wales, for example, there are signposts in Welsh as well as in English. Newspaper advertisements for jobs are also in both languages, and Welsh is taught in schools in Wales – even in the curriculum there are exceptions and special arrangements for school education in Wales. Ethnic minority languages are also recognised as ‘community languages’ in Britain. Recently, Turkish was placed in this category, as a result of a huge campaign by the British Turkish community. Community organisations mobilised teachers, parents, pupils and politicians to ‘save Turkish’, which was finally done. These considerations were clearly reflected in the attitudes of teachers towards the use of Turkish. Banning languages other than English, and even discouraging pupils from using their mother tongue, would be at odds with the right to use ‘community languages’ and the ‘multicultural’ character of the nation. When the Dutch member of the research team visited Huxley, he was asked by one of the teachers whether Turkish lessons constituted part of the curriculum at the Tinbergen school. She was shocked to hear that this was not the case and that the use of Turkish would even be discouraged at the school in Rotterdam: ‘But that’s racism!’, she exclaimed. Other teachers were less outspoken, but they were well aware of the sensitivity of the issue. Given this sensitivity about the status of ‘community languages’, it seems rather paradoxical that there is a strong emphasis in British educational policy on the dominant role of the English language. This looks at first sight to be at odds with the principles of ethnic diversity and racial harmony and the status of one’s mother tongue as part of one’s community rights. But when we take a closer look at the reasons given for the dominant status of English, logic reveals itself: English is considered to be the key to access to, and success in, the National Curriculum. ‘Only by mastering English properly is one able to raise the performance level of all pupils and to remove the obstacles to higher achieve151

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ment, which are common to all. As such society is able to preserve and transmit the national values in a way which accepts Britain’s diversity and promotes tolerance and racial harmony’ (in Broeder and Extra 1997: 74, my italics). These statements, taken from the influential report Education for All (Department of Education and Science 1985), not only show an emphasis on minority rights, but also on English as the common language enabling access to resources for all and thus racial equality. These principles seem to be clearly in favour of a policy at school which confines the use of mother tongues to situations that have no educational implications and which considers English the educational language per se, but in practice the situation was much more complex. In the classroom teachers had to navigate between their educational agenda and the requirements of a multicultural society. Pupils were very much aware of this and sometimes used the built-in tension between these two principles as political leverage in order to create a space for negotiation, thus invoking ‘community rights’ and fair treatment. This is probably why many teachers had ambiguous feelings about the use of Turkish, ranging from strict disapproval to discouragement to totally free permission.

Lise Meitner School: Coping with Cognitive Deficiencies Inconsistency of rules with respect to the use of mother tongues was also observed at the Lise Meitner School in Berlin, though for different reasons. Turkish was treated as one of the cultural particularities of a section of the pupils, and teachers were faced with the fact that the language was widely used in daily communication. But despite the considerable number of Turkish pupils at the school, there were no clear regulations with respect to the use of Turkish. The school did not have or apply a specific language policy in this respect. But unlike the British case, children who have migrated at a later age and who cannot speak German sufficiently in order to be able to follow lessons need to take a language test (Sprachstandanalyse). In most cases they are then placed in special preparatory schools (Vorbereitungsklasse), where they follow a course lasting one or two years, with an absolute maximum extension of another year, to be concluded with a final test. It turned out, however, that for many pupils at Lise Meitner this proved to be insufficient for the purpose of following lessons in German. Pupils who somehow or other had passed the aforementioned language test, were considered to have mastered German well enough to follow ordinary lessons. For the rest it was the pupils’ own responsibility to learn German properly and to use Turkish or not to use it. The dominant status of German was apparently taken as an evident fact. Mastering proper German is a basic cognitive skill, and pupils were expected to learn the language. If they did not live up to this expectation it was not the school that was to blame, but a failure in the parental environment. At the 152

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school this often led to diffuse, opportunistic approaches right up to complete linguistic anarchy. Some teachers at Lise Meitner School were strictly against the use of mother tongues and stopped it immediately, sometimes adding general explanations that pupils should learn German rather than becoming established in a Turkish ‘second-society’ niche. At the other extreme, a few teachers initiated the use of Turkish in situations where they had the impression that pupils could not follow their explanations of the subject because of poor language skills. One of the mathematics teachers applied this method repeatedly and with considerable success. In between these two positions, many teachers did not mind their Turkish pupils talking to one other in Turkish during the lessons, even though they could not be sure that the content was related to the lesson. As one remarked, ‘In many cases linguistic competence is not sufficient to understand the lesson fully, so Turkish pupils are able use their mother tongue in order to make sure they know the subject’. The status of Turkish lessons was also a matter of conflict among Lise Meitner School’s teachers. Turkish lessons were offered as mother-tongue lessons from Grade 7 onwards as an addition to the normal range of subjects. From Grade 9 onwards Turkish lessons were a regular element in the range of optional classes (Wahlpflichtunterricht) that all pupils had to choose from, but in practice they were not open to all pupils. Many teachers would have preferred Turkish lessons to be an option for all pupils and for it to be granted the status of a modern foreign language. Discussions about this had still not been completed at the end of the research period. Some lessons took place as mother-tongue lessons. There were two teachers of Turkish origin who gave lessons in Turkish as well as teaching other subjects. They both asserted that the poor linguistic competence of many pupils justified their teaching activities. Native language skills were promoted as being helpful for the development of language skills in general, and because of this both teachers insisted on keeping Turkish lessons closed to non-Turkish pupils. The reason again was not policies of cultural identity, but the development of linguistic competence leading to cognitive development. When we consider the reactions of teachers to Turkish being spoken at school, it seems that the basic argument against it was that it was a sign of unwillingness to adapt oneself to German society. Some teachers who were against the widespread use of Turkish argued that it should be considered an act of withdrawal from German society and an act of orientation towards one’s own community. Speaking Turkish is an expression of ‘otherness’, of living in one’s own ‘cultural niche’: speaking Turkish meant reproducing one’s Fremdheit. It was argued that this indeed shows that Turks are a separate group, a considerable number of whom were turned inward, not wanting to be part of German society. As one teacher put it, ‘A certain exclusion takes place through the use of the Turkish language during lessons.’. In one of her classes the same teacher reacted to a pupil’s using Turkish with a school friend as follows: ‘You 153

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talk in Turkish, you stay in your own circles, you go shopping only in Turkish shops – integration cannot work like that!’. Another argument that was often heard was that many Turkish pupils apparently did not internalise the basic values of (German) politeness and interaction: Their speaking Turkish gets on my nerves: in my lessons they are not allowed to do so. They should adapt themselves more. Unfortunately it seems to be a ‘holy cow’ from the age of the crèche onwards not only to accept the permanent use of their mother tongue among Turkish pupils, but even to be forced to accept it. Such a courtesy towards non-Turkish pupils cannot be imparted to Turkish pupils.

These reactions refer to principles that can be related to civil culture and ideas about citizenship. With a few exceptions, there seemed to be hardly any pedagogical argument involved in the reactions. This does not mean that such arguments did not play a role. They were, however, not so much related to considerations about the integration into society of individual members of minority groups, but rather to a concern with the lack of linguistic competence and the alleged lack of effort and willingness by both pupils and their parents to adapt to German society. The perception of the ever-growing dominance of Turkish was supposed to indicate this. This concern led to the following absurd anecdote. When the mother of Murat, a boy who happened to speak Turkish frequently, came to see a teacher on parents’ visiting day, the teacher mentioned that Murat talked a lot, but unfortunately hardly ever in German. His knowledge of German was said to be quite bad because he spoke so much Turkish with his classmates. The teacher asked Murat’s mother to try and speak a little less Turkish and more German at home. The woman was shocked and answered that she could not speak any Turkish, as they were Aramaic! A teacher who had listened to the anecdote was amazed and also shocked. She commented: ‘That can’t be true: after all, that’s how integration works here – the Turks integrate all the others!’. The apparent absence of any pedagogical consideration with respect to the use of mother tongues, which is so omnipresent in the Dutch case, as we shall see, can be regarded as an expression of the fact that Germany lacks any central policy with regard to integration and immigration. Policies towards minorities are decentralised at the level of the Bundesländer and schools. There is no central pedagogical agenda, as in Britain, with respect to the status of mother tongues and the national language. Lessons in mother tongues and even bilingual lessons can be found in many schools with a considerable number of foreign pupils, but there are also schools that explicitly refrain from doing this. These lessons have long been linked with ‘return migration’ (Broeder and Extra 1997), but since this has become obsolete as an administrative tool, reasons for instituting such lessons are as varied as are the schools. 154

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Most of the Turkish pupils at Lise Meitner School were aware of the overall negative attitudes towards the use of Turkish, but most of them did not really care very much. They did not really understand why they should refrain from using of Turkish in a situation where national backgrounds were taken as fact and where inconsistency in enforcing rules with respect to the use of Turkish was widespread. For Turkish pupils who chose mother-tongue courses, the motivation simply tended to be the expectation of easy success, but there were also positive connotations in the sense that, ‘It would be really good to know proper Turkish’. However, most pupils who had spent their school years in Germany from the start had enormous difficulties in obtaining good marks in Turkish because they had never learnt to read and write the language systematically.

Nikolaas Tinbergen School: Language as a Communicative Device While at the Lise Meitner School in Berlin attitudes towards the use of Turkish were mainly left to the teachers’ own choice and considerations, at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam we observed a different approach. On the one hand there was a general feeling that one should not be too rigid with respect to the cultural particularities of pupils. If the use of mother tongues assures that, then it must be allowed to a certain extent. As one teacher put it: ‘[Cultural particularities] belong to this or that particular child. One cannot and should not ignore it, because it can have a lot to do with determining their general feeling of well-being at school.’. This was considered a social reality the school had to deal with, although speaking one’s mother tongue could never be a right that one could invoke. Tinbergen was very anxious not to stigmatise children on the basis of their ethnic background. In every respect the school was very keen on breaking down any ethnic patterning, hence the permissive attitude towards headscarves. As such this general attitude is in line with Dutch civil culture, which is characterised by consensus-seeking and conflict-avoidance and which opts for a inclusive moral community, so that a low-key approach to everything that pertains to ethnic and religious diversity seems to be the only viable option. On the other hand, there seemed to be a general consensus, as well as clear instructions, that the use of Turkish and of any other mother tongue within the school should be discouraged as much as possible. When a group of Turkish pupils spoke Turkish in the corridors or in front of the school building, they were asked not to do so. The reason was clear: the school considered this to be a means of isolation from other pupils. As one teacher put it: Most of the Turkish kids here have a good command of Dutch, although in some cases you still see some problems with grammatical structures. For us this is our prime task as teachers and as a pedagogical institute. But on the whole that is not a big problem here [in the higher grades of HAVO and VWO]. We try to treat pupils 155

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as individuals, not as members of a particular group. We ask other pupils to do the same. This is the general rule of politeness here at school. When you speak a language that other pupils cannot understand, you place them at a distance, you exclude not only them but also yourself. You do this when you want to exclude others from a conversation, as if you were whispering in public. But apart from this a school must stimulate pupils from whatever background to interact as much as possible, shouldn’t it? That is how you increase mutual understanding. When they do not talk to one another any more, we have a serious problem. So I see no reason why Turkish or any other allochtonous pupils should separate themselves out by using another language. It has to do with how you behave yourself towards others.

The argument was thus that a school must be the crucial place where participation and interaction between pupils of all backgrounds must be enforced. Anything else was considered unwise and as leading to segregation and non-participation. There were, however, no sanctions: pupils were simply shown their responsibility to take part in school life. The other, even more dominant argument against the use of mother tongues was a cognitive one. Speaking one’s mother tongue too much is bad for one’s Dutch. Mastering Dutch properly was considered to be the only key to successful education. Most teachers acknowledged the importance of one’s mother tongue as a cultural requisite, but they did not consider the school, as a Dutch educational institute, the place where this right should be asserted. According to the deputy head of the school: We have pupils at this school from a variety of cultural backgrounds. They have their particularities, which we should acknowledge, but it is our policy that since this is a Dutch school, Dutch is the language with which we [my italics] communicate with each other. Only by learning Dutch can you be successful and participate in our society.

By discouraging the use of languages other than Dutch, a certain idea of equality was also invoked: ‘We have the task of offering equal opportunities to all pupils. All pupils must be able to take part in our society and must have equal access to resources, and the main instrument to accomplish that is learning Dutch – it’s as simple as that!’. Thus, speaking one’s mother tongue is fine so long as it does not obstruct these important goals. The school is the single most important place where this goal must be accomplished. Consequently, at the Tinbergen School all pupils were expected to master and use only Dutch. For this reason the school was very much against the (semi-official) use of Turkish, even in situations where there was a language barrier. There were no signs or brochures written in Turkish or Arabic (for pupils from Morocco), and if parents could not communicate in Dutch, it was their responsibility to acquire an interpreter. 156

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This line of reasoning is very much in accordance with the considerations that prevail in present-day Dutch minority policies. A good command of Dutch is considered the key to (individual) integration into Dutch society. Even the rather widespread practice (at primary schools) of giving lessons in one’s mother tongue is legitimised with purely pedagogical and cognitive arguments, not with any reference to the maintenance of cultural identity. In the Netherlands, lessons in one’s mother tongue have long been (and still are) considered beneficial for allochtonous pupils. A better command of one’s mother tongue, it is argued, functions as a bridge between the migrants and the host society, or rather between the home and school environments. Research has been carried out to substantiate the assumption that a better command of one’s mother tongue enables pupils to master Dutch more easily and quickly (see Broeder and Extra 1997).2 Although in the first half of the 1980s arguments could be heard with respect to cultural identity, since then this aspect has been neglected in favour of ostensibly pedagogical considerations. In recent years the dominant position of Dutch has become even stronger. Thus the so-called inburgeringscontract (citizenship contract) in the Netherlands is a kind of signed commitment by a newcomer to learn Dutch as soon as possible and to master Dutch cognitive skills in order to be able to act as a integrated member of Dutch society. In short the attitude at Tinbergen toward the use of mother tongues was based on a combination of cognitive arguments and arguments pertaining to a pattern of social interaction. Cultural politics did not play a decisive role in the argument. It seems that Turkish pupils at Tinbergen understood this line of reasoning well, but since most of them saw themselves as ‘successful foreigners’ (after all, they had managed to enter the highest grades of the highest school levels), most of them considered this pedagogical argument obsolete. But also, most of them viewed the argument that they were in favour of segregation as complete nonsense. They proved to be able to master Dutch. Turkish is just a simple means of communication, not a means of separating oneself from other pupils. Hasan (Grade 5 VWO) remarked: I do not hear so much Turkish at school. I do not understand what they are talking about. There are no problems with language here. I can imagine that you might ban any other language apart from Dutch when pupils are having serious problems with Dutch, but that is absolutely not the case here, so why make a fuss about it? I am sure that every Turkish pupil at Tinbergen very well understands and accepts that this is a Dutch school. What other language should you use? What I do in my leisure time with friends and relatives is none of the school’s business, I would say. 157

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Lycée Fernand Braudel: French as the Only Integrative Device At first glance, the actual attitude towards the use of mother tongues at Lycée Fernand Braudel in Paris more or less resembled that of the Tinbergen School in Rotterdam. Any other language than French was banned from school. But where arguments at the Dutch school were in the first place related to minority policies and considerations concerning participation, and implementation was not so strict, in the case of Lycée Fernand Braudel French republican principles seemed to be invoked right at the outset. According to the French republican rationale, there are no intermediate identities, only French citizenship. The school is the public arena par excellence, where republican principles should be enforced. But educational arguments also reveal a very explicit assimilationist policy. From primary education on there is a heavy emphasis in France on learning French as quick as possible. This is considered to be the only effective means of integration into French society. Giving attention to mother tongues is not only counterproductive in terms of integration, it is also not republican. Education in minority languages still exists in France, but it is left entirely to the initiatives of the respective foreign consulates (Broeder and Extra 1997). Otherwise, Turkish has the official status of a foreign language which can be chosen for final examination, provided there is enough demand for Turkish lessons. As such it explicitly does not have the status of a minority language and is open to every pupil. The school administration can then ask for a teacher of Turkish. During the 1996 to 1997 school year no Turkish lessons were offered in Lycée Fernand Braudel, although some Turkish pupils asked the headmaster about the possibility. When the headmaster explained the difficulty of finding an appropriate teacher for such lessons, it became clear that such lessons are only considered legitimate when they conform to the French republican model. In his words, ‘Some Turkish pupils asked me about it. In principle I do not object, but to set up such lessons is not so easy. I want to have a real teacher with a French diploma and all that. It is out of question to have the kind of lessons at the school in the form these pupils asked for them’. Of course, complete and effective control is impossible, but apparently most of the Turkish pupils ‘got the message’. Turkish pupils were not observed speaking Turkish with each other at Lycée Fernand Braudel in Paris. Even teachers did not remember ever hearing it. In addition, interviews with pupils revealed that Turkish would only be practised at home with one’s parents, especially mothers, or in the most intimate situations. Not only did we hardly observe any pupils speaking Turkish, it seemed that most of them had internalised the dominant position of French. Seviye, a Turkish girl, admitted that she always spoke French, even with her Turkish friend at school, because ‘this is more natural’. Other Turkish pupils made similar overt statements, all pointing to the same mechanism: the effectiveness of the French system creates a logic that considers every reference to 158

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ethnic background irrelevant. This was especially the case for the relatively small number of Turkish pupils at Lycée Fernand Braudel. They wished to make themselves as ‘invisible’ as possible in order not to be ‘minoritised’ or equated with the proverbial foreigners, the Arabs. Unlike in the Netherlands and Germany, where use of Turkish apparently did not affect one’s status, not speaking Turkish at a French school seemed to be a ethnically loaded statement: ‘We do not want to be outsiders…’.

Conclusions At the beginning of this chapter I mentioned three fields that are related to language policies and the use of mother tongues: first, cognitive skills and social competence; second, cultural politics; and third, interaction and communication. As we saw, teachers and staff who argued for or against the use of mother tongues at school invoked one of these fields or a combination of them. The same was true of the specific policies at each of the four schools towards the status and use of Turkish. These attitudes implicitly or explicitly reflect specific aspects of civil culture. With respect to regulations, particularly their implementation at the schools, we saw that at both Huxley School in London and Lise Meitner School in Berlin, – but for different reasons – there was a general lack of transparent rules with respect to the use of Turkish. In the British case this had to do with the seemingly contradictory requirements of society with respect to minority pupils. In the German case, as in the previous chapter, we observed uncertainty and fuzziness regarding the rules, which corresponds well with the widespread assumption that rules should be internalised that is characteristic of German civil culture. The lack of control therefore offered pupils room to use Turkish wherever and whenever they wished. On the other hand, the more limited space Turkish pupils had in which to use Turkish at the Dutch school, and even more so at the French school, cannot be explained solely with reference to stricter external control. It is the unequivocal character of the arguments against the use of mother tongues and the extent to which Turkish pupils have internalised these principles that accounted for this situation. These arguments were characterised by a considerable internal coherence. We might well explain away these variable implementations of the rules by referring to different circumstances at the different schools, but if we take a closer look at the legitimating arguments that went along with the specific policies adopted, we find a certain logic behind them. To a large extent, these legitimating arguments fitted the civil-cultural frameworks in each of the four countries. When we consider the school in the nation state as a crucial agent in bringing up citizens, it is almost self-evident that the status of mother tongues 159

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in relation to the national language constituted an important issue. One way or another it influenced the schools’ educational agendas, and teachers and staff were expected at least to adopt an attitude towards it. In all four cases, policies regarding use of mother tongues were linked to considerations about the character of the nation. This was done by referring to the three fields mentioned above in a particular way. The net result was, not very surprisingly, an emphasis on the national language at the cost of minority languages, but the arguments were very different. At Huxley Comprehensive in Britain, the key concepts were racial harmony and fair treatment. The school was conceived of as a reflection of society, and the dominant status of English was linked to ideals of racial equality and fair competition embedded in a notion of the nation as an ethnic mosaic. The argument was, ‘Whether we accept a certain degree of multiculturality in our society or not, everybody must have a reasonable command of English, otherwise nothing works’. A good command of English was considered to be essential in being part of the British nation. Yet language (in this case Turkish) could be conceived as being (part of) the cultural heritage of a section of the population – language as an aspect of a particular culture or a particular community. On this level Turkish was equal to English; both are community languages. For this reason a recognition of Turkish as a modern language that could be part of the regular curriculum was considered of crucial importance to Turkish pupils. But at the same time English was regarded as the language with which one was able to negotiate and defend equality. It is the encompassing language, the ‘lingua franca’ for equal rights. Thus although language belongs to the field of cultural politics per se, it is the strong emphasis placed on its performative and communicative aspects that gives English its central status. At the school in Berlin the arguments against the use of mother tongues were linked to ideas about German culture and descent. But there seemed to be little need to articulate these arguments. The German language is self-evidently a homogenising agent, and its prevalence as a crucial feature of German culture was taken for granted. As a result, there was in fact no need to argue in favour of German. Mastering proper German was considered an obvious part of a longterm trajectory of adaptation as a key to taking part in German society. In order to function properly in a German school and achieve a sufficient level of linguistic competence, one must have a good command of German.3 As we discuss in other chapters, linguistic competence is considered one of the essential prerequisites in developing the capacity to be allowed responsible personal comments and judgements. Speaking Turkish is therefore a sign of unwillingness to live up to these requirements and more generally to adapt oneself to German civil culture. But the complete adaptation mainly envisaged in the German model is at the same time prone to suspicion regarding intentions, which makes inclusion a matter of generations. Given the fact that Germany is conceived as a nation with ethnic and lingual homogeneity, the status of belonging to Ger160

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many’s ‘foreigners’ (Ausländer) is not affected by the language used, at least not in the short run. If your ethnic background is Turkish, you will be considered a ‘foreigner’, even if you only speak German. As in the British case, therefore, language equals culture. In the Dutch case arguments were much more pedagogical and explicit. In the Dutch idea of the nation, despite the presence of communities, an imagined moral community is envisaged which every member of society, irrespective of his or her ethnic background, must be able to subscribe to. This moral community is the key to opting into the national project. One remains a Turk (or rather an allochton) in the Netherlands whether one speaks Dutch or Turkish, but in order to participate in this moral community one needs to be ‘on speaking terms’. This strategy of internal inclusivity, which is typical of the Dutch way of arguing, demands an approach in favour of participation in which ethnic and cultural particularities must be treated in as low-key a fashion as possible. The difference from the German case is that no exclusivity is implied in the idea, because ethnic diversity is part of the Dutch project. The school is a pedagogical instrument of society rather than its reflection, a crystallisation point of civil values and goals. A good command of Dutch is the key to optimal participation in society and to overcoming backwardness (achterstand), since it leads to equal opportunities. But since the Dutch nation is at the same time conceived as a ‘nation despite communities’, a certain degree of cultural diversity must be ensured. At the Tinbergen School, then, wearing headscarves pertained to this cultural symbolic space at school, but speaking Turkish apparently did not. Arguments in favour of allowing the use of Turkish at school were easily challenged by ‘rational’ cognitive arguments. Turkish does indeed constitute an important part of the cultural background of Turkish pupils, but not in an educational institution. Turkish is a (sub-)cultural prerequisite that pertains to the strictly private sphere. It only functions within Dutch society when it sustains the integration process. Thus the effectiveness of the French project lay in the fact that cognitive arguments and arguments relating to the characteristics of the French nation are consistent and reinforce each other: the only key to integration as a migrant is French citizenship. In other words French minority policies and republican policies run in parallel. One of the results is that the boundary between private and public is defined differently. In other words, the private sphere is considered smaller than in the other countries. In the French school the argument was that equality is only accomplished through a complete command of the French language. The school was not considered simply an instrument of the republic: it embodies the republic. In France, which is envisaged as a nation above communities, the prominent status of the French language apparently led to a clear and explicit attitude against the use of Turkish. According to the French rationality project, there are no intermediate identities in the public domain other than French citizenship. The use of Turkish belongs to the private domain, which is 161

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more narrowly defined than, for example, in Britain. Speaking Turkish at school, which belongs to the public domain, was considered to be opting out of this project. At school one is a pupil of a French school. Speaking Turkish is considered a purely personal and private matter that is mainly used in family situations. Language (French, that is) is the key to civil competence. As in the Dutch case the cultural dimension was considered irrelevant in the social process. Although one can apply the concept of assimilation as in the German case, assimilation (through language skills) had an instrumentalist rather than a cultural connotation. In addition to this, we see that in the French, Dutch and to a lesser extent British schools there were arguments pertaining to the integration of individual members of minority groups. When we compare these arguments, we can observe some remarkable similarities and dissimilarities. With regard to arguments relating to individual trajectories of integration into society, the French and Dutch schools seemed to follow the same kind of instrumental logic, stressing the prominent status of the national language as the integrative device per se. Consequently, rules with respect to the use of mother tongues were transparent and unequivocal and reinforced each other. In the German case, on the other hand, this sort of instrumentality was non-existent, since the status of mother tongues and of German was in no way linked to any instrumental trajectory of integration. The dominance of German is an expression of the ‘monolingual habitus’ (Gogolin 1994) of German schools, rather than a pedagogical instrument. Together with rule uncertainty, this led to the linguistic anarchy typical of the Berlin school. In the British case, two principles (community rights and fair treatment) that are ideally indissolubly linked to one another in practice demanded different approaches. Consequently, teachers must find practical ways of overcoming these contradictory requirements. When looking at the meaning attached to mother tongues by both teachers and pupils, we see another pattern. In both the French and British cases, if for different reasons, the attitude towards the use of Turkish seemed to be highly ethnicised and linked to identity politics. The Turkish language as a marker of ethnic identity was probably most obvious in these countries and constituted a crucial attribute in the concept of the nation. By refraining from speaking Turkish, one not only subscribes to the French republican project, but also ‘deminorities’ one’s status as a citizen. In Britain it was almost the other way around. The right to speak one’s mother tongue was considered a potential means of attaining the British concept of citizenship. In both Germany and the Netherlands, on the other hand, Turkish played hardly any role in identity politics. This had mainly to do with the fact that the dominant modes of ethnic categorisation and definitions of the nation run along different lines. Language was perceived not so much as an external ethnic marker but as a phenomenon located in individual pupils. Assessments of the use of the mother tongue were situated on the level of participation versus iso162

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lation. In Germany, refraining from speaking Turkish affected neither one’s alignment with the German nation nor one’s minority status and merely showed a willingness to adapt oneself to society without becoming an integral part of it. In the Netherlands, it was the very narrowly and precisely defined trajectory leading to full integration and participation that accounted for the status of mother tongues. Refraining from speaking Turkish was thus in itself an act of integration.

Notes 1. The British school system requires that all state school pupils should follow the National Curriculum as much as possible. This implies that even those pupils who have not mastered English should be in class and follow ordinary lessons. The idea is that, by forcing them to attend classes, they learn the language more quickly than if they did not attend. 2. For quite some time already there has been a technical discussion going on about the advantages and disadvantages of lessons in one’s mother tongue for a better command of the second language (Dutch). It is important to emphasise here is that the arguments used are purely cognitive and linguistic. 3. The recent changes in German naturalisation law stipulate that a ‘sufficient’ command of German is one of the conditions for becoming a German citizen. These changes even reinforce the idea of the German Kulturnation, in which language equals culture.

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„ 7„ Regimes of Discipline and Civil Conduct in Berlin and Paris Sabine Mannitz

Analysing the place of mother tongues and national languages in the four civil cultures, we have seen that it is not only didactical considerations relating to mastering of course content that govern expectations in school, but also that norms of politeness were equally invoked to argue for or against the use of a certain language. Preparing pupils for social participation evidently reaches beyond the groundwork of instrumentally mastering knowledge. Besides learning different subjects, pupils are also taught the modes of conduct that are considered appropriate and necessary for social interaction and individual success, such as: punctuality, reliability, a methodical attitude towards productive work, yet also fairness, solidarity and the keeping of certain rules in the solution of conflicts. Given the educational task of transmitting the rules that should be kept to in social, public and political arguments as an adult participant, these normative rules and constraints cannot be restricted to the virtues of disciplining oneself. The creation of civility, that is, a social cohesion meant to facilitate the ideal of a functioning civil being, lies at the heart of pedagogical aims regarding conduct. Across the four civil cultures, certain unspecific norms will commonly be subscribed to, particularly concerning the limits of civility: for instance, the belief that conflicts should ideally be solved without the use of physical violence. The corresponding positive norms of how to behave oneself in public will however be different because they relate to the specific concepts of each civil culture. The question is how this bundle of expectations is translated into practice and how it enters assessment, or likewise affects opportunities. When competing for vocational training or places at university, school success is a crucial criterion. The examinations passed and marks obtained are regularly treated as objectified expressions of an applicant’s achievement and 164

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ability. This operational abstraction is necessary to create a basis for meritocratic principles in distributing opportunities. Nevertheless, it remains illusory because the school results relate to contextualised interactions that in themselves are not comparable.1 Moreover, they involve complex and heterogeneous qualifications: on the one hand, the distribution of marks is part of a very explicit, constant training towards the evaluation of how a society confers merit. On the other hand, marking also refers to the implicit codes of politeness, and to the relations between etiquette and mental discipline that are either rewarded or sanctioned. Successful pupils will have behaved according to what are regarded as appropriate manners and civil conduct at their school. Depending on the personal background of pupils and the styles that rule in their own social circles, expectations at school might be different and hence imply a need for habitual assimilation.2 The efforts made to adjust to this disciplinary pressure are somehow also evaluated at school, even without the separate marks for conduct that were common in former times.3 The degree to which individual manners and behaviour towards others is understood as being of explicit school concern, or is seen more as an aspect that leaves an implicit influence on the overall impression of teachers about a particular pupil, may vary. But by promoting a particular style as the normative ideal, the schools all aim at the inculcation of a cognitive process that relates to the social ethos of the surrounding civil culture, however particular and diversified the schools and their involved protagonists may be. It can thus be expected that the textures of norms and conditions, concepts of order, rules and sanctions in the four schools shape distinctive ideals of civility. The first approach to this topic concerns the extent to which codes of civil conduct are expressed as explicit norms or remain rather implicit expectations. This involves daily routines with disciplinary duties of time-management in the form of timetables for lessons and homework. Since this is an important interface with the pupils’ private lives, we will look at the relations that are aimed at between schools and the families. Their specific division of labour reflects on normative ideals of socialisation: what does the ideal structure of civil enculturation look like? Certain regimes of civility shall be instituted in this way. But what happens if pupils do not meet the expectations or even break a rule? What is understood to be a failure of civil conduct, and how should it be responded to? When violated, the crucial concepts inherent in each civil culture need to be translated into immediate practices. Breakdowns of ideal regimes make their reinstallation necessary. As much as the explanatory interpretation of failures, preferred sanctions will therefore draw on specific rationales. While analysing appropriate examples to highlight this aspect, this chapter points to limitations and unintended consequences of the approaches taken in the different civil cultures. The effective comprehension of rules and expectations will finally be described in respect of the presence of immigrants and their children. Due to their position as newcomers, immigrant parents are not familiar with the cru165

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cial concepts present in school out of their own experiences. The ability of school systems to incorporate pupils from different backgrounds can therefore be shown in a special way by focussing on families with a migrant history. The argument will mostly centre on case-studies from Berlin and Paris, because they represent profoundly different, if not radically opposed, approaches. Given the limitation of space, we decided to have a thorough investigation of these two rather than a broader view of all four cases here. Cross-references to the schools in Rotterdam and London, which in most respects come somewhere in between the French and German situations, will be made when appropriate to gain a more complete picture or to cast some brighter light on a certain aspect.

Expectations and Rules: Ideals of School and Home What the schools chosen for our research in London, Paris and Berlin all share is that they are situated in socio-economically ‘difficult neighbourhoods’, known as sozialer Brennpunkt in Germany and quartiers difficiles in France: a combination of high rates of unemployment and welfare clients, bad housing conditions, and residential populations consisting of many, rather poorly skilled immigrants, characterises these areas. Likewise, in all three settings we found the assumption that such difficult social conditions had an impact on the school because pupils from underprivileged families tended to lack certain linguistic and social skills, which were important for successful schooling. In none of the schools would a certain family influence on the cognitive development of children and their manners be denied. Social origin undoubtedly affects the actual conditions in school,4 but social learning and the inculcation of disciplined manners and civility are to some extent school tasks. How these are translated into practice at school and how they reach into the private sphere are matters of a different balance in the different cases. In the French case, the option chosen is one of stating clearly recognizable rules. During fieldwork, teachers and other staff members at Lycée Fernand Braudel often stressed the relevance of strict rules and consistency of punishment in cases of their violation ‘in particular in these housing areas’. In other words, since children from problematic neighbourhoods were not thought to be equipped with appropriate manners, school-imposed rules of discipline increased in importance. Civility was expected to be inculcated less by initial socialisation there than in bourgeois districts so that the school had to compensate this lack with the help of enforced rules. This approach marks the whole concept of French state education that attempts to take an active part in socialisation from an early age. To ensure the principle of equal opportunities, the state runs a comparatively well-developed system of crèche facilities for the youngest, a nursery school education system that may start at two years of age 166

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but mostly starts at three with the so-called école maternelle,5 and generally a whole-day school programme6 with only one free afternoon a week. To create equality is declared to be the main objective of state education in France, as reaffirmed in the Education Act of 1989. The fact that schooling may start in early childhood and occupies most of the week indicates a relatively far-reaching aim to achieve children’s emancipation from their primordial groups in order to reach the egalitarian task.7 The statements by teachers and other staff at Lycée Fernand Braudel that order should be enforced even more strictly there, need to be seen in this context: to create equal opportunities means to optimise learning conditions for the disadvantaged. The more difficult the neighbourhood the more important this assignment appears to be: schools in the so-called zones sensibles are often better equipped than those in less problematic areas. The term zone sensible denotes a category which provides a municipality with extra money, more staff and other additional facilities because of anticipated strains. Not all schools in difficult quarters profit from the administratively acknowledged status of being based in a zone sensible, but the suburb where Lycée Fernand Braudel is located had this status. The school therefore obtained resources through being classified a zone d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP). The ZEP classification is a kind of affirmative action programme created in 1981 under a Socialist government. In ZEP schools, material working conditions, including teachers’ wages, are higher than elsewhere in order to improve motivation and compensate for the school’s location.8 The goal is clearly to eliminate potentially negative influences on school success that might stem from social background.9 With respect to discipline in the narrow sense, the ideal of equal opportunities is translated into action through institutionalised external order: a strict separation of teaching and discipline is characteristic of French schools. This means that teachers are exclusively in charge of teaching inside the classrooms. Outside, in the corridors, dining hall or school-yard, there is a special supervisory staff, the so-called surveillants, who are under the control of the conseillers principal d’éducation or CPE.10 Roughly twenty such surveillants and three CPEs were in charge of supervising the 1,000 pupils at Lycée Fernand Braudel. They made sure that pupils were under permanent control except in the toilets. The surveillants were often university students, who in age thus fell between the pupils and the adult teachers and CPEs. The surveillants reported all problems of behaviour to the CPEs as their heads, who decided what punishments to inflict. The CPEs were in charge of the vie scolaire, with responsibility for all questions of the pupils’ discipline, like arriving late, being absent or creating trouble, but also for further educational orientation of pupils (see Payet 1997) – at least that is the idea. One of these pedagogical counsellors in the Lycée expressed his frustration at the fact that there was hardly any time to cover this pedagogical side of the job: 167

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They want us to do pedagogical work, but we really do not have time for it, because of our disciplinary role. May I say, as a historian [he had studied history], in former times the CPE was the ‘head-supervisor’ and that tradition is still alive.

Nevertheless, for personal interviews, to talk about private problems and so on, pupils can approach the CPEs, who thus represent an interface not only between discipline and pedagogy but also between the state institution and the pupil’s private sphere, or in Dubet’s words the ‘human side’ of the school (1991: 249). The counsellors might contact parents or advise the head teachers to take steps when, for instance, pupils are frequently absent without justification. Employing extra personnel to supervise behaviour accords a certain value to the keeping of rules. Besides this aspect, the presence of a special staff of supervisors gives to norms of behaviour the impression of a clear set of rules that are not subject to negotiation but are purely instrumental. Ideally, all discipline problems are solved outside the classroom, which is exclusively the space for teaching and learning. The separation of these two functions involves a clarity in respect of roles that allows for consistency in each area of responsibility and helps to avoid dilemmas, for example, having to establish situational priorities, discuss the rules or find compromises. Since teachers are, for example, not concerned with pupils’ reasons (or maybe lack of reasons) for their absences, they are discharged from assessing them and thus gain distance. Teaching is supposed to take place in a setting that is undisturbed by disciplinary problems, even though they are admittedly of special relevance in socially deprived areas. The classroom is in any case meant to be a space of égalité, and the surveillants’ controlling role facilitates this. By dealing with the code of conduct as a separate, almost mechanical prerequisite that makes learning possible, the actual teaching somehow appears to have been purified from potentially negative contextual influences: even if there are such problems, cognitive development is treated as a separate project. Relationships between all protagonists in the school can ideally remain unbiased: neither teachers nor supervisors nor pedagogical counsellors embody the school in totality, they just stand for one partial aspect, and each has an unambiguous role in the institution. This entails the possibility that failure in one sphere does not hinder success in another: a lack of manners should not hinder the acquisition of knowledge; deficient family socialisation should not hinder school success. In a report on the suivi pédagogique in the 1996–97 school year, the pedagogical counsellors at Lycée Fernand Braudel phrased the egalitarian ideal as follows: a strict but humane control of school life (vie scolaire) was necessary in order to fulfil the highest aim of the school, namely ‘to create good working conditions, security and seriousness, so that all young people in Lycée Fernand Braudel have the chance of successful schooldays and attaining social and professional integration’. Since learning contents are also centrally regulated in France, the republican principle of equality appears to be fully attained in school. 168

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The concept of a system of rules being applied identically to all, and which should be respected by all, means that calling the rules into question can be interpreted as a challenge to the Republic. Pupils in Paris should experience their school as a well-fortified bastion of the republican principles. No negotiation of the rules or consideration of individual circumstances are provided for in this setting, for the civility that is aimed at relies on a conceptual division between individual backgrounds, with their diversified outcomes in terms of habits and manners, and the school’s task of transmitting both norms of ‘appropriate’ conduct and relevant knowledge for school success equally to all.11 The statement by one teacher at Lycée Fernand Braudel confirms these implications. He saw the integrity of the state institution being violated by the dress of some Muslim mothers: Even nowadays [that is to say, after prohibiting all headgear in the school rules], there are still mothers who come to school with headscarves, you know, on Saturdays when parents can meet teachers. I don’t understand why they don’t do something about it – it should also be forbidden.

Keeping order in the Lycée seems so crucial to this teacher that he even applies the rules to non-pupils. This makes them appear as a kind of legal code that must not be infringed by anyone entering the institution. The rationale is clearly that the state institution must be defended against potentially disruptive influences from society through the methodical implementation of an objectified order. A clear division of labour between school and home marks this model of socialisation: each part should fulfil its own responsibilities but not interfere with those of the other part. In the classificatory enterprise of separating the neutral state institution from the pupil’s private sphere of his or her own circumstances, the school rules function as means of purification. The message pupils learn from this is that they are offered opportunities if they free themselves from their background. In return, the promise is that the state school conveys the knowledge one needs for upward mobility irrespective of one’s private resources. Rigid controls concerning measurable knowledge were accordingly very much present at Lycée Fernand Braudel. Merit was supposed to draw directly and almost exclusively on the results of written examinations.12 Throughout the school year, several tests were conducted which all pupils at the same course level had to do in exactly the same way, and teachers on a different course would assess their results. These devoirs communs were supposed to be training for the final, centrally administered national examinations. Teachers believed that it helped them judge pupils objectively and compare ‘good’ and ‘bad’ classes. But at the same time the discipline of standardised comparison affected their own marking and teaching practices just as much. All these efforts to create outwardly equal standards are connected with the assurance that all pupils will be 169

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assessed on the basis of their factual achievements, just as separating pedagogy from discipline in the narrow sense is meant to create equal opportunities. Single-stranded relationships which are separable and therefore controllable characterised the working of the Parisian school. The same approach can hardly be imagined in Berlin’s Lise Meitner School. In fact, the institutional arrangement of German school education is in many respects not only different, but really opposed to the French characteristics: not so much emphasis is placed on external order, nor are there any extra personnel like surveillants to exert constant control. Knowledge and discipline appear to be more connected and are entirely tasks for the teachers. When compared to what was observed in France, this implies less transparency about normative rules and constraints and is connected to a profoundly different ideal as regards the relationship between pupils’ individual backgrounds and the educational project of the school. Unlike the French state system, with its crèche facilities from an early age and particularly with its (in terms of weekly time) extensive schooling, in Germany there is much wider variation in the provision of pre-school day-care and education, as well as in attendance rates before compulsory education starts at the age of six.13 It is normal for German school timetables to differ from day to day, so that schools are by no means reliable institutions for the day-care or even half-day-care of pupils. Usually the German school day is over by lunch time, and school meals are the exception. The care of children is much more considered a private matter, the ideal being that families, in practice above all mothers, perform this task. The German system of state education is thus not supposed to counterbalance the impact of the private sphere but is constructed in co-operation: the tasks of socialisation are meant to be shared, and strong parental rights are prominently enshrined in the German constitution.14 Where the French system appears to express a certain mistrust about the negative potential of private backgrounds as inhibiting the achievement of equality, German programmes stress the importance of close co-operation between school and family. Parents should be committed to, and given a share in, school decisions, as reflected in their institutionalised representation on rele-vant committees (Schulgesetz für Berlin §25). In other words, there is a mainly positive expectation concerning family influence, and suspicion seems more directed towards an excessive influence of the state.15 The Berlin School Statutes mention this explicitly: The school must…be open to the influences that necessarily contribute to its outcome. At first, this necessity affects the co-operation of the school with parents in the common upbringing of children and teenagers. The better this co-operation, the greater the educational success… The school [will] succeed in its tasks only if it can see that its work is supported…by society… Among parents and pupils there must

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not arise a feeling of powerlessness in the face of an apparatus nor the impression of subjection. (Die Berliner Schule A I, 12)

Quite opposed to what we found to be the ideal in Paris, the vision in this scheme is not emancipation from the primordial group but a shared responsibility for education. Due to the experience of a Nazi state education that forced schools into line and played children off against their parents, any allusions to levelling down specific family backgrounds has become a strong taboo. That the institution might become independent from its foundations, as well as the fact that people might perceive it as a black box that intimidates them and creates uneasy feelings, should both be prevented. To reach the goal of symbiotic cooperation, it is essential to establish trust and avoid alienating impressions. Parental participation is not just requested but stressed as being important for educational outcomes, and pupils and their families are called upon to identify with the school and to take an active part in it. This is presumably something nobody would ever expect in a French school, for this would run counter to the systematic separation of roles and responsibilities. A system of external order, so characteristic of the French Lycée, would not make any sense in the German educational scheme because of the immediate suspicion that obedience to external rules implies authoritarian oppression and contradicts the ideal of committed citizens participating in the democratic forum. In reaction to the Nazi past, when this principle was crushed, individual responsibility is so highly valued that one of the pedagogical aims most frequently expressed in Berlin’s regulations states that pupils should learn how power can be abused and that one’s social commitment should be to defend democracy (Die Berliner Schule A I 6; A I 10; A V 3; A V 4 (5)). The most important demand for children and teenagers was to become individuals ‘able firmly to oppose political doctrines aiming at tyranny. Such individuals will have to be made aware of their responsibility to the public at large’ (Schulgesetz für Berlin I, §1). In terms of the relevant concept of civility, this call for responsible participation implies expectations reaching far into the sphere of the private and the person: the task of the common educational project of families and school is to link the adolescent’s identification with the wider public in such a way as to ensure social solidarity. These are high demands of personal development, admittedly requiring every individual to have ‘skills and modes of behaviour that were formerly expected from just a few’(Die Berliner Schule A I, 2). This very idea that a common good can only develop when individuals truly accept their responsibility for the entire system does not allow for the singlestranded relations we identified in the French school. A division into an intellectual sphere of education where knowledge is imparted on the one hand, and a supervision of disciplinary conduct on the other is obviously not appropriate if pupils shall be taught how one can, as a responsible democrat, contribute to the keeping of social order by means of identification. Flexibility in all respects 171

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is a prerequisite in fostering the civil values that commitment is assumed to depend on. The educational task per se is after all conceived of as being interrelated and multi-layered, going back and forth between content-related issues and modes of social interaction. The high esteem for extracurricular activities in the school programmes aptly illustrates what is meant here. Schools are supposed to become active in supporting pupils’ individual talents and social skills by offering substantial extra-curricular activities (Die Berliner Schule A I, 11). Personal development and social learning are thus both defined as school assignments. Since there is no functional separation of roles as in the French school, these assignments describe what teachers are expected to cover besides teaching: imparting a sense of the wise use of one’s spare time, of meaningful communication and the uses of the media to pupils, are described as equally important. Within the educational programme teachers are thus called to account for pupils’ personal development by representing a complete role-model: a person of integrity who knows to behave properly in a given situation, and who combines empathy with the ability to assess things rationally. This also describes the sort of civility that pupils should preferably acquire: invest your emotions and your personality, but learn to control your feelings and to balance a multitude of probably competing expectations within your own self. Reconciling particular interests with the interests of the social whole is thus a task for each individual that demands a process of self-reflection. It suggests a relationship between the individual and the common good that does not draw upon a public sphere of equality, as is crucial in French civil culture, but rather on the notion of integrated heterogeneity.16 Since one can hardly derive a set of rules from such a concept, the inculcation of civility is rather approached through the example of teachers in Berlin. Among their declared tasks, one also finds, for example, guidance through the time of turmoil caused by puberty: Teaching and education contribute to the child’s and teenager’s self-conceptualisation and self-realisation. Teaching and education strengthen willpower and serve the development of character by facilitating rationality as well as emotional bonds. The precondition for this is the teacher’s devotion to the pupil. If he opens himself up to his pupil and accepts him with his personal characteristics, he helps the younger person become aware of himself, at the same time gaining the confidence that is crucial for the acceptance of claims and tasks, help and advice, praise and criticism. The personal encounter is an essential basis of education. (Die Berliner Schule A I, 5)

Instead of rational interaction, as in Paris, personalised affiliations are placed at the centre of the educational philosophy in Berlin: teachers should invest ‘emotional bonds’ and ‘devotion to the pupil’ in order to reach a relationship of ‘confidence’ that is defined as being basic to the ‘acceptance of claims and tasks, help 172

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and advice, praise and criticism’. Such a chain of causality would definitely be frowned upon at Lycée Fernand Braudel: while teachers distribute tasks to pupils, criticise them or give advice, the content-related setting in Paris supposedly rules out ‘emotional bonds’ with pupils. Purified from personal issues, the French teacher–pupil relation shall be governed by factual topics. The cognitive process that is striven for in Berlin does not centre on such a sort of normative exclusion of emotions but on processing them towards the described ideal. The teacher’s role is thus set up as manifold: he or she should combine the function of the subject expert with the ‘human side’ of personal attention, which in Paris is represented by the CPEs. Moreover, in Berlin the teacher has to supervise pupils as well, the task that is done by the surveillants in Lycée Fernand Braudel. The emphasis in the German case is hence on fostering a holistic, personal approach. In this respect, the German vision parallels that followed at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam. The school’s ‘confidential counsellor’,17 a lady who had worked there for over twenty-five years, said that it all came down to ‘creating an atmosphere in which everybody feels part of the whole’. Although good co-operation with parents was also expected in Rotterdam, this seemed not to go as far as the symbiotic ideal of the German concept. Pupils were strongly encouraged to identify with their school as ‘Tinbergeners’ and to display an appropriate style that fitted the school’s profile of participation and inclusivist communication. However, educational responsibilities in pursuing this ideal were not so much laid down in consultation with pupils’ families, and in this respect the Rotterdam school’s approach resembled more the French separation of spheres, in which each part may follow its own agenda. Polarisation should be prevented, but close interaction was not really considered necessary. Within Tinbergen, however, rules and expectations were not understood as in Paris, nor were they taken care of by special personnel (supervision was part of teachers’ duties, as in Berlin). They had no special significance in themselves either. In the words of the confidential counsellor: ‘You enter an institute with rules which everybody has to obey, but rules do not mean anything unless you relate them to the individuality of each pupil. Pupils, after all, have to participate in the school community, and rules are there to smooth this process.’ At the Huxley School in London, similarly, the ideal of ‘school as community’ was the aim, yet a much more active strategy was chosen: co-operation with pupils’ parents was approached in numerous ways, including a contractual agreement. The following extract from an interview with the head teacher at Huxley School explains these activities: Sabine Mannitz: What is your idea of co-operation with pupils’ families? Mrs D.: That is our ideal, definitely. We need this co-operation, but it is difficult not only because of the language problems, but also because, with respect to ethnically English pupils, we have parents who did not have very good experiences with school 173

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themselves… In general it is very hard to get parents involved in activities relating to school… We want to set up parents’ groups with a translator so that we can build up trust in the school among as many parents as possible. Here again we have a problem with communication: in many cases it is the pupil who acts as interpreter to the parents, so the information parents get is, well, coloured… So I am looking for more staff to do this kind of intermediary work…. We are looking now for a home-school agreement which will be translated so all parents know what the expectations are, they sign up to it.

Among pupils, a feeling of belonging to the school should be established by means of the school uniform, but social cohesion was also directly promoted with the help of a certificate system. Again, the head teacher explained its meanings: Sabine Mannitz: I saw that pupils are rewarded for certain achievements,18 and among these I saw that ‘citizenship’ was a certificate. What does that mean? Mrs D.: We do not have one definition of citizenship. It is something of value that somebody has done for the community: they might have been particularly helpful or public-spirited inside or outside the school. But more likely, they have been helpful to other pupils, younger pupils, or supportive towards the community and the school, or helpful towards the teachers… We are working hard at that. We are trying to create a climate where pupils can be proud of being good. It is in general the atmosphere at the school that counts… Education is much broader than schooling. We try to encourage everybody to take part in, say, residential excursions, field visits… We have drama, music… so it’s a lot. To get the best out of school you put as much in.

Encouraging pupils to regard the school as a place for them, where they feel well and are personally taken seriously, is an ideal expressed by all the three variants that envisage multi-stranded relations, that is, in Berlin, London and Rotterdam. In this respect, the Paris school differs with its segregation between school and the private sphere, between the public and private person, and between teaching and conduct. However, in considering the degree to which the normative expectations of civil conduct are made explicit, the pattern looks different. In this respect, the school in Berlin represented the most implicit field of expectations, while attempts to spell out expected norms transparently characterised the Lycée in Paris, Tinbergen School in Rotterdam and Huxley School in London. To take an example from Huxley School, on the door of nearly every teacher’s course room, and in some other places, such as the corridor, there was the same yellow sign setting out the school’s ‘Behaviour policy’ conventions: 1. We will work hard at all times. 2. We will conduct ourselves in a sensible way at all times during the school day. 3. We will walk around school. 174

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

We will be properly dressed and properly equipped at all times. We will help each other. We will take care of school property and other people’s belongings. We will co-operate with all adults in school. We will not verbally or physically abuse each other. When something goes wrong, we will not retaliate or get involved but will seek to resolve differences in a peaceful manner. 10. We will respect each other’s race, gender, religion and special needs.

This resembles the clear order of rules in Lycée Fernand Braudel, although meeting these expectations was not subject to constant control. On the other hand, extraordinarily good performances were rewarded. The norms of exemplary conduct were thus understood not so much as outwardly controlled rules, but, as phrased on the notice board, as ‘conventions’ expressing the mere practicality of certain habits (which are admittedly as arbitrary in origin as the traffic rules). Pupils were regularly left without supervision, for example during breaks, which emphasised their own responsibility. In a school council meeting,19 the head teacher of Huxley made this principle very clear. When discussing vandalism in the school-toilets, she addressed the pupils present in the council by reminding them that they were expected to create and maintain order in their peer group: You have to go to those pupils who did that, you know better than we who was responsible for this. It’s a very serious thing: when the boys’ toilets were renovated we talked about surveillance, although you have to be very careful with that. We all have a shared responsibility, it’s our building, and people should police themselves. We as staff are not always there to do it. Damage is a symptom of a problem, being a lack of responsibility, and that means a lack of identification with the school. It remains a problem to be thought of, because we need to share responsibility for these matters. If we can get hold of the pupils who did this damage, they will have to pay their share. We need to involve people to improve this lack of housekeeping and identification.

The appeal being made is to self-regulation and the favourable feeling that school is a place for them: expectations of civility are phrased less as a rule or order from above than as a focus on autonomy, personal responsibility and selfdiscipline. Surveillance is characterised as something ‘you have to be very careful with’, civil conduct should preferably work on a common-sense basis within the community. A conformity created by dialogue is stressed so as to create the normative social cohesion of fair interaction that is not deemed possible through externally imposed rules, as is attempted in the French school. In this respect, the same didacticism was found in the Huxley, Meitner and Tinbergen schools. Everywhere, schools prepare children for adult life, and the staff of all schools would accept as their pedagogical task to assist that future life and participation in (civil) society. But opinions about how far this reaches into the private sphere 175

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of the individual person obviously differ, and the main differences in the concepts of civil society are reflected in the prevailing attitudes towards the extent to which ‘the private’ reaches into school and vice versa. The respective divisions of labour regarding the transmission of values and dispositions to the next generation are fundamentally different. The difference between German and French practices is again telling. In Germany, the citizen should not be created in the state school, as in France, but emerge from the person who has been socialised within the family. School-related time structures exemplify this well: the French institutions occupy pupils with lessons throughout the day, most offer them a meal so that they do not have to leave for lunch, and, on top of long days at school, allocate tasks as homework that fill the evenings. The only way to obtain good results seems to be to concentrate completely on the tasks set by the school, which absorb nearly all one’s time. It is, for instance, virtually impossible to attend school full-time for six days a week, do homework in the evenings and also carry out domestic tasks such as helping around the house or taking care of younger siblings. In Germany, exercises are also set as homework, but since actual lessons do not take up as much time as in France, the relationship between the two parts of learning is of a different kind. In the French school, the private sphere is to step back in favour of the public sphere and its function of imparting extensive knowledge equally to everyone, whereas in Germany the private sphere overlaps much more with public educational aims: the afternoons are free of lessons, and nobody is forced to spend them in ‘reasonable’ activities in Germany. Afternoon activities at school, if they exist, are just an offer, and it remains a question of personal commitment and free choice whether or not one makes use of them. Family socialisation is crucial to this arrangement in many respects. Parents are supposed to activate and encourage their children’s awareness that extra effort means chances for personal progress. They are expected to invest much more energy and time in the school success of their children.20 In other words, the institutional organization of space and time within the school not only builds up a daily routine framework of discipline for the actual pupils but it involves expectations of conduct on the part of families as well: rehearsing systematic time routines for productive work is evidently seen as a task for public education in France, and a family responsibility in Germany. With this step in privatising an essential element of school success, the German model goes beyond positive integration of the pupils’ private background while making it possible for private heterogeneity to become the site of effective distinction and class reproduction. Not all parents realise how essential homework actually is to their children’s school career. One reason why its relevance might not be recognized is because the supervision of homework is mostly carried out as unwaged mothers’ work, that is, as invisible work of low esteem that can easily be interpreted as an expression of motherly love and not understood in terms of labour. Consciousness of practices is thus an important factor in diversification.21 Moreover, for 176

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obvious reasons not all parents can offer qualified supervision. Economic and social differentiation has an impact here: in contrast to working-class families,22 where parents have neither had enough education to become conscious of the importance of helping their children with homework, nor are able to do so nor pay for any professional assistance, upper-class families clearly see the relevance of ‘coaching’ their children appropriately, and mothers who do this also escape the cycle of invisible work and low esteem. Because of the particular contents and goals of socialisation in the higher classes of society, women can derive selfassurance from their responsibility in preparing their children for top positions in society. Supervising children’s homework then becomes an important task in terms of the transmission of cultural capital. Well-off families ideal-typically fulfil the schools’ expectations of family care,23 and it is not surprisingly that it is mostly these bourgeois circles in Germany that tend to criticise the state school system for not demanding enough from pupils and for exerting too little pressure on them to work. This relates to exactly those conditions of socialisation that make up the ‘currency’ of the educational system, which is evidently not in circulation in all pupils’ families. Demanding more homework expresses the hope that even greater competition meant further benefits for one’s own children, owing to the different resources in the private sphere. Some pupils in Lise Meitner School, who had no such ideal coaching at home, clearly saw this as a structural disadvantage and recognized it to be an important resource for upward mobility. Bujar, a Kosovo Albanian who had come to Berlin at the age of thirteen, was twenty years old and preparing to pass the Abitur at the time of fieldwork. His insight that parents need a certain amount of qualifications themselves to assist their children has influenced his ideas about the choice of a spouse: What I don’t appreciate so much about my mother is how she has been brought up, that she has not had such an education. Nor has my father! I could never say to my father, ‘I have some maths to do, can you please help me with it?’ I couldn’t do that and I have taught myself all that, or I went to friends or to a neighbour who was three, four grades higher, and let him explain it to me…and I would like to have, well my wife should at least be able to read.

Owing to the particular division of labour between school and home, an awareness of parents’ roles in the task is crucial. Compared with implicit codes of habitual cultural capital, expectations regarding homework refer in practice to an explicit distinction. The extensive delegation of pupils’ activities to the private realm and its great importance for success or failure at school in Germany makes it a prime agent for inclusion and exclusion, like class distinction. Since education at state institutions starts comparatively late and carries a lesser part of the entire educational load in Germany than in France, private backgrounds have a completely different impact.24 If families fail in establishing the basis for 177

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the educational task, although the school’s efforts may be not completely useless, the situation can be very difficult. Family socialisation should ensure that pupils already know how to conduct themselves when they enter a German school. This might affect immigrants in particular: when families are expected to take an active part in rehearsing routines of discipline and transmitting a particular style of civility in order to ensure their children’s success at school, children from immigrant families may face structural problems in obtaining the appropriate help from their parents.25 Many will have passed through schools where no assistance of this sort was expected, so that they might not even be aware of its necessity. And they might have internalised a completely different style of conduct in their countries of origin as being appropriate and desirable. It is exactly the impact of this potential distinction that comes from the needed consciousness of implicit expectations that the Huxley School’s contractual agreement is meant to prevent.26 The head teacher in London explained that Turkish pupils had been empirically rated the worst all over Britain, suggesting that factors were involved such as parents not knowing what was expected of them. Different ideas about the school’s role were assumed to play a role – ‘a cultural difference in terms of expectations’, as she put it. To sum up, the French system of maintaining externalised rules can be seen as an attempt to install a regime with equal opportunities. The school reflects this republican norm by separating knowledge and conduct, which enables abstraction from the private sphere in the state institutions of education. Given the public concern of overcoming particularities, the school offers a means of emancipating oneself from one’s family background in order to move up the social ladder. This appears to be a radical antithesis to the ideal of inwardness, moral integration and family responsibility characteristic of the German approach. In Paris, parental responsibility ends at the school gate, an intervention that many parents in Germany would probably reject as alienating and creating hostility towards the institution. In the French case, the acquisition of civility is located within the institutional structure of a benevolent state that applies the same straitjacket of rules to all. This framework is inclusive and does not expose immigrants’ children to the structural risk of failure, as seems to be the case with the high expectations entailed by the German scheme. The varying stresses on external versus internal order describe profoundly different concepts of civility, yet are normative ideals. What happens in practice when these patterns do not work as they should?

Failures of Civil Conduct: Definition of the Problem Open violence, theft or drug abuse would be understood as gross offences against expected conduct in all the schools. There were however also less spectacular cases of ‘failure’ that refer more particularly to the specific expectations 178

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of the different civil cultures. They required the restoration of order since failures of civil conduct challenge the expected codes imposed by the collectivity. Implicit boundaries and limitations became visible in these processes. A good example is the way, the headscarf conflict was perceived and eventually handled in France which we have extensively analysed in Chapter 5. The identification of the school with what the French Republic stands for was very clear in the interpretation of the headscarf as a challenge to the republican ideal of a neutral public space in which radical equality rules. Damage was done to the clear boundary between the pure state school and its diversified surroundings. Given the status of this conceptual separation as a prerequisite enabling equal conditions, the conflict was interpreted as questioning basic axioms of the social order. Many French schools, like the Lycée Fernand Braudel, rephrased their school regulations in the affaires des foulards to reinstall clarity and recreate an objectified basis for the evaluation of failure. Having reformulated the school rules explicitly, the surveillants could continue their work as defensive guard. The expectations that pupils faced in Berlin were much more implicit and hence more difficult to satisfy. Internalised modes of conduct predominate over formal regulations, and since pupils’ overall social behaviour is a matter of the individual teacher’s evaluation, ideas of appropriate conduct appeared far more uncertain and situational. In the course of one day at the Lise Meitner School, given five different teachers, five different ideas might emerge as to whether pupils were allowed to walk around in the classroom, eat or drink things, keep their jackets on or talk in private during lessons. There were no clear rules, as the following case illustrates. This concerns sixteen-year-old Ferhat, who had continual problems with the expectations regarding behaviour. One day, he wanted to continue wearing his baseball cap during lessons: Lesson 1: Ferhat can keep his cap on, and is not asked to take it off; the teacher takes no offence at it, and there is not even a verbal exchange about it. Lesson 2: Ferhat knows that this teacher will not tolerate his wearing his cap because there was some trouble over it before. Nevertheless, Ferhat wears the cap when the lesson starts; but one sign from the teacher is sufficient to make him take it off. Lesson 3: The teacher asks Ferhat to take off his cap. He is reluctant and wants to negotiate the issue by referring to his hairstyle that day: ‘Look, today my hair is not so nice – it’s better with the cap.’ Teacher: ‘I don’t want caps to be worn during my lessons. Fatma, Aliye: you two should also remove your coats now; that belongs in the same category.’ Lesson 4: Ferhat wears the cap again at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher only realises this after five minutes and starts to shout at him: ‘Ferhat, take that cap off immediately; what are you thinking of?!’ Ferhat: ‘But why am I not allowed to wear the cap? In other lessons I can.’ Teacher: ‘We are at school here! Before this 179

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class meets again you will write out fifty times that you should not wear a cap. Ferhat: ‘Yes, but why? Tell me the reason!’ Teacher: ‘Now that’s really enough. You will write out one hundred times, “I am not allowed to wear a cap during lessons”,27 and next time you will get a reprimand!’

Each teacher followed a different practice. In Paris, this situation was absolutely inconceivable: the school rules prohibited the wearing of any headgear throughout the whole school, not only in the classrooms but also in the corridors and the school-yard. The surveillants watched over this and sent pupils to the CPE for punishment if the rule was not obeyed. When pupils tried to wear a cap during lessons, teachers simply referred to ‘the rule of correct clothing’ within the school. This was not a matter for discussion or for any manipulation on a caseby-case basis, and from time to time, when a kind of laissez-faire attitude seemed to be slipping in, large posters were put up all over Lycée Fernand Braudel to remind everybody of the rules. In Berlin, the fashion for caps affected incidents like that involving Ferhat frequently. Not only did teachers handle the issue differently, but there were also different arguments involved. The teacher in the third lesson, who asked Fatma and Aliye to remove their coats because ‘this belonged in the same category’, argued, for instance, that they did not want to reproduce the atmosphere of a railway-station waiting room: in a school lesson people were not just travellers passing through but should actually be present. The teacher of the fourth lesson simply referred to an unwritten convention: ‘We are at school’, was considered to imply a self-evident norm that caps are not to be worn there. Some teachers modified their stress on conventions of politeness when opposing the wearing of headgear as signifying a ‘central European’ bulwark, such as the following, addressed to a course in Grade 12: We are in central Europe here. Certain conventions and rules of politeness apply here that everyone who lives here must respect. That includes taking off headgear in closed rooms. I consider it my task to transmit these general conventions and rules to you. This is what the actual balance of power looks like! In future, you can, of course, handle it differently. If you are teachers at that stage, you can make sure that your classes make themselves uniform with caps or whatever.

Like those opposed to caps, those teachers who allowed them in lessons also had different arguments. One, for example, said that he could only understand a certain reservation in physical education, where some kinds of sport might involve safety risks if headgear, particularly headscarves with pins, was worn. Otherwise, and mostly, he would not care who wore what. His opinion was that teachers should ‘try to put things into pupils’ heads, no matter what was on top of those heads’. There were also teachers who simply wanted to avoid the question becoming a constant source of disturbance and of delayed starts to lessons and who tolerated them simply for pragmatic reasons, although they might dislike them too. The inconsistency of each teacher applying a different 180

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regulation did not bother any of them. Ferhat’s objection that the requirements were not consistent thus did not impress his teachers, even though it is quite understandable that he should ask for reasons because he could obviously not find any. In Nikolaas Tinbergen School, Ferhat’s request for an explanation would probably have been better understood. The goal-oriented, situational definition of expectations is the same in Rotterdam as in Berlin, but teachers acknowledged the need to make them explicit. One of them remarked, ‘Rules must be explicit because they are not universal. They differ from place to place, from teacher to teacher and from situation to situation’. A colleague of his gave the same explanation: ‘As a teacher in a Dutch school you always have to explain the rationale behind rules, otherwise it is a dead letter. And I would not easily obey rules either if I did not know why. So what I always do is explain why I take certain measures. That’s what pupils expect.’ This was what many pupils expected in Berlin as well, but did not get. Teachers in Lise Meitner School saw no need for an explanation: Ferhat should know the logic of adequate behaviour or look inside himself to find out. On the level of the individual, this demand parallels the idealised relationship between school and home in the German educational philosophy: internalised order should enable adjustment to specific situations and individual cases. The fact that pupils are exposed to contingencies and inconsistencies seems to be simply part of what one should learn to deal with. The situational ability to adapt is to be acquired and practised, and the requirements of any situation are defined by the teachers. The following example from one German lesson might illustrate how difficult it can be to fulfil the expectations. Ferhat again did not manage to do so. His teacher distributed a study sheet about Gypsies in Europe, including an explanation that Gypsies would have been forced to steal in former times to survive because, as nomads, they could not earn their living like settled people: Teacher: So let’s continue with the second question… ‘Can you explain, on the basis of the text, why Gypsies frequently steal or did so in the past?’ Ferhat: That’s not true. Ferhat is called to order… Ramona’s answer is greatly praised and mentioned to everyone as exemplary: ‘They had to steal because they were persecuted and didn’t have anything to eat.’ Ferhat: That’s not right, that sentence! Well, that sentence is absolutely not right! Teacher: It’s not your turn, Ferhat; put your hand up or otherwise be quiet!… Now look at the text: where is it? Where can you prove with a textual reference that Gypsies steal? Ferhat: But they don’t all steal! (He receives a condemnatory glance from the teacher.) 181

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The class should first have demonstrated methods of text-analysis by answering the question, why Gypsies might have been forced to steal in certain circumstances, ‘with a textual reference’, but Ferhat argued against this generalisation right away. Instead of discussing this, the teacher became angry and finally punished him by giving him extra homework. The teacher’s plan for the lesson was to analyse the text first and make sure that all pupils had understood the line of the argument. A content-related discussion about discrimination, persecution and contemporary prejudices against Gypsies was supposed to follow later. In that final part of the lesson, Ferhat’s contribution would have been perfect. His bringing the idea forward at the start of the lesson, together with his typical direct style, was treated as an impertinent disturbance and as showing a spirit of opposition. In fact many of his adversarial contributions in lessons showed that he made his own mind up about what he should learn to come to his own opinion, but his style was judged inappropriate, and his behaviour lacked the necessary competence of situational adjustment. In this respect Ferhat was representative of many, mostly male and mostly post-migration pupils at Lise Meitner School who had problems orienting themselves in the outwardly inconsistent jungle of expectations. Among many teachers, Ferhat had become notorious as disruptive and as having conspicuous behavioural failings (Verhaltensauffälligkeiten). In spite of his undoubted intelligence, his lack of appropriate manners led to bad marks. He himself apparently did not realise this at all: Ferhat had attended primary school in Turkey, where he had regularly been the best pupil in class. When he came to Berlin at the age of ten, his success at school ended. Despite taking preparatory language courses, he could not follow the lessons in German sufficiently and was bad at school ever since. From the moment he started in German schools, Ferhat felt unfairly treated by teachers, some of whom apparently did not take his initial language difficulties into consideration when it came to assessment. Ferhat complained about aspects such as mastering contents and language, and did not connect his bad marks at all with issues of social conduct, which were obviously due to the implicit nature of expectations. However, the problem must be defined when pupils are told to improve. In Paris, this happens without such a complex of interpretations: pupils who have difficulties in coming up to the expected style of civility face a clear set of punishments at Lycée Fernand Braudel, but the problem itself does not have to be interpreted. Due to the absence of clear, omnipresent rules at Lise Meitner School, there was a need to discuss reasons for failures in conduct when the problem was to be solved. The fact that a pupil’s actions were accepted by one teacher but not by another created the need to establish a dialogue. In the case of Ferhat, his style of directly expressed dissent led to a disciplinary procedure in the form of a small court hearing (Jahrgangsausschuss), where the problem was defined. Most of his course teachers were present, together with his mother and his uncle, and Ferhat himself. It was admitted right at the 182

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start, when Ferhat’s tutor opened the meeting, that no serious incidence like violence or theft had occurred but that Ferhat’s general manners indicated an opting out of the conventions of politeness. As a result, his teachers wanted to establish a dialogue with his parents so that they too could exert an influence on him. Ferhat’s actions in the classroom regularly created a disturbance and trouble for himself and others, his tutor said. During the committee session, the same issue came up again. The English teacher confirmed what had been said before, and added that Ferhat was always wanting to discuss matters rather than ‘behaving according to the rules’: once he was nasty, the other day he did not take his cap off… Ferhat interrupted her: ‘I only wanted reasons!’, which provoked remarks that this sort of behaviour was exactly the problem. The head of the grade and his class tutor both told him that he would have to take off his cap if a teacher told him to. It was not a matter of argument but of obedience. Ferhat replied: ‘But with Mrs K. and Mr W. [two other teachers] I am allowed to wear the cap. Sometimes I take it off, but…’ His German teacher interrupted him: ‘Ferhat, this behaviour is impossible; we cannot discuss such things here! You behave as if we were your class-mates with whom you can talk about such things! You must finally realise that you must talk to us in a different way than to your friends!’ When Ferhat was told that his behaviour was lacking in respect, he protested at once that he never lacked reasons to be contradictory. The inconsistency he complained about again, saying that he could wear a cap in some lessons, while other teachers insisted on him taking it off, was not a matter of concern at all. There was no call to have a clear, general rule, as was the case in France, although ‘behaving according to the rules’ was at the same time expected. The responsibility and power of defining what is appropriate lies with the individual teacher. What they demand is the pupil’s flexible ability to adjust to the appropriateness of place, time and people. Conventions of politeness are essential, but they always depend on the context. A high degree of situational competence is thus required, and there are in fact no clear criteria against which this is measured because teachers’ understandings of the requirements concentrate on contextually defined goals. The German teacher got to the heart of the matter by asking Ferhat to realise that he had to talk to teachers in a different way than to his friends. This does not just mean linguistic competence: to behave appropriately implies a need to be aware of one’s own social position in relation to others. Failures of civil conduct mostly concerned boys from immigrant families at Lise Meitner School, and they were clearly over-represented in these disciplinary procedures. Obviously, many did not manage to cope with the system of implicit norms but tended to test the limits of how far they could go. Many teachers interpreted the fact that the discreet codes of civility were stumbling blocks for this group of pupils in particular in terms of their initial socialisation. At the same time, there were however boys with similar backgrounds in immigration 183

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who were considered sycophantic because of their stereotyped politeness. Although this evidently did not lead to disciplinary measures, it was also judged insufficient. Exaggerated courtesy was not seen as desirable either but as superficial and hollow, a mechanical anticipation of conventions that pays no regard to the specificities of relationships and situations. One teacher made the significance of this aspect very clear. She was forty-seven years old and had been teaching English, history and social science at the school for sixteen years: Apart from secondary virtues like order and punctuality, the ability to co-operate, mutual tolerance and respect, which all require one to assess and appreciate oneself appropriately, are important values. (emphasis added)

Both extremes, over-politeness no less than constant disruption through obtrusive behaviour, were interpreted as indicating a lack of self-confidence and personal independence. This affects the central aim of educating self-conscious individuals. Since this second process of socialisation depends on moral grounds already supposedly established through family socialisation, failures somehow reflect a deficiency in socialisation, which is also why the school strives to institute a dialogue with parents in cases like Ferhat’s. During his disciplinary committee meeting, his German teacher expressed this concisely and also drew an explicit connection with educational methods at home. She first stressed that Ferhat was always very insistent. All his actions, through which he constantly tried to attract attention, allowed the interpretation that he was an insecure person; someone who was really self-assured would not constantly need to attract attention to himself in this way. She repeated this diagnosis several times and finally appealed to Ferhat to become more self-assured and alter his personality. Ferhat’s uncle replied that they would try and exert more influence on him at home to improve. Basically, they realised what the problem was, but he could be difficult; they had not known how to proceed, but now they would try to be even stricter with him. The teacher responded, ‘Well, I hope you don’t beat him!’ Ferhat’s uncle replied, ‘We don’t beat people! It’s not like that at all in our family – we don’t beat each other up!’ The tutor calmed them down: he had been to Ferhat’s home, and that had left a good impression on him; and in any case, a slap every now and then would still be legitimate. If pupils did not manage to adjust to the particular situation, the failure was taken as an expression of failings within the person: an obtrusive style was supposed to indicate a lack of self-assurance because the criteria against which competence in respect of situational adjustment is measured consist of internalised values. Since socialisation in the family is crucial in developing the self and therefore one’s ability to behave according to an internalised code of conduct, a violation of the etiquette is understood to reflect on failures within families.28 If, for instance, Ferhat had attended Tinbergen in Rotterdam, the school would probably have informed his parents about disciplinary problems and 184

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related measures. But they would not be made responsible for the matter as in Berlin where it becomes necessary to involve the family to find a solution which does justice to the individual case. This approach reveals that, even in cases of breakdown, the ideal of co-operation with the parents is not given up. The particular difficulty is however that the problem of interpretation points to family responsibilities as well: if the ideal co-operation between school and home has not yet worked, approaching parents for a solution to the conflict might trigger off an even worse cycle. The teacher’s hope, expressed in Ferhat’s hearing, that he would not be beaten at home afterwards expressed such a fear, drawing on the argument that repressive family conditions were responsible for disruptive activities. Other teachers suggested the same causal relation. Take, for example, the following statements by a teacher of history and German. He was fifty-five years old and had been working at Lise Meitner for twenty-four years. On the whole he explained his ‘very little contact with families’ by saying that most ‘couldn’t help their children in school at all’: Possible influences from home, which mostly took the shape of repressive behaviour, only did harm to us because the pupils released the pressure they felt at home here… If difficulties appear [most of ‘our’ parents] have no other means than to react with pressure, which is quite harmful to us.

His explanation points to the potential risk of attempting to work together with parents. The initially positive institution of a common educational project, with school and parents sharing responsibilities, may become counterproductive if the parents do not support the same sort of civility that the school takes for granted. This kind of dilemma does not arise for teachers in Paris, where relationships between school and home are anyway not loaded with comparable positive expectations and where codes of conduct consist of clear and easily understandable rules. Even if teachers in Lycée Fernand Braudel were to hold exactly the same opinions about the reasons for failure as their colleagues in Lise Meitner School, their views would not count in practice. In Berlin, on the other hand, the teachers not only hold the power of defining what is appropriate in a given situation but also need to diagnose the causes of failure to suggest a suitable solution. When asked by the researcher the factors to which he would relate harmful, repressive educational methods, the same teacher, in Berlin, answered, ‘Social background’. However, although all teachers at Lise Meitner School were generally very careful not to be seen as acting out of xenophobic prejudice, an explanatory pattern repeatedly became evident in remarks to the effect that foreign culture played an important role in contributing to underprivileged social backgrounds. Basically, no teacher at Lise Meitner School would deny that German pupils from deprived families also tended to lack certain skills of importance for education, and in fact some emphasised class as the most significant source of 185

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problems in their work.29 Yet in the case of pupils from foreign families, many teachers seemed to consider the situation even worse. In particular, the presumed higher potential for violence among teenage boys was related to culturally specific socialisation within foreign families. Here reference was mostly to ‘macho’ habits, supposedly fixed gender roles, and the absence of sophisticated conflict-resolution strategies: ‘oriental’ adolescents were seen as being deficient in these respects. The idea of the harmful influence of poor social background contained an additional negative cultural bias. The same teacher quoted earlier expressed his overall assessment of pupils’ heterogeneity at Lise Meitner School as follows: When I compare this to what pupils tell me about the outside, it’s a real paradise here as far as the code of etiquette towards others is concerned, or at least what we wish manners to be. We have an influence on pupils here and can intervene a bit in a guiding role… Especially regarding foreign pupils, where [long hesitation] role behaviour in my eyes is a bit – backward [pause], I want to express this as a norm, yes… The worst thing I notice is…hmm – there are hardly any capabilities to solve conflicts verbally, no willingness to compromise, and partly also the tensions between male and female teenagers, where, with our big proportion of, hmm…oriental pupils, it must be said there are many failings… The high potential for aggression, the low tolerance; this has also changed among German pupils through clashes and in company with foreign, especially Turkish, pupils. German pupils were formerly more peaceful and able to do more when the others were less numerous. And what is also a factor…is this macho behaviour: they didn’t have anything with which to oppose the Turkish kids and had problems with this behaviour, which obviously came down to an ideal of masculinity – they had problems with that.

Although he himself had called ‘social background’ the main problem earlier, class came to be negatively culturalised in his further argument. In reaction to the comment about the ‘macho behaviour’ of Turks, I asked this teacher if similar ideals of masculinity might not also be seen as typical of proletarian milieus. He forcefully rejected this suggestion, stressing that he also came from a proletarian family and could not share that view at all. Altogether he was very careful in his statements, as can be seen from the long pauses and hesitation between the use of certain terms like ‘backward’, ‘oriental’ pupils and their ‘failings’. In view of his thorough considering of words, he evidently assumed his assessment in explaining the problem with reference to the concept of culture to be a factual description of the actual state of affairs. The line of this argument is that a culturally specific socialisation in immigrant families leads to behaviour that exerts a negative influence on the whole schooling situation: it even leads to reactionary adaptation among German pupils. The initial positive expectation that parents and school should work together appears ridiculous with such a ‘difficult clientele’. 186

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The problem of lacking support and commitment from the side of the immigrant families30 was thus thought of as being accompanied by incompatible methods and ideals of socialisation. The Berlin district career counsellor in charge of Lise Meitner School – who was, moreover, the appointed expert for foreigners’ affairs at the local job centre – referred to this lack of assistance and consciousness as typical and as the main reasons for the statistically proven bad performances of Turkish pupils: ‘There is absolutely no awareness of problems, not even among parents’, he said, ‘All parents have high expectations, but very few support their children in reaching the high level they have in mind.’ Teachers at Lise Meitner School shared this view. This perspective recalls the description of the problem we encountered in London. The head teacher at Huxley School saw relationships with Turkish parents as similarly problematic since they delegated responsibility for their children completely to the school. She stated: ‘Research has shown that Turks in Britain do less well than any other group. They have language problems similar to other groups so there must be cultural reasons.’ The head of Huxley School therefore intensified efforts to approach parents with the help of the home-school agreement, using extra staff who speak the parents’ languages, to get them involved and clarify the terms of co-operation. In spite of basically the same evaluation of problems, no such strategies were tried in overcoming the lack of parental commitment or distorted expectations at Lise Meitner School, and in view of the supposedly repressive socialisation concepts that teachers diagnosed as being the central problem, the foreign parents’ relative disinterest even seemed the better option. One teacher remarked that, in relation to their family backgrounds, most foreign pupils developed in a really positive way: ‘Once you meet the parents, you learn to appreciate their children!’ Another teacher, who had been working at Lise Meitner School for more than twenty years, said that it was only teachers’ actual behaviour as an effective hidden agenda (heimlicher Lehrplan) that could impart relevant values to Turkish pupils, whose parents’ educational inputs were an absolute catastrophe: Turkish pupils are victims of circumstance. Turkish parents fail in so far as little esteem is placed on the acquisition of the German language. Our pupils’ Turkish parents throw their children into the German school system without any assistance. Turkish boys especially are often confronted with such unreal expectations by their parents that many are in danger of breaking apart. This pressure naturally produces ways of behaviour that we feel to be very unpleasant: trying to attain marks and pass examinations using any means, from attempted deception to sycophancy and even open threats, the latter luckily rather seldom, though. My opinion is that the Turkish Parents’ Association fails completely. 187

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When the Turkish parents’ input is considered so incompatible, it limits the possibilities of inculcating the crucial civil values that school education aims at. The precondition for such inculcation is self-assured individuals, not subdued characters covering up their insecurities with excessive physical presence or ‘sycophancy’. Female teachers especially, who had the impression of not getting enough respect, spoke of this in terms of a culture conflict: Turkish boys ‘often cultivate a macho behaviour that has been learned at home and that makes contact as a female teacher with them in some ways quite difficult’. Turkishness was associated with a style in opposition to the one striven for: backward gender roles, repressive education norms and authoritarianism, all of which are irreconcilable with the German programme of school education, were supposed to be reproduced by the Turks. Two years before our research, three teachers had conducted a questionnairebased inquiry among colleagues at Lise Meitner School, in which 50 percent of them participated. One third expressed the opinion that many pupils’ ‘foreign cultural origins’ (Herkunft aus anderen Kulturkreisen) were responsible for those problems one considered most important at the school, namely rudeness, a lack of cultural techniques (like reading and writing) and, on the whole, a too low level of skills and achievements. 40 percent considered the influence of ‘foreign cultural origins’ as significant in the increase of violence at the school. The same logic was invoked when some serious incidents occurred in the school-yard: one pupil was beaten up by three unemployed youths who had entered the yard; a teacher was jostled and threatened, also by youths who were not pupils; and shortly afterwards, in a crowded situation, the headmaster himself was pushed to the ground in a crowd. In a union assembly that followed, many teachers made a major issue of the fact that the attacks had ‘all been by foreigners’. When one teacher opposed this emphasis by saying that a friend of his could tell exactly the same stories from the school he was working at in Potsdam the only difference being that the pupils would not be black-haired but bald, that is, right-wing skinheads, the discussion escalated: ‘Are you daring to suggest that X is a racist, he who was already a member of an anti-apartheid group twenty years ago?!’ In other words, the assumption that foreigners are more violent has nothing to do with being biased against them. It was rather considered a matter of fact that they had a different (deficient) culture, for example with respect to conflict-resolution. When a similarly serious incident of violence which had taken place in Nikolaas Tinbergen School was related to the Dutch researcher, staff in Rotterdam emphasised that it was, ‘of course, purely coincidental’ that it was a Turkish boy who had pointed a gun at another boy’s head. Hardly anybody would have subscribed to such a view at Meitner. The tendency in Berlin was that teachers felt overburdened by their difficult surroundings. Many considered their efforts wasted and blamed the socio-cultural environment for failures. The resulting (re)production of inequalities was in no way concealed but also seen by teachers themselves, namely that ‘These 188

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Turkish pupils, who come from such a ghetto environment, are well and truly at the bottom of the German school system, absolutely bound to fail; we are simply setting them further on the road towards becoming the dregs of society’. Shifting the blame on to a ‘ghetto environment’, leaves a desperate impression: there seems to be an altogether pessimistic assessment as regards the opportunities of children from underprivileged families, and the influence of other cultures contributes further to an even worse outcome. Since the description of teachers’ responsibilities in Germany appears to involve the most ambitious and demanding personal input of the four countries studied, this state of strain might also be reached sooner there than elsewhere. The French method of systematic role division and clarity of rules discharges teachers completely from the need to define problems in this way and thus prevents culturalist interpretations from becoming an open argument in the context of disciplinary breakdowns. Culturally different socialisations, whether presumed to exist or not, are to be ignored in the French school in favour of equal conditions for all. When pupils in Paris sometimes tried to introduce particular circumstances so as to be granted concessions by their teachers, this strategy failed. There was one Muslim boy who wished his religion be considered on all possible occasions. In the eyes of his teachers, this made him something of an odd character. It is (again ideally) not relevant where teachers locate the reasons for such odd behaviour. They might also agree with negatively coloured culturalist arguments in private, but this is to play no role in their work as teachers in a French school and should not enter their evaluation. Since pupils’ personal backgrounds are not considered they are also rendered inviolable.

Sanctions and Responses to Inadequate Conduct We have seen that failures in civility are measured against different ideals. They must therefore also result in specific strategies to remind offenders of the desired codes of conduct. The favoured types of sanction that one applies to guide pupils towards the appropriate performance need somehow to reflect what is expected of an exemplary member in society. In Paris this was not very complicated: since the French school is defined an area with its own unequivocal rules, as if separate from the surrounding world, any failure of conduct can simply be seen and treated as a violation of the regulatory code. If this happens, it should ideally be dealt with through the application of general rules rather than being negotiated on a case-by-case basis. The school’s reaction to the headscarf problem displayed this very logic: the headmaster of Lycée Braudel considered the dilemma satisfactorily resolved, because, first, the formal procedure was respected, and, second, general rules were reestablished: a ban of headgear was integrated into the school rules, these were 189

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made public, and non-observance could be treated as disciplinary offence thereafter. What is most interesting here is the principle of creating a clear institutional regulation again: opinions among teachers were very mixed on the matter. It was however not despite but rather because of this controversial situation that a general rule was implemented and appreciated. The common view was that the situation absolutely needed to be cleared up. All agreed that one should not leave the issue to the responsibility of individual staff members. And in the preferred fashion of applying equal strategies to all, the school rules at Lycée Fernand Braudel were rephrased to prohibit any kind of headgear since then: baseball caps, Muslim headscarves or fancy hats are all treated in the same way, thus conforming to the ideal of systematic consistency. When being asked by the researcher why headgear was forbidden in the Lycée, two teachers said that their school wanted ‘to establish a difference from the outside’. The repeatedly expressed opinion that it was particularly necessary to enforce the order strictly ‘in these areas’, and the fact that Lycée Fernand Braudel was equipped with a high fence and an iron gate, were other expressions of the high value attributed to symbolic authority. The French state school anyway represents a kind of civic lighthouse in a sea of social chaos, but neighbourhoods classified as zones sensibles mark an especially pronounced sort of chaos. Efforts of fortification gain in importance there to maintain the difference. Entirely opposed to the even stricter application of the rules in problematic surroundings, the climate of motivation at Lise Meitner School in Berlin was one of resignation. The basic failing, that many pupils’ families supposedly do not meet nor even aim at the emancipatory ideals of socialisation, was countered by a retreat on the part of many teachers. The field of extra-curricular activities shows this. If taken seriously, the rationale behind these activities as positive measures to support the inculcation of civility could be expected to be of special relevance in a neighbourhood where pupils’ socialisations are conceived of as being deficient, as in Paris. However, in relation to the size of Lise Meitner School, with its roughly 1,000 pupils, 120 teachers and 8 social workers,31 the number of activities was not great. The neglect of this programmatically rather crucial field of education points to the desperate mood in this school.32 This also affected the requirement to keep an eye on pupils’ behaviour, which is – due to the absence of extra personnel like the French surveillants – part of the teachers’ duties. Some fulfilled this task as it should be, but many others only complained about pupils’ bad behaviour without intervening to prevent it. Some even mocked colleagues who took their tasks seriously as careerist over-achievers. One teacher described the dominant laissez-faire mood and deficient supervision of pupils, including his own, as a moral dilemma: Nobody does that here: it’s much too exhausting. One of them who still does that a lot is X. When he gets hold of pupils who don’t behave properly, they have to take a pair of tongs and clean the borders of garbage, or else they are made responsible for 190

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cleaning the floors in our hut of garbage for a week, or he makes them wipe graffiti off the rest rooms. But naturally this absorbs an awful lot of time, and it has to be controlled, otherwise they immediately run away again. And that wears people down completely.

His argument, that this part of their job simply cost too much energy, is, of course, not in accordance with the vision of teachers as role models for commitment, and he knew it. However, even though particular problems made Lise Meitner School an extreme case, this ‘burn-out’ phenomenon among teachers is apparently not that exceptional in Germany (Struck 1995: 53 ff.). The feeling that too much is expected seems to prevail very quickly, as if everything was pointless, as long as the ideal preliminaries were not complete. The idea that a school should be much more than an educational institute, was acknowledged and shared by teachers at Lise Meitner School, but hardly practised. When asked why there was not a greater range of extra-curricular activities, reference was made to the school’s ‘difficult clientele’. It would, for example, be impossible to organize school trips because Muslim girls were never given their parents’ permission to join in. In the words of a man in his fifties, who was teaching German and history at Lise Meitner: ‘Unfortunately it has been a fact for a long time already that school trips can only take place to a very limited extent because the parents, especially those of foreign girls, cause big problems and don’t let their children join in.’ When I asked for his judgement of a school trip’s educational aim, he stressed ‘free contact with others that is not so much determined by the repressive rules of school organization’. Pupils could be offered ‘many more possibilities to cope with something themselves’ then. This antiauthoritarian notion that external order has repressive consequences attaches high value to the school trip in that it enables pupils to encounter one another free from the usual limitations of a school day. In Lycée Fernand Braudel, teachers might stress the opposite, namely that it is keeping to the rules that frees them and that this order is a condition of, not a restriction in, their carrying out the task. In Berlin, the external structure of the school day was seen as serving a necessary function, but in a way also as limiting the educational enterprise aimed at flexibility and self-responsibility. If the ‘difficult clientele’ fails to come up to scratch, this is understood to be their own fault. Extra efforts might then be reduced. This tendency to stress the own responsibility was also observable at Huxley School, in very much the same way as in Berlin. When some Huxley pupils smashed the windows of a minibus belonging to a neighbouring school one afternoon, the assembly for Year 10 the following morning was full of appeals to self-responsible improvement. The year head began to address the audience by saying, ‘Don’t think that damaging property is harmless, it’s not bearable at all and we will not tolerate it. You don’t know anything about behaviour, respect or courtesy: if it suits you, you do it. That’s how it starts, and it easily builds up, 191

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and you are likely to end up in court, let me tell you that!’ A second, female, colleague of his stepped forward and continued: I will tell you about two people I know who were involved in stupid fights. I know a man who was a fireman – he lost his job because of what happened. He lost his temper in a pub and got involved in a stupid little fight. You can believe that he feels very sorry for that – he was sacked for it! I know another one who also took part in a silly, stupid fight. Now he can’t go swimming any more because his ears were damaged in that fight. Believe me, he regrets that. So it’s not a thing to laugh about, it’s absolutely serious! This is just to support what the year head said.

The ideal of self-regulation and of remaining cool-tempered was recalled in this crisis of civility. If one failed in this, one would sooner or later have to face the consequences in the form of a loss of one’s health, of one’s job or finding oneself in court. As well as making these appeals, the school increased supervision, closed the school gates to keep the pupils in, had teachers patrol the area around the school, co-operated with the police to find out which pupils were involved, and so on. Even though it was not planned to keep the gates closed for more than a couple of days, there was a lot of activity to make the need for self-discipline clear to all pupils and recall potential consequences if they did not manage to control their tempers. Although there were comparable cases in Berlin, with pupils being arrested for theft or physical violence, they never occupied the whole school to such an extent. Furthermore, the view that one’s own efforts were fruitless anyway easily got the upper hand in such situations. Thus, in response to the unfulfilled preliminaries, the educational institution also cut down the size of the commitment, and, instead of intensifying efforts, opted for withdrawal. Connected to concrete sanctions in matters of punctuality and presence, the same line of argument with respect to personal responsibility and blame was followed. Not surprisingly, pupils were supposed to be at school at the proper time. In the Dutch, English and French schools, systems of checking that pupils were present were applied as routines, but at Lise Meitner School absentees were not controlled carefully. There were occasional attempts to introduce discipline with regard to time, such as censoring pupils who came late to lessons, but spot checks predominated, and no coherent measures were taken against violations. Probably the most disastrous outcome here concerns the inactivity of many teachers when confronted with mass truancy. Although the German School Laws have a whole raft of graduated measures to enforce compulsory education, starting from an official letter to the parents, to sending police to bring pupils back into school, to letting courts impose fines on the parents if no other punishment succeeds, there was a lot of casualness concerning absentees in general. The absence of foreign pupils in class seemed to justify sanctions even more rarely. In September 1996, the Berlin School Authorities informed all 192

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schools in a circular that preliminary proceedings concerning reported absences from school would be abandoned by the public prosecuting office in the particular case of foreign parents: if parents raised their children ‘according to their culture group’, and if there was nothing like compulsory education in their countries of origin, their guilt would have to be considered minor, and a gross violation with respect to their duties of care could not be substantiated under such circumstances. Thus, there would be ‘no public interest justifying prosecution’. Unless the ‘neglect’ of children was involved, parents’ rights came first (Dienstanweisung, 10.9.96; copy in possession of the author). The observation that the system of expectations does not work with immigrants as it should thus takes the form of an officially acknowledged disadvantage to their children’s school career that can simply be ignored. Practices at Lise Meitner School conformed to this as well. There was, for instance, the case of a Turkish girl in Grade 9 who was missing for weeks, and many teachers did not even notice her absence on their courses. When they finally realised how long the girl had already been missing lessons, they telephoned the pupil’s parents, who expressed surprise because they believed that their daughter had been at school every day, and they promised to send her. The next day she was in fact back in school. After some days attending selected lessons, the girl started to stay away again. The tutors involved, together with one of the school’s social workers, agreed that ultimately she could not be forced to go back to school, nor could the parents be forced to make her: pupils with such a massive record of truancy would simply not come back. One of the tutors commented with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘They can fall down so fast! She should really be careful that she does not leave the straight and narrow’. In effect, this negligence represents a disavowal of compulsory education by a frustrated staff of teachers.33 Confronted with criticism of how easily they release pupils from their obligations, no teacher was really prepared to defend the actual carelessness. Yet appeal was made instead to the responsibility of the individual pupil: it made no sense, and it was, moreover, not possible to force them to attend. Formally, of course, they should take steps, but each case would matter, and one would always need to decide whether it made sense to make an active response. Thus, if pupils did not realise the opportunity that school education provides them, this was treated as unfortunate, but hard to be changed: it would simply reflect on themselves and their future. Adolescents had to want school or at least to submit to its necessity of their own free will. If that attitude was missing, and if parents did not enforce the necessary commitment either, it would make no difference whether one took them back to school merely for their physical presence or not. This rationale was also applied in attempting to lift the school’s standards a little. Lise Meitner School had installed a commission of five teachers to look through the enrolment registrations and try to sort out the ‘worst cases’. Criteria were the pupil’s overall behaviour at school, which was assessed from 193

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the final primary report: if the so-called ‘head of the report’ (Zeugniskopf) reported notorious lateness or contained obvious remarks about deficient social behaviour, this led to the commission’s rejection,34 as may having many bad marks. In other words, the relevant attitudes towards work and discipline were considered less a task of school to inspire than a mental precondition that determines educational chances. Evidently, this was not a strict limit, and in cases of pupils who were still considered reachable and ‘schoolable’, measures were taken to make them understand what is expected of them. Again this was a matter of teachers’ evaluations, and there was no standardised application of punishments, the effort being to do justice to the individual’s situation and reach the pupil as a person capable of improvement.35 The ideal way of approaching those who have failed in conduct consists of small court hearings like that arranged for Ferhat: all teachers who were instructing the particular pupil attend, the headmaster or head of grade presides at the hearing, the pupil’s parents are invited to join, and the pupil in question is also present. The latter might bring forward an argument in his or her defence and can ask for defence counsel from the Pupils’ Representation Board. Everybody makes a statement, and finally the teachers as the committee in charge take a decision.36 Therefore, the individual case is examined to find out what might have led to the failure, and finally the expert committee decides on an appropriate method of punishment and improvement. In the case of Ferhat, the punishment for his lack of respectful manners and his trouble-making consisted in requiring him to keep a small diary, which, after each lesson, and without being asked, he should present to his teachers, who would then make some notes about his performance in the particular lesson. He was also told to present the diary at home every day, so that a parent or his uncle could sign it. This solution is very telling because it emphasised Ferhat’s personal responsibility for his conduct (and in result for his school success), and should also give him a chance to learn about the standards of assessment applied. It was not the punishment as such that was the focus of attention, but the aim that it should foster insight and individual responsibility. The measure had the character of a probationary offer37 which only made sense if Ferhat was not called to hand in the diary after each lesson but had to do it voluntarily, without being asked. Most likely, the resulting inconsistencies in methods of improvement in Berlin to consider particular circumstances on a case-by-case basis would provoke interpretations in terms of injustice and arbitrariness in the Paris school, where the institutional system of order should ensure equal and fair treatment. The statement of one CPE at Lycée Fernand Braudel about the importance of always applying the same procedures points in this direction: pupils should definitively know beforehand the consequences of certain forms of misconduct, like playing truant or disrupting lessons.38 In Fernand Braudel, formalising was the route to supposedly objective fairness, because the measures applied were freed from the suspicion of their having validity only in specific contexts that 194

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would require interpretation and allow negotiation, as in Berlin. It is not single persons but the institution that exerts authority in the French setting. All pupils who came late to Lycée Fernand Braudel could not avoid seeing one of the supervisors, who were controlling admission to the building. Only after a clarification of reasons could the pupil enter the lesson. Pupils who failed in conduct, like Ferhat in Berlin, had to meet an educational counsellor and maybe the headmaster in Paris, but not a committee of teachers. If pupils were absent frequently or for a long time, they would very likely also face consequences in the teachers’ domain in the form of bad marks. But the whole matter of their personal (lack of) motivation or other problems was delegated to the CPE, so that teachers were not concerned with any design of strategies for pupils’ personal improvement that occupied their colleagues in Berlin. Looking at the measures applied to individual trouble-makers in Paris, we find that, again, systematised regulations were activated. A frequent punishment, for example, consisted in the so-called colle on Wednesday afternoons, that is, detention during the only afternoon in the week without regular school lessons. Pupils had to stay at school and were given extra work to do. This was institutionalised, and teachers knew that surveillants would be there on Wednesday afternoon to supervise detention.39 Again this is content-related: a lack of civility was punished with an additional load of learning assignments. There was, for example, one Muslim boy who had disrupted sports lessons by refusing to run during Ramadan.40 He had to stay for two hours in the colle and copy irregular English verbs. During lessons too, teachers had the possibility of handing problematic pupils over to supervisory staff who would keep them under guard in a special room until the lesson was over. Such an option also existed at Huxley School, where pupils could be sent to ‘Room 21’, where a teacher was in charge of supervising disruptive pupils. Sometimes they were withdrawn not just for the rest of a lesson but even for the remaining school day, but learning was also maintained for them. These kinds of sanction still relate to the school task of enabling equal opportunities. At Huxley School, a system of afternoon work groups entailed the same combination of detention and assistance: afternoon homework groups were held under teachers’ supervision to offer additional help to weak pupils but also for punishment purposes. A geography teacher explained that she met pupils who had failed to hand in homework on Friday afternoons for detention, which meant that they completed their work with her help. Pupils might also be punished for bad behaviour with detention afternoons, which were run by all of Huxley’s teachers in turn. In Paris, the Wednesday afternoon colles were only imposed for misconduct, but in fact they also meant an extra portion of content-related tasks. This mirrors a concept that clearly prioritises the mastering of content. The goal of the French lycée and its teachers is not to invest emotional energy in the development of their pupils’ personalities but to prepare them for the baccalauréat, the rationale being that mastery of the content is the precondition for school success 195

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and all further chances. This does however not mean that notorious disturbers could make their way to the baccalauréat without bettering their conduct: pupils who did not display proper manners nor the needed disciplinary attitudes were not tolerated in the section générale of the lycée for long. Even if intelligent, such (mainly male) pupils, were re-oriented into the professional section which restricts their options considerably as regards future careers.41 Not surprisingly, teachers reminded noisy pupils of the baccalauréat in the fashion of a threat in Lycée Braudel. In Berlin, the same consequence of restricting chances was, like expectations of exemplary conduct, much more implicit: pupils who conspicuously did not meet expectations received bad reports, because their overall performance influenced their marks. In some subjects, 40 percent of the assessment can be for oral participation, and the style of oral contributions is, of course, a part of this. Thus, one does not weed pupils out directly, at least not in the comprehensive school of the type to which Lise Meitner belongs,42 but if certain achievement levels are not met – to which appropriate conduct belongs – there is evidently no chance to pass the German Abitur either. The results of selection as a means of sanctioning are similar in Paris and Berlin: only those who are successful in demonstrating civility are also rewarded with school success. But the transparency of the relevant norms and the procedures for their introduction differ. There was no institutionalised punishment like a jour fixe for detention at all in Berlin. Additional homework was imposed occasionally at Lise Meitner School, but teachers handled this option with a lot of unease. It reminded them of the strict authoritarian tradition that had been characteristic of their own school education and that had supposedly been overcome. Furthermore, standardised sanctioning runs counter to the ideal that not only holds true for the code of conduct expected from pupils but is also the normative guideline for teachers in the German school, namely competence in situational adjustment. Not only are the concepts of civility thus different, but so are ideas of what is an appropriate and fair punishment to re-impose order following lapses. What we found in Paris – explicit clarity in the shape of systematic order, a high degree of institutionalisation and an application of standards that are supposed to be objectively equal – implies a sense of justice that is located in the proceeding itself: the creation of formally equal conditions for learning, knowledge control and punishment is supposed to constitute justice. This echoes the republican principles and the calculable methods rationally derived from them. Conversely, in the German school, justice seems rather to be understood as being attained when attention has been given to the particularity of an individual case or a specific goal. This means a contextual approach that depends on how a problem and its cause are defined. If the experts in charge see the problem in an absence of crucial preconditions, whether on the level of individual pupils or their families’ share in the educational task, the approach of considering the circumstances to find a suitable response also implies the possibility of resignation. 196

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Assessing Success: Built-in Costs and Side-effects Schools cover several functions in respect of socialisation, qualification, selection and allocation, legitimising the system as well as integration into it.43 The role of school education in assisting social inclusion and providing all able pupils with the means for upward mobility is thus at least in tension, if not contradiction, with the reproductive allocating functions of schools: the meritocratic ideal assures success on the basis of achievement, but social and civil skills are admittedly also necessary to succeed. The conditions for acquiring styles of civility relevant to success are however not distributed evenly in pupils’ homes, a structural inequality that is recognised in all the four cases of our study and that clearly competes with the promise of equal opportunities. All three schools in problematic housing areas, those in Paris, Berlin and London, face the same phenomenon of social segregation: less ‘difficult’, statusconscious middle-class parents avoid sending their children to any school identified as being a sozialer Brennpunkt or zone d’éducation prioritaire. Partly this might be motivated by the idea of direct bad influence that contact with pupils from underprivileged social groups might exert on their own children. However, if there were general confidence that school education ensured a certain standard of socially acceptable behaviour as a working basis, this argument would be relativised. Bourgeois circles obviously do not believe that negative influences from distressed family backgrounds can be counterbalanced in school. Their practices of avoidance belie the notion of equal opportunities and might also contribute to its non-fulfilment. Seemingly, the more democratised access to higher qualifications becomes, the greater the importance placed on symbolic capital, in the form, for instance, of the choice of a particular school or type of school. If one examines the number of pupils who pass the highest school examinations, the baccalauréat in France or the German Abitur,44 they can be seen to have become progressively less exclusive. This trend was also referred to in a farewell ceremony which Lise Meitner School held for the pupils who had passed the Abitur in 1997: the head of the final Oberstufe grades stressed that this school examination was ‘fortunately no longer a privilege’, and the school would always ‘make use of its full range of educational resources to help as many pupils as possible pass it’. This confession is exactly what adds fuel to the fire of the bourgeois discourse found in Germany, claiming that pupils are passing the Abitur nowadays who really should not be, the effect being that the formerly high level of educational standards is being lowered. In fact, the policies of popularising higher education and examinations that served purposes of distinction in former times have important consequences for the selection process. The increase in those passing high school examinations is not after all supposed to mean that all of them shall become part of a graduate elite. In Berlin, the opening up of higher education is connected with the generally increased 197

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demands of civil enculturation in a complex democratic society. Given the increased requirements, the German teaching programme declares distinctions between a mainly intellectual and a mainly practical ‘popular’ education to be obsolete. This shifts the dilemma of selection but it does not dissolve the necessity to evaluate the performances of pupils. If a system is to work on the basis of merit, standards for the assessment of success or failure are crucial in creating credibility. Ideals regarding the distribution of chances are meritocratic in all civil cultures examined in our research. Yet, measuring ‘merit’ is an outspokenly contextual affair. In all four educational fields we found particular concepts of civil conduct serving as a kind of hinge to link competing functions. These concepts involve such tensions and ambivalences that high-brow ideals of fostering civility, and providing subject-related education for all, are bound to be fictitious in one way or another. The fictitious aspect of the concept that was applied in Lise Meitner School concerns transparency: there was apparently a lack of awareness that the prevailing inconsistency regarding rules, and fuzziness with respect to what constitutes ‘appropriate’ conduct in a given situation, encourages pupils to test the limits. Being exposed to an ambiguity of expectations that are not made explicit, they should learn to act according to the circumstances. The built-in casuistry means that teachers must be trusted as competent in making responsible judgements. This requirement of accepting the validity of experts’ evaluations, is a basic condition, and at the same a limitation, of the ideal: in spite of the general suspicion of mere obedience unsupported by conviction, the authority of these experts is not under discussion. Implicit expectations should be met with a cognitive process that enables the person to interpret a situation correctly, but inconsistency obstructs comprehensibility. This was evident in Ferhat’s disciplinary committee: when a teacher demands that a pupil remove a cap, there is no need to discuss why. The teacher might even refer to ‘the rules’, although there were none: some teachers forbade caps, some were indifferent, some tolerated Turkish being spoken in class, others punished it, and all might have different explanations as to why they were in favour of or against either option. Despite such contradictions, no need was seen for a systematic regulation with clear criteria, because the norm was goal-oriented. Given the intention of pedagogical interaction, expectations depended on the learning goal of a particular situation. The risk of this flexibility turning into arbitrariness should be prevented by the responsible weighing of options. However, this actually leaves pupils with uncertainty, which they can only master by using internalised knowledge of what is appropriate. This is the weak point in the German model of expectations: if the pre-condition of a moral order as established through family socialisation is absent or if it follows a different agenda that is judged inadequate – owing to migrant backgrounds or rough neighbourhoods, for example – the school’s efforts at socialisation soon reach their limits. 198

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This limitation was of special relevance insofar at Lise Meitner School as most of its teachers had been at university between the end of the 1960s and the mid-1970s and were noticeably influenced by the civil movements of that time. Although this became an explicit topic only in particular contexts (as in lessons about the thirtieth anniversary of the 1968 revolt in 1998), the anti-authoritarian impetus of this generation left its impact on the whole situation: the claim for individual democratisation which was articulated in the 1968 revolts in West Germany had particularly influenced the 1970s debates on education. External rule-orientation was dismissed as an ideal condition in reproducing restrained, servile characters,45 and the anti-authoritarian concept of education placed its stress on individual responsibility and the necessity to develop conscience and a critical personality. The particular composition of the teaching staff meant an intensification of the ambitious ideals of education, at the same time as a marked unease with repressive regulations. When asked what subjects they considered most important in the education programme, many teachers mentioned German, languages, arts and music, history, ethics, political and social studies, all of which were seen as fostering capacities for independent thinking, and developing standards of critical assessment: in other words civil competence. These aims imply a complicated balance between styles and contents, yet the arguments hardly ever drew on the contents of specific subjects (such as German lingual competence as tool of participation). Instead, it was appreciated that these subjects ‘are open enough to allow “pedagogical and artistic freedom” to take current developments into account’, as one teacher phrased it. This extraordinary stress on flexibility and freedom contributed, in practice, to discredit possibilities of institutionalised order, probably more than would have been the case with a staff that was more heterogeneous in terms of age and political socialisation. The fuzziness and contradictions that prevailed on the level of observable rules in Lise Meitner School were therefore rather extreme. Clearly neither many pupils nor their families managed to come up to the high expectations involved. This was a source of constant disappointment for the teachers, especially as the absence of intellectual high achievers was far above the usual situation in Berlin.46 In brief, the sublime ideals hardly ever functioned in practice. For many of those with an anti-authoritarian past, being confronted with situations where displaying open authority appears to be the only viable strategy led to feelings of unease and further frustration. The following statement, made by a male teacher of sports and geography who had been working at Lise Meitner School for roughly twenty years, was not exceptional. When I recall the orientation of ideals in the seventies about styles of leadership, there were three types: authoritarian, democratic and liberal, like laissez-faire. These were the three models we studied, and in those days we all strove for the 199

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democratic style. But today, when I think it over, daily business at this school has come to be conducted in a rather authoritarian style.

The ideal that rules should be handled flexible does not work properly, so that one resorts to strict methods again. But since most teachers were not convinced that an authoritarian style was of any use, their reluctance and ambivalence contributed even more to the unpredictability of requirements between which pupils had to manoeuvre cautiously. Pupils in Lycée Fernand Braudel did not need to invest any efforts in understanding diffuse expectations but had to keep to a given set of rules. Since authority was not imposed on a case-by-case basis by individual teachers but by the institution itself, there was no need to argue about arbitrariness. However, this release from a number of dilemmas prevented pupils from learning to control their tempers in a responsible way. They were so much used to constant outward control that, whenever supervision weakened, some ran riot and, for example, destroyed the toilet facilities. For the school administration this served as additional evidence of the need for strict control. All proposals by pupils to organize something for themselves, like their own club room, were rejected with reference to the notorious discipline problems. The concentration on keeping strict exterior rules but leaving the whole complex of internal order untouched produced exactly the style of repression and servility that anti-authoritarian teachers in Berlin were so keen to avoid. Given its contextual goal-orientation, the German concept of civility demands much more than the French one, and is therefore also more difficult to succeed at. Pupils in Paris face a clear system of rules which are easily recognisable but do not imply any ambitious challenge to personal development. The rules are just basic conditions facilitating pedagogical communication, and as such they require no identification. However, practice in Lycée Fernand Braudel also showed that the ideal of gaining freedom through the rules and then being able to handle them in a creative way remains a fiction. School education in France is extensively oriented towards conveying knowledge, through lessons designed in ways that enable the analysis or treatment of specific topics to be acquired by the pupils. In this setting, the whole aspect of conduct plays a completely different role than in Berlin, because the punishments for misconduct are based on open criteria and take place according to transparent rules, yet remain separate from assessing achievements in different subjects: pupils who do not observe the external order imposed by the school rules are sent to the professional sections. In separating teaching from social skills, the marks are supposed to express an objectively measured competence with respect to the taught curriculum, and this should provide the currency of meritocratic competition within the wider society; trust in the teacher’s ability to evaluate a performance is less necessary than in Berlin. This promise of equal opportunities, coupled with the means to objectify success, lies at the heart of 200

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the French concept of egalitarian state education.47 However, this is not only belied by the ‘white flight’ or phenomenon of middle-class avoidance that a suburban school like Lycée Fernand Braudel faces, but also by the ranking of lycées that is published every year. French magazines regularly compare different lycées after the national baccalauréat examination and publish the ‘Top Ten’ that have attained the best results. When this consumer survey was published for the first time, it ‘broke an unofficial taboo’ and ‘triggered an outcry among teachers, who saw it as an attack on the image of French schools as being exactly alike’ (International Herald Tribune, 12.10.98). But since the notion of objectively evaluated school success rates is also part of the whole system, this public mirroring of inequality in results could not be prevented. The best lycées, which all discharge 98 to 99 percent of pupils with successful examination results, are all situated in the centre of Paris, and it is known that these elitist schools select their pupils right from the start. Although criteria other than achievement are never named openly, the empirical fact of consistently bourgeois top-ranking lycées, in central Paris, speaks for itself. The promise of equal opportunities for all circles of society is obviously not fulfilled, and it seems an illusion to assume that family background could be disregarded. Regarding assessments, pupils should believe in the objectivity and institutionalised justice of the French school system, but their experience is that other criteria also influence the effective selection and distribution of chances. The reproach that the promise of equality is nothing but lip-service was accordingly expressed by pupils from Lycée Fernand Braudel when a good pupil from their school was not accepted for a preparation class to the concours at an elite lycée in central Paris. The pupils believed that the option of moving up a level, if knowledge-related ability justified it, was unsubstantiated, when discussing the matter with the researcher. Pupils at Huxley School in London expressed similarly disillusioned views, but saw their personal lack of advantage as being quite clearly due to existing class practices involving distinction. They treated class as well as racial inequality as matters of fact in British society and they too did not judge the ideal of equal opportunities to be realistic. In view of their school’s efforts to counter potentially negative impacts through parents not being informed and so on, this suggests that in the British case it is the contractual approach that marks the fiction. The situation in Rotterdam was not so very different: the wonderful collective identity as ‘Tinbergeners’ worked de facto only at the highest level of academic achievement (but not in MAVO). To put it another way, symbolic exclusion effectively drew on the personalised resource of a participatory habitus. Thus, achievement-oriented equal opportunities might exist formally, but, in all four cases, mastering subjects is by no means enough. Pupils only succeeded if they also managed to express the embodiment of a dominant cultural capital in the field of symbolic skills related to regimes of discipline and civility, 201

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whether these were approached positively and explicitly or when they were expected to be reached through an internalised consciousness.

Conclusions Concepts of civility aim at social cohesion in order to activate mutual respect and social solidarity. They represent codified expectations of adequate conduct and mark its limits with reference to a positive norm suggesting an ideal of how the individual should contribute to the whole, as well as to negative sanctions recalling an expected norm after it has been broken. School disciplinary regimes reflect and reproduce the ethos of the specific civil culture, even though neither pupils nor teachers in all cases relate their immediate individual performances to the requirements of social reproduction. Regarding daily routines, it emerged that the French school follows a policy of systematic order that separates questions of conduct from teaching. Ideally, lessons take place in a quasi-sanitised setting, whereas in the Berlin school, subject-related issues and civil conduct are much more inter-connected: social learning and the imparting of knowledge are treated as an ideally interactive project. Considerable differences also mark the two examples with respect to timemanagement: in France, schooling may start in early childhood and occupies most of the week, while in Germany, pre-school education does not start as early, nor does school occupy as much time as in France. These differences relate to divisions of labour between school and home. We found a concept of state education in France aimed at the creation of the citizen in the public school, thus implying a separation of school and home. Conversely, it is not emancipation from primordial ties, as in the French scheme, but co-operation with pupils’ families that is characteristic of the German ideal of socialisation. The school should organically continue what the family has started, namely integration into a moral community of shared responsibility for the common good. Since primordial relationships form an essential part of the person, the aim is integrated heterogeneity rather than equality. This has important consequences. The French educational model reduces the scope of the private sphere, but in doing so also leaves it inviolate: personality development is not really an issue. What we observed in Berlin not only leaves a lot more space for the private sphere but also demands co-operation with the state school in the forms of identification and commitment. An awareness of practices is thus crucial and makes particular family and class backgrounds a powerful resource: in France this would likely be frowned upon as a mésalliance contradicting all egalitarian ideals. In fact, unlike the unambiguous clarity of rules in Paris, contingencies and inconsistent expectations were characteristic of the Lise Meitner School. Expectations of what an ‘appropriate’ style of conduct consisted of depended on 202

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the situation and the persons involved. Flexible adjustment to particularities and goals is necessary and a part of what should be learned. The cognitive process this entails concerns the situational competence to make assessments on the basis of internalised values, resulting from family upbringing. By contrast, goals in Paris appear to demand no internal conviction of this sort, and newcomers do not face the need to perform a suggested identification: on the contrary, for the sake of producing a supposedly egalitarian ethos in the public arena, they should rather forget their particular identifications while at school. The normative structure of equal conditions controls and patterns the space for the individual within a framework of formal order. In German civil culture, on the other hand, the public arena is mostly not defined by equality of the partici-pants but rather conceived of as the space where heterogeneous individuals negotiate their common platform. Private particularity overlaps into the public arena in so far as sharing responsibility for the whole implies an identification that should develop in a process of self-reflection and dialectical reconciliation. In both situations, discipline is imposed vertically and demands subordination, but to different principles: subordination in the French school is to the system of institutionalised authority, with the common goal of establishing equality; subordination in the German school is to one’s own conscience, with the common goal of establishing responsibility; and subordination to the experts in charge, the teachers, for as long as the aim has not been reached. Where the French lycée favours anonymous clarity of rules, diffuse expectations are characteristic of the school in Berlin. Outward applications of rules are somewhat mistrusted as possibly interfering with one’s internal conscience. The ideal code of civil conduct requires adaptation, but there are no clear criteria to define the adequacy of their application. One needs to match the specific situation and its pedagogical intention. Casuistry should ensure this contextual flexibility. On the basis of these antithetical concepts of ideal forms of socialisation, cases of misconduct were interpreted and responded to in different ways. These practically applied rationales indicate the critical moments in the two systems where crises become visible. In response to challenges, the clear general order was strictly reimposed in Paris. Inconsistent, ambiguous situations were treated as intolerable. When the observance of crucial school rules seemed to be slipping into oblivion, attention was called to them using posters, or else new general rules were drawn up as in the case of Muslim headscarves. In Paris the idea of a generalised clear system of order and institutionalised punishment prevailed, while case-wise assessments of problems predominated in Berlin. The contingencies and inconsistencies that characterise the setting of expectations at Lise Meitner School were even confirmed and reinforced in cases of failure. The case of a Meitner pupil who pushed the limits of civil behaviour led to his failure being investigated in an introspective manner. The definition of the problem and of the favoured sanctions draws on the idealised relationship between internalised civility and self-assurance: misconduct is interpreted as reflecting failings in the per203

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son and ultimately suggests a deficient initial socialisation in the family that prevents success at school and to a certain extent hinders the further consolidation of civility in one’s second socialisation within the larger community. This definition of the problem carries the risk of flexibility turning into arbitrariness, of casualness developing into sheer negligence, under conditions of stress. The system of external rules in Paris is so clear that rule violations do not require interpretations of problems. No implicit expectations need to be activated, because an abstract order is enforced by equally clear (and ideally, generally applicable) measures of punishment. The separation of conduct-related aspects from teaching discharges teachers from the need to evaluate civil skills and lends an appearance of objectivity to the assessment of school achievement. Compared to the highly demanding German approach that grounds school success not only in mastering knowledge but also in internalised moral order, the French explanation of rules leaves an impression of being easier to handle: it is definitely not as easy for newcomers to meet implicit norms of internalised civility as it is to submit oneself to an explicit outward regime of rules, and indeed the notion of the ‘difficult clientele’ contains a negative cultural bias in the descriptions of the problem provided in Berlin. Given the assumption that the input into the socialisation of immigrant parents is not only insufficient but tends to be counter-productive, the ambitious project of co-operation with parents turns into a vicious circle and apparently paralyses the system easily. The rationale in the German school shifts the blame for the resulting failure on to the negative circumstances of the environment and thus reasserts family socialisation as a source of difference. The approach of the French school shifts strategies of differentiation towards their symbolic substance by instituting an order that is supposed to objectify achievement but does not prevent elitist selection following other criteria, including family background.

Notes 1. For the sake of being able to operate in the competitive arena of the wider society, the contextual character is simply ignored in order to be able to act. Kalthoff ’s analysis of marking praxis (1996) gives insight into the extent of hidden contingencies that are normally treated with ‘learned ignorance’ to prevent the whole idea of an achievement-based distribution of chances being rendered invalid (Kalthoff 1996: 122). 2. Bourdieu’s theory of reproduction takes this into account by connecting the concept of habitus as personalised cultural capital with the argument that we should apply the same logic to cultural as to economic capital: the dominant group controls the relevant resources and their redistribution (1979/82). Consequently, already being in possession of the ‘right currency’ when entering the system means having an advantage over others. Applied to education, this hypothesis means a likely reproduction of inequalities, since the cultural capital of the dominant group functions as the central reference scheme for success or failure (Bourdieu 1987; Bourdieu

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and Boltanski 1981). This chapter will scrutinize this hypothesis of embourgeoisement by discussing the related material from our empirical research. 3. Marking conduct was no longer usual in any of the schools examined. In some German states, the re-introduction of such marks has been discussed or agreed, for example, in 1999 in Brandenburg. At the time of this research, only general comments were possible on school reports in Berlin, such as ‘his/her attention in lessons could be improved’. 4. This is, of course, no mechanistic reproduction cycle but describes a tendency. Bourdieu and Boltanski have also shown that schools both rely on and, conversely, stabilise reproduction within families (1981). 5. Although école maternelle is not compulsory and not all parents enrol their children at the age of two, 99 percent of the three- to five-year-olds attend such a nursery school. Compulsory education starts at the age of six in France (Monchablon 1994: 2379–81). 6. The length of the school day depends on age: starting at 8.30, and interrupted by a two-hour lunch break around noon, lessons end in the afternoon in between 4.00 and 6.00. Pupils are offered the option of school meals. 7. This corresponds with the cherished impetus to create the citizen anew as a republican that has existed since the French Revolution. Although cultural and regional particularities are a historical and social fact, the normative political idea is to take them into account only so as to overcome them. The French Revolution can thus be seen as a starting point with regard to the creation of a nouveau peuple (Bauman 1992). 8. The positive side of the classification is the high standard of facilities, but the negative side is its stigmatisation: whenever a school is classified ZEP, middle-class parents tend to put their children into other schools, and if necessary move out of the housing area! The Jospin government has been trying therefore to revise the ZEP policy to make it more efficient and prevent the flight from such schools (Peignard and van Zanten 1998). 9. All these classifications, like zone sensible and zone d’éducation prioritaire, strictly concentrate on social and economic problems like unemployment and poor housing conditions. The presence of high rates of people of foreign origin in such areas is never referred to, but in fact it is well known that ZEP-schools regularly have high rates of pupils from immigrant families. 10. The fact that the head supervisors are at present called conseillers principal d’éducation indicates a transformation in their occupation over the last decades. Formerly, they were called surveillants général, meaning ‘head supervisor ’, because they were and are heads of the supervising staff. Discipline has since been redefined as more a question of pedagogical assistance (suivi pédagogique) and of education in a wider sense. 11. Where the concept of distributional justice associates, if not identifies, liberty with equality, it is by definition unlikely that the rules are amenable to adaptation for particular individual cases. This seems to be characteristic of French civil culture (see Schiffauer 1993). 12. Whereas in Paris oral participation plays a subsidiary role and hardly enters the marking process, in the school in Berlin it is valued at between 30 and 40 percent of marks, depending on the subjects. 13. A major difference in the provision of child-care institutions was due to the different political systems: while the GDR governments tried to maximise educational control and at the same time increase female employment, the emphasis in West Germany was and still is to a greater extent on pluralism and parental responsibility (Lehmann 1994). 14. The parental right enjoys fundamental status in the constitution (Grundgesetz Art. 6 (2)). Parents’ objections, for example against certain learning contents, are therefore treated as constitutional conflicts to be solved by the competent courts, for compulsory school education under state-control is a constitutional principle too.

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15. The dilemma of reconciling the claims of state and home has accompanied the erection of a state school system in Germany from the beginning. Friedrich Fröbel had a dispute with Johann Gottlieb Fichte on the matter in the early nineteenth century which reminds one of the French versus the German model of today. Against Fichte’s idealism concerning the state’s responsibility for education, which might be compared to the French approach, Fröbel emphasised the role of families and connected his argument to a strong rejection of education as ‘a tool of the state’ (Norman 1997: 68 ff.). Strong state-control of education is nowadays interpreted in the context of totalitarianism and frowned upon as reminder of the Third Reich and the GDR. The institutions are supposed to need citizens’ participation to prevent ‘inadequate claims to power and the degradation of humankind through the institutions of society’ (Die Berliner Schule A I, 6). 16. On the level of learning contents, a similar principle can be observed: no centralised catalogue of pedagogical aims is provided for as is the case in France. The formulation of educational tasks reflects the structure of federalism: they are matters for the federal German states. Some co-ordination is considered necessary, so that a Standing Conference of Ministers for Education (Kultusministerkonferenz) decides about common standards which are to establish a functional basis for co-operation. Below this ceiling of mutual recognition – and under the binding liberal-democratic order – each German state formulates its own principles and learning objectives, and issues its own school statutes (Schulgesetz). Thus the idea of taking particular interests of integrated communities into account is a crucial element in the construction of the German educational system, a decentralised feature that is quite different from the centralised French organization: territorial heterogeneity, which was abolished in France in the aftermath of the Revolution, survived in Germany to a large extent (Max-Planck-Institut 1990: 50 ff), and even increased in importance after the Second World War in the FRG, where the federal system itself was instituted as an attempt to prevent a return to totalitarianism. 17. Apart from the two sub-directors, there were two tutors for each class, a dean and a ‘confidential counsellor’ in Tinbergen. The dean is to co-ordinate educational programmes for pupils in co-operation with the tutor, who is supposed to know the pupil best. The confidential counsellor is in charge of pupils’ extra-curricular problems, such as matters that concern home. In this respect, her role resembles the French CPE, but pupils were just as likely to contact a teacher concerning these sorts of problem in Nikolaas Tinbergen School. 18. There were several exhibition cases at Huxley School. Along the corridors, the walls were covered with topical subjects, posters made by pupils, pieces of art or wall paintings, sports diplomas, etcetera, and information about how things were handled at the school. Included among the latter, pupils were informed of the credit point system through which they might obtain an award from the school, being a printed certificate awarded by the head teacher in front of the year group for punctuality, 100 percent attendance during term, always being equipped as required (with certain things like pens, sharpeners, rulers and the like which are subject to spotchecking by teachers), intellectual achievements or ‘citizenship’. Another display case showed photographs of pupils who had thus been rewarded, together with paintings about the ‘don’ts’ of the school: no smoking, no trainers, no colours in one’s dress other than those of the school uniform, no drugs. 19. The school council is a legal requirement in Britain. Pupils represent their year and are elected by the classes. The other members are the head teacher, a governor of the local school committee and, optionally, further teachers. The council meets regularly to discuss current problems, activities, complaints or requests. 20. See Enders-Dragässer (1991a, 1991b), Trömel-Plötz (1991), who speak of the ‘second school shift’ in the afternoons. A more analytical approach to the reliance on functioning private care is contained in Karin Norman’s ethnography of children’s education in a German village (1997: 145–79).

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21. Opposition to these implicit expectations is consequently also articulated with the impetus of the civil rights movement to shape political awareness: the feminist objection against the German school system argues that the dominant division of labour and power is effectively reproduced by the taken-for-granted intrusion into the private sphere and the related conditioning of mothers (for example, Enders-Dragässer 1991b: 70–2). 22. There may be doubts in other respects whether it still is legitimate to speak of social difference in terms of classes, but in the field of educational reproduction, the stability of social inequalities has repeatedly been confirmed so that the hypothesis of an erosion of classes cannot be substantiated in this context. This is shown, for example, in Blossfeld and Shavit 1992. 23. Not only does the rather traditional concept of marriage, in which women’s central task is to be at home and take care of the children, remain unquestioned in these upper-class families, but this life-style is also seen as an indicator for ‘disciplined conduct’ in their own circles (Böhnisch 1999: 116). 24. The outcomes of the two systems differ accordingly with respect to the levelling or reproduction of social differences. Concerning measurable school success, the International Encyclopedia of Education remarks that in Germany, ‘the allocation process is markedly dependent on the influence of social background’ (Lehmann 1994: 2472), whereas in the French system of education, ‘the social gap is decreasing’ (Monchablon 1994: 2380). 25. Statistics show that immigrants’ children are affected by school failure to an extraordinarily high degree in Germany. This suggests that the system entails a particularly negative impact for newcomers. When foreign pupils fail in school, they are often thought of as struggling with ‘culture conflicts’ (Auernheimer 1988; Dietrich 1997: 25) which comes to serve as evidence for the defence. Pupils of other nationalities and mother tongues other than German are also very much over-represented in schools for the educationally handicapped because they do not ‘function’ in regular German schools (Dietrich 1997: 9, 18 f.; Kornmann and Klingele 1996; Uçar 1996). 26. Issuing such explicit home-school agreements for parents to sign was not just a policy of this particular school. According to Huxley’s head teacher, schools all over Britain were obliged to hand them out in the course of the year to prevent children’s failing at school through lack of parental awareness. 27. In her next lesson, the teacher did not check whether he had written these lines or not, and since there was usually inconsistency here as well, pupils mostly only carried out such punishments if a teacher returned to the matter again and again. 28. This concept gained significance in the case of a boy from a Turkish immigrant family who, being still a minor, was expelled from Bavaria to Turkey in 1998 because of his considerable criminal record. The Bavarian authorities were then considering throwing the parents out too because they had obviously neglected their parental duties! The boy was allowed to return to Germany in 2001, and his expulsion was retrospectively declared illegal by an administrative court in the meantime. 29. Quite often this was phrased as an ‘explosive mixture’ (brisante Mischung), and it was also suggested that, with their problematic family backgrounds of alcoholism, divorce, unemployment and so forth, German pupils were ‘already’ in need of so much attention that foreigners appeared as an additional hardship. In one teacher’s words, ‘the high number of foreigners in our school is a problem because our German pupils come from very disadvantaged circumstances, and one can only just take care of their problems’. Another teacher expressed this as follows: ‘The mixture is explosive: too many German kids come from problem families and they require a lot of attention’. Both apparently shared the assumption that children from German families were entitled to get their teachers’ attention first.

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30. Although pupils of foreign origin were numerous at Lise Meitner School, hardly any foreign parents participated in forums as representatives of parents’ interests. As far as support for their children is concerned, a pedagogical inquiry in Berlin in 1991 revealed that among Turkish pupils, 58 percent of boys and 53 percent of girls received no assistance with homework at all, compared to only 26 percent of German boys and 22 percent of German girls who were completely unsupported. Also, the type of assistance (whether mother, father, siblings or professional help) tended to be better in the case of German children (Kroon et al. 1993: 124). 31. They offered some working groups or discussion circles and gave pupils the opportunity to stay indoors and play games or do their homework when lessons were cancelled. Four rooms which were reserved for these purposes existed at Lise Meitner School, two social workers being on duty for each room. 32. The outward situation of the demolished school building and the provisional use of lightweight huts has, quite understandably, also contributed to a lowering of staff motivations. The high age of personnel (as in most Berlin schools, due to a freeze on new employment for a couple of years) did nothing to improve the situation either. 33. Teachers’ absences were also considerable, which certainly did not contribute to inculcating a sense of education as something precious among pupils: if lessons were simply cancelled regularly because of teachers’ absences, without any substitute being provided, why should pupils consider them to be important? 34. At the end of primary education, pupils receive a recommendation from their primary school teachers regarding the type of secondary school they should go to in the tripartite system, OH meaning recommended for attending a Hauptschule, OR meaning recommended for Realschule and OG meaning recommended for Gymnasium. Any recommendation has to be accepted at a Gesamtschule like the Lise Meitner School because this integrative type of comprehensive school offers all the relevant final examinations. Primary school teachers give recommendations, but it is pupils’ parents who decide what type of secondary school they actually want their children to attend. They opt for a type, but cannot choose a particular school, because some schools have so many applications that some pupils must be sent to other schools of the same type. The school commission mentioned above can, however, only produce preferences and requests. It is the local School Authority (Bezirksschulamt) that finally decides the distribution of pupils in Berlin, the main criteria being: first, the time that a pupil’s trip to school would take using public transport; second, parents’ personal priorities; and third, the ideal of having balanced numbers of OH, OR and OG recommendations at any Gesamtschule. The ideal for such a comprehensive school is that one third of each level is represented in a grade. The tendency for the more talented pupils to be sent to a Gymnasium or Realschule rather than to a Gesamtschule puts a brake on this ambition, and in all of Berlin there was only one such comprehensive school where the ideal representation was a reality. Lise Meitner School had one of the worse pupil groups in this respect: in 1997 there were 123 registrations of pupils with OH, 72 with OR and only one with the OG recommendation. The aim of having a mixture of all achievement levels failed. 35. This inconsistency in imposing sanctions was a further source of irritation. Ferhat, for example, confronted his tutor with it: his class-mate Deniz would be absent for weeks without facing any consequences, but he would promptly receive a disciplinary procedure after just some minor cases of being late. He himself did not understand why he was brought before the committee. When a school-friend asked him the reason before he left for the sitting, he could not mention anything but became angry. 36. Structurally, the procedure is quite similar to the style of lesson dialogues; see Chapter 8. 37. Pupils who were given such an obligation and failed to offer evidence of their interest in improving were confronted with the prospect of relegation. This was more or less the same in

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all four schools. In order of severity, possible steps in Meitner were to exclude pupils from their social group by putting them into different classes, to expel them from school for a certain period, to send them to another school, or, as ultimate punishment after a series of unsuccessful disciplinary proceedings, to throw them out of all schools in the State of Berlin. 38. He did not accept letters from parents as an excuse for being absent. Pupils had to provide a medical certificate. After three unjustified absences the parents were called in. If the situation still did not improve, the local authorities were informed, who might punish the family concerned by, for example, reducing benefits. 39. The surveillants sometimes helped pupils cope with their tasks and talked to them about the problems that had lead to their detention. The colles are also opportunities for supervisory staff to elaborate on their role in representing the approachable side of the school. 40. His teacher would have accepted a medical certificate to grant release. Also, she had proposed that he might join in the training and stop when feeling tired, but he refused completely and started mobilising other pupils instead. 41. This is the main division in French secondary schools. The professional section prepares for diplomas called brevets professionnels (BEP). These exams are passed after Grade 11. One might afterwards continue on to the baccalauréat professionnel, but that is still of lesser value than the baccalauréat obtained in the general section. 42. Things are different in secondary schools of the classical tripartite system with separate schools for the lowest general exam (Hauptschule), an advanced school level exam (Realschule) and the Gymnasium for the highest school exam that governs access to university. Options to repeat grades, for instance, are limited in the two types of school above the lowest general level, and bad results lead to transfers to the next lower school type. Since ‘integrated’ comprehensive schools like Lise Meitner School combine all three branches, pupils might be transferred to courses at lower achievement levels but cannot be delegated to any separate section. There are also ‘additive’ comprehensive schools in Germany, which have separate sections, like the lycée polyvalent type of school in Paris. 43. Extensive discussion of these functions in the framework of the meritocratic European nation state as compared with the reproductive concepts of education in pre-national corporative states has been carried out by Wenning 1996: 22–39; 93–6. 44. For a quantitative analysis, see Wenning 1996: 34–9. The programmes’ official goal is for 80 percent of an age group to have the qualification of baccalauréat in France (Monchablon 1994: 2379). The common term does however comprise a variety of exams, such as the general baccalauréat, the professional or the technical baccalauréat which correspond to exams below German Abitur, such as Fachhochschulreife. 45. The fact that former Nazis were able to continue their careers undisturbed after 1945, provided they behaved themselves under the new system, in other words kept to the external rules, stimulated a demand to profoundly rethink the conception of democracy and end such hypocrisy. The resulting emphasis on processes within the individual has contributed to the deep ambivalence, if not explicit suspicion, of all external order that we described as a characteristic feature of the, nowadays dominant, political discourse in Germany. 46. This phenomenon is known among experts as typical of Berlin (Berliner Verhältnisse): compared with other German states, in Berlin fewer pupils qualify for the higher school-achievement levels and a larger number for only the lowest level. 47. It is therefore exactly from this angle that the school system is criticised: the objection centres on the failure of its civilizatory attempts and objectification is declared ineffective as long as the school system still functions to reproduce a hierarchy by selecting and classifying pupils (Bourdieu 1987b; Bourdieu and Boltanski 1981).

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„ 8„ Argumentative Strategies Thijl Sunier

Discursive practices, strategies of discussion and argument, and the negotiation of interests can be considered the crucial fields in which civil culture is performed. Modes of arguing, even in situations where opposing opinions are at stake, should take place within certain boundaries of the discursive community and follow a set of discursive tools, methods, and conventions. Apparently neutral and universal principles like ‘reasonable (arguments)’, ‘fair (discussions)’ and ‘plausible (explanations)’ take on very specific qualities and meanings in different civil cultures. These conventions have to be learnt, and the very process of civil enculturation among migrants is clearly shown when we consider not merely what they say, but how they argue for or against certain positions contested in social negotiations. This chapter will analyse the basis on which discussions and negotiations in and around the classroom proceed and how Turkish pupils deal with the required conventions and act within this context. To what extent has a process of discursive assimilation and discursive integration taken place among Turkish pupils? When analysing processes of discussion within the classroom, the focus will be on the situation at the Lise Meitner School in Berlin and the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam. In both cases, discussion held a prominent place in the curriculum and was even part of final examinations. Discussion in class takes place on a frequent basis and was considered an important skill that pupils should master. At the Huxley Comprehensive School in London and the Lycée Fernand Braudel in Paris discussions rarely seem to take place, for a number of technical and other reasons. Later on, however, Huxley School will also be included when cases of negotiation concerning discrimination and differential treatment are illustrated. 210

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Discussion as a Pedagogical Aim Although discussion and the exchange of opinions did constitute an important part of the curriculum in the Berlin and Rotterdam schools, there were important differences between the two cases with respect to underlying pedagogical aims and the ideal course that a discussion should take. One remarkable distinction between the arrangement of discussions at the Tinbergen and Meitner schools was that in the latter case most discussion sessions were in fact more like instructive conversations (Unterrichtsgespräche). By discussing and arguing, pupils must learn to develop personal judgements on the basis of relevant (curricular) knowledge in order to understand the limits of their own points of view in a process of self-reflection. This key concept in the German (Berlin) project implies that, despite all the different opinions that exist, it is necessary to come to an agreement over co-operation that is respected by every individual. The route by which these skills have to be accomplished are stipulated in a very detailed way and are specified according to subjects and to the levels of learning in different categories. The result of this process should be the ability to make an assessment (Werten). Mastering the content is understood as being a prerequisite for being authorised to make personal comments and evaluations. This tallies well with the high esteem given to experts in German public debates (cf. Schiffauer 1993). It clearly shows the centrality of the role of the teacher as the ‘expert’. The relative status of individual opinions is made explicit by the teacher’s summary of what has to be kept in mind. Apart from differences in individual teaching styles and grade levels, a typical conclusion to a debate is that the teacher finally declares something to be ‘the result’ or the ‘true standpoint’ (Ergebnissicherung is the key-term among German pedagogues, which means something like ‘ascertainment of results’). The relevance of having internalised the idea of reaching a higher common platform as a point of reference for one’s own convictions is most important, particularly in the higher grades. Discussions here are designed as immediate preparations for academic education and future employment. In sharp contrast to the colloquial language that prevails in the lower grades, the upper level (Oberstufe) stresses the precise use of terms and arguments. The school’s allocating function becomes apparent here, for only those pupils who pass through the higher levels are candidates for possibly becoming future experts themselves. Pieces of work that are thoroughly prepared individually at home and afterwards presented to the rest of the class are accorded greater importance in the higher grades. In the Dutch pedagogical scheme, speaking and listening is given a very high priority among basic educational aims. Speaking skills, articulating, arguing and listening are considered important prerequisites of the Dutch curriculum. The school’s task here is to teach pupils to put forward an argument, defend it and discuss it with others, and to prepare them for a society in which oral skills are 211

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said to be becoming more and more important. This is considered valuable as contributing to the development of skills required in a society where hierarchical decision-making structures have increasingly been replaced by structures in which relatively autonomous individuals must function in structured social settings and interact with other individuals on an equal basis. One can no longer rely on authority alone, but must deal with matters individually or collectively. These skills have assumed greater priority since a major new educational reform programme, called the Second Phase (Tweede Fase), was fully implemented in August 1999 in all secondary schools in the Netherlands. Central to this major reform programme is the idea of ‘self-motivation’ (in Dutch zelfwerkzaamheid). A strong emphasis (stronger than before) on arguing and debating (argumenteren en redeneren) is part and parcel of this new approach. Discussion is one of the crucial means by which independent working and self-motivation is endorsed. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School was, though not an exception, rather advanced in developing a Dutch curriculum in which conversation, argument, discussion and other oral skills were considered crucial elements. Discussion was even part of the final examinations. The school has made a particular effort in developing discussion skills. A considerable part of Dutch lessons is devoted to formal discussion. In one of the instruction sheets handed out at the school for pupils in discussion lessons, and on oral skills in general, it says: Not everything you learn at school seems to be directly useful in ‘real’ life. Life can still continue without linking verbs and Jacob van Maerlant [a famous thirteenthcentury Dutch poet]. But without speech, listening, discussing and arguing, life comes to a standstill, literally. So you have to talk a lot at school. You’ve being doing this already, and sometimes more than teachers would wish, but we are dealing here with organized speaking. (Instruction hand-out for Dutch discussion lessons, unpublished.)

The school thus considered discussion among pupils not only as an individual social skill, but also as means of endorsing participation in a social setting (be it society as a whole or a group of fellow pupils) and interaction between the members of a group. It is the process that counts, and skill at arguing is considered more important than knowledge per se. The rules that condition a proper discussion are considered so important that the topics for discussion must preferably be ‘topics close to daily experience’, so as to enable all pupils to take part in it. The aim of the discussion sessions is thus the interaction of everybody with everybody, all the time. Horizontally imposed control of the process is encouraged: serious participation is an obligation towards fellow pupils rather than towards the teacher. 212

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Discussion in Practice The crucial difference between the Meitner and Tinbergen schools with respect to the arrangement and aim of discussion in class lies in the way educational aims are accomplished. In order to show this, let us look more closely at some important aspects of the discussions that are held in these two schools and analyse the process that actually takes place. In both schools we are dealing not with spontaneous conversations between pupils, but with organised classroom discussions. Therefore the following points are relevant for the analysis: the arrangement of the discussions, the choice of topics and not least the role of the teacher. In the following comparison, we shall not hide from the reader the fact that the comparison of the two cases is complicated by the fact that whereas the Lise Meitner School is a quite negative example because of its relatively low educational achievements, the pupils of the grade 6 VWO and grade 5 HAVO at the Tinbergen School belong to the upper range of achievements. Reaching this level implies that the pupils in question have mastered many cognitive skills that make spontaneous discussion in class quite easy for them. Pupils at the MAVO level will probably never reach this degree of oral skills.

Lise Meitner School : The ‘Unterrichtsgespräch’ The first example is a lesson on the Nazi period where a more or less spontaneous discussion has developed on the meaning of certain historical facts. First the pupils have to draw a diagram of the development of election results in the Republic of Weimar up to November 1932 (showing the percentages as a graph). Then the diagram has to be compared to another one showing unemployment rates for the same period. Teacher: What is remarkable here? Oliver K. (a German pupil): When the rightists were in power, unemployment went down. Teacher: You cannot say that they were already in power at that time [autumn 1932]. Oliver: Why not? They were the strongest party! Teacher: And in this case one should not say “rightists”. When referring to the NSDAP one should speak of “right-wing radicals”. Oliver protests in a lowered voice: They were most powerful at that time, the rightists! That’s true isn’t it! 213

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The teacher does not react again but concludes that one can clearly see by comparing the graphs that radical parties were most successful in times of high unemployment.

The example shows the arrangement of a mode of discussion we often observed at the school, the so-called Unterrichtsgespräch. The teacher opens the conversation by making a statement, or in this case by pointing to a passage in a text. Then he or she asks the pupils to reflect on the statement. Then the teacher reacts by either correcting the pupil or expanding on the statement. What Oliver did in this case was to reflect on the statement but wrongly in the eyes of his teacher. Instead of a discussion about causes and consequences with the class, there was an interaction between the teacher and one pupil, in which the teacher ensured that the pupils pick up the message of the statement as well as the correct way to phrase it. By doing this the teacher prevented the pupils from making emotional or ungrounded judgements, particularly about such sensitive matters as the Nazi period. The example shows the central role of teachers in the discussion, as well as the primacy of content over the process, which, as we shall see, is apparent in many such cases, even where a classroom discussion is the initial aim. Apparently a pupil cannot simply argue any point of view. The next example shows this very clearly. During a German lesson in Grade 9 the teacher distributed a paper about Gypsies in Europe. The arrangement was to start by reading the text and asking the teacher informed questions. The text contained an explanation saying that the Gypsies were forced to steal in order to survive in former times because, as nomads, they could not earn their living like settled people, and on top of that they were hunted. The pupils were now supposed to be able to answer the question why Gypsies had to steal: Teacher: What is the situation today with prejudices against Gypsies: do they still exist? Christian: Less now because they live in houses. Claudia laughs: But they still steal. Ferhat (a Turkish boy): But everybody steals nowadays! Tanja: Yes. Teacher: Well, among Germans it was not that usual. And you think that meanwhile they have adopted stealing from the Gypsies? Tanja: No, everyone steals here. Ferhat: Not from the Gypsies. Claudia: Stealing is absolutely normal, everybody has stolen something already. Teacher: Well, I don’t believe that. I can’t imagine that, for example, everybody in this class has stolen something already. 214

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Mike: Nowadays everybody steals, because nobody has enough money anymore… Teacher: That is really serious. You regard stealing as something normal? I really don’t believe that!

Although there was more of a discussion among the pupils in this case, it is again the teacher who guided the way it proceeded. The message was that the stealing habits of Gypsies should be judged according to the circumstances they were facing at the time. Ferhat and other pupils, however, brought the argument to a more general level by stating that stealing is a widespread habit nowadays involving everybody. The teacher questioned this argument and tried to introduce another contextual argument in line with the central thesis of the discussion: Teacher: On the other hand I have just learned from you that stealing has become something completely normal. That depends, certainly. If only some small, unimportant items were stolen, something like a vase; that is really not as serious as taking a lot of money, for example, or something really valuable. Ferhat: If that is true, then why is theft punished much more than physical injury in Germany? Teacher: Is it really like that? I don’t know. Well, as a conclusion one could perhaps draw that you shouldn’t do any door-to-door trading, not only with Gypsies, but generally. And naturally you shouldn’t let any strangers into your house either.

Ferhat now brought forward another issue relating to the precarious position of Gypsies in present-day Germany in order to convince the others. The teacher was apparently not satisfied with this development and wanted to bring the discussion back to the initial thesis about the contextuality and relativism of stealing habits by proposing to continue with the next part: Teacher: Now we should proceed with our next study sheet. She distributes the paper and has it read aloud in turns. Already during the reading Mike is sneering at it: Oh yes, just stealing a few chickens and lifting something from old people’s homes. Apart from that they are supposed not to have done anything, right? After the reading has finished, Mike is asked to express his criticism. In a complacent tone he reads aloud the passage he disagrees with: Apart from smaller offences against property (like stolen chickens) and occasional frauds, their [ the Gypsies’] crime rate is considerably lower than the general average. Certainly, when they sell door-to-door, they try to talk their customers into buying their low-quality carpets as if they were high-quality floor coverings. Teacher: And you think that it is played down in the text? 215

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Mike: Absolutely! What the guy is asserting here! He is implying that it was nothing bad! To steal from old people at their homes is totally bad, isn’t it?

When we now examine the contributions of the pupils more closely on the issues being raised, there are some striking features. None of the participating pupils apparently agreed with the initial thesis, which is why the teacher tried to come back to it several times. When we look at how pupils tried to make their point, the first thing to notice is that only one pupil apparently had enough situational competence to argue effectively and according to the requirements. Mike, the German boy in the second example, is the only one who seem to have mastered the conventions. Although he too was opposing parts of the thesis, the way he argued shows that he knew very well how to play the game. Like Ferhat, he did not wait until the reading of the text was over but offered comments during the reading of it. In contrast to Ferhat, however, he did not express his opposition in a direct outburst such as, ‘That’s not true!’ but instead chose a more complacent and ironic tone. He too, like the others, admitted that ‘everybody steals nowadays’, but he subtly went along with the teacher’s emphasis on circumstantial factors, saying that, ‘Nobody has enough money any more’. In the second passage too he was apparently heard objecting by the teacher, who gave him a chance to explain his objections as soon as the reading was over. Using irony, he read the paragraphs that he could not agree with again and then gave his own view on them. Mike thus proved to be a competent debater, knowing how and when to argue. Bearing in mind the requirements and educational aims cited earlier, what can we conclude from these cases? The first thing is that it is the teacher who is in control of imparting knowledge. Therefore the role of the teacher is indispensable. There is vertical control of the discussion by an expert, and the conversation ideally goes from teacher to pupil and back again. It is in fact the ‘Socratic’ style of debate, the interplay of question and answer. The teacher is the expert who reminds and corrects the pupil who is trying to question the authorised information being presented. The teacher starts the discussion and concludes it, and the outcome seems to be clear from the outset. The discussions at Lise Meitner School must therefore ideally have a substantial outcome and are mainly content-oriented. They are designed to reach a (higher) common platform of knowledge. The process is therefore not irrelevant, but it would not be considered sufficient to learn how to discuss, irrespective of content. A pupil is not just expected to argue and defend an opinion against objections. Self-reflection is apparently the required style of discussion, and provided one does not offend the other participants one can say whatever one wishes. It is part of the battle or ‘concert’ of expressing opinions in public. But what is most rewarding are not discussion skills in a discursive meeting with other pupils as such, but discussion skills with one’s own self that are supposed to lead to a conscience-based statement, compatible with the common good. 216

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The goal is not that one should accept dissent but rather that one should learn to moderate one’s own position and appreciate other opinions. While the framework of educational regulations stresses that controversy belongs to democracy and that young citizens should learn to sustain tensions and arguments, to cope with other attitudes and to learn that society is a field of negotiation, teaching performances actually contain a lot of final instructions about what is right and what is wrong.1 These examples also show that the German arrangement is rather complicated and that it seems to contain an in-built inconsistency. As we saw, the pedagogical aim behind this form of education is to teach pupils to develop an individual, responsible and critical standpoint. As long as this goal is not reached and pupils are not yet able to distinguish between ‘right and wrong’, they must be guided by the expert, who determines the limits of both the content and the process. Content and process are thus intertwined, and an appropriate strategy is hard to grasp: it demands a very subtle situational competence, which is not easy to acquire, as can be observed in the lower grades. The discussions there are characterised by a decidedly nonchalant tone. Teachers try to re-formulate topical questions at a lower linguistic level, making them easier to understand and often simplifying them to an extraordinary degree. Discussions develop with mixed contributions and many personal comments. This makes the role of the teacher as expert even more important and consequently easily leads to a form of patronising.

Nikolaas Tinbergen School: Commitment to the Group Pedagogical aims may be in many ways identical at the Tinbergen and Meitner schools, but the ideal way to accomplish these aims differ considerably. In short it seems that the actual discussion process has a much more prominent place in the Dutch case. The following examples of more or less spontaneous discussions during social studies lessons in the fifth and sixth grades of VWO will show this. The pupils had to watch a documentary video about ritual slaughtering among Muslims in the Netherlands, which was shown at the beginning of the lesson. After some remarks about ritual slaughtering, the discussion switched to the position of women. In the documentary a converted Dutch female stated that in Islam women were the property of men: Dutch pupil 1: The woman said that she is the property of her husband – what nonsense. Nobody is anybody’s property. Dutch pupil 2: Yes, but that’s cultural difference, that’s the mentality of eastern people. 217

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Ays‚egül (with a headscarf): What nonsense this is! In American movies one can say, ‘You are mine’. You must not take such statements too literally. It’s a way of expressing your commitment to your husband. That is, after all, what is expected here too. Pupil 1: But the other woman said that she has to go to bed with her husband when he wants to. Ays‚egül: That’s really nonsense. Dutch pupil 3: I have a friend who says that women are nothing according to fundamentalists. Ays‚egül: That is a matter for those fundamentalists. It has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is much more normal than you think. Dutch pupil 4: But isn’t it true that women are obliged to sit at home and are not allowed to work? Ays‚egül: That’s really not true; women can work when they want. Teacher: Yes, fundamentalists, what about them? We see that we have to nuance our opinion about Islam. That is what Ays‚egül is trying to explain to us. Dutch pupil 5: Fundamentalists are stricter. They are like those black-stocking Christians. [a popular expression for small Reformed church communities in the centre of the Netherlands.] Teacher: Wouldn’t you say that since every Muslim takes his belief serious, every Muslim is a fundamentalist? Ufuk: That’s also not true. Fundamentalism has to do with politics, not with belief. Teacher: But what about headscarves. There are many Muslims, only some of whom wear headscarves. Ays‚egül: Exactly, there are as many differences among Muslims as there are here in the Netherlands.

The teacher only entered the discussion after some time by finding a bridge to a related topic so as to ensure that the discussion continued. He picked up the word ‘fundamentalist’ from one of the pupils and asked a question about it. A little later he used another tactic by posing a provocative question. Thus he ensured the discussion proceeded, because the pupils immediately reacted to this. In the other class the discussion took the same course, and again the Muslim pupils tried to put things in perspective: Teacher: As you can see, the position of women is an important aspect of Islam. Saadet (wearing a headscarf): Yes, that’s true, they are equal to men, there is nothing to be discussed.

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Dutch pupil 1: Yes, there is something to be discussed because you can see that they are not equal. Teacher: Doesn’t this have to do with the perspective from which you look at the position of women? Dutch pupil 2: In Islam, women and men are separated, they’re not allowed to speak to each other. Saadet: What am I doing to you now? Besides, in many other religions there’s separation between the sexes for a very logical reason. For Allah everybody is equal, but not the same mentally and physically. Nobody is the same – take a look around. By the way, we have unmixed gymnastics, football teams are unmixed and so on. What’s the difference? Moroccan pupil: Apart from that, the Koran is not black and white like that. It can be explained in different ways. Saadet: Men and women are not allowed to act outside the law, but that’s also true for men too. There are, for example, also dress rules for men, but they don’t obey them, that’s the problem. Spanish pupil: It also differs from country to country, the position of women. When a country is poor, the position of women is worse; you see that in southern Europe as well. Dutch pupil 3: What I don’t understand is why women have to be virgins when they marry and men not. Saadet: Again that’s not true. Here there is also equality among men and women, but it is the idea of a really big guy to have sex before marriage. But men have to be virgins too. Ug˘ ur: This has to do with culture. In rural areas in Turkey rules are different than in the cities, the same as here. Teacher: So we have to make a distinction between culture and religion. But is it virginity and the headscarf culture or Islam? Saadet: It’s both. You do it because you think it important. Firdevs: Yes, maybe I should wear a headscarf, but I don’t. It’s my own decision; there’s no pressure. Ug˘ ur: Islamic rules are not so very strange and they have significance; they are not just there to be obeyed. Spanish pupil: If everybody lived according to Islamic rules there would be no problems. Dutch pupil 2: Yes, excuse me, that is everybody’s own decision! Teacher: So in Islam there are also rekkelijken en preciezen [an expression difficult to translate but referring to strict and loose versions of reformed Christianity]. 219

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Saadet: That’s exactly what I have been trying to explain all the time. Teacher: When rules are equally applicable to men and women, then Islam is very fair in Western eyes. Ug˘ ur: Yes. Teacher: We can see that there are different opinions about this complex issue. We’re in a non-religious school, yet there are different beliefs. That’s what’s nice about this school as a matter of fact.

The teacher now apparently picked up a remark made by one pupil about the position of women and opened the discussion by making a statement. For the rest it was a discussion among the pupils. The teacher only interfered every now and then by making relativising or provocative statements or by posing questions to keep the discussion going. These interferences could be inclusive or relativising, as in the reference to the ‘black-stocking Christians’, provocative as in the question about ‘fundamentalists’, or just informative. The discussion ended inconclusively with the teacher’s statement that there are many different opinions on the topic. These examples show striking differences from the discussion process at Lise Meitner School in Berlin. The most striking differences are the role of the teacher, the different balance between process and content, the role of content itself, and the way in which the pupils ‘play the game’. The role of the teacher is basically different. Although determining the curriculum and setting the conditions of discussion, he or she is a moderator rather than an expert on content. The teacher does not play the central ‘Socratic’ role as in the Berlin case, but must instead ensure that a horizontal network of discussion is established between the pupils. Ideally pupils should react to one another. A teacher in a discussion lesson at Tinbergen must ensure that the discussion keeps going, and most of all that as many pupils participate as possible. Pupils must learn to be responsible towards each other, and this horizontally imposed control is not just a matter of expressing different views and opinions, learning tactics and even tricks to convince others, at the same time respecting others’ views, but also of shared responsibility for the outcome. Pupils must learn to criticise one another’s opinions and actions in the process fairly. One important aspect of this horizontally imposed control of the process is that in the formal discussions during the Dutch lessons, pupils had to give a mark to the pupil who introduced the topic. This marking is considered a very crucial part of the process. Pupils have to learn that judgement is not only intersubjective, but also that they have a responsibility towards other pupils. As such they must learn to break through the usual pupils’ solidarity against the teacher. There is also a different balance between process and content. While a discussion at Lise Meitner School aims to reach a certain consensus and a certain level of self-reflection about content, and the discussion is an instrument to 220

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achieve that, in the case of Nikolaas Tinbergen School it is the discussion process itself that is central. Content is in many cases an instrument for the discussion, the fuel that enables it to proceed. But this does not mean that content is unimportant. Naturally the very conclusion that a discussion gives rise to many different opinions can only be reached by talking about topics that matter. Although it is generally appreciated when pupils come to a final common agreement on opinions, this is not necessary. Content is relevant, but for different reasons. The very choice of topics during formal Dutch discussions can sometimes cause very personal and even emotional statements. The teacher then has to ensure that things do not get out of hand. Discussions must never cause serious cleavages between pupils, not so much for reasons of order, but because this would imply that pupils are either taking sides without arguing or withdrawing completely from the discussion, both of which will hamper it. Under ‘normal’ circumstances, however, what pupils express is secondary to how they argue. One’s responsibility is therefore towards the process rather than towards the content. Discussions must be restrained and nuanced in the sense that everybody must pay attention to other opinions, but at the same time everybody’s participation is sought at all times. Nobody can hide behind ignorance or expert statements, and everybody is expected to give his or her personal opinion. Discussions are, in this sense, very moral. Topics for discussion are expected to be within the limits of a moral framework. Pupils are implicitly expected to give their personal opinions without taking a provocative stand to stimulate discussion, and almost all the pupils (including the Turkish ones) agree to this principle and submit to it. In other words there is a moral obligation not to make fun of serious topics, even if you have a provocative opinion. It was remarkable to observe that almost all pupils had a very good sense as to the direction in which a discussion should go. Pupils who opt out of this principle (either Dutch boys with a unco-operative attitude or those who do not have any liking for the topic) during a session are criticised by the others. Thus what you do in such circumstances is either hold your tongue or submit to the moral and discursive standards that have been set.

Arguing about Cultural Difference So far we have concentrated on the conditions under which a proper discussion should take place. The examples show what the conditional limits are. A model German discussion apparently resolves itself along different lines than a Dutch one. In the German case, the complex balance between content and process is designed to reach a certain level of self-reflection. Mastering content as well as discursive skills should lead to the development of a personality suited to the existing ethical and democratic order. Once a person has mastered these discur221

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sive skills, he or she is able to come to responsible and rational judgements on different issues. In the Dutch case discussions are more process-oriented. Content is secondary to the process carried out in a social setting (be it society at large or a group of pupils in a classroom). Discussions teach pupils how to argue and defend any position, but never at any cost. The question remains, however, what results these different types of discussion lead to and what pupils actually do with these requirements and conditions. Conventions of speech and interaction and modes of arguing are to a certain extent principles that are internalised, but interaction is also a ‘game’. Modes of arguing are tools that can be used in deliberate negotiating processes. But even these negotiating tactics are bound by certain implicit and explicit rules and imply different discursive strategies. This difference can clearly be illustrated by classroom discussions related to identity and cultural issues.

Lise Meitner School: Coping with Competence At the Lise Meitner School the idea that ‘cultural differences’ between Germans and foreigners are of crucial importance in the shaping of relations was widespread among both pupils and teachers. Culturalisation and the drawing of cultural boundaries came up regularly in lessons, even when cultural difference was not the initial topic, as the following example shows. A text called ‘Problems of Periclean Democracy’ is distributed to the class and must be read first. All the parts and words that are unknown to the pupils must be marked and discussed afterwards. Among the unknown concepts are encapsulation and ostracism. The teacher’s explanation is that these terms belong to the practice of ostracism in ancient Athens. Ostracism, the teacher continues, was really significant. A ten-year ban, but without any claim to one’s city-state. It was also interesting how the decision was made in the people’s assembly. That was really something: Imagine being able to vote for something by simply pushing a button on our television – that would be interesting. A Turkish pupil, Ali, then asks: Were foreigners allowed to vote then? Teacher: Come on! Please! Ali: And suppose the Germans decided that all foreigners must leave? Teacher: In principle Parliament could decide that. Ali: And then we would have to leave, or what? (bewildered face.) Teacher: Well…there are courts and human rights and all those things, [and quickly leaving the issue]. What other concepts in the text were unclear? After some other questions the text is discussed with the class. 222

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Teacher: What does it say about citizens’ rights? Robert Demir reads that after the reforms of Pericles only those people who had parents who were citizens were citizens with full rights. Teacher: Exactly! Imagine such a situation here in our country. What would that imply? Daniel: That would not work here. Teacher: I beg your pardon? My parents are both Germans, so I am a proper German too. Ali: Are there any improper Germans then? Teacher: Of course, Ali, those who have a Turkish father, hey. Umut: That is a very nice joke again! Teacher: Pericles made a law that laid down that the children of a mixed couple from Athens and Metoks could no any longer consider themselves citizens. There was an Athenian girl who fell in love with a Metok boy, but who had second thoughts about having a child with a Metok father. Full citizenship for her child was important after all. Imagine such a situation with us. Then Robert Demir would have to go to the people’s assembly and the people would decide his status. Then he would go to bars and tell the people that he wanted to be a German. Those people would drink another beer and smoke another cigarette and then decide his fate. That is how one should imagine such decisions being made in the assemblies of ancient people.

Ali then asks about the situation regarding visas at the moment. Would his little brother still need a visa as long as his parents were Turkish citizens, even though he was born in Berlin? The teacher admits that he is not familiar with visa procedures and passes the question on to the researcher present in the class, whereupon all Turkish pupils enter the discussion. They all seem to be worried, but hardly informed, about the matter. They ask whether this implies that they will have to go to the immigration office again now, or whether their younger brothers and sisters will have to go back to their countries of origin. After the lesson, a Turkish girl asked the researcher whether she could check the validity of her residence permit. Such exchanges in which ‘foreigners’ are reminded by the teacher of their limited rights and their being different tended not only to create uncertainty among foreign pupils, but also seemed to legitimate a strategy of argumentation in which cultural boundaries were emphasised rather than relativised. Yet control of the discussion by the vertical expert and the sometimes patronizing style of the teacher makes it clear that only the teacher (and subsequently the Germans) are entitled to introduce ‘cultural difference’ as an argument and define ethnicity for others. The following case clearly shows that ‘foreigners’ themselves are not entitled to do this. A German literature class in Grade 12 had read Goethe’s Faust and 223

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was to discuss the ideas of moral behaviour that are expressed by Gretchen’s brother Valentin, who had called his sister a whore because of her relationship with Faust. The implicit task of the lesson was to discuss morality and ethics of individual responsibility, in this case concerning the right to have pre-marital sexual relations. In order to remind everyone of the Faust story again, a brief explanation is given of Faust’s motives. Then a passage from the theatre version of Faust in a modern adaptation is played on tape. Afterwards the same passage is read from the original text, in which Valentin accuses Gretchen of being a whore (‘First one, then many, and once you are taken by a dozen; it will soon be the whole town’.) The teacher asks about Valentin’s moral ideas and how they might be characterised. Batek says that these were the ideas of ‘the decent soldier’ when he died. Ümit speaks next: But that’s absolutely normal, when one is brought up like that, then one also has to accept that; at that time, I came from a region where that’s absolutely normal. But today it depends on one’s own ideas. Teacher: How do others perceive this? Should one accept this sort of normality? Vera: I don’t think that one should see it like that. For Gretchen it is..well she does not conceive of herself as being immoral. She must know that herself. Ümit: In Turkey, where I come from, it’s also like that. It’s normal that a woman should not have any sex before marriage. And I’m also sticking to that – that comes from Islam like that. Fatma: It’s also valid for men, but that’s always put to one side! Aslan: The men don’t live up to this, right Ümit? Teacher: In the Bible it’s basically the same, that pre- or extra-marital intercourse is tabooed and that it applies to both [men and women]. However, in Christianity too it has mainly been applied to women.

The case is significant because the initial topic of discussing individual responsibility seemed to shift in the discussion to the issue of double moral standards and Islamic values, thanks to Ümit’s intervention. But the way Ümit argues runs counter not only to what is considered a legitimate mode of arguing, but to the very idea that is contained in this part of the Faust epic. The most crucial part of the discussion is how Ümit refers to Islam. He defended Valentin’s view as normal: if one had been brought up like that in former times, or in places like Turkey, where he himself came from, such ideas would be normal and would have to be accepted them. In Turkey the idea was derived from Islam. By implicitly agreeing with Valentin’s motives, he claimed that pre-marital sexual abstinence ought to be accepted as a norm, because in Islam the same moral standards existed. He thus refuted the dominant German perspective that it has now become ‘normal’ to be sexually experienced before 224

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marriage and introduced another sort of ‘normality’. But in stating that such standards were ‘normal’ for religious reasons and therefore had to be accepted, he was not refuting another opinion, he was also arguing on the basis of an external ideology and not on the basis of the German project of individual conscience. If he had said that his personal view was not disturbed by Valentin’s concepts because he would also try and live modestly, have no sex before marriage and would expect the same of his bride, there might have been bewildered faces in the classroom, but not necessarily a counter-argument. Ümit was criticised not because he drew sharp dividing lines, but because he referred to a normative system, and not even a European one, instead of expressing his individual conviction. Referring to external normative standards is not a legitimate strategy of argument. The desirable strategy in discussion is individual ethics related to the common good. The teacher then threw in an argument and asked if anyone would really have to accept these rules of ‘normality’. In this particular discussion the teacher, again in the asymmetric role of the expert in charge, finally proposed an inclusivist perspective as common ground by referring to Christian morality, although none of the pupils had done so. The complicating factor in the German case is that the strong orientation towards content, in combination with the emphasis on expressing personal ethics, makes it very difficult for a pupil to find the right tone or the appropriate and accepted strategy of argumentation in a discussion. The example makes it clear how subtle and implicit these tactics are and reveals a certain built-in inconsistency. On the one hand, one has to know the state of affairs before becoming entitled to make personal judgements. On the other hand, any reference to some questionable ‘external authority’ such as ‘religion’, ‘culture’ or a mere reproduction of what is in the textbooks is considered to run counter to the wished-for self-reflective style of discussing and learning. This is not a successful strategy of discussion because it makes one an uncritical follower, a believer, not a critical thinker. This may be one reason why it is only in the higher grades that one meets pupils who have acquired the crucial competence that is needed in establishing a relationship between factual content and personal conscience.

Nikolaas Tinbergen School: Inclusivism and Relativity ‘Cultural difference’ was also the topic of a formal discussion in a Dutch lesson in a fifth HAVO class at Tinbergen.2 Cultural differences between the ‘West’ (westers) and the ‘non-West’ (niet-westers) were the subject of discussion, introduced by Güldane. The pupils, drawing on personal experiences, pitted dominant, stereotyped views drawn from the literature presented against situational views. Besides Güldane, there was Mahmut from a Turkish family, a Hindu girl and a Creole girl from Surinam. The other pupils were Dutch. Güldane began by saying, ‘I want to say something about the differences between Western and 225

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non-Western cultures and the problems mixed marriages sometimes face. This is a problem we are all familiar with.’ She then drew a scheme on the blackboard depicting the crucial differences. On the non-western side were dependence on the group, group atmosphere, the separation of men and women, and politeness. On the western side were individualism, personal success, equality of the sexes, and openness. Güldane continued: Culture is not innate, it is acquired from generation to generation. It manifests itself mainly in language and religion. People do consciously belong to a culture and are proud of it. Turkey, for example, is a non-Western country, whereas the Netherlands and the USA are Western. In non-Western cultures, people do not talk very much; they see how one lives. That is the way behaviour is expressed, as a way of living. Politeness and respect for elderly people is important, and the change in culture is considered problematic. In the West youth is celebrated. Young and beautiful. In non-Western cultures there is a big difference between men and women. Men are the bosses. It is virtually impossible for a woman from a non-Western culture to have a relationship with a Western man.

Güldane deliberately reproduced the typical dominant discourse in which cultures are depicted as reified, bounded entities and started the discussion with the following statement: Güldane: In mixed marriages there are more problems than in unmixed ones. What is the main problem in mixed marriages? Dutch pupil 1: Religion I guess. Dutch pupil 2: I don’t think that you can say that mixed marriages cause more problems. It’s too general. If they don’t believe, there’s already no problem about religion. Surinamese pupil: I think there are more problems in mixed marriages. I see it in my own family. Mahmut: It all makes no difference, if you ask me. Maybe when you don’t know about each other’s cultures, but in that case why should you get married? Dutch pupil 3: I also think the statement is too general. Individuals, that’s important. When there’s a mixed marriage and there are problems, then you think it’s cultural. I have a cousin who is married to a Mexican, and they do fine. Surinamese pupil: But your family is also involved, they have an opinion. Cultures can clash. Güldane: Yes, dependence on the group is important, you tend to listen to what your family thinks about it. But I also think that personality plays a role. My second statement is: ‘Non-western women adapt to a Western culture more quickly than men, because women are more submissive, more servile than men’. Dutch pupil 2: I don’t agree; again it’s too general and it also depends on the attitude of the man. 226

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Surinamese pupil: It depends how deep the culture is, what you feel about it. Hindu pupil: It’s society that makes women servile, not culture. Mahmut: This becomes less of a problem when secularism increases. Dutch pupil 4: I beg your pardon? Can you spell that word and then translate it? Mahmut: That means ontkerkelijking [same word in proper Dutch]. Surinamese pupil: All the people who live here are already a little bit adapted. When I go to Surinam, they say how Westernised I am, because I have taken over Western culture. That happens automatically. Güldane: You mean that when you live in a multicultural society, adaptation and change happen automatically? Surinamese pupil: Yes, very easily.

The discussion continued for a while in this fashion, with rather bold statements and relativising reactions. Then Güldane concluded the discussion: In all these examples it is clear that you think differently than what I have read in the literature.3 That’s funny. You have all apparently overcome cultural differences. Also non-Western cultures can change, and that is good. That is how it should be in a multicultural society.

About herself Güldane said, ‘I am Dutchified, I have defeated the cultural differences’. A significant aspect of this discussion was that bold statements (more or less provoked by Güldane) were relativised by Dutch as well as ‘foreign’ pupils by referring to individual characteristics or to familiar situations which contradicted the stereotyped statement. In the end Güldane was given a high mark and was praised by the teacher not only because of her stimulating and thought-provoking presentation, but also because of her relativising style of argument. Although the discussion was inconclusive and the initial statement diluted in the process of discussion – which would probably be considered unsatisfactory had it taken place at the Lise Meitner School – Güldane and the other participants were praised for reaching a consensus on that ‘We should be careful not to be too rigid in opposing cultures’. The example shows very well how a discussion can develop in an unpredictable direction, a development the teacher favours. The most intriguing aspect of this discussion was that the pupils by themselves completely neutralised the initial provocative statement of the proposer, Güldane, about sharp cultural boundaries. This is almost the reverse of the process we observed in the Berlin examples. Consensus was reached about the statement that all human beings are individuals. That is what they share. The pupils apparently internalised the message that cultural differences should be relativised in order to reach a sufficient level of communication. The most 227

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appropriate strategy in this respect is to argue inclusively. We already saw some clear examples of this strategy in the discussions mentioned previously in social studies lessons. The issue there was to what extent there was a fundamental difference in the position of Islamic women compared to ‘Western’ women. It is the task of the teacher to prevent provocative statements emerging from pupils in a discussion that emphasises rather than relativises cultural boundaries. In the next example, the teacher adopts a more active role in ensuring a implicit consensus is arrived at by looking for commonalities. This was a formal discussion during a Dutch lesson in Grade 5 HAVO class. The proposer was Okan, a Turkish boy. In the class were two Moroccan and two Turkish pupils. After an introduction about Islam in general, and especially the prohibition on pork, the discussion started as follows: Proposer: Do you think that pork should be prohibited in the Netherlands because it is an unclean animal? Dutch pupil 1: Huhhh?….are you mad. What’s unclean about it? Assim (Moroccan boy): Always in a pigsty, shit and bacteria. Dutch pupil 2: But that’s also the case with cows. Assim: Not as bad as pigs. When your room isn’t clean, what does your mother call it? A pigsty, not a cowshed! Biologists have proved through research that pork contains more germs. Dutch pupil 3 (to Okan): So your statement is that because Islam prohibits pork, it should be forbidden? Harun: No, not because Islam prohibits it, but because it has been proved to be unclean medically. It has been proved, for example, that you can get tapeworm when eating a roll with ‘tartar’ [raw minced meat, in fact beef, a popular snack]. Harun is referring to an article in the newspaper just a couple of days before. Assim: Pigs are dirty, so they are unclean, so pork should be forbidden. Teacher to Okan: Can you explain more about uncleanliness? Okan: Well it turns out that there is more cholesterol in pork. Assim: We [!] also forbid those dirty granules they make for chicken. They contain junk meat and shit. Dutch pupil 4: But you can’t just say that you would forbid everything that’s unhealthy. Teacher: No, I agree, there are more unhealthy things, like tobacco. Assim: And what do they do now, they ban smoking in buildings, at school, and they ban cigarette advertising. Why? Because it’s unhealthy. Okan: That’s exactly my point. 228

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During a short break the teacher explained to Okan that he, like the other Muslims, was being too hasty in trying to convince the others. He ought to allow more room for other opinions and listen to what others were saying: in other words, he should pay more attention to the progress of the discussion instead of pursuing his own argument so consistently. After the break, the discussion continued in the same way about the ban on drugs and alcohol. The Muslim boys again tried to convince the other pupils by presenting medical evidence of the unhealthiness of pork and also by comparing it to legal restrictions on alcohol in the Netherlands. The Dutch pupils mainly reacted by saying that this was one’s own responsibility. Only one of the Turkish boys, Harun, agreed with this view. He agreed with the reasonableness of Islamic rules, but considered personal responsibility and freedom to act to be important principles too. Then the discussion continued about the headscarf as a symbol of oppression, and the atmosphere became a little tense. The other Muslim boys then changed their strategy. Instead of trying to compare different standards and values, they drew a sharp boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’, Muslims and non-Muslims, stating that ‘Western’ styles of clothing provoked sexual harassment. Assim: You know that Dutch girl who was raped and murdered by those Turkish boys in Turkey, they… (This happened some years ago and caused severe reactions in the Netherlands, with a lot of attention in the media.) Dutch female pupil (reacting furiously): Do you mean to say that it was their fault? That’s unbelievable! Okan (concluding the discussion): We see that there are, after all, big differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. The class reacted to this conclusion by growling and grunting. The teacher afterwards assessed the discussion, referring especially to its style: Teacher: What happened here was that you [the Muslim boys] did not pay enough attention to the views of other pupils. You did not try to reconcile differences, and therefore two camps emerged. It was a typical discussion between two camps, and that does not work well.

Okan and the other ‘foreign’ pupils were criticised by the teacher for two reasons. First, the discussion became a discussion between ‘two camps’ (Muslims and non-Muslims). This should have been avoided because it emphasised cultural differences which, as the subject showed, were not very relevant. The second reason concerned the discussion process itself. Okan and the other (Muslim) discussants did not pay enough attention to the course of the discussion and tried to convince the others in a rather assertive way. It is simply not done to assume that your opinion is better than somebody else’s and that others have to accept that. Instead you should act as if the conclusion is open. Assim proved to be a witty debater who knew the tricks, but his style was not 229

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appreciated because he touched on a taboo subject by referring to the tragic incident in Turkey. It is not done to use any argument available. Again, the teacher is supposed to monitor things, although in this particular case it happened to be the pupils themselves who corrected Assim. When comparing this case with the Faust discussion at Lise Meitner School, we can observe some remarkable similarities and differences that reveal the different binding limits. Okan and the other Muslim pupils at Tinbergen, and Ümit at Meitner, basically used the same strategy of argumentation by referring to normative Islamic standards. Ümit referred to Islamic morals, and Okan and the others referred to the universal medical logic behind Islamic prescriptions. Ümit and Okan both drew a sharp boundary along religio-cultural lines and tried to emphasise the normality of these principles. They were both criticised by their teachers, but for basically different reasons. Ümit, instead of expressing a personal opinion, invoked external normative principles, which made him appear an uncritical thinker. The fact that Okan invoked Islamic principles was not a problem in itself. By doing so, however, he violated the principle that one should always look for commonalities rather than emphasise differences.

Arguing against Exclusion and Discrimination So far discussions analysed have had a more or less organized character and have taken place inside the classroom. Arguing and negotiation also take place, however, in a variety of situations outside the immediate teaching situation. So in all four schools we observed situations where migrant pupils either protested against perceived unequal treatment relating to their ethnic background, or else tried to have special provisions introduced that acknowledged their religious or cultural particularities. Yet the very definition of the issue and the way it was dealt with and developed over time differed considerably.

Lise Meitner School: Procedure and Paternalism At the Lise Meitner School we observed a couple of incidents that clearly show the specific procedure that should ideally be followed should any conflict take place and the way Turkish pupils dealt with this procedure. In order to understand these cases, it should be realised that conflicts should ideally be solved individually by going through official channels. This means appealing to hierarchically organized committees and experts in the matter. In school, to approach the trusted teacher who is elected by the pupils’ assembly every year is considered to be the most appropriate channel of negotiation: make up your mind, recollect your arguments and discuss them with the mediator in charge to check whether they can be regarded as legitimate. If so, then make use of the media230

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tor to solve the problem. In addition, you can consult the pupils’ representative council and engage them as advocates. A court hearing is conducted when teachers feel the need to solve a problem concerning a pupil: all teachers who have had dealings with the pupil join together, the headmaster or grade head-teacher presides over the hearing, the pupil’s parents are invited to attend, and the pupil is also present. The procedure is reminiscent of that in German civic culture and civil service called the Amtsweg, the ordered succession of steps from the lower echelons of the administration to the highest. The procedure can thus be regarded as a lesson in civic culture: one must weigh one’s viewpoints against one’s individual conscience in order to find out whether they are legitimate arguments. The following case nicely illustrates how a conflict is handled. The pattern was quite typical of several different cases we observed at Lise Meitner School. A Turkish girl in Grade 12 made an unsuccessful attempt to mobilise the pupils’ representative body and the trusted teacher for a case she started. When she was picked up at the school gate by her boyfriend, who was not a pupil at Lise Meitner School, they were yelled at by the school janitor: ‘Turkish girls attract too many guys from the outside, and that causes constant trouble!’ The girl, Pinar, at first approached the trusted teacher to ask him to criticise the janitor’s comment, because, as she said, many girls, both Turkish and German, met their boyfriends in front of the school. Turkish girls certainly do not cause any more trouble than the others. The ‘teacher of confidence’ was of a different opinion. Basically he agreed with the janitor’s view and in addition backed him up by asserting that he was ‘certainly no racist’. Pinar, who is an active member of the larger part of the pupils’ representative body, then tried to make use of this. She called for a general day of campaigning against racism at the school. The proposal was taken up by the chairpersons of the pupils’ representative body, both of them Germans. They suggested organizing a meeting with other representatives in Berlin to learn about their experiences of this matter at their school. However, the idea was not carried out. When it was asked a month later what they had planned to do, the idea was already being passed over in silence. The chairpersons of the representative bodies said that they had dropped the plan because ‘it would involve too much work’. Pinar stopped working in the organization after that. She had applied to the ideal channel of negotiation, but the teacher in charge did not consider her argument a legitimate one. As the pupils’ council did not support her either, the next step of confronting different arguments could not take place. None of the possible ‘advocates’ accepted the defence, and consequently the matter was dropped. The crucial point is that there was a difference in opinion as to how the case should proceed. Pinar blamed the janitor for only concentrating on Turkish girls and asked for equal treatment for the German girls. The trusted teacher, instead of looking into the actual accusations, neutralised the argument by stating that 231

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since the janitor was no racist, his remarks could not possibly represent discrimination. The perception of severe conflicts in these cases was related to the negative attitude towards foreigners (Ausländerfeindlichkeit). Pupils from minority groups often felt they were being treated unfairly when they were treated as ‘foreigners’, but they never really took issue with the problem. By comparison, German pupils adopted a far more assertive position when they felt the need to complain about something or wanted to discuss a conflict with a teacher. Among ‘the foreigners‘, it was the ‘courageous’ ones who took the initiative when they experienced discrimination, but the assessment of what was a legitimate argument justifying further steps apparently did not evoke so much sympathy for them. Moreover, the procedure with the trusted teacher and the council functioned as a form of institutionalised clientage. In order to be successful in such cases, one must have representatives on one’s side who have established positions at the school. The arguments put forward must be authorised and approved of, so to speak, by these key individuals. These prescribed channels in solving problems with school staff were indeed appropriately followed by competent pupils, irrespective of ethnic background, but in general there seemed to be more restraints and complications whenever minority pupils approached the committee. When the ‘experts’ considered a case not relevant, the pupils who had taken up the issue were effectively silenced. As a result, German pupils not only made use of the system more readily than Turkish pupils, but the latter tended to refrain from taking any steps at all. It seems as if they had ‘accepted’ the fact that they would not succeed anyway and resigned themselves to the inadequacies of a paternalistic system.

Huxley School: Playing the Ethnic Card The principal difference between solving these issues at the Huxley School in London and the complexities of the German procedure relates to the sequence of steps that are likely to be taken. Pinar, the Turkish girl at Lise Meitner School, tried to settle the issue by invoking the proper procedure and tried to mobilise the whole class. That was at least the legitimate step to take. Although it did not work, it would be inconceivable for her to try and mobilise only the Turkish pupils, thus giving the case a collective ethnic character. But this was exactly the option chosen by pupils at the Huxley School. We observed several incidents which clearly showed the great sensitivity at the school about labelling and stereotyping, particularly where ethnic differences were at stake. This was not just a matter among pupils alone, it was also the staff at the school who at the same time kept pupils aware all the time of the damaging effect of stereotypes. Even seemingly ‘ordinary remarks’ that were 232

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common among many pupils referring to ethnic background, like ‘Hey, Paki!’, were taken by some teachers very seriously and made a major issue of. The net effect was that, although situations of conflict were not dealt with in a structured way, as in the Berlin case, it was very common for pupils to make their argument by ‘ethnicising’ the issue and trying to mobilise their fellow (ethnic) pupils. The following rather serious incident clearly shows this. The beginning of fieldwork at Huxley School was marked by a violent incident. Levent, a Turkish pupil, was badly beaten up and injured by Jim, an English boy, who hit him on the head with a bottle, whereupon Levent’s elder brother seriously threatened Jim. Up to this stage the school administration was not involved in sorting out the conflict and probably not even aware of it. This changed, however, when the conflict escalated and began to involve more and more relatives and friends on both sides. The police were called to settle it and separate the parties. The next day Levent brought a large knife to school with him in case he should be attacked by Jim’s English group of friends and relatives, who had even threatened to kill him. Levent was, however, caught with the knife on the school premises. Consequently he was temporarily removed from the school and his exclusion announced in the weekly report published by the school. The incident caused a great deal of concern among Turkish pupils at the school. By the time the police arrived at the school, they had gathered at the front door to support their friends and to protest against the violence against Turkish pupils. When Levent was excluded his friends continued to exert pressure on the school administration for just and equal treatment. They demanded that the school administration exclude Jim too, since he had started the whole conflict. The Turkish pupils used an effective mechanism in order to achieve their demand for justice. The school administration tried to play the incident down and initially did not punish Jim except by excluding him from the school for a week. But this was not enough for many of the Turkish pupils. Under the leadership of Salih, a Turkish sixth-former, a commitee was set up to try and negotiate the issue with the heads of year. After some unsuccessful attempts, they decided to take further steps. Bypassing the heads of year, they sought to talk to the head and to deputy headteachers to argue that as long as Jim remained at the school, there would be a feeling of injustice among the Turkish pupils. Again they were unsuccesful. When they failed to obtain a ‘just’ solution, they decided to organize a collective action. The next step the committee took was to organize a sit-in protest in the staff corridor one morning. Almost fifty pupils occupied the corridor where senior teachers and the headteacher have their rooms. Turks, Kurds and Turkish Cypriots were present. The school administration had not expected such extreme action. The pupils could not be persuaded to disperse and go to their classrooms before being allowed to talk with the headteacher. When she appeared, 233

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Salih presented her with a list of demands and copies of letters to be sent to local newspapers, the education authority and the Secretary of State for Education. The committee not only demanded that Jim be expelled permanently from the school, they also wanted the removal of the two heads of year who had blocked their attempts by not acting as channels to the senior administration. When they were assured that their demands would be looked at, the Turkish pupils dispersed after half an hour of protest, which did not involve any violence or disrespectful behaviour. The reactions of the teachers on the issue, particularly regarding the ethnic aspects of the whole conflict, were mixed. Some played its significance down by pointing out the troubled behaviour of the English pupil, which was said to have nothing to do with ethnic violence – the boy is simply a problem. However, they agreed with the Turkish pupils’ demand that he should be expelled. Others held that the conflict certainly demonstrated that measures against minority pupils tend to be tougher. In general, however, in such serious cases there was a tendency for the school to play down the ethnic aspects of any conflict because that would provoke even more serious reactions. Yet, since it is the principal task of the school to take into account the sensitivity of ethnic relations in neighbourhoods such as that where the school is located, there is no clear consistency as to how these conflicts should be assessed. It is precisely this inconsistent policy that made the Turkish pupils feel ‘victimised’ and created a fertile atmosphere for ethnic mobilisation.

Nikolaas Tinbergen School: Playing it Low Key As a school, the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam was well-off in many respects. It had a low record of serious incidents. It had a relatively low percentage of migrant pupils, and ethnic problems seemed to be almost non-existent there. During the research it was hard to collect cases in which differential treatment was involved. Yet there were demands by Islamic pupils that made reference to ethnic particularities. The most viable strategy when one wanted to achieve something relating to ethnic or religious background was to phrase the issue in inclusive terms. The repas des condemnées, a tradition at Tinbergen, formed the background to one issue in which special rights were at stake. Just a couple of weeks before the central final examinations start, the teachers organize a dinner for the pupils who are in their ‘final hour’, hence the name. The pupils are asked to dress in their best suits, sit at the table and do everything that one should do when going out to dine. The teachers act as their servants. The dinner was attended by most of the Turkish pupils, like the meetings at the end of the year and the end of term. Although attendance was voluntary, everyone was expected to take part in the repas because it was considered part of school life. The repas in the year of 234

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our research took place in April. Not long before, the researcher had interviewed Ug˘ ur, a Turkish pupil in Grade 6 VWO. Ug˘ ur is a Muslim, and he was complaining about the fact that the fondue bourgignon that was to be served at the repas would be made of non-halal meat: I do not want them to organize anything separate for Muslims [my italics], but I thought it would take little effort to buy the meat from an Islamic butcher. The meat is no different from other meat, and the Muslims can sit side by side with other pupils and take part in the dinner. That is what they want, after all. Now we have to sit at the vegetarian table, because they do take vegetarians into account. Why not, then, Muslims? I put this to the organizers, but they said that it was too late now, they had already ordered the meat. They said, ‘Maybe next year.’ But I shall be gone by then.

Ug˘ ur knew precisely how to phrase his request in the appropriate context. Instead of asking for extra provisions for Muslims, he referred to the principle of equal participation for all pupils at the school and proposed a practical solution. And instead of consulting and mobilising Muslim pupils around his idea in order to get their support beforehand, he directly addressed those responsible. But despite this his request was rejected. This case was typical of many such situations at the school. Although Ug˘ ur phrased his argument precisely in the way it was expected at the school, that is, in a low-key and inclusive manner, suggesting not separate provision but rather a practical solution, he did not succeed. The reason for this might have been a practical one, that it was too late to change things and so on. At least none of the teachers who were asked about the case was absolutely against the idea. If the following year the idea were to come up again, but earlier, the Muslims might very well be able to arrange something that would enable them, too, to eat meat during the repas. But at the same time a critical undertone was evident in the reactions we collected among teachers to his demand: why make a fuss about it? There seemed to be a taboo placed on any reference to discrimination at the school, where it seemed to be a very sensitive issue. Anyone alluding to discriminatory behaviour would probably be silenced because this is regarded as a very serious accusation. It is not only the Dutch myth that the Netherlands is a tolerant country that is at stake here. What was essential was to avoid turning a single incident into a (collective) case. The most characteristic aspect of conflict-resolution at Tinbergen was the low-key approach to every potential source of conflict. There was also a tendency to involve as few people as possible in a conflict and to treat it as a single case. As in the Berlin case issues were settled individually, though there existed no official procedure for doing so. Although the Dutch member of the research team had access even to sensitive information, the school authorities were very reluctant to give any insight into potential sources of conflict. This is reasonable 235

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from the general point of view of privacy, but it also showed the policy of the school in treating conflicts as cases in themselves and not as being typical of a particular situation. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School tended to avoid any situation which set groups of pupils against one another, because that would easily give rise to conflicts. As the head of the school put it: Every year we receive lots of requests from interest groups. We had representatives here from a Muslim platform who were listing the extent to which schools organize extra provisions for Muslims, such as praying rooms and so on. Our basic policy is to refuse any such requests. If pupils themselves ask for a solution, say a day off during important celebrations, that can be arranged, not as a basic right but rather as an accommodation for our pupils… You know that we do not register ethnic background, nor religious background. We much prefer to stick to a policy of not separating pupils on the basis of these criteria. For us pupils are pupils, just human beings, each with his or her personal background, and we want them to feel comfortable and at ease at school.

Consequently lots of things could be organized provided it all remained low key and could be done in practice. Even more important, it must not be perceived as the recognition of a collective right to which a specific group or category of pupils is entitled. An example of this was shown in an earlier chapter, where in a corner of the library at Tinbergen there was a place where Muslims were able to pray. This provision was not announced officially or publicly, the place was just there, and those who wanted to make use of it could do so. Since this low-key approach was applied consistently and without exception, most pupils agreed with it. Havva (Grade 5 VWO) remarked: ‘If you want something separate for Turks or Muslims, then go elsewhere. The school is not the place to pursue special provisions. And besides, when I go to the head of the school and ask for something related to my background, they almost always agree to it’. ‘De-ethnicising’ sources of conflict and struggles over interests, as well as the strong equalising approach that the school had adopted, was appreciated in most cases. Pupils understood that the logic behind it was to de-escalate potential conflicts, but the other side of the coin was that in some instances it could lead to actual cases of unequal treatment through ethnic background being neglected. As one pupil of the Grade 5 HAVO said in confidence: ‘It sometimes looks as if it is not acknowledged that a considerable number of the pupils at this school have another culture. I want them to take my background seriously. We are not all the same’. The cases from the schools described here differ to a large extent from each other with respect to seriousness and impact. Yet they all referred to the same kind of mechanisms of ethnic labelling, discrimination, exclusion, and, not least, boundary negotiation. In all schools any issue that tended to develop into an ethnic conflict was, of course, played down as much as possible. None of the school staff wanted to provoke serious cleavages between pupils, but the strik236

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ing differences in these cases show how potential sources of conflict were perceived and how teachers and pupils dealt with them. These differences are directly related to essential aspects of specific civil culture, as we shall see in what follows.

Conclusions: Discussion, Negotiation and Civil Culture Discussion strategies, but also issues of differential treatment and exclusion, revolved around the same discursive conventions that were typical of each of the four schools in the project. The first part of this chapter dealt with strategies of argumentation as we observed them in the schools in Berlin and Rotterdam. The German and Dutch educational agendas seemed to require skills going beyond the imparting of pure knowledge. Emphasis was placed on the particular conditions under which the conveyance of knowledge took place. In that respect there were important differences that reflected a different trajectory into the central institutions of society. In the German approach content was at the heart of the process of discussion. Discussion should ideally lead to an appropriate level of rational and responsible judgement, necessary for the proper functioning in society. In this respect the German educational context referred to the tradition of isolated thinkers, not to conversational expressiveness. Liberty depends, and should depend, on internalising what is external and general. (‘Erst wenn das Allgemeine internalisiert ist, kann und darf man frei sein’: Schiffauer 1993: 195). Discussions were thus designed to teach pupils to be successful in discussion and to win an argument. The basic values of the democratic system (Freiheitlich-Demokratische Grundordnung) were to be respected as binding limits. Regarding the legitimacy of dissent, pupils must accept the authority of the objective experts as the individuals who are entitled to lay down the common platform as reasonable according to the West German concept of the ‘republic of experts’ (ibid.: 196). Consequently, processes of discussion must be under strong (vertically imposed) expert control. As long as pupils had not yet reached the required level of competence to judge things, control and responsibility must be separated. As regards issues of discrimination, exclusion and boundary negotiation, we saw a similar pattern. Discrimination and unequal treatment seemed to emerge regularly as issues at Lise Meitner School. The impermeable boundary between Ausländer and Deutsche that is typical of the German situation on the one hand apparently encouraged ethnicised argumentation, but on the other hand ruled out any reference to collective rights for communities other than the Germans. In the exclusivist German ‘nation of one ethnos’, a taboo was placed on ‘otherthan-German’ ethnic cards being played. In this respect, the system is paternalistic: the ethnic card is legitimate for Germans, but also it is them alone who 237

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are entitled to play the ethnic cards of others. As most immigrants and their children, whether born in Germany or not, remain ‘foreigners’, and as the status of foreigner does not ensure structural equality, it was not up to them to invoke the principle of equality. Rights could only be granted by the Germans. Thus it was not up to ‘foreigners’ to manipulate boundaries with reference to cultural hybridity or to demand particularist rights with reference to cultural difference. Only when introduced as a legitimate argument by the teacher could pupils also refer to it. Boundaries were then equally crystallised, but without any reference to an overarching denominator. The consequence was that ‘We Turks are always treated unequally’. In the Dutch case the emphasis was primarily on the relationship of the individual with other members of society and participation and functioning in an imagined social and moral community. It was expressivity that counted first, and the ideal was not a community of isolated thinkers but a community of mutually related individuals. The Dutch ideal was that pupils as a group should learn to develop a proper culture of discussion and to participate in an imagined moral community. Discussion skills were considered crucial tools in accomplishing these goals and thus pertained to the sphere of social relations. Generally speaking, an ideal discussion in a Dutch school should lead to a common opinion, although it does not necessarily do so and instead may lead to an appreciation of different opinions within a given group. The group process, consulting different opinions, was more important than the opinions themselves. This is reminiscent of the typical Dutch consultation model (the poldermodel). Control and responsibility must necessarily go together and can never be separated from one another. The emphasis on horizontal participation and inter-subjectivity required a tuning of opinions rather than the articulation of insurmountable differences. Thus the particular social competence required in the Dutch case was individual functioning and participation in a community and the responsibility that goes along with them. The horizontally imposed control of the process is a logical consequence of this approach and implies that the individual member of the group is not only subject to control but also exerts control at the same time. It thus became clear that the discussion sessions were reminiscent of a particular vision of society: democracy, meaning control over the common good, at the same time involves responsibility for the common good. A real democracy only functions when responsibility and control go together. One had to accept that others would point out one’s responsibilities and that one could not just claim one’s rights. Only in that way would one become a proper member of society. Consulting the opinions of others is valuable in itself, but it was also a means of attaining an adequate level of ‘inter-subjectivity’. The enormous emphasis given to intercultural communication in the Netherlands is a good example of this inter-subjectivity. Commitment is more important than results. 238

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These requirements are directly related to the key concepts of the Dutch project: ‘consensus’, ‘negotiation’ and ‘conflict-avoidance’. Discussion and argument were considered important prerequisites in coming to terms with others and reaching a consensus about the circumstances under which we live together. Statements like ‘We all have different opinions’; ‘Not everyone is the same’; ‘We have to respect and to learn about each other’s backgrounds’; as well as ‘It’s none of your damn business what I do, dress or believe’, at first sight express discord concerning norms, values and life-styles. Actually, however, they express consensus about the limits of the moral community that encompasses everybody, irrespective of background. It is a matter of agreeing to disagree with one another in certain cases. That is what one must learn at school. The same principle was applied with respect to the negotiation of boundaries. Since a taboo is placed on an articulation of this sort, a much-appreciated strategy was relativising. A consultation model does not function properly if every participant is defending his or her viewpoint to the very limit. Opting into the Dutch project means looking for commonalties rather than controversies. Opting into this consensual project hence involves a strategy of discussion that does not explicitly play down actual differences, but rather includes them in an overarching moral field. Opting out would then mean drawing sharp boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and stating implicitly or explicitly that there are different standards by which to judge things. There seemed to exist a subtle difference between asserting ethnic particularities and playing the ethnic card. The first was considered legitimate because it belongs to the individual variety present at the school or in society at large. In itself the demand for halal food was legitimate, but in so far as it implied exclusive treatment, it was taboo or at least frowned upon. The Dutch approach only favours the ethnic card if it is played in an inclusive way. A legitimate reproach often heard in the Netherlands is to accuse someone of being exclusive. The proverbial emphasis in Dutch civil culture on consensus, consultation and conflict-avoidance rules out, or at least relativises, potential sources of conflict. If consensus is to be reached by peaceable consultation, a taboo must be placed on any form of conscious sectionalism. One may emphasise one’s ethnic background as an important part of one’s identity, so long as this does not lead to a sort of self-exclusion, so ideally the ethnic card should not be played. People were encouraged to look for similarities to the dominant population rather than differences from it. Inclusivist strategies of argument were favoured above exclusivist ones. One was understood best if one was able to negotiate and construct one’s identity in such a way that it fitted into the overarching moral community. Thus the most viable option was one of blurring the boundaries and ideally shifting them. While this left room for boundary manipulation, the built-in inconsistency in the preferred way of arguing was that inclusive and relativising strategies avoided controversy, tensions and conflict, though they were hardly ever con239

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clusive. They did not encourage people to push arguments to their limits, because they might infringe upon the group process. The private sphere was completely depoliticised: it is none of your business how I behave and what my convictions are; that is my private matter. An unintended consequence, however, could be that minority pupils felt themselves caught in a ‘reverse identity trap’. Every attempt to allude to ethnic specificity was played down as not being relevant in the school context. The strategy of acting inclusively sometimes required skills that many minority pupils did not have at their disposal. In the British case, on the other hand, playing the ethnic card was a legitimate strategy for pupils and was acknowledged as such. The whole idea of Britain as a nation of communities had an impact at the level of the school, where lessons about cultural difference, racism and racial equality belonged to the regular curriculum. Pupils were explicitly encouraged to emphasise their own ethnic background. They were entitled to demand fair and equal treatment as members of an ethnic community. In cases where the principle of ethnic equality was violated, one could invoke colonial history and even cultural imperialism as shameful failures of the British past. In cases of conflict, however, certainly those of the type described above, there was also an issue of order involved. The school staff must then navigate between de-escalating the conflict and treating pupils fairly and equally. When there was a difference in opinion about the ethnic connotations of the conflict, and minority pupils felt that ‘racism’ was involved, the path was opened to ethnic mobilisation and arguments like, ‘We are a community and we want to be treated equally’. When, finally, we recall the French case of the headscarf as described in Chapter 5, we can conclude that any reference to ethnic particularities and differential treatment was ruled out completely. The ethnic card was taboo and ruled out as a deviation from the French republican project. As we saw, legitimate arguments referred to the denial of universalism or republicanism and the production of social exclusion. In ‘ordinary’ arguments, such as the scheduling of lessons or a quarrel between two pupils, things were settled by teachers or the subdirector, but when certain republican principles were involved conflicts tended to be defined more in collective terms. In such cases, and in accordance with the dominant discourse, ethnic arguments and strategies were pitted against republican ones, but the outcome was clear from the outset. Since the headscarf issue was, as we saw, so sensitive, no compromise was possible and the school would win the argument anyway. It was clear to those pupils who had tried to refer to the headscarf as an important ethnic and religious attribute that they saw no other possibility than to give in. 240

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Notes 1. Recently, more and more critical voices have been heard from trade and industry representatives in Germany, who complain that the educational system with its asymmetrical roles is rooted in old-fashioned concepts and does not teach the skills needed by companies nowadays, like creativity, flexibility, co-operation, team skills, mobility and curiosity (see Struck 1995: 86 f.). It is basically taken for granted that school is meant to prepare people for the job market, but nowadays social skills are increasing in importance on that market. 2. It should be mentioned here that the following examples are formal discussions during Dutch lessons, an important part of the curriculum. In order to assess the discussion procedures to be analysed here, I shall, for the sake of the reader, briefly explain the conditions under which these discussions are conducted. Formal discussion is important and time-consuming, as it requires weeks or months of preparation. In the HAVO and VWO examinations it accounts for part of the final examination grades. Participation in the discussion is essential, as it influences the marks one obtains. This implies that pupils are obliged to participate. The emphasis in the arrangement and organization of these discussions is on the formal structure rather than on content. The pupil involved is asked to give a short (ten minutes) introduction to a topic he or she has chosen. The topic can be anything, but not, for example, ‘hunger in the world’, ‘poverty’ or any other subject which is too far removed from everyday experience. If pupils are better able to discuss something that directly relates to their personal experiences, then the choice is clear. The proposer should prepare his or her introduction in such a way that it stimulates the discussion. It must contain an argument or a statement that can be discussed. It must be a topic that may be controversial but not too technical. This means that other participants in the discussion cannot easily use the excuse that they do not have any opinions about the matter. Some of the subjects chosen most often during the research period were: ‘plastic surgery’, ‘anorexia’, ‘sex and friendship’, ‘violence in the streets and at the disco’, ‘cultural difference’, ‘IVF’, ‘the Eleven Cities Ice-skating Marathon’, ‘sporting facilities for young people’ and ‘the development of zoos’. One of the pupils is asked to monitor the process, take notes and in the end comment on the discussion. The mark the proposer receives is the average of the observer ’s mark, the teacher ’s mark and the average mark of the class. Using such strict requirements with respect to the level of knowledge presented and the assessment procedure, maximum equality between participants is obtained and optimum participation assured. 3. She referred here to the numerous articles on intercultural communication and other cultural matters.

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„ 9„ Pupils’ Negotiations of Cultural Difference: Identity Management and Discursive Assimilation Sabine Mannitz

The analysis of dominant concepts and taxonomies of cultural difference at the four schools has shown that each nation state in our sample establishes a particular discursive field which is crucial for enculturation. The nationally specific imaginaries shape effective schemes of classification which govern meanings of culture and imply conditions of integration for those who represent cultural otherness. This marks out the relative place of particular cultural affiliations and defines legitimate spaces of identification in the framework of the nation states, for identification is the central link between the imagined national communion and individuals’ emotions of belonging or loyalty towards it. The problem with identificatory options in this context is that citizenship and nationality form a tension-filled package: formal citizenship constructs the equality of individuals before the law, whereas nationality is closely interwoven with notions of a moral and cultural community. Not only are the two multilayered, they are also connected: although citizenship in its formal sense includes all the rights and obligations that go along with ‘full membership’ in a state, criteria regarding such membership might still refer to the particularly coloured concept of the nation. Since the French Revolution, liberal democracies have mostly subscribed to the voluntarist understanding that efforts of political will shape the common basis, and that demos needs to be differentiated from ethnos. The pre-political concept of an ethnically codified nation has nonetheless survived along with it, thanks to their common roots. Both antagonistic traditions have become visible as unresolved tensions in the inclusion-oriented representations of the nation states’ dominant cultures, and likewise in the excluding constructions of otherness. Apart from all formal questions of belong242

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ing to a state, the degree to which ethnos and demos colour the nation differs in the four countries, directly affecting the status of ethnic minorities, in their options for participation, legitimate representation and identification. The ideal that all nation state ideology tries to transmit is that belonging to the nation state involves a collective identity. But the fact that the latter does not, in all cases, recognize additional identifications as legitimate can involve problems for those who insist on particular hard-edged identities. In Paris as well as in Berlin, the children of immigrants face a situation where acceptance of cultural and ethnic plurality is simply not provided for in the construction of the two nations, while their peers in London and Rotterdam are confronted with the dominant discourses of two self-confessed multicultural societies. Adolescents’ identity discourses definitely need to be seen as embedded in the objectification processes of collective as well as self-representations, but the dominant taxonomies are not necessarily reproduced on their vernacular level. Although standards of argumentation for self-placement are established within hegemonic power relations, they may well become a topic of negotiation. The question is how pupils from ethnic minorities act in this discursive field: do they take over the dominant suggestions as to how they should preferably deal with their particular background and develop an identity in relation to the national collectivity, or do they mobilise own counter-discourses? For reasons of space, this issue cannot be treated fully here. Therefore, I will again concentrate—as we did before with respect to the dominant constructions of otherness—on one thread of the discursive pattern, namely the concept of cultural difference and related constructions of group boundaries. In all four settings, we found indeed that minority pupils polarised home and school as representing a difference in ‘culture’. The logic of this issue will be portrayed and explained in the first case, the study from Berlin. Although this general opposition between ‘home culture’ and ‘school culture’ is not specific to the German discourses but holds true for the other three research sites as well, pupils’ tones when articulating this idea, and their styles of arguing and evaluating it, were remarkably different. Thus, the crucial question to consider is how the young people themselves phrase and assess this assumption. What group boundaries do they delineate among their peers, and how do their own categories, as expressions of identity, refer to the context of classification in their country of residence? Do they accept the expected role allocations, or are strategies developed to claim something else? How do they ultimately perceive the value and meanings of their cultural otherness in respect of recognition, personhood and participation? Is it attractive to obtain the greater identity that comes with citizenship or, if not, what options are favoured instead? 243

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The Germans and Ausländer in Berlin We have already shown1 that the idea of cultural difference, denoting a collective disposition of mentality, is a strong element in the self-imagination of Germanness that pupils encounter at their school in Berlin. At home, Turkish pupils are confronted with similar concepts, which are, however, loaded with reversed contents: their parents construct analogous cultural boundaries in relation to Germans, whom they tend to declassify. ‘Becoming’ or ‘behaving like a German’ is apparently used as a pejorative term in many families. For example, nineteen-year-old Songül remarked that she was immediately accused of ‘being like a German’ at home when she did not fulfil her daughterly household duties: ‘For instance, when it happens that I don’t do the dishes, I hear “We must be clean, not dirty”, and then Germanness comes up: “You’ve turned into a German.” In many small situations, “You have become Germanised”: I always get to hear that, it happens quite often, there are many, many examples!’ The attribute of being clean and tidy is one that any ethnic group claims for itself: it is always ‘the others’ who are considered dirty and messy, and many Germans would stress identical concerns of cleanliness in the context of typically positive German qualities, and in turn stigmatise foreigners as the dirty ones.2 The fact that it is not the actual contents of the reproach that matter, but that parental interest in defining boundaries means attempting to retain a distinct cultural identity is well understood among these young people3 in Berlin, but not necessarily appreciated or shared. When Songül’s mother, for instance, does not accept her daughter calling a German neighbourhood girl her friend and insists that she is ‘no friend but a German’, Songül can no longer understand the distinction. It makes her think of home and the surrounding German society as two separate spaces: ‘I come home and everything is completely different from the outside. At home, the things that matter are basically very unimportant to me, really very, very unimportant and of no significance. And outside, again,…well, sometimes it’s enough to drive one mad!’ Behaviour expectations at home differ from those outside, and apparently Songül feels more comfortable with those outside, because at home significance is attached to things which are unimportant to her. Songül shares this experience with many school-friends who are the children of immigrants, though not necessarily from Turkey. Melanie’s Croatian parents make use of the same boundary versus the Germans, as do Dimitra’s Greek, Ranya’s Palestinian and Meera’s Sri Lankan parents. Also, they all impose the same restrictions with respect to outings, namely that their daughters should stay at home in the evenings. These five girls took up the boundary in their assumption that German parents would be more understanding. If German parents were reproached for being intolerant, they would give in or at least discuss matters. If their own ‘foreign parents’ were confronted with this same reproach, they would not be impressed at all. Meera: 244

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Going out or staying overnight is not possible at all. ‘Going out? Why?’ Then I get to hear, ‘You have your own bed, are you homeless?’ My parents do not understand that… It’s quite different how we are brought up… With German parents, and I’m really comparing only those I know, it’s so good, because they are really trained from the beginning to lead an independent life… And it’s not only that: with my [German] friend’s mother I can talk about everything, about sex, about drugs. Whereas with my mother, I can only educate her: ‘Ma, such things do exist.’ But I can’t talk to her directly about it… I think that German parents have a better understanding of this… Once I read that an effective objection to German parents would be telling them that they were intolerant, after which they would give in. That’s not possible with our parents. They would simply say ‘So what, then? We are just intolerant’.

Examples of German girls with strict parents were repeatedly treated as exceptional and still not so extreme in comparison with one’s own immigrant parents. The Germans were depicted as being relatively liberal and willing to discuss things, while ‘foreign parents’ were held to be strict, uncompromising, and neither willing nor able to allow things to be discussed. Although often phrased as ‘having to do with culture or religion’, the difference being claimed in Berlin was thus not a specific cultural or religious difference – the five young women, quoted above, had parents of rather diverse belief: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Sunnite Muslim, Alevi and Hindu. Irrespective of this variety, they drew a line between ‘Germans’ and ‘foreigners’ which common experiences substantiate, like the differences mentioned in family socialisation, and especially in how girls are brought up. They thought of gender relations as the essence of cultural difference between ‘Germans’ and ‘foreigners’ of various ethnic origins or religions. But since they were also encountering this idea as a negative estimation in the discourse of the majority, many saw themselves in the structural position of defending and justifying their families against denunciation, although they might not fully agree with their parents’ ideas about chastity either. A discussion lesson about ‘honour and shame’ in the Grade 9 is a telling example of the difficult structural balance this implies. The case of Güler, a Turkish girl, who attended Lise Meitner School until leaving in the summer of 1996, was chosen for discussion with her former classmates. The girl had eloped with her cousin in Turkey during the school holidays, had married him: they then started living together back in Berlin. Their marriage soon broke down. Güler moved back in with her parents, then back to her husband, became pregnant, had an abortion, and was in constant trouble. Her former class tutors wanted to discuss this ‘matter of honour and shame’ in the classroom and finally did so after a couple of months. For this, they used an article from a German feminist magazine about a young Pakistani woman from Bradford, Britain, who had been killed by a member of her family after she had run away from her unwanted husband, whom she had been forced to marry while on holiday in Pakistan. After the class in Berlin had read the article, their teacher opened the 245

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discussion by asking the Muslims for their opinion, ‘because Pakistanis were also Mohammedans, like some of the pupils in the class’. Two Turkish boys stressed that it was against the principles of Islam to marry a girl to somebody against her will, but they immediately reproduced expectations of chastity as crucial: their future brides would also have to be virgins, they stressed. The same line of argument was adopted in a class in Grade 11 which was later given the same article for discussion: the Muslim boys in this group also said that forced marriages and murder should not be shifted on to Islam, since this would, of course, be going too far; but as far as control of women was concerned, they too would insist on bridal virginity. This reduplication of the discourse on chastity went along with a catalogue of stereotypes about cultural differences: family orientation and restrictions for girls were ascribed to their own cultures, and more liberal standards, up to and including loose morals, to Germans and ‘Germanised’ girls. These boys were actually invoking classic double moral standards: girls who are willing to have sex before marriage were judged as morally inadequate prostitutes, although the boys themselves were very interested in becoming sexually experienced with such girls and invested numerous activities in trying to become so. Some boys avoided Turkish discos for this reason and preferred those where they expected to meet more German girls. The idea of the ‘Germanisation’ of Turkish girls thus carried morally pejorative implications from the perspective of many Turkish boys. As a counterpart to this reproach against girls, a more egalitarian view concerning premarital relations was in fact treated as a standard of measurement for the cultural approximation of boys, although this seemed quite odd. Among many statements of Turkish boys who could not imagine marrying a woman who is no longer a virgin, one boy’s position entailed such a shift, which he connected to his own process of ‘Germanisation’: he had already given up Turkish citizenship in favour of German, and he also claimed to ‘feel quite German already’. His idea was to concede the same premarital sexual freedom that he had enjoyed himself to his future wife in equal measure. On this same topic, it was in fact only German boys who went a step further by saying that they could not imagine marrying a woman without any sexual experience. This viewpoint was then applied to the same bias in terms of cultural difference, for it was given as an important reason why they could not in any circumstances imagine marrying a Turkish girl: owing to their presumed complete lack of sexual experience. Not only is the assumed cultural difference gendered in this respect, so is the power of moral judgement. Pupils’ own views, like the dominant construction of cultural difference, make female access to sexual experience a central issue, and the processes of converging or diverging along the scale of the different cultures thus defined have different connotations for boys and for girls. Gender power relations are reproduced simultaneously with the negotiation of majority/minority power relations: girls who are in favour of dissolving the strict boundaries still depend on the approval of boys. Structurally, the girls’ positions 246

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are thus subject to competing pressures in terms of justification. They have to relate to the norm of premarital chastity as well as to the principle of self-determination which marks the hegemonic discourse on gender equality. In the ‘honour and shame’ discussion in Grade 9, mentioned above, the girls in fact applied different strategies in response to the culturalist assumptions from those that their male class-mates had chosen to maintain: (Female) Teacher: In the introduction to this article, we are told that it is dealing with ‘one of the most burning issues of our time’. (Fatma is already commenting in the background: ‘I have different problems!’) What is the subject of this article? Fatma: Being forced to marry. Teacher: Who is forced to marry, women or men? Fatma: Well, women. Teacher: Is it the same for you, that you consider this ‘one of the most burning issues’? Fatma: Definitely not. My parents would neither force me nor kill me! Claudia: That’s for Turks only. Anna: For me, it’s not a problem; only for Turks. Senem: Arabs and Turks are like that… Claudia, loudly and complaining: That’s their problem, for the Turks and others, that’s got nothing to do with me! Teacher: Well, I don’t know if that really doesn’t concern you. A case you have all got to know about is your former classmate (Senem starts laughing loud) Güler. Senem, with a triumphant voice: I knew 100 percent that you would come up with Güler!

Claudia’s statement that it was ‘their’ problem, not hers, expressed a harsh and pejorative view of difference as deficiency. Fatma’s immediate comment at the start, that she would have different problems, indicates that she had anticipated exactly the emphasis with regard to the problem that actually came up: ‘Arabs and Turks are like that.’ Senem’s triumphant remark that she had known ‘100 percent’ that her teacher would bring up Güler also suggests how familiar the pupils are with this combination of topics: a repressive family background that makes girls suffer, and contextualisation in terms of another, ‘traditional’ culture or the Muslim religion. Speaking against the prevailing perception of their being paralysed victims of backwardness who need support in developing an independent personality, Fatma stated from the beginning that she did not expect to experience any problems of that kind. From her comments in the discussion it is clear how unbalanced the relationship is: Muslim girls are in the 247

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position of having to defend themselves against the German majority that depicts Muslim women as puppet-like representatives of traditionalism. In turn, those girls who articulate their distance from modesty as a norm of behaviour, like Senem, who is also from a Turkish family, receive positive reassurance. In the later part of the same classroom discussion, she said, ‘Parents must get used to it when I have a boyfriend. They will get to know it anyway and adapt to it. My father had a girlfriend himself formerly, though my mother did not have boyfriends. She came from a village and had no such experiences’. Her teacher commented on this and that, having talked to Senem’s parents, ‘We also know them and I believe indeed that they have come to live more like we do and are a bit more open-minded’. By pointing out her mother ’s village background, Senem located concerns about chastity in a rural setting that might be opposed to the looser standards in urban contexts. This allows diversification within Turkey to be taken into account, but at the same time reconfirms the view that premarital sexual abstinence is associated with backwardness: it matters out there in the villages, where people have no chance to become experienced. The teacher ’s assessment supports Senem’s interpretation by equating openmindedness with ‘living like we do’, thus implicitly stigmatising those girls who do not follow the same ideal. From the same lesson: Teacher: When I think back to when I was your age or maybe a little bit older, all girls were concerned to have a boyfriend, and were concerned about how their parents might react if they slept with them or not… How is this for you, when you want a boyfriend, or what does it actually depend on, whether you want one or whether it works out? Fatma, Ewa, Claudia simultaneously answer that it depends on whether they want a boyfriend… The teacher is obviously surprised by this unanimous reply, and she addresses Fatma and Aliye directly as the two ‘headscarf girls’ who are present: ‘But I still have one more question to you two: Given your headscarves, are some boys disqualified from the beginning?’ Fatma: No. Anna: But not everyone wants a girl wearing a headscarf. Claudia: And they are afraid also. Senem: …to get into trouble with their families! Fatma: My sister had a boyfriend and was not beaten up, I could have a boyfriend as well!… Ewa: Ah come on, you know you are not allowed to have boyfriends! Fatma protests that her elder sister had had a boyfriend, and their parents had only wanted to know who he was. She could have a boyfriend as well if she wanted to. 248

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The girls’ status management was highly situational. Although Fatma tried to play down things in this discussion by denying any difference, in another lesson she modified this and stressed that German girls could treat the matter of boyfriends frankly in their parents’ presence. Turkish girls could have boyfriends as well, but they would have to keep it secret. Rukiye: The Germans are not so strict, that’s how I see it. They let their daughters have boyfriends and so on. Mike: But there’s nothing naughty about that! Rukiye: But in our belief there is. As I see it, it comes from beliefs about how to bring up children, and our belief is just different. Mike: They behave in such an inhibited way towards their daughters, the Turks, that they must not have any boyfriends and still have to wear headscarves! Rukiye: But that’s not true at all! We can also have boyfriends if we want to, secretly, of course, but we don’t want that. The Germans just always have boyfriends. (Male) Teacher, astonished: And this works? Do Turkish girls actually have secret boyfriends? Rukiye: That’s obviously possible! Some are also caught out, but they would not confess it easily. Fatma: The Germans talk about this with their parents, while we keep it secret. After all, it’s embarrassing when we go to our fathers and say, ‘I have a boyfriend’! Rukiye: For us that’s embarrassing!

As Mike said in this discussion, if you do not have a boyfriend and even wear a headscarf, like Fatma and Rukiye both do, you are perceived as being inhibited by the German majority. The pressure to adapt to the liberal standards of our Western pleasure-oriented societies is enormous. Fatma and Rukiye tried to argue against the suggestion that they are pre-modern and backward just because they do not ‘always have boyfriends’ like German girls, and they did so using the argumentation of the dominant discourse, that is, declaring it to be the result of freedom of choice: ‘We could, but we don’t want it!’ Speaking later in confidence, however, Rukiye would complain that her parents did not allow her to participate in a school trip to Turkey, and the same was true of Fatma’s parents because: ‘They do not really trust us.’ Thus, against their parents they argued for the dissolution of the traditional nexus between values and behavioural norms. In a classroom discussion where their cultural background is exposed to stereotypical disparagement, they would never admit to such a clash but feel the need to defend their parents and not least to justify their own way of handling the conflictual matter. On the German side, as for their immigrant parents, ‘becoming German’ evidently implies a process signifying cultural 249

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assimilation—either understood as ideal vision of ‘integration’ or as the feared alienation from their original culture that needs to be prevented. Turkish pupils in Lise Meitner School strongly objected to this impact. They judged adaptation to be necessary with respect to mastering the German language and accepting laws and rules, but ‘identity and culture should not be lost’, as one girl phrased it. In a lesson about labour migration in the same Grade 9 class as above, the Turkish pupils were asked what they thought about the different options of remigration or integration: Fatma: I am against the view that ‘Turks should either adapt or leave’. Mucahit: No adaptation with respect to religion, I would say, but rules and laws must be respected, and language: they [sic] should also know German. Senem: Either they [sic] should live here in Germany like Germans or go back to Turkey; there they can live like Turks. Rukiye (upset): That’s a private matter! Do we have to live here like Germans? No!

They seemed well-acquainted with the problem of pressure to adapt and with the assumption that something like collective life-styles exist. At the same time, given this construction of culture as a collective life-style or ‘mentality’, cultural assimilation is not really a feasible project either. This dilemma characterises the dominant construction of Germanness as well, but the quoted pupils have obviously found a solution to it: addressing their parents, they argue that one needs to master the methods and apply the rules of German society, that is, ‘they [!] should also know German’. When addressing the German majority, their argument insists on a private sphere where particular cultures other than German should be legitimate and inviolable. None of them doubted in further discussions either that one could collectivise by ‘living like Turks’ or ‘living like Germans’. In this respect they were fully in agreement with the polarised taxonomy of cultural differences that prevailed in their surroundings, at home as well as in their school. Their teacher made use of the same dichotomy in the ‘honour-and-shame debate’ when judging that Senem’s parents ‘have come to live more like we do’. This account contains the equivalent inner contradiction of assuming the possibility of ethnically patterned collective life-styles while arguing for assimilation of ethnic minorities. It is exactly this internal incoherence which is also telling for the German construct of the nation, in which the German people are defined as a community of descent and culture, that marks the special problems of self-placement for immigrants’ children in Berlin. In spite of tracing taken-for-granted differences back to different sorts of upbringings – that is, seeing them as the result of a social learning process in families – when the differences were mentioned, the rigid concept of ‘mentality’ repeatedly entered the discussion: different upbringings were thought to cause different ‘ways of thinking’, also called ‘mentality’. This style of argument is unmistak250

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ably coloured by the hegemonic German rhetoric of classification. The basically anti-essentialist idea of family socialisation as the decisive factor in the development of the self was smoothly combined with a culturalist assumption of inherited customs and traditions as boundary markers. The following debate among Grade 12 pupils in Berlin highlights this particular synthesis: Ranya: However, there are quite big differences between us and the Germans… You just have to see how we treat each other and how the Germans treat each other. Dimitra: So you mean the mentality involved? Ranya: Yes. Meera: Treat each other? No! How they grow up and how we grow up, that is different. Ranya: Our thinking is, well I mean, at least my way of thinking is completely different from that of a German… Dissident voices, as Songül, Dimitra and Meera start protesting. Dimitra: That can be coincidence. Ranya: That foreigners have the same way of thinking and Germans have a completely different one?… By growing up at home, children are raised by their parents completely differently. I have certainly been brought up completely differently from a German… It all comes through upbringing… We live in two different societies in a way, therefore none of us can be typical because [addressing Dimitra] you are not a typical Greek, and I am not a typical Arab because I have not grown up in that country and have not experienced the whole culture and whatever, their thinking. My thinking is completely different from theirs.

Even though Ranya’s idea of a completely different ‘way of thinking’ was not unanimously accepted at this point, all discussants accepted it later on as if it were fact that ‘Germans’ follow other principles than ‘foreigners’ when raising children, something that was ultimately held responsible for the resulting ‘cultural differences’ that recall the dominant boundary. Socialisation was hence judged to be the decisive factor in forming an identity, meaning that collective traits do not exist unchangeably. But apparently they are assumed to exist in culturally consistent environments: people in Lebanon are taken to be ‘typical Arabs’ without any internal variety. Ranya’s relatives in Lebanon are cited as representing a reified, undiluted, authentic Arab identity, while her identity appears degenerate by comparison: growing up in Germany is a disturbing factor in socialisation which has to some extent diluted Ranya’s Arab identity. Cultural differences, codified as ‘ways of thinking’, were thus treated as a way of measuring behaviour. The very idea of cultural difference is not denied in this way of arguing, but it does suggest that impressions of ‘cultural difference’ are 251

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not restricted to Germans: distance is also experienced with respect to one’s parents and the people one meets ‘over there’, where the family comes from. In the nomothetical sense of some unchangeable collective quality, the notion of ‘mentality’ regularly occurred when these young people spoke about their parents’ countries of emigration. For example, Dimitra, aged nineteen, said, ‘Mentality plays quite a big role in other countries’. And Bujar, a twentyyear-old Albanian from Kosovo, commented in the same sense: ‘Countries that are economically weak are always bound to religion, customs and tradition; it’s always like that.’ This nexus of culture as a ‘locational factor’ for poor economic circumstances, which in their turn are assessed as being responsible for conflicts and instability, sounds familiar: it is also the recurrent line of argument in school lessons about underdeveloped countries, traditional culture and push-factors for migration. The pupils had obviously got this message and applied it to their parents’ countries of emigration. Not only were one’s own parents judged as being unable to discuss controversies or find a compromise, holding on to traditional norms instead, the countries they had left behind stood for this deficiency as well: the sense of there being a coherent ‘culture’ other than the German one seemed to be associated with charms on the emotional level but tied to costs in terms of irrationality, a lack of competence and economic weakness. This negative image was also articulated during a social studies lesson about migration in Grade 9, when a German pupil asked why immigrants had come to Germany: Claudia: Why did they [labour immigrants] come here at all? Teacher: Maybe one of the Turkish pupils can try and explain that? Ferhat: Mainly because of money. In Turkey life is expensive because one can’t earn so much money and thus can’t afford much. Here one can earn money, one also has to work hard for it, but the income is not too little, and then when one drives to Turkey, it means a lot of money there. Here we live in luxury. Fatma: And everything works here: at the doctor’s, when you are ill, you can go there, and in the supermarket you simply get everything and so on. In Turkey one always has to wait for a long time and you do not have any rights.

The Turkish pupils who answered were not worried to be treated as representatives of the whole immigrant population in this context. They emphasised discrepancies between the countries with respect to the economy, supplies and consumer rights, all of which are factors that can be taken into consideration without having to argue about culture. On the other hand, poverty, internal conflicts and, more generally speaking, the absence of a functioning system were actually thought to be closely connected with a different culture that relies on tradition. It was their own parents and relatives who represent the other culture 252

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which the adolescents felt they have distanced themselves from. Being treated differently, being seen as not of the same kind, being asked silly questions, was a widely shared experience that confirmed to a feeling of distance whenever these young people went to visit their parents’ places of origin in Turkey or elsewhere. This became clear from the same classroom discussion about migration: Aliye reads one of the sentences from the overhead projection which their teacher has compiled to provoke a discussion: ‘In Turkey we are also foreigners.’ – ‘That’s true. They immediately notice that in Turkey…somehow they notice it at once.’ Senem, Rukiye, Fatma and Mucahit emphatically agree with her. Teacher: And are you treated differently then? Aliye: Yes, the shopkeepers want to charge us higher prices, and they say that one needs all their stuff and so on. Rukiye, Fatma, Mucahit and Senem again all reconfirm this. Fatma: Yes, and then they start to act so slimily… (She giggles.) Senem: And they ask us very strange questions, like once I was asked if we take showers with Coca-Cola in Germany!

They claim that one can’t stand one’s relatives in the parents’ home countries for long, because of all their silly questions, weird expectations and distorted information about European countries of immigration. Meera in Grade 12 remarked that she did not develop any homely feelings when visiting her relatives in Sri Lanka, because they were all narrow-minded and saw everything in Germany in a bad light. Seeing everything in Germany negatively indicates a lack of insight on the part of those left behind. But an irritation with stereotyped images of Germany also reveals an identification with at least some aspects of Germany, be it the functioning infrastructure, economic opportunities or political rights. Not being as ‘narrow-minded’ as the people ‘over there’ was hence linked to a mixture of pride and luck because one might easily have turned out like that as well if one’s parents had not emigrated – after all, upbringing and environment were seen as being decisive in terms of perceived cultural differences. In this sense, parents’ migrations create a specific indebtedness in terms of loyalty: although the parents represent a rather discredited culture, it was also they who left these narrow circles behind and facilitated their children’s access to diversity by migrating to places with a variety of people, perspectives and options to choose from. In Meera’s words, ‘One can develop oneself much better here than in our own countries’. Twenty-year-old Bujar put this argument forward in the following way: To question some things – living here in Germany, we see many things differently – when I try to do that over there, I am always told, ‘No, we don’t do that, that 253

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doesn’t suit us, it’s not our tradition and culture, that’s a matter of honour, we don’t do things like that’… Living in Germany has given me a different way of thinking. When I imagine what I would have been like, had I grown up in Kosovo, I would have had a completely different idea of the world, absolutely! The people there think completely differently.

The fact that the norms of behaviour which one’s parents have set up as crucial boundary markers cannot be discussed at home was a shared worry among the children of the immigrants. Because of migration, their parents feel they have lost the support of wider society and therefore lay down strict rules to prevent cultural erosion. These rules were not debatable but had to be handled with circumspection, because, as Songül put it, ‘It would be too much for them to be confronted with really opposed views’. Yet at the same time, the very competence in discussion and compromise is exactly what these young people consciously underwent as their personal experience of cultural change in comparison with their own elders, and to an even stronger extent with their relatives ‘back home’. In Dimitra’s view, ‘Me personally, I am in any case convinced – and that is what my parents mean by behaving German – that you must also be able to compromise, otherwise it doesn’t work’. About her parents she thought, ‘They are not used to discussing things or finding interim solutions’. The own personal development and the ability to tolerate controversy, to discuss and solve conflicts using compromise was seen as a chance which their parents had never had. Meera: Well, there are also foreign families I know, once they hear of an attack [on foreigners] or already if they are having trouble with officials, they immediately say, ‘These Nazis’! Immediately they say so. Then I always become furious: that’s simply not true, it’s not fair to say so… I think that the two sides don’t know each other… Songül: But how should they adapt? Our first generation that came here, they went to clean houses or into the factories, were by themselves and had no time to learn the language! And now they have grown old… I have nothing against my parents; as you said already, they came from the countryside and had no chance to develop themselves!

Although parental stereotypes of the surrounding society without any doubt upset these youngsters and made them defend the German majority culture against their own families, they also felt for their parents’ situation. The structural minority position and personal ‘indebtedness’ create a particular difficulty to dissociate oneself from one’s parents’ expectations. Assessing cultural difference with regard to those who are so afraid that their culture might become lost means walking a tightrope: their emigration implied giving their children chances in respect of personal development, but this was not intended to end up as cultural alienation. On the one hand, ‘becoming German’ was admitted in 254

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the self-reflective styles of, as Bujar phrased it, ‘questioning some things’, but parents should not be offended either. In view of the effective ‘coalition’ between parents who do not want their children to give up identification with their origins, and the wider German society that does not accept immigrants as legitimate full members, these young people’s negotiations with parents or peers or society over identity have to draw on different resources under different circumstances. Processes of identification thus demand a special creativity in order to find a space for the imagination of a self that is not yet on the agenda of either community. The shared ‘foreigner’ (Ausländer) identity is apparently a way out of that dilemma: cultural particularities in terms of origin are effectively ruled out, and integration into the dominant discourse of German society can take place ‘as foreigners’. Moreover, as a collectivising category, this prevents internally divided discrimination against a particular group and thus also functions as a means of internal pacification. Take as an example this exchange from a discussion with pupils in Grade 10 in Berlin: Kamil: Many Turkish pupils are more aggressive than others, quite aggressive, in fact. Rukiye: How do you mean? Kamil: Well sometimes, one is afraid of them. Rukiye: As if the Arabs were not worse sometimes! Robert: One cannot generalise about that. Kamil: But here there are more Turks than others, and they always carry a knife. So, they are more aggressive than others, that’s what I think. Rukiye: Why? Kamil: Because I never see Germans fighting. I only see foreigners fighting. Rukiye: Only? Susanne: Foreigners, maybe. Rukiye: And what is it with the Arabs, why don’t you say that, eh? Don’t talk about the Turks only! Kamil: I said foreigners! Rukiye: Yes, you said foreigners, but at first you said Turks!

It was not the generalisation that foreigners are more aggressive than Germans that created a dispute here, but the initial singling out of Turks. The overarching category of ‘foreigners’ prevents any particular ethnic group from being blamed, but the boundary between Germans and foreigners is not an issue for discussion and was in this case even reconfirmed by their German classmate 255

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Susanne’s intervention. The vernacular expression produced by ethnic minority adolescents thus coincides exactly with the dominant notional division: the ‘us–them’ dichotomy is made up of ‘Germans’ versus ‘foreigners’ (Ausländer), a taxonomy to which Turkish pupils at Lise Meitner School responded to by adopting the residual role and social allocation of being ‘foreigners’, thus constructing a group identity which collectivises people beyond their cultural or religious distinctions. Ethnic labels were also applied below the overall level of the ‘foreigner’ group identity, and most ‘foreigners’ knew precisely the ethnic origins of their schoolfriends. Rukiye’s intervention about the Arabs was well directed against Kamil, who had blamed the Turks: Kamil’s mother is German, his father is Lebanese, and among his peers Kamil tended to be called an Arab. Depending on the situation, he might sometimes boast of his German mother and, jokingly, establish a distance from the ‘dirty foreigners’, but mostly he would not object to being called an Arab. Ethnic addresses were quite common, particularly among boys whose greeting rituals contained extended handshakes and clapping. They also used originally pejorative terms like ‘dirty foreigner’ (dreckiger Ausländer) or ‘wog’ (Kanake) in an ironic fashion as terms of address. This vocabulary might give an impression of tension, but ethnic differences did not affect internal solidarity at all. A strong common minority identity as Ausländer, being composed of different ethnic groups, though with a preponderance of Turks, served to bond them against the Germans. Grouping reflected this construction, as it followed the ‘inverse logic’ of being non-German. Ranya described this pattern: ‘At our school it is like this, for example: the foreigners are on one side, and the Germans are also more on their own. It seldom happens that there is a German among the foreigners, because the Germans are completely different.’ She thus attributed the tendency for groups consisting of either German pupils or ethnically mixed ‘foreigners’ to emerge from cultural difference, however not meaning the culture of a specific ethnic or national group, but an all-embracing Ausländer culture. Identification is hereby clearly expressed as lying with their position in Germany and as entailing a dissociation from parental origins. Since Germans were considered to be least like themselves, they served as the taxonomic contrast group when specifications or internal diversification within the group of ‘foreigners’ were being described: Ranya: Among the foreigners are the Arabian-Turkish, the Muslims, that is, and the others. Melanie: Yes, because principally the Polish are also foreigners, but as they are also Christians, they tend to be more like the Germans. Meera: European. Melanie: Yes, European. 256

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These categories refer to a cultural classification in which religion is an essential element of the construction: the fact that European culture is generally defined as Christian makes it a good criterion for distinction. They realise the hierarchical effect of the concept of a dominant culture which distinguishes problematic from unproblematic groups of foreigners on the basis of cultural distance. Yet for the pupils everybody was encompassed by the residual group identity of Ausländer. Therefore, although the dominant terminology was taken over, the construction of being a ‘culturally problematic’ group in society was not accepted but countered. Furthermore, there is another dimension to the notional opposition to the Germans, which has to do with Germany’s Nazi past. The ambivalence of German national identity, like the image of ‘the evil German’, is in the back of many minds and prevents integration in terms of ‘becoming German’ from instantly giving rise to positive sentiments. In their perception of group cleavages, pupils from immigrant families explicitly referred to this opposition between ‘we foreigners’ and ‘those Nazis’. The ‘Nazis’ are the most extremely condensed representatives of a dangerous side in Germanness. Since pupils are also confronted with historical equations in lessons about National Socialism, in which ‘foreigners’ are placed in the position of potential victims, the reduplication of this classificatory opposition suggests an assimilation of the notional landscape without automatically meaning that they have all had experiences with ‘Nazis’. They perceived a latent threat in the majority culture and responded to it by mobilising a counter-collectivity along the lines of potential victimisation: where the structural minority is in numerical terms a majority, the danger is averted. Several pupils of Turkish, Kurdish and Palestinian origin expressed their view of the situation at Lise Meitner School as being without many problems: there were no Nazis at the school because of the high number of foreigners. Therefore everything was fine, and there were no problems between Germans and foreigners in school. It was only at soccer matches with teams from East Berlin that dangerous situations arose, with regular fights as a result, because the Easterners were Nazis who daubed racist slogans in the changing rooms. Structurally the same views were held with respect to the social map of Berlin: in northern Neukölln and Kreuzberg, because of the high number of foreign, namely Turkish residents, there were no problems with rightwingers, who did not dare to go there and make trouble. Although elections in the district of Neukölln regularly produce some success for right-wing parties, Turkish pupils were convinced that ‘the Nazis’ are only a problem in southern parts of Neukölln and especially in the former East Berlin, where foreigners are in fact virtually absent. The following discussion about this matter took place outside school: Kenan: At our school, there are no problems at all. You should have gone to a school with fewer foreigners! 257

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Sabine Mannitz: Are there more problems at schools with fewer foreigners? Kenan: Sure. Sabine Mannitz: What sorts of problem? Ferhat: With Nazis, baldies [skinheads]! Kenan: Yes, with Nazis. Here there aren’t any. Ferhat: They don’t dare come to our school or to Kreuzberg, because there are so many foreigners. Only where there are not so many foreigners do they dare go… It works out well at our school between foreigners and Germans; there are no problems. Kamil: On the whole, it’s only been like that since the Wall came down. Every evening we go and try to rebuild the Wall but we can’t manage it, right Ferhat?! He laughs and, addressing the researcher again, says, ‘Be honest, it was a mistake to remove the Wall, right?’ Ferhat laughs. Sabine Mannitz: So you think the Nazis come from the East? Kamil: Logically. Before there was no problem. And we even went to throw bananas over the Wall so that they would have it better in the East. (Researcher laughs) You don’t believe me, eh?! We threw kiwi fruit over the Wall for them…but they probably thought they were hand grenades. Now all the Nazis come here.

Unlike the widespread negative image in the German public that immediately associates a high rate of foreigners in schools with problems and in the same vein depicts Kreuzberg or Neukölln as desperate ghettos, the foreigners’ hegemony in these quarters of Berlin receives only a positive evaluation in these boys’ accounts. Since ‘Nazis’ supposedly avoid places where foreigners predominate, the ‘foreign’ in-group ensures a safe haven. At the same time, this safe haven seems endangered and anyhow does not reflect the real social situation that foreigners face in Germany. The whole discussion started with a question from one Turkish boy, whether our research was particularly concerned with the problems of foreigners or of Turks and, if so, why Lise Meitner School had been chosen, since there were no problems there. Their definition of the problem is radically different from a frequently published view about such districts, where a combination of factors, like a high percentage of the population being of foreign origin, many people on unemployment and welfare benefits and run-down housing amounts to a problem, or, as the headmaster at Lise Meitner School liked to phrase it, ‘a difficult clientele’. From the viewpoint of ‘foreign’ teenagers, the problem lies elsewhere: according to them, if I were interested in researching the problems of foreigners, I should go to a school with ‘Nazis’, preferably in the east of the new Germany. These boys regarded Germans from the former GDR as the ideal-type of ‘evil Germans’. Their fashion of constructing this image is in fact exactly parallel to 258

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the fashion the Third World and partly also the countries of their families’ origin are represented in their geography lessons and textbooks: economically, the underprivileged need our help, but then in return they should at least be grateful and try to meet our expectations: one helped them economically, threw kiwi fruit and bananas over the Wall, but instead of appreciating the good deeds by being grateful and nice, the Germans from the GDR brought only trouble and hostility into society. So, they do not even share ‘our’ terms of trade and civility. By this turn, these boys make use of the images of otherness due to cultural difference which have been confirmed as socially valid concepts in their school experiences, and they apply this to cultural diversity within Germany – arguing that such a difference is to be found along the lines of the former state border. Within this narration, one can also see the motif of pride and identification with the economic success of the former West: ‘we’ had enough exotic fruit to throw them over the Wall. The two boys thus tried to establish a level of solidarity and agreement with the researcher as somebody from the West by ‘othering’ the Germans from the East. For these young ‘foreigners’, the German unification has apparently stimulated new definitions in the sense of a push towards identification, however not with the new post-unification Germany, but with a common mythical narrative of the past: before unification everything was fine, ‘there was no problem’, as Kamil said. Elements of this discourse can be found among teachers at Lise Meitner School as well. In an interview, one teacher applied the same strategy of ‘othering’ Germans from the former GDR. He was 55 years old and had been teaching German, social and political studies for 25 years, of which 24 had been spent working at Lise Meitner School. Teacher: The foreign pupils were very sad about unification. They believed they would be pushed to the back because German society would concentrate completely on making unification a reality… Sabine Mannitz: Yet, doesn’t the possibility also exist that Turks who have been socialised here feel themselves to be Wessis to a stronger extent now and sort themselves into this category on this level of discourses about Ossis and Wessis?4 Teacher: Absolutely true; no question! Sabine Mannitz: …so that it meant a push towards integration and a stronger feeling of belonging here? Teacher hesitates: Well yes. But then, quite soon relatively heavy confrontation occurred, because the difficulties that young people from the East have with foreigners quickly led to our foreigners in the West also talking about Ossis; I actually do think that it meant a stronger identification, not with German society but with the Western society that has been lost. That is what happened.

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West German left: the Ossis represent a pre-civil-society state that was supposed to be overcome by the achievements of the cultural revolution of 1968 and the social movements that followed from it in the former Federal Republic of Germany. According to this, people from the GDR society, who lacked such an experience, have not learned to handle social plurality in a liberal way.5 This teacher was at university at the end of the 1960s, so he represents this perspective quite well. Migrants and leftist West Germans thus have a common ‘enemy’ as well as a shared narration of a better past. What this discourse also offers is the opportunity to create selective coalitions on the level of opposition to parochialism and anti-fascism. In the words of Meera from Grade 12, ‘Very many Germans… do not simply say, “I am a German”, they are leftists and they also say that they are against the system, just like that. I identify with these Germans, not the usual Germans’. The characteristic terms and the dominant taxonomies of difference are again reconfirmed in this statement, but it is not claimed that the categories of Germans and foreigners are divided by a fixed boundary: given subtle selectivity, cross-cutting patterns of identification remain possible as well. Hostilities directed against foreigners in general, whether experienced personally or merely remembered collectively, have evidently strengthened the construction of a collectivising ‘we foreigners’ in-group. If an anti-fascist consensus is created, however, multiethnic networks and friendships also functioned to absorb ethnic Germans into the ascribed group identity. One Kurdish boy mentioned a German friend who was nearly killed by ‘Nazis’ because he had been a member of their group of close friends, which included Turkish, Kurdish and Arab boys: They simply attacked him and stabbed him because he was such a good friend of ours, and because of that they also called him a ‘wog’! When I visited him once in the borough of Rudow and we were together with other friends, Arabs and so on, an old woman came and screamed, ‘Bloody wogs, get away from here!’, so I walked up to her and asked her if I had done her any harm. She only screamed ‘bloody wogs’ again, so I asked her if she couldn’t speak to me properly. I would do the same, speak to her properly. Then she walked off. Another time, one of our friends, an Arab, was also sworn at as a ‘wog’ by a young German woman whom he had been chatting up. I asked her if she really knew what he was, namely not a Turk but an Arab6 she wasn’t even interested!

Such incidents confirm the notion of everyone being in the same boat, despite particular ethnic or cultural origins. Even though pupils said that there would not be any problems of this sort in their own school or district, a deep mistrust against Germans was also discernible. One Turkish boy commented that he had also been to the city of Solingen: ‘They all looked like normal people there, and then they burnt the Turks: nobody had expected it there either.’ In spite of such xenophobic crimes, and although the Germans serve as the taxonomic contrast 260

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group for ‘foreigners’, the boundary was not seen as preventing friendships and living together. However, immediate identification was not deemed possible, and still in this respect, young foreigners are unmistakably influenced by the lessons of German history in terms of political failure and the fragility of democracy. The restraints that marked these minority pupils’ identity management are entirely in line with the very mistrust which is also deeply rooted in the consciousness of many ethnic Germans themselves, with National Socialism in the background. National Socialism has effectively disavowed any national reference in post-war Germany so that German national identity could not be defined positively thereafter. National responsibility for the dreadful past has led in postwar West Germany to a rather sceptical voice towards the concept of the nation and has favoured a discourse in terms of the federal and constitutional order as provisions to hinder any totalitarian developments again. Instead, economic success is the area within which to create positive moments of collective effort.7 As well as being a site of positive identification, economic prosperity is supposed to function as a means of attaining democracy as well as social peace. This was a clear message of their school’s teaching, and it was taken up by the immigrants’ children: facing the risk of becoming potential victims, as substantiated in history lessons that equate murdered German Jews with the ‘foreign fellowcitizens’ of today, they placed their hopes in economic integration.8 When discussing future prospects and conditions for their children, two ‘foreign’ girls in Grade 12 recalled the idea that whereas peacefully living together in society requires economic stability, unemployment would make people look for scapegoats: they hoped that their children as well as future Germans would be able to handle the situation better, but if the economic situation worsened, their own children might easily be made scapegoats, they said. The occupation with National Socialism as the central failure of Germany has a clear impact on role allocations for immigrants in Germany and hinders immediate identification. On top of the rather exclusionist portrayal of Germanness as relying on cultural and ethnic commonalities and the related negative construction of otherness from the perspective of the majority, the notion of Germanness does not arouse positive associations either. This perspective was shared by the pupils from immigrant families. Ranya’s opinion was that ‘One can’t feel one is a German…also somehow I don’t want to think of myself as German, because being “typically German” somehow acts as a deterrent!’ The conviction that belonging to the German people is not attractive for identification but implies the danger of a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ nature is one that Ranya shares with many people who ‘have been born German’. Although one might object that national membership as such is principally nothing to be proud of, the notional landscape is in the German case specific insofar as it is typically German neo-Nazis who use the slogan ‘I am proud to be German’. The fact that the extreme right-wing has become more visible in recent years and that open violence against recognizable foreigners in Germany has also increased does not 261

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make it any easier: for naturalised immigrants, ‘being proud to be German’ would mean identifying with their declared aggressors. Thus options regarding identification need to be more tentative and emotionally reserved. Positive German characteristics, like the welfare state, economic success, the stability of the system and, for those who are politically inclined, freedom of speech and other democratic rights in German society, were thus seen and subscribed to in a very down-to-earth manner. Of course, these aspects mattered when weighing up the option of taking German citizenship; but given the ambivalence of Germanness, becoming German was nothing to be enthusiastic about, let alone something likely to be invested with pride or joy: Melanie: It is also a matter of pride, for example, to call oneself a Croat and to want to keep one’s Croatian passport. My aunt has a German passport, and now she is always the ‘dirty German’ in Croatia! Ranya: They’re just jealous. Melanie: No, it’s pride! Dimitra: I also believe this pride exists.

In her remark about jealousy, Ranya is pointing to the positive aspects of living in Germany, especially the fact that most of them are much better off than those left behind in the countries of emigration. But still, ethnic or national pride, emotions of belonging and positive qualities beyond the economic aspects are attached to one’s parents’ origins rather than to Germany, so that naturalisation was judged positively only at the level of practical matters and privileges such as not needing visa, less paperwork, full voting rights and equal professional access (e.g. to the status of civil servant). The experience of unequal treatment when crossing state borders made the idea of visa-free travelling particularly appealing: ‘Maybe it would really be better [to be a German national] when one is travelling, to get through [borders] more easily; with a German passport, there would not be all this paperwork’, said Melanie. Typically, the passport was used as synonym with formal citizenship. Naturalisation was thus perceived as an institutional prerequisite for equal treatment, and those who were interested in politics also considered the rights and opportunities that are attached to full political participation. At the same time there were also many ethnic minority pupils who had no interest in politics or in voting at all, and in this respect there appeared to be no differences when comparing them to their German classmates. Even though they clearly realised that they were excluded from equal rights to political participation and regarded this as unjust, that does not necessarily mean that they were all eager to exercise voting rights and would therefore like to be naturalised. Songül still had Turkish citizenship but considered applying for German citizenship because 262

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she did not want to suffer the numerous humiliations any longer: unequal treatment often made her cry when in libraries and videotape libraries people always checked her passport and residence permit before she could borrow or rent anything. But ‘I would not vote here’, she said: There is no political party here that comes up to my ideas, and moreover I just would not be interested in voting. In Turkey, too, I would not know, I would not vote for any party either. And basically it’s just the same: simply getting into power. In the beginning they all behave hypocritically with their advertisements, but when they get into the system they never exert themselves and change anything. It’s all just promotion.

Those who were not interested in politics used such widespread arguments of disenchantment: politics was a dirty business, dominated by a rotten and corrupt political class with a lust for power and greed for material enrichment, and had nothing to do with carrying ideals through. Songül’s peer Dimitra, for example, argued: The problem is also that one never knows whether to believe them, the politicians, or not. On the one hand they do everything just for prestige until they get elected and then they look what to do where in order to get away with it best… There are things which really make me furious, so that I was thinking about going into politics myself…but on the other hand one fights one’s whole life for something, and it’s hard to explain to others how you mean and intend it, very hard! You need a lot of time.

The opportunities for change were estimated to be low, and in view of the time and energy that would have to be invested in taking part in politics, commitment easily faded away. Such pessimistic assessments of the possibility of change made the question of political participation a side issue. Although pupils were all aware that full political participation is linked to formal citizenship, politics did not seem to occupy them any more than their ‘indigenous’ classmates. Like people who acquired their German citizenship and future voting rights ‘by birth’, so to speak, attitudes towards politics among post-migration young people in Berlin were likewise divided into those who were conscious of their political interests and wanted to take an active part, and those who considered any effort in this respect useless or too time- and energy-consuming. Some argued that a withdrawal from politics indicated immigrants’ orientation towards the countries they had come from, while calls for participation were treated as demonstrating a wish for further integration. But the reasons for either political commitment or staying out of politics were hardly ever related to the status of foreigner, like wishing to work against discrimination or for ethnic group rights. The things that made, for instance, Dimitra so furious that she thought about going into politics were animal rights and global nature conservation. 263

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Access to political participation rights thus played a minor role for most pupils from immigrant families when the question of naturalisation was at issue. The fact that ‘being German’ neither contains an offer to accommodate cultural diversity nor bears any positive connotations as such was a great barrier and bothered them far more. Since these young people mostly saw it as impossible to reconcile a culturally different identity with being German, the problem of recognition seemed irresolvable under existing conditions: Melanie: Sometimes one feels like asking, ‘Where do I belong ultimately?’ Should we found a new state for all who are half-and-half German or what? Bujar: That’s only because you encounter barriers and then you feel that you are not accepted 100 percent as a foreigner here.

Melanie’s view that immigrants would always remain ‘others’ who might only be seen as ‘half-and-half German’ recalls the rigidity of the German nation concept that does not clearly differentiate between ethnos and demos. The main segregation between Germans and Ausländer seemingly allows no blurring or shifting. The same problem was expressed in the following exchange, taken from an out-of-lesson discussion with two sixteen-year-old boys: Kamil: I have read that Germany has 2 percent of foreigners, but that’s not true: it’s more than that, right? 60 million population9 and here in Berlin there are already 2 million Turks! Sabine Mannitz: There might be 2 million Turks in the whole of Germany, but not in Berlin; that would actually be more than half Berlin’s population! Kamil: Or is that supposed to mean that they don’t count those with German passports any longer [as foreigners]? Sabine Mannitz: Why should they count them too? Kamil: They are also foreigners. Sabine Mannitz: When they have German passports they are Germans, after all, and one cannot count them as foreigners any longer. Ferhat: Yes, that’s right! [pause] But for the Nazis, even then they are still wogs and not Germans; why is this so?

These boys treat the category ‘foreigner’ as an unchangeable attribute which is not altered by having German citizenship. In other words, their different culture and origin lastingly prevents immigrants from being accepted as equal Germans. Although naturalisation ensures formal political integration, it implies no access to comprehensive nationality, which contains additional meanings of ethnic descent, ‘mentality’ and culture. Given a concept of the nation that allows people to be excluded on grounds of ethnic and cultural otherness from 264

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the imagined collectivity, no hyphenation can express identities involving simultaneous multiple belonging or modified distance. Since dual citizenship is not possible as a regular option in Germany either, the positions recorded in Berlin necessarily followed a winding path through a labyrinth of contradictions. This set the framework for contestations of identity with situationalist strategies of subtle selectivity, identifying partially while distancing oneself at the same time – integration ‘as a foreigner’. Even though identification with Germanness is a restricted option, local identifications are another answer to this dilemma: without subscribing to a national German identity, it is possible to identify with Berlin, or with parts of it.10 ‘I am not a German but a Berliner’, the adolescents said, or ‘Germany is not my home, but Kreuzberg is’. And like the collective Ausländer identity, Berlin, and especially the borough of Kreuzberg, also stand for a heterogeneity where being ‘other’ than the German majority culture does not involve exclusion and may even offer protection. The problem is apparently not handling the situation personally but the fact that society and parents do not recognize one’s crossing over. Songül described their situation as an advantage: ‘As we, the foreigners, also know another mentality, another culture, we can decide which one is better or appeals to us more. As a result, there is this longing for the culture that one likes best. I think Germans do not have this choice.’ Songül’s opinion was highly praised by her teacher of ethics, who was impressed at her rejection of the idea of deficits and her mentioning the positive aspects instead. His affirmative response was that the rigid classifications of being German, Turkish or ‘foreign’ no longer fitted social reality. Most of the pupils present immediately agreed with this view, but they answered straightaway that the problem remained that ‘everybody in the environment still used these drawers’, ‘especially parents’, ‘even though the chest of drawers is too small’. As these young people evidently felt that they had left their parents’ context of identification with their countries of emigration behind and were orienting themselves towards their position in German society, where they also imagined their future lives to be based, their shared identity as ‘foreigners’ remains an emergency measure that is much less than the ideal. It rules out the concrete background provided by their parents’ origins and thus expresses their status in the pertinent matter of living together with the Germans, but stigma management cannot replace recognition of their genuine contribution to German society. Melanie thought that a new state would have to be founded in order to do full justice to cultural and ethnic mixing. The fact that the United States of America was often mentioned as an ideal ‘multicultural’ society is telling: the United States invokes images of a glossy metropolitan life, a functioning pluralist society, and, not least, of immigrants who can be rewarded for their efforts with economic success and social advancement. Dimitra from Grade 12 fell into near-raptures about the States, because ‘basically I really appreciate the idea that so many cultures live together as in America very much, really super! And it seems to work!’ 265

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The special dilemma of recognition explains pupils’ preferences for a ‘foreigner’ identity in Berlin. The same structural position of being excluded from the imagined community of the German people, combined with shared experiences stemming from inter-generational crises with their migrant parents, led to a common group identity internally encompassing heterogeneity. In spite of the exclusivism inherent in the term, its adaptation by the pupils from immigrant families actually signifies an incorporating process of civil enculturation, in that it reflects the conventions and rhetorics that prevail upon this issue in German society. ‘Foreign’ pupils in Berlin are referring to a basic uneasiness with Germanness when they express their mistrust by using the idea of a boundary between Germans and Ausländer. At the same time they are also describing a counter-model that accepts ethnic heterogeneity and is (even) open to ethnic Germans who subscribe to their ideals. The selective positive identifications with their districts in Berlin, with the ‘good Germans’, that is, confessed antifascists, or with German economic success in spite of political failure, are all open for sharing with Germans, regardless of ethnic or cultural differences. The collective group identity of ‘foreigners’ has developed on the basis of exclusionist classifications from dominant German discourses,11 yet since young Ausländer clearly define their position within German society by taking it up, their emic taxonomy of group boundaries does not signify an exclusivist position. In practice, they expressed the fact that formal citizenship and cultural identity need to be dissolved in order to cover internal cultural plurality. The notion of being ‘foreigner’ is their ethnically pluralist counter-model, which was opposed to the exclusivist model of the German national community, but was expressed using the discursive means of the majority.

The Dutch, Allochtonen and Buitenlanders in Rotterdam While minority pupils in Berlin tended to express the experience of cultural difference in terms of being foreigners in both settings, Figen, Fadime and Naile from the Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam felt the greatest difference when going to Turkey, which they described more or less as just reflecting changes in themselves personally: Figen: In the Netherlands you are used to everything; it happens automatically. But when you go to Turkey, they ask you why you do this and that. They stare at you, how you walk and so on. Then I see how much I have changed here, how much I have become Dutchified. Naile: But here you also see differences. We are still more polite to each other. In Dutch families you can contradict your parents. We were taught to obey. It is within you, you do it automatically. But at the same time things change. My parents see 266

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that I’m doing well at school. They trust me more than before, so gradually I get more freedom.

Again, their statements contain some of the typical key words which we encountered in Berlin and which occurred in all four schools when pupils from immigrant families spoke about the different ‘worlds’ of home, school and their peers. When the focus was on their home situation and their parents’ culture, they noted that ‘at home everybody behaves differently from in school’. However, the tone in the Dutch case was different from that of pupils at the Lise Meitner School: being Dutchified apparently does not raise serious problems of the kind that young foreigners face in Berlin. Justification or fencing oneself off from one’s parents’ cultural tradition seems less urgent too. Naile’s view is quite different from the rather negative outlook of pupils in Berlin, where they described parental culture in terms of narrow-minded restrictions and inadequacies, not being able to discuss and compromise, and so forth. Although starting from the same idea of cultural difference in socialisation, namely that in Dutch families one can contradict one’s parents while Turkish children are taught to obey, she defines this difference in positive terms of ‘greater politeness’. This view has incorporated the message of Dutch hegemonic discourse about the multicultural society, in which every particular (sub-)culture can contribute something good. Moreover, in acknowledging the process of gradually obtaining more freedom and gaining trust, Naile is describing her relationship with her parents in terms of dynamic change. The Dutch ideal of reaching a consensus by peaceful negotiation seems significant here too. Parallel to the dominant construction of Dutch political culture – in which the absence of revolutions is not regretted but expressed positively as fostering a peaceful way of pursuing goals by ongoing consultation and the balancing of factions rather than by radical solutions – there is apparently no need to revolt against one’s parents, since changes can be accomplished step-by-step. The latter is apparently seen as a reciprocal relationship: for success at school, one can obtain greater trust and freedom. Making one’s parents aware of the modernisation which has taken place in Turkey in the meantime can also be part of the negotiation. As Fadime said: I can understand to some extent why my parents are sometimes so afraid of losing their culture. They were brought up in a completely different Turkey from what it is like now. You really see modern life now in Turkey, with all the clothing and music and so on. It is really not a problem any more for girls in the city to go out, at least for some. But many parents here refuse to admit that. For them, Turkey is what they left twenty-odd years ago. We have to show them. 267

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Fadime thus takes stratification into account and treats culture as a field of negotiation and change. Unlike the concept of culture as a collective disposition, favoured in Berlin, this view emphasises internal diversity. Such references to contemporary change put cultural differences into relative terms: their parents’ strict or ‘old fashioned’ attitudes are thus lifted out of the ‘us–them’ dichotomy between Turkish parental restrictions and more liberal Dutch parental attitudes. In a similar rhetoric, Fadime’s friend Naile did not just treat the concept of multiculturalism as a Dutch phenomenon but applied it equally to Turkey: ‘My parents always say, “You must only socialise with people from your own region”. That is the point in Turkey as well, you have all sorts of different cultures there.’ Cultural difference is thus qualified by taking internal plurality into consideration. As with the idea of dealing with cultural diversity in a conciliatory way by playing it low key and not making a big issue of it, as is favoured in the Netherlands, Naile used the same model to see different cultures in the fashion of sub-cultural life-styles. Culture is ‘more a feeling’, said one Turkish girl in Rotterdam, and her friend added: ‘It’s your background, what you get from your parents.’ Culture in that sense means an emotional atmosphere that is important for each individual, like a personal taste or preference, but does not need to be an issue of special relevance on an inter-subjective level in society. On the other hand, the Turkish adolescents in Rotterdam sometimes adopted the dominant views on cultural difference, or rather the relevant topics attributed to the different cultures. The position of women in Islam, for instance, was one of the most frequently discussed questions relating to ‘culture and religion’ during lessons at their school. We have already recorded some typical extracts from such Dutch discussion lessons in the chapter on argumentative strategies, for example the debate on ‘Cultural differences between West and non-West’, introduced by Güldane in a Grade 5 HAVO class. Some features of that discussion are worth considering again: Güldane had depicted the supposedly crucial differences to consist of ‘group dependence, group atmosphere, the separation of men and women, and politeness’ on the ‘non-Western’ side, and opposed it to ‘individualism, personal success, equality of the sexes and openness’ on the side of ‘the West’. Although she was thus reproducing the typical dominant discourse that depicts cultures as reified entities, she then continued with an explanation that stressed social learning as the source of different cultures. This conflation reminds one of the discussion reported from Berlin, in which pupils treated different cultures as the results of different upbringings but then nomothetically called them ‘mentalities’. In the further course of the lesson, Güldane went on to confront her classmates with culturalist stereotypes drawn from literature on the ‘multicultural Netherlands’. The autochtonen Dutch as well as the ‘non-Western’ pupils deconstructed all the bold statements by referring to either individual characteristics, or to personal experiences which contradicted the stereotypes. In this respect, they pursued an ideal-typical Dutch process of 268

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gradually deconstructing oppositions in order to arrive at a consensus. When this stage was reached, Güldane concluded by saying with contentment, that ‘you have all apparently overcome cultural differences’. About herself she said the same: ‘I am Dutchified; I have overcome cultural differences.’ Although this example gave only a partial view of what cultural difference fundamentally is for the participants, it is nevertheless revealing how they situated the notion of differences of culture in a wider perspective of social change and thus accommodated themselves to the prevailing Dutch ideal of playing things down in order to prevent conflicts emerging from hardened positions rather than insisting on the existence of a profound contrast. By tying these differences to situational circumstances and reducing them to the level of differences in life-style, minority pupils in Rotterdam were apparently consenting to the taming of other cultures that is favoured in dominant concepts of cultural diversity in the Netherlands. The fact that Dutch society officially consists of a plurality of cultures gives way to an ‘overcoming of cultural differences’ that does not entail any open pressure for cultural assimilation in the course of becoming Dutch. The positive self-image of Dutch political culture as a matter of negotiation was reproduced by the pupils as to measure individual efforts at integration. Contrary to the image that ‘non-Western’ cultures could not cope with change, the ‘non-Western’ participants in the debate personally stood for the possibility of mastering processes of transformation; this is also what is expected of them in the course of their enculturation in Dutch society: to reconcile differences. In contrast to the quite critical judgements that young ‘foreigners’ in Berlin expressed about their parents’ cultures, the style of argumentation used by Güldane, Naile and other pupils from immigrant families in Rotterdam was more one of ‘being different but equally valuable’: politeness and respect for elderly people were among the positive factors named to characterise their families’ cultural background. The same insistence on having something positive to contribute was also expressed notionally, and in this respect, the dominant model of Dutch multiculturalism was no longer followed by concerned pupils at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School: they did not use the well-intentioned official phrase allochtonen at all because of its negative connotations. In the words of Melek: I don’t like ‘allochtoon’. It sounds very negative. It’s as if we were quite different and less than the others. In the newspapers you read, for example, ‘more allochtonen are criminals’, or ‘allochtonen pupils do worse at school’. I do not want to be talked about in that way.

So the term allochtoon was well known and also well understood as denoting a liminal status of cultural difference that is ‘still’ too big to be accepted. Because of this problematic association, most Turkish pupils at the Rotterdam school rejected it as being negatively coloured, if not offensive. Given the racist definition of the term allochtonen in their textbook on the multicultural society, their 269

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sensitivity against this classification should not come as a surprise.12 The adolescents preferred the Dutch term buitenlander instead, meaning foreigners with some cultural difference but without the connotation of their being problematic. This classificatory preference is remarkable, insofar as the concept of the foreigner (buitenlander) has already been out of fashion for a long time among professionals in the field of ethnic studies and migration in the Netherlands owing to its exclusionist nuances. For teachers too, buitenlander sounded more exclusive than allochtoon, and they therefore used the latter term when talking about pupils of Turkish or Moroccan origin. When asked why they speak of themselves as of foreigners by using the term buitenlander, one girl from a Turkish family who was born and raised in Rotterdam and held Dutch citizenship said: ‘Aren’t we buitenlanders? After all, we have a different culture.’ Although the Turkish term yabancı would be the formally correct translation of buitenlander, according to Turkish pupils it is semantically not what they meant. When Harun was asked about this he answered, ‘No, no, yabancı means more a stranger. It is, of course, the translation, but it feels different’. Buitenlander, as the pupils used it, just refers neutrally to having a different cultural background, but does not mean being a stranger. In their own understanding, being a ‘foreigner’ has evidently less to do with formal citizenship than with being ethnically or culturally different. All Dutch political programmes designed to overcome presumed inhibitions springing from particular cultural restraints and habits might be well-intended instruments of collective inclusion. Yet the Turkish pupils interpreted the implicit treatment of them as clients in need of compensation as a collective stigma. They consequently rejected the term allochtonen along with any suggestion that special help was needed, a viewpoint that ultimately fits the civic aim of participation. Miserabilist perspectives or positive discrimination were hence not appreciated. Güldane put it like this: It’s okay with me to pay attention to the problems some foreigners face in society. There is more unemployment and there is still discrimination, but when you have overcome all that, like me, you must treat me like any other person. Then it must not make a difference any more where you’re from and what you think.

Among pupils themselves, ethnic terms were also used as self-attributions, but they were not connected to articulations of collective identities. The young people treated them as mere background information of no special importance beyond the level of individual self-placement. Turkish pupils at Tinbergen thus showed a strong orientation towards participation in society and demonstrated exactly the style of treating their original ‘home culture’ as a peculiarity of their life-style that marks the dominant vision of multicultural society. However, in their view of contrasting groups, the immigrants’ children in Rotterdam have 270

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already passed the stage of needing to be integrated by means of special policies: the allochtonen are others, those who do not participate of their own accord but need a target policy to overcome their backwardness. In using the term they have chosen for themselves, buitenlander, they were therefore claiming a space for cultural differences to be seen apart from the whole process of integration. Buitenlander was intended as a purely descriptive term designating their status in society vis-à-vis the autochtonen Dutch, namely in terms of their different culture. In spite of the meanwhile unconventional term buitenlander, the minority pupils were thus referring to the same idea of ethnic diversity that is also depicted in the official model of multicultural Dutch society: there are genuine Dutch, officially called autochtonen, and other inhabitants, the latter being officially divided into a number of ethnic groups. The adolescents went against this very hierarchisation entailed by the dominant discourse, where ethnic groups are sorted and labelled according to their presumed social status in being culturally or ethnically different, as well as according to the gaps that needed bridging. At least for their own ‘other culture’, the emic discourse of the buitenlanders rejects the implicit valuations of the policy-based taxonomy, namely that being culturally different might hinder social or political participation and should therefore preferably be countered. ‘Feeling to be both’ does not lead to a conflict of belonging because it is accommodated by the acceptance of ethnic diversity and the possibility of dual citizenship in the Dutch case. The problem of recognition remains nevertheless unsolved as long as some immigrant cultures are associated with the risk of inhibition. Although it is obviously much easier to come to terms with the Dutch than with the German nation concept, ‘becoming Dutch’ was still not judged so appealing either that it could be seen as sufficient to make an identity. For most pupils from Turkish families at Nikolaas Tinbergen School, naturalisation had no special relevance in terms of their self-definitions. The fact that many of them held both Dutch and Turkish citizenship was considered a mere practicality, including especially satisfying parental concerns about the feared loss of original national bonds whilst not being excluded from full rights in the Netherlands. Serife explained: ‘Whether you have a Dutch passport or a Turkish one, it does not make you different. I am still Turkish, that’s my culture. It’s easier to have a Dutch passport. You can travel in Europe without problems, and there are all kinds of advantages, like voting.’ When Harun said, ‘I feel Dutch and at the same time Turkish’, the words ‘Dutch’ and ‘Turkish’ just referred to different spheres of his daily life. Nezife articulated this difference more clearly: Being Turkish is your culture, it is what you think, what your parents are, where you come from… I’m also Dutch. I have been born here and I go to school, I have Dutch friends. It’s more the society you live in; I don’t know how to explain it. When I go to school I am Dutch; when I come home I am Turkish. 271

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She expressed very concisely what the overwhelming majority of Turkish pupils in Rotterdam thought about Dutch citizenship, national origin and the multicultural society: they saw themselves as part of Dutch society but also identified with their Turkish culture. However, since ethnic and cultural pluralism is legitimate and does not contradict national integration in the Netherlands, Turkish pupils did face some pressure to take ‘that minor step’ and apply for naturalisation. They realised that they were expected to accept and appreciate the beneficent gifts the Netherlands has for them. The following brief discussion is very telling in this respect. It took place during a preparatory lesson in social studies for a visit to the Parliament in The Hague. Volkan, who was considered the most ‘Dutchified’ Turkish pupil at Tinbergen School and who had Dutch as well as Turkish citizenship, expressed his lack of interest in politics and said that he would not make use of his right to vote at the next general election. His unwillingness was immediately criticised by both the teacher and some autochtonen Dutch pupils: Volkan: I’m not going to vote. I’m not interested in politics. They promise everything, but in the end they cheat you. Teacher: But you have a Dutch passport, you have the right to vote. By voting you are participating in Dutch society. Foreigners pay taxes, they live and work here: they should also use their right to vote. You have the right; why not use it? Autochtoon boy: Yes, why, my friend? It’s discriminatory that foreigners who live here and who have no Dutch passport cannot vote in general elections. You have the right to do so and you don’t use it? Volkan: This is typical rubbish. What does that have to do with my background? I know many Dutch pupils here at school who are not interested in politics. They are never bothered with questions about their background. Am I less Dutch when I don’t vote, or what?

Volkan is criticising the fact that his immigrant origin comes into play as a moral obligation to display a special commitment. His teacher and classmates do not treat him as just someone who is not interested in politics, but depict him as an immigrant spurning his formal rights. He does not value the Dutch gift of inclusion, that is to say. What Volkan is opposing is discrimination in terms of his being told how he should participate in society. He wants to be treated equally, and that includes the right to be as non-political as his autochtoon Dutch peers. Volkan’s example also shows how the Dutch assimilationist ideal that cultural differences should finally be overcome, which we discussed in the context of the dominant taxonomies, implies unbalanced expectations and a lack of recognition. It should be immigrants who bridge the assumed gap with exemplary behaviour as citizens. In spite of the options of having double citizenship and hyphenated identities, there is subtle pressure to 272

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come up to the Dutch ideal that autochtonen Dutch people are not subject to in the same way. Volkan’s protest, that indigenous Dutch pupils would never be bothered with such pressure over their isolation or participation, reveals the hierarchical effects of the official group classifications that target special policies towards liminal allochtonen. In spite of their school’s creed of being happy with cultural diversity, Turkish pupils saw themselves exposed to double standards and negative assessments of their home culture as an inhibiting factor. This description of the problem and the resulting minority allocation were rejected with their own concept of buitenlander, which was meant to refer to cultural differences without valuing them negatively. A further source of pressures to legitimise the immigrants’ civil inclusion is the gender topic. Particularly for allochtonen girls, the high esteem given to participation sometimes posed difficult situations when they felt the need to explain withdrawals that might stimulate culturalist stereotypes. Although the staff at Tinbergen try to filter pupils, so to speak, from the outset by telling parents before enrolling their children that participation in extra-curricular activities will be a crucial aspect of their success in school,13 a relatively large number of Turkish as well as Moroccan girls did not join in activities such as working weeks or trips to the city or countryside under the guidance of a teacher. Many girls were hesitant to admit that their parents forbid them to join in but felt embarrassed and also obliged to repel the image of being under strict control. In view of the widespread stereotypes about oppressed Muslim girls which also came up regularly in topic-related classroom discussions, they rather defended these restrictions as reasonable and as being in total accord with their personal preferences. In Serife’s words: ‘Yes, it’s true, my father forbids me from joining, but on the other hand I can imagine why. We saw this video made during the last week in Prague. The boys drinking excessively, yelling and behaving badly. If that’s a working week, I’d rather stay at home and do something nice. I don’t want to be part of it.’ Dance parties were a similar issue, and structurally the same replies could be heard. Firdevs, for example, said: ‘That’s not my style of having a party. I can join if I want, my parents trust me, but I simply don’t like it.’ Fadime likewise commented: ‘But what’s the problem? Do you really like going to discos? What are you looking for there? That’s my opinion.’ And Hacer applied the same strategy when talking about mixed marriages: ‘I am sure my parents won’t allow me to marry a Dutch boy, but after all, there are not many Dutch boys who are ready to convert to Islam, so the choice is easy, isn’t it?’ All of them offered practical arguments and, by insisting on their personal freedom of choice, tried to avoid being stigmatised for their cultural background. This approach could also be observed in a number of classroom discussions. We might at this stage simply recall some of the examples that have already been presented verbatim to analyse the different discussion cultures in the schools of our survey: The arguments that developed in Rotterdam as the result of an implicitly biased documentary video on Muslim life in the Netherlands are 273

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particularly telling in view of the pupils’ reactions to subjects that could have provoked culturalist divisions. Allochtonen pupils mastered such situations repeatedly by pointing at the normality of their own Islamic religion or Turkish culture, suggesting that it was not something to get upset about. To counter disparaging remarks that were made by some autochtonen classmates when watching the video, Aysegül and Ufuk from Grade 5 VWO insisted that Islam should neither be confused with fundamentalism nor equated with other negative stereotypes, like the suppression of women. They applied exactly the same strategy as their social studies textbook on the multicultural society. When the documentary video was shown to a Grade 6 VWO class an hour later, the discussion took the same direction: Islam was kept clear of suspicion by stressing that the degree of difference resulting from religion could be seen in the same fashion as any other life-style diversity in Dutch society; the religious concept of gender separation was equated with having unmixed gymnastics at school or separate soccer teams of men and women. In both classes, the Muslim pupils argued using the discursive strategies they had learnt at school about the Dutch notion of a functioning multicultural society: Muslim neighbours should not be confused with Islamic fundamentalists, who are the real political danger. Muslims in the Netherlands are not an exotic species following remote control rules that need to be obeyed but are quite normal, moderate, and internally differentiated, like any other people. Arguing that ‘the Koran is not black and white’ but ‘can be interpreted in different ways’, individual choice was emphasised above collective mobilisation. The Dutch civil convention of playing down any issue that might hinder consensus seemed to be fully internalised by these pupils. This appeasing rhetoric, although on the whole in line with the normative discourse of Dutch multicultural society, in fact goes a step further than the hegemonic taxonomy of differences in claiming absolutely equal recognition. Turkish pupils at Tinbergen rigidly rejected any suggestion that their cultural background might be hindering their equal participation in Dutch society. Entirely like the rejection of the negatively coloured concept of the allochtonen, or Volkan’s protest against double standards that put them under subtle pressure to prove their worth through exemplary behaviour as citizens, so, with respect to the gender issue, the adolescents argued against the assimilationist ideal of giving up their cultural otherness in the future. Basically, they seemed to have the same concern as the young foreigners in Berlin: formal citizenship and cultural identity have become separate issues, and equal recognition of the latter is claimed. They pursued this argument with the means they have learnt to use in Dutch political culture. Dutch citizenship involves no ethnos–demos dilemma, as in the construction of the German nation, so that this is not the crucial level of conflicts in the Netherlands. The young people from immigrant families in Rotterdam were concerned with another problem: despite Dutch citizenship 274

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and despite the official acceptance of the multicultural reality, their cultural otherness was not recognized as an individual resource that was equally valuable to that of any autochtoon Dutch but instead made the object of targeted policies to defeat it.

The English, Blacks and other Britons in London When Turkish pupils at Huxley School referred to cultural differences, they mostly spoke of traditions, family structures and the quality of relationships. Speaking Turkish and what were presumed to be ‘typical Turkish cultural practices’, like loyalty in friendship, readiness to help one another, respecting elders or offering presents, were mentioned as positive aspects which they could not discover so easily in the wider society. For Serkan, ‘co-operation among friends and sacrifices for them are very good traditional values. We are a minority in this country and we have to look after each other. Therefore, these kinds of values should be preserved’. The minority–majority contrast was also referred to by Bekir, who complained about social tensions with his English peers: ‘Here I can become friends with Turks more easily. They are not bossy or snobbish. Turks are more warm-hearted, and also we speak the same language and have similar tastes in music, food and football.’ They both considered personal devotion to friendship and preferences regarding consumption not as individual but as collective traits, ‘good traditional values’ of the Turks that one should retain in the cultural diaspora. The positive definition of one’s own ‘good traditional values’ and the sensitivity to ‘bossy or snobbish’ behaviour by others appear as expressions of an awareness that one’s own cultural background needs to be taken care of. In view of the multicultural teaching programme in Britain, these positions exemplify the style pupils are expected to develop: at school, they are reminded of the ethnic diversity in society as a source of collective enrichment and individual strength. Pupils are taught that an awareness of such differences matters in developing an identity within one’s own community, as well as in behaving in a non-discriminatory fashion. This hegemonic British rhetoric, favouring group rights by delineating collectivities of shared culture, religion and language as essential heritage and a collective asset, has left an unmistakeable influence on these pupils’ perceptions. On the other hand, this insistence on maintaining one’s own culture did not interfere with self-attribution as British. Aisha and her brother Sadiq, from a Somali family, were both born in London. When Sadiq explained that, ‘We cannot think of ourselves and what we are without having these values that our parents taught us; although we differ in approach to several things, we are basically Somali Muslims and also British’, Aisha nodded in consent. She then drew a comparison between themselves and people with other convictions: ‘We are not the only ones to respect our cultural heritage. Look at others: Indians, Sikhs 275

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and Jews all keep their beliefs and values, and open schools to teach them to their children. Why shouldn’t we do the same? They are part of this society, so are we.’ Having no doubts about the model of reified cultures as represented by communities, British society was thus depicted as consisting of different ethnic groups that all ‘respect their cultural heritage’. Cross-cutting contingencies and contradictions that go along with such group boundary constructions did not appear to bother the young people. Although a few pupils, interestingly enough, mixed up Britishness with Englishness, the majority of young Turks interviewed in London called themselves Turkish and also British. Since Britishness does not require them to get rid of their ethnic or cultural identifications, it was easily adopted as an additional layer of identity. The following statement taken from a classroom discussion illustrates this approach well. The teacher had read a paragraph from a book which explained that Greek parents were worried about the future of their children in Britain. Greek families, pupils were told, were concerned about the transmission of Greek cultural and traditional values to the younger generation. They feared that their children would not learn Greek and might eventually lose their cultural identity. Then pupils were asked to comment on this. A Turkish-Cypriot girl said that her parents felt more or less the same about the transmission of culture as source of identity: When I was very young, my parents used to take me to supplementary school in order for me to improve my Turkish and see Turkish music and folk dance. They were very insistent about that, and I did not like it at the time, because it was difficult to spend the whole Sunday at school. Now I realise that I have got similar feelings. I feel British as well as Turkish and a Muslim.

When the teacher asked her if she wanted her children to learn Turkish and follow Islamic values, she replied, ‘Yes’ without hesitation. This line of argumentation was not peculiar to pupils from a particular ethnic group. Somali and Pakistani pupils used similar words about their ‘ethnic group’ and ‘culture’. They all shared a perception of Britishness that accommodates diverse origins, cultures and religious convictions. Turned into a topic at school that concerns everyone, the experience of immigration can be taken up without restraint. Together with the implied principle of construction, which sees culture and ethnic groups as bounded entities, these pupils have assimilated the mosaic model of cultural diversity that is a recurring element of self-definition for British society. In comparison to the Dutch case, references to ideally ‘overcoming differences’ or forgetting about the origin of one’s own grandparents are remarkably absent in Britain. The ideas of the pupils from ethnic minorities, parallel to the hegemonic British understanding of multiculturalism, were rather that one should stick with one’s own cultural community, become aware of the different 276

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traditions and care for them. Britishness was regarded as coming out on top and being a source of democratic rights that facilitate fair play. The Turkish pupils at Huxley School who had both British and Turkish citizenship saw being British as the first step towards claiming equal rights in society. Hamza observed that, until his father received British citizenship and a British passport, it had been very difficult for him to travel. Each time he had to apply for a visa, but ‘now he is British and can travel easily’. Hamza continued: ‘First of all you have to be British. You need to learn the language well and have a British passport. Then you can have free education, find jobs and travel to many places without having to get a visa.’ His school-friend Kazim, who did not yet have British citizenship, also wanted to become naturalised because being British would provide him with opportunities and firm grounds for arguing that he was ‘British and entitled to have the same rights as other people’. Accepting British citizenship and using the rhetoric associated with it did not cause any conflicts of identity. Turkish pupils, like their peers from other ethnic groups, knew that displaying different ways of being British would not interfere with retaining their cultural particularities. The way in which they pursued the argument in favour of having British citizenship reflects the legalistic approach to cultural diversity, which also characterised the portrayal of multicultural Britain in teaching. Belonging to a distinct community provides a cultural identity, although at the expense of perpetuating boundaries. Since ethnic diversity is a recognized element of Britishness, the hyphenated terms that correspond to this concept were those mostly preferred as self-designations by the pupils from immigrant families in London. Britishness was and is an imperial rather than a genuinely national concept, so that McCrone remarks that ‘being British is manifestly a weak form of political identity’ (1997: 587). This makes it evidently easy to integrate Britishness into the construction of a minority identity that is expressed through hyphenation, but cleavages that cut across ethnic boundaries are hardly taken into account: ‘You cannot overcome ethnic descriptions and ethnic belonging’, as Kazim said. Regarding these differentiations beneath the common roof of Britishness, a black group identity was especially strong in comparison to other ethnic groups at the school in London. Clothing and socialising were observed as markers of distinction that referred to this emic taxonomy of difference: black pupils at Huxley School wore baggy trousers, fashionable trainers and caps, their hair cuts were very short, something that – for this reason – no Turkish pupil at the school would want to have. Obviously, Turkish pupils in London avoided the dress codes of their Black peers, and not many long-term or close friendships between Turks and black or Somali pupils could be observed either. In the classrooms, the tendency was either that black pupils sat together or that they sat with English classmates rather than with Turks. Some of the Turkish teenagers called black pupils ‘Arabs’, a term with derogatory connotations in this context. Sevil, a Turkish-Cypriot girl who was born in London and who grew up in the 277

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same borough that her school was in, said that she was discouraged by her parents from becoming friends with coloured classmates, especially with black boys, whom they considered violent and unreliable. Sevil took this argument up when some Turks were bullied by black boys in her school and neighbourhood: ‘I’ve got nothing against black people. I have black female classmates with whom we walk to the bus stop from time to time. But boys are not the same. As I told you before, if my friends saw me with black boys, they would talk behind my back.’ Her perceptions and assessment were again expressed along collective lines, as if the black boys had some common trait apart from the colour of their skin. When Turkish Kazim spoke about the differences between him and other pupils, he also referred to these boundaries in collectivising terms of a ‘different mentality’ and ‘different ways’: I really would like to see myself as a part of the wider society. But you cannot overcome ethnic descriptions and ethnic belonging. When I am always defined as a Turk and constantly reminded of this, I feel that there is a distance between others and myself. Many other Turkish pupils will also tell you that we are called ‘dirty Turks’, ‘bloody Turks’ and so on by English and Arab [i.e. black] pupils, especially when they have a dispute with us… There is a barrier between Turkish pupils and others. That’s why Turks, English and Arabs [i.e. blacks] have their own groups at school. They have a different mentality and they have their own ways; we have our own ways. Because of these differences most of my friends are Turks and Kurds. We get on well with each other. In our group there are Turkish, Kurdish and [Turkish] Cypriot pupils.

By treating Turks, Kurds and Cypriots together on the basis of the common Turkish language that they speak in London, internal differentiations are cancelled out for the time being in order to draw up other boundaries against black or English pupils. The interesting thing about this common turning away from other minority pupils, namely blacks, is that the black population in Britain represents the proverbial outsiders who are considered as having the fewest opportunities in society. This view was also reflected in pessimistic statements which black pupils from Huxley School made about their futures, anticipating racial discrimination. In avoiding close relationships or stylistic references, the Turkish adolescents were expressing a desire not to be associated with these miserable, stigmatised people. This is a clear expression of upward social ambition by making reference to the minority–majority axis. On the other hand, Turkish pupils also expressed the idea that existing differences should ideally be irrelevant in the distribution of opportunities. They measured treatment and opportunities against the criterion of group belonging, which is, after all, what the equal-opportunity legislation aims at, namely constant monitoring of discrimination and stigmatisation. Pupils who felt humiliated and embarrassed tended to make immediate reference to ethnic group preference and discrimination. Zeynep’s case is a good illustration of this sort of 278

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assessment. Zeynep’s father comes from mainland Turkey, while her mother comes from Turkish Cyprus. About herself, she said she was Turkish, Cypriot and British. Yet, whenever she came to school late and thought this was not tolerated in her as much as in English pupils, she accused teachers of being biased against Turks. The following incident was one of many. The class was waiting in front of the teaching room door. The teacher came, unlocked the door and let the pupils in. Only after attendance registration was finished and teaching had already started, Zeynep walked in: Teacher: Where’s your registration slip for coming late? Zeynep: I don’t have one. Teacher: I’m afraid you can’t just walk in like that. Zeynep: Why not? Others can. I’ve seen it happen. Teacher: No, you’re not right. I’m not allowing you to disrupt my classes like that. Zeynep: I want to follow the lesson. What’s wrong with that? Teacher: You can’t simply walk in, Zeynep. I am asking you to wait outside until I call you in. Zeynep goes out unwillingly. Five minutes later the teacher invites her back into the room. She comes in and complains in Turkish. She talks out loud and says, ‘Bastard, if it was an English pupil that came in, he [the teacher] would have behaved differently. He would have let her in immediately. He is treating me differently because I’m Turkish. The asshole!’

The fact that Zeynep did not treat her grievance openly but restricted her complaining to the Turkish-speaking audience indicates that she knew she was on shaky ground with her reproach: the teacher was, of course, right to ask for the registration slip,14 and the unfair treatment she was complaining of consisted of an inconsistency in the application of the rules that was hard to prove in the actual situation. When Turkish pupils were asked explicitly if there was unfair treatment at their school as regards sanctions for coming late or not wearing school uniform, most of them denied it. Yet whenever one of them felt they had unjust treatment, the suspicion of an ethnic bias was immediately raised. Ferhat, for instance, claimed that Turkish pupils would be ‘picked on’, and his younger brother Musa especially had been treated unfairly many times. Teachers would take the side of an English boy when there were conflicts in the classroom involving both. Ferhat said: Musa is a quiet boy and does whatever his teachers ask of him. He is well-mannered and nobody has ever seen him act violently towards others. He was bullied a couple of times, and I reported these incidents to his teachers. The same English pupil continued bullying him. The teachers did not bother about it. So I asked Musa to keep 279

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away from that boy in the classroom, and he did. He asked his teacher to seat him at the other side of the classroom. But the English boy approached him and started to kick him under the table. He tried to tell the two teachers what was happening in the classroom. When he failed to get any attention, he started hitting the English boy and banged his head against the wall. The teachers saw that and separated the two. When they reported the case to the year head, both teachers said that Musa was the guilty one who had started the fight in the classroom. Although I had previously reported incidents of bullying to them, they immediately blamed my brother! If Musa had been the bully and had been reported, he would have been punished a long time ago. I believe they treat us differently because we are a minority and nobody cares about it.

Turkish-speaking pupils, who had been lumped together as one collective by Kazim, easily out-numbered the English pupils at Huxley. Together with Turkish Cypriots and Kurds there were nearly 400 altogether, while the ‘UK Europeans’ numbered 290. The feeling of ‘being a minority’ was thus not a matter of the actual size of the groups in school but of the structural situation within Britain. Such segmentary mobilisation along ethnic group lines was regularly observed in Huxley Comprehensive when pupils had conflicts with each other across ethnic boundaries, and the suspicion regularly arose that the school tended to side with the English pupils. When a Turkish boy was badly beaten up and injured by an English boy who had hit him with a bottle on the head, Turkish pupils, together with Kurds and Turkish Cypriots, took action in common and accused the school administration of favouring the English. We have given a full account of this case and analysed it in detail in the chapter on argumentation standards and conflict resolution. The Turkish boy felt endangered, so he extended his network of friends among his ‘own folk’. The conflict was thus understood with ethnicised patterns of perception, which conversely were further ossified through the formation of ethnic cliques. The Turkish pupils also resorted to collectivising ethnic terms in the course of settling the conflict. The school administration expelled the Turkish boy when he was caught on the school premises with a knife. In the view of his ethnic network, this expulsion was evidence of a lack of neutrality on the part of the school administration. Even one of the teachers, who was not English but of Sri Lankan origin, commented that the school was actually tougher on pupils of other ethnic backgrounds in times of conflict and suspended them more quickly than English pupils. This feeling of unfairness, to the disadvantage of Turks and other pupils from ethnic minority groups, runs counter to the promise of ‘multiracial equality’ under a common umbrella of Britishness. Are the English actually more privileged and entitled to call themselves Britons than members of ‘other’ ethnic groups? As concerns the treatment and representation of different groups in the teaching this impression is hard to substantiate: apart from the daily act of worship and the religious education syllabi that prescribe studies of a ‘mainly Chris280

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tian nature’, critical history teachers at Huxley Comprehensive pointed out the Anglo-Saxon-focused history curriculum. But since the curricular self-presentation of Britishness defines ethnic plurality as its heart, and given teachers who take a distance from ‘Anglo-Saxonisation’, an actual preference for the English is not very likely. On the contrary, in order to avoid such ethnic rivalries among pupils and counter pre-defined roles, some teachers reported having developed special strategies. One teacher said: ‘In order to avoid a sense of injustice among pupils, I strip them of their roles. From time to time I assign pupils some kind of role. It may be “awful”, “nasty”, “nice” or “funny”; that varies according to the texts and the topics. Before the end of lesson they become real again. Roles are left behind in the classroom.’ This strategy was meant to dissolve the prevailing suspiciousness of preferential treatment, which is an unintended side-effect of the much-appreciated awareness of different backgrounds and discourse of their inviolability. The alertness to discrimination has effectively patterned pupils’ assessments of presumed unfair treatment: not only is discrimination on grounds of ethnic and cultural difference an effective reproach given the relevant legislation in Britain, but pupils also left the impression of being over-sensitive so that they easily felt offended and humiliated. An illustrative incident for this took place in a religious education lesson. The topic of the day was the Buddhist belief in reincarnation. The teacher explained the idea that human beings might be re-incarnated in a different form of life after the end of their physical existence. Wanting to enrich her explanation with an example, the teacher pointed to Selim, saying, ‘Selim might become a squirrel in his next life’. This caused a great deal of laughter in the classroom, and the other pupils made Selim embarrassed and angry by calling him ‘squirrel Selim’. Selim raised the matter at home and told his parents that the teacher had humiliated him. As a result, they came to the school, made a formal complaint and asked for an apology. The teacher assured them that it had not been a premeditated bad joke and that she had not meant to humiliate Selim at all. She stressed that, by pure chance, she had mentioned Selim’s name, but it could have been anyone in the class. The fact that it was not only a possibly insecure teenager who felt offended and embarrassed at being laughed at, but that Selim’s parents also considered this to be a serious enough incident to complain about it formally and ask the teacher for an apology, indicates the existence of a coherent pattern of expectations based on fair treatment, which are known to be defined legitimate claims so that instant action is taken in cases of (presumed) unfairness. To highlight this specialty of the London setting, let us briefly throw a comparative glance on some incidents that took place in Berlin. Between the British and the German example, there proved to be a striking difference in the legitimacy of demanding respectful treatment from the social position of the immigrants: at the Lise Meitner School, several situations that resembled the one of ‘squirrel Selim’ led to completely different reactions from the pupils concerned. 281

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There was, for example, one case where a history teacher tried to provoke a discussion about the causes of colonialism with the remark that ‘the German race was, as everybody knew, the best one’. In another course, one geography teacher, in a lesson about desertification, asked a Lebanese boy to read ‘that textbook paragraph with the camels’, as it was the appropriate part for him. In both situations the foreign pupils just exchanged irritated looks but refrained from objecting. They became reserved and quiet as if they were not entitled to make any complaints. The extent to which minority-majority power relations affect the reactions and strategies that pupils may follow becomes even more obvious when taking into consideration how a number of German pupils countered against ‘insulting behaviour’ of teachers in Lise Meitner School, namely with immediate protest, demanding a discussion in their tutorial lesson when situations did not improve. In the absence of any declared recognition of the immigrants’ contributions, let alone an anti-discrimination apparatus like the British one, pupils from immigrant families had no reliable backing in Berlin to appeal to. The legitimacy of interventions was in practice defined by their teachers and German classmates, some of whom even displayed unashamed ignorance of their immigrant classmates’ backgrounds: when a geography class in Lise Meitner School had to watch a documentary video about Kurdistan, one of the German girls protested immediately to their teacher: ‘Why don’t you just give the lesson to the Turks straight away? I’m not interested in that!’ At Huxley School in London, she would probably have been rebuked as a racist for such a remark, for knowledge about others in multicultural Britain is put forward as being of crucial concern for every member of British society. In Germany, an extreme counter-example in this respect, the immigrant cultures are hardly ever taken into consideration and therefore almost treated as if illegitimate. The situation for minorities is thus confirmed as a structural one, and not, as in British multiculturalism, counterbalanced by legal and affirmative measures that are to ensure recognition of cultural traditions that differ from those of the English. In both settings, the responses of migrants’ children to what they considered acts of discrimination reflect their assimilation, if not internalisation, of the implicit meanings that are conveyed by the dominant discourses on cultural differences. Pupils in London thus saw their immigrant background in positive terms as a source of cultural identity and a stock of knowledge that adds to the assets of British society, so that it deserves respect. Although they had no problems in identifying with the concept of Britishness – which does not require to overcome internal differences but rather strives to maintain if not cherish them – the boundaries pupils drew between themselves along lines of cultural and ethnic origin seemed radicalised to shape the classificatory context for jealous competition in terms of preferential or discriminatory treatment. Their extreme suspicion of injustice intimates that the normative British rhetoric of multicultural equality is hardly translated into reality. Nevertheless, even though they 282

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might thus overdo the monitoring regarding equal opportunities, basically this is exactly what they are expected to be aware of: they are, after all, only applying the discursive means and strategies that characterise the dominant concepts of multiculturalism and racial equality in Great Britain.

The French, Arabes and Immigrés in Paris In the Parisian Lycée, as in the other three schools, differences in gender relations were most often referred to as expressions of cultural difference. At school, a number of girls from immigrant families tried to introduce this as an apologetic argument for why they could not carry out school-related tasks like doing homework or preparing for an exam. They claimed to have less time than French girls because of their duties as daughters, which were part of their different ‘culture’ at home. When Nouara, whose family is of Algerian origin, talked about this, she meant not only herself but also other girls of North African backgrounds: Often we say to teachers, when we have no time to do our homework or when they want to give us too much work to do at home, ‘You don’t understand all the things we have to do at home’. In our places it is not the same: cooking, doing dishes, cleaning, and some of my friends also have to take care of younger brothers and sisters. I cannot say to my mother, ‘No, I don’t want to help you’: she wouldn’t understand that. I am her daughter, I must help her and have to know how to do all these things. Sometimes I get into a rage, lock myself into my bedroom and want to do nothing, but I cannot do that all the time.

Her account of these expectations at home would meet instant agreement from girls from ethnic minorities in Berlin, London and Rotterdam, where we met the same notion of culture as gendered. However, while the girls in Berlin tended to articulate this in terms of a negative dissociation in respect to both ‘cultures’, and those in Rotterdam opted more for a conciliatory correction of both in positive terms, pupils in London were wary of their own culture being violated or made a source of stigma while merging it into the greater cultural mosaic. Nouara’s self-defence most resembles what we found in Britain, but the discursive context in which she places her argument differs enormously: members of minority groups in London can draw on the dominant discourse of anti-discrimination and equal opportunities that takes the existence of different cultures within Britishness for granted as a basis of affirmative action and group rights. The equality of pupils in Paris is supposed to be attained by a normative ignorance of all cultural differences. Although the school system differentiates between French and foreign citizens when registering them, the idea of structural equality is approached by regarding pupils as just being equal pupils, no 283

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matter what social, cultural, religious or ethnic particularities they might exploit as their private source of identity. The only legitimate differences that can be referred to in this setting concern the levels of achievement: cultural arguments are not acceptable at all. Nouara, and the other girls who made the same argument as she did, belied this normative premise of equality. The dominant taxonomy which pupils encounter at their lycée in Paris entails that the category ‘French’ is meant to be as universal as ‘British’. Yet in contrast to the British concept, which defines internal plurality as the core of Britishness, the construction of Frenchness has been shown to rely on a normative indifference towards primordial affiliations: belonging to the French state is supposed to transcend all internal diversity. When pupils in Paris talked about ‘a French person’, however, they did not follow this logic but categorised people by criteria like physical appearance, name and religion. According to such labelling, a ‘French person’ has French ancestry, a French name, white skin and is most probably a (secularised Roman Catholic) Christian. A boy like seventeen-year-old Richard, whose family emigrated from Turkey, who was born in France, has French citizenship and a French surname,15 but whose religion is Aramaic Christian, would thus not be considered French. He did not conceive of himself as a French either: I was born in France, but I don’t call myself French. If somebody asks me what I am, I say that I come from Turkey, but as a matter of fact I am not Turkish. Here, you cannot say you’re French, and if I say that I’m Orthodox, nobody knows what it is.

Richard is not just talking about descent and physical appearance but also revealing how a religion that differs from the norm in France contributes to the vernacular formation of group categorisations among adolescents. Hüseyin, a Turkish boy in the same Seconde group as Richard, pointed out this ethnicised perception as significant for socialising. Concerning Richard and his cousin Fehmi, Hüseyin said, ‘They are from Turkey, but they are not Turks’. He never spent time with them out of school, and the avoidance was mutual. Fehmi explained that he had friends of all ethnic backgrounds, but not Turks, because ‘It’s true, I don’t really like Turks after what they did to us in Turkey’. When Fehmi and Richard talked about their family’s origin and their Orthodox religion, they insisted very much on subtle details marking their distinctiveness, for example, that they were not Chaldéans but Araméens, that is, ‘Orthodox Christians of Byzantine origin’, as they explained it themselves. It is not clear whether these boys knew exactly the significance of the religious difference for church dogma and meant to use it as argument on this level.16 What matters irrespective of this possibility is that they insisted on the difference between Armenians and Arameans and emphasised it as crucially important, just as they also refused to see themselves as French, because their particular religion was not acknowledged and ‘nobody knows what it is’. 284

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Another boy at Lycée Fernand Braudel, who is from a Chinese family and whose physical appearance makes this other background immediately visible, commented in a similar tone that, ‘Even if you have lived in France for a long time already, that does not prevent you from not feeling French’. He added, ‘I just have to look into the mirror’. These boys have ultimately internalised a conceptual exclusion: in opposition to their school’s equalising approach in ruling out all cultural, ethnic and religious differences between pupils, among themselves the basis of reference were ethnicised concepts. Their emic taxonomy set up different ethnic groups in respect of the ethnic French. Despite holding French citizenship, which many pupils from immigrant families did, they still stressed their being different in terms of culture, religion or ethnicity when describing their own position in France. Take Nouara as one example. Her parents are of Algerian origin, but her father was already born in France. She said, ‘Really, I don’t feel French! I’m Algerian, although I was born in France and I have never lived anywhere else than in France. When I come home, everything is different in my house’. As already mentioned, this way of describing the experience of difference is the same as in Berlin, London or Rotterdam: ‘at home’ signifies a world that differs from the surrounding majority society. But comparing the tones in respect to how acknowledged divergences were assessed by minority pupils in the other cases, Nouara’s comment again strikes a different chord: the irreconcilable nature of Frenchness with her family’s origin is in the foreground. With the same emphasis, Loubna, whose parents are Moroccan, commented, ‘I am not French, I feel different… Even if you want to feel French there is always somebody to remind you that you are not’. Like the complaints about differential treatment in London, this last remark sounds as if Loubna regarded the republican discourse about equality in France as mere lip-service. Officially, the umbrella term applied to residents in France who are not French-born is that of Immigrés, but this was considered inappropriate and replaced with ethnic labels by the young people. They spoke, for example, of ‘Turks’ or of collectivities like that of the North Africans whom they called Arabes, whether their family was of Tunisian, Algerian or Moroccan origin. This invention of a comprehensive Maghrebian culture recalls the collective ‘foreigner’ identity that pupils constructed in Berlin. To ‘turn against the internal divisions rooted in their parents’ pre-emigration cultural heritages’ (Baumann 1996: 157) with such a new collectivity suggests a reaction to their being comprehensively classified in the dominant public representation.17 Given the republican norm of equality in France, which is to rule out all internal particularities, this sort of terminology is in any case highly undesirable. Teachers at Lycée Fernand Braudel consequently became rather upset when they noticed the appearance of ethnicised vocabulary among their pupils, even when it took the ludic form of joking. One of the French history teachers described his uneasiness about this: 285

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It’s bizarre, but my pupils, they insult each other; they say ‘dirty Arab’, and the Algerians, they call them ‘bomb-planters’, and the Moroccans they call ‘hashish-smokers’. To begin with, I didn’t realise it and didn’t understand it. I found it rather shocking and I have told them how startling it was to me. But they just answered, ‘No Sir, it doesn’t matter, it is only joking, we are having fun!’.

For the teacher there is no fun in people addressing each other with insulting collective stereotypes. Yet on the part of the pupils, existing pejorative meanings and prejudices against ‘Algerian bomb-planters’ or ‘dirty foreigners’ are actually reflected in, and reversed by, playful ethnic joking.18 This interpretation was offered by North African pupils themselves, like Saloua, who is from a Tunisian family: ‘For us there is no difference’, she said; ‘Algerian or Tunisian, that’s not important… The Algerians, we call them bomb-planters and the Moroccans hashish-smokers, and so we had to find something for the Tunisians as well; now we call them dog-killers. But that’s just for fun, it’s joking.’ Since she remarked that these insulting terms would not matter among themselves, this joking was clearly directed at the negative image of North Africans as people who are depicted as delinquent rather than as having something remarkable to contribute in France. The pupils from immigrant families appeared to have absorbed the implicit messages conveyed by the curricular emphasis on portraying the French concept of Civilisation as a model and a pivotal force which their original cultures could not compete with. Although the stress on Civilisation rather than on culture in the French case is intended to facilitate ease of integration by restricting the competence for participation to supposedly neutral methods of how social progress should be pursued, pupils did in fact recognize the negative valuation that is placed on culture as a negative liability through its normative exclusion from representation. Their textbooks are set up to measure immigrants’ levels of integration by using average standards of ethnic French people as comparisons – for instance, with respect to immigrants’ birth rates – this falsifies the assertion of programmatic neutrality.19 In spite of having a radically different normative approach to cultural diversity, the outcome of the public denial resembles the British affirmation in that pupils have apparently developed a sensitised awareness of their ethnic and cultural particularities, which they defended against negative valuations that are, in France, expressed by normative indifference and open assimilationist expectations. In one political science class in the Première, arguments from culture were, to the teacher’s surprise, brought into the discussion when the topic being discussed was formal citizenship. The issue is part of the regular curriculum in political science. The teacher first explained and distinguished nationality from formal citizenship and political citizenship. Yet instead of valuing the French conditions of citizenship, the pupils from migrant families were preoccupied with the theme of differential treatment. The fact that immigrants do not auto286

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matically enjoy full formal equality before naturalisation, even though they participate in the economy and pay taxes like French citizens, bothered them: Nadia: Anyone who does not have citizenship cannot vote. But even if you are not French, you still have to pay your taxes… Salima: We participate economically; why shouldn’t we have the right to participate politically?… Nationality legislation gives an appearance of justice, but there are many conditions. Teacher: I have all the duties of the others, but I do not have all the rights. Nadia: Immigrants were always treated as inferiors. Teacher: In the French constitution, citizens and foreigners do not have the same rights.

The teacher answered Nadia’s comment that ‘Immigrants were always treated as inferiors’ with reference to citizenship as the crucial difference, for, according to the French constitution, ‘citizens and foreigners do not have the same rights’. Yet Nadia apparently meant an inequality that is not ruled out by naturalisation. In the course of the discussion it became clear that the aim of the minority youths could be described as one of acquiring recognition of their cultural origin: Salima: For example, someone who is Tunisian, that’s his official status, but what does that mean when he was born here and when he’s been to school here: somehow he’s French. Nadia: But there’s his family and culture. Teacher: That’s the whole question of identity.

Salima’s argument was that, being born and educated in France makes a person ‘somehow French’, that is civil enculturation takes effect irrespective of formal citizenship. But according to Nadia, the other culture remains important and can be a reason to keep Tunisian citizenship. Their teacher suggested that these issues belonged to the complex of identity and thus tried to separate them from the discussion of formal political integration in France. But for the pupils, there seemed to be a relationship. Contrary to the norm of indifference, which says that cultural arguments do not belong in the public sphere of political rights, the pupils defended their other culture as essential for decisions about naturalisation. They continued to link these two issues in the further course of the lesson. Also they seemed to experience cultural difference as something that does in fact matter as a site of exclusion, because, as Nadia said, ‘immigrants were always treated as inferiors’. After admitting that citizens and foreigners do not have the same constitutionally guaranteed rights, the teacher explained how French citizenship could be obtained. But still, migrant pupils in the classroom were rather 287

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interested in knowing, ‘When can you have two citizenships?’. Although only formal citizenship ensures the full set of rights, giving up one’s original citizenship was judged no less inadequate than remaining a foreigner with fewer rights in France. The option of dual citizenship was hence raised to do justice to both sides in terms of legitimate participation in the public and political sphere, and recognition regarding one’s own ‘other’ religion and culture. French citizenship alone was not attractive enough for identification. The dilemma of belonging also became an unexpected topic during a lesson on the citizenship act of 1993 in a Seconde history class. The lesson was to consider new conditions for naturalisation derived from the ‘Pasqua law’, one of which is a strengthening of provisions against fictitious marriages. When the teacher asked why the new law required two years of marriage before naturalisation, a North African boy suggested that it was ‘to become acculturated’. The teacher responded to this suggestion with a question: ‘What makes you feel French? What makes you feel integrated?’ Instead of answering the question and thinking about their levels of integration or ‘feeling French’, the children of immigrants somehow rejected their teacher’s proposal and started talking about discrimination that prevented them from ‘feeling French’: Kim: Even if you have been living in France for a long time, it is possible that you do not feel French. I only have to look in the mirror. [His family is of Chinese origin.] Samira: He feels different. North African boy: There are always people who say that this is not true [that he is French]. Teacher: You don’t have to bring forward the arguments of the racists… Salima: One does not give up one’s origins or religion just because one is adopting citizenship. I will ask for my parents’ citizenship, so that I will have both. Kim: The people I know who have French citizenship only have it to have less trouble… Also, if I ask for French citizenship, I will still be a foreigner; it is only for the papers.

This discussion shows how important ethnic origin was considered among the young people in Paris, and not only in terms of self-definition. The possibility of holding French or dual citizenship does not remove the experience of being denied equal recognition as French. Naturalisation was pursued just ‘for the papers’, ‘to have less trouble’. For purposes of identification, on the other hand, only dual citizenship appeared as a viable strategy because it means a way of recognizing one’s other identity aspects too. And even then, French citizenship does not prevent discrimination. As becomes evident in these debates, formal belonging to a state and the political rights that come with it are just part of 288

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what counts, and as in Berlin it was assessed as being of minor importance. For politically interested pupils in Paris, the right to vote mattered, but many were not interested in this aspect of citizenship. Ali wanted to be naturalised in France as soon as possible because of the right to vote: ‘I am really interested in French politics and also in Turkish politics. I regularly follow Turkish news on satellite television’, he explained. On the other hand, Emel, whose parents come from Turkey and who had French citizenship already, said, ‘I am twenty years old, I have French citizenship, but I never vote: I don’t know anything about politics’. The notion of ethnic and cultural difference as such was not a source of any concern for these adolescents, given that they produced their other backgrounds as a reason for keeping their parents’ nationality; and, as already mentioned, among themselves ethnic categories were taken for granted as a routine form of address and reference. In spite of the official blindness they face at school regarding ethnicity and cultural diversity, pupils frequently referred to these concepts. What they opposed, like their peers from minorities in Rotterdam or London, is any negative valuation of their families’ backgrounds. The North African boy’s remark that citizenship did not entail full recognition, since there would still be people who doubted that people like him were really French, was opposed by the teacher for being a racist argument. Being a French citizen should rule out ethnic differentiation. Intermediate identities, remaining in ethnic circles and referring to specific cultural traditions were implicitly disqualified in the dominant presentation of Frenchness as the standard that has overcome all other stages in the lead-up to the attainment of Civilisation. According to the pupils, this ideal of an egalitarian community of equal citizens does not work. Kim’s suspicion that even after naturalisation he will ‘still be a foreigner ’ suggests that the promise of equality is just an illusion. Political and discursive indifference towards cultural diversity has stimulated immigrant groups to maintain or create their own classifications, so that French citizenship means nothing more than a change ‘for the papers’ in order to have ‘less trouble’. In opposing a strong republican taboo, the children of immigrants in Lycée Fernand Braudel used ethnic terms and thus pointed to the inner plurality of the French republic, creating intermediate identities and thus expressing the claim that it is not only French Civilisation that should be regarded positively but also the other, different cultural heritages. The concept of cultural difference also patterned day-to-day contacts among peers. They did not see themselves or each other at all as just being equal pupils. Saloua’s statement was that it meant no difference among themselves, whether one was from a Tunisian or an Algerian family, but this was to describe the comprehensive North African collectivity of Arabes. Concerning group formations the adolescents distinguished ethnic French from a variety of other ethnic groups, one of which were the Arabes. These differences were reported to exert an important influence in filtering possible friendships. Caroline, whose family 289

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is ethnically French, remarked that she did not feel happy if she was the only French girl in a group: ‘Compared to North African girls we are different, we do not talk about the same things, we do not have the same interests.’ From the other side of this boundary, so to speak, Loubna, who had French citizenship but whose parents are Moroccans, said: I am not French, I feel different. When I arrived in this class, I said to myself, ‘This is not possible, there are no Arabs, what can I do?’ – Even if you want to feel French, there is always somebody to remind you that you are not.

Because of their common experience of discrimination, North Africans wanted to stick together. As well as the joking, in which defaming stereotypes can be playfully inverted, Loubna’s statement also suggests that she can only imagine solidarity and shared feelings with other Arabes but not with her ethnically French classmates. In her bewilderment, if there are no Arabs, saying, ‘What can I do?’, she seemed to be anticipating isolation. This reflects the strong internal integration that pupils of diverse North African origins have developed. They expressed this commonality through socialising preferences, and also with the common youth language, Verlan. Even more explicitly than joking inversions, this common code literally inverts French words or their syllables and creates a completely new jargon. Given the importance of the French language as a tool of Civilisation integrating minorities and new arrivals, this linguistic counterculture is an affront. Rather than giving in to assimilationist expectations, the Arabes insisted on their own contribution and counteracted the dominance of French concepts. Their teachers did not understand this persistence but considered it rather odd. It confirmed their impression of the North African youths as notorious troublemakers. Turkish pupils at Lycée Fernand Braudel tended to distance themselves from this impertinent insistence that the Arabes demonstrated and stressed the boundary between Turks and North-Africans. Neither did they participate in speaking Verlan, nor in the accompanying hip-hop music and dance culture most North African and black pupils were fond of. One reason for exercising this reserve may be that Turks are not subject to derogatory stereotypes to the same extent as North Africans. We have found no negative reference to Turkey in textbooks of the kind that comes up in Géographie Seconde under the heading of ‘cultural differences’, where Iran and Algeria are put forward as bad examples of other cultures with non-democratic systems that do not separate religion from the state. Turkish pupils had no negative image among teachers at Lycée Fernand Braudel either but a good reputation, being considered highly motivated to achieve success at school. Teachers remarked as a positive sign that they never heard Turkish pupils speak Turkish together and stressed that they were very nice, polite and hard-working. The deputy headmaster once remarked: ‘We do 290

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not have any problems with our Turkish pupils at all, though we do have many problems with pupils of Arab [sic] origin.’ The existence of such stereotypes against North Africans as well among teachers may be another reason for Turkish pupils’ avoidance of them: les Arabes were the group they were least involved with. If Turkish girls had friendships across ethnic lines, they socialised with French, not North African girls. Their conformist avoidance of these stigmatised others can be regarded as an expression in favour of participation, for they directed their attention towards the dominant group in society. Sixteen-year-old Ilkay, who had come to France when she was still a baby, placed her own social preferences in this context: I never had Turkish girlfriends. Since primary school I have always had French girlfriends. As I was a really good pupil, the best in the class, the French girls wanted to be my friend, and even their parents were proud to say that their child was a friend of mine. In school I never have the feeling I am different because I’m a Turk; I always had French friends.

She relates the fact that not only was she accepted as a friend by French girls but that ‘even their parents were proud’ of these friendships, due to her good school results. Upward mobility is therefore phrased as a combination of social preference and objectively measurable success rates. This is exactly the ideal put forward in the French school: individual emancipation from one’s particular (immigrant) background gives way to success and appreciation by the French majority. This vision entails a certain negative image of the others which Ilkay appears to have internalised as well. Why should it be worth mentioning otherwise that people were ‘even’ willing to make friends with her and be proud of it? This reflects power relations in the immigrants’ situation, which is that of a structural minority. To describe turning away from one’s own ethnic group, as Ilkay did, in terms of success and recognition by the French, who after all set the standard for assessment, corresponds to the aims of the republican integration model. Nevertheless, even Ilkay, when referring to herself, called herself Turkish and thus qualified the category of the French as not covering adequately the ethnic belonging of those who are ‘other’ than ethnic French. Even if Turkish pupils were, in comparison with their North African schoolmates, less persistent, in terms of identity management they did not deem French citizenship sufficient either, but insisted on the significance of their original culture. Another Turkish girl in Lycée Fernand Braudel, Esin, phrased this level of identification as follows. When discussing the German concept of Heimat (home in a wide sense) in a German-language course in Paris, she said that her Heimat was her culture. She conceived of culture as a symbolic space sheltering her identity. In brief, not less than in the other three cases, identity and formal citizenship have become separated in the attitudes of minority pupils in Paris as well. The reason here is that because the category ‘French’, in 291

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spite of its claim to be universal like the category ‘British’, does not solve the problem of recognition. Insistence on one’s own particularity is the consequence. As in the German examples, this is also being stressed by pupils’ immigrant parents as a crucial resource. Since the French concept, too, provides no legitimate space in public to be different, a fear of cultural erosion takes effect that reminds one of the conflictual situation of immigrants’ children in Berlin. Ilkay’s parents, for instance, did not grant her certain liberties because they did not trust social control in French families. In Ilkay’s own words: I’ve always had French friends. Today I regret that a little, because I can’t do anything: I can’t go out, I can’t spend the night at my girlfriends’ places, like they do. My mother says, ‘We’ve told you before, this isn’t possible, but you didn’t want to think about it. If you had Turkish girlfriends, it would be different’.

Whether friendships among girls were already prohibited like this, or whether the parents only started to become nervous when boys and the possible choice of a marriage partner were involved, seemed to be idiosyncratic in particular families. In all cases, pupils were very much aware of the fact that ultimately parents’ ideas of avoidance concerned questions of marriage and cultural continuity. All pupils interviewed in France clearly expressed the fact that their parents would oppose a mixed marriage. Saloua remarked: ‘For us, Algerian or Tunisian, that’s not important. We really don’t care… For our parents, it’s different. Especially when they begin to think about marriage, suddenly, it’s important.’ Nouara had a black African boyfriend, something her parents were not to know about: If my father found out, he would kill me. I mean, I would have so many problems, I don’t even want to think about it! He wouldn’t really like me having a boyfriend at all, that’s for sure, but if he heard he was black, it would be worse. As regards my marriage, my parents have rather old-fashioned ideas: he must be Algerian, of course, and preferably somebody from a family they know.

The question of cross-cultural marriage was a taboo in immigrant families, and many adolescents seemed to have internalised their parents’ preferences, especially girls, who feared being expelled from their families if they did not follow their wishes. In one classroom discussion in Terminale, this was related to the possibilities of religious conversion. A German-language course was discussing an interview with a Turkish girl from Germany, who was complaining that Germans did not understand her way of life and often asked her silly questions. The theme changed to the position of women in society as being marked by cultural differences in which ‘modern thinking’ was opposed to a ‘backward mentality’. Then the question of mixed marriages came up as a possible way of bridging such differences, or of ‘looking at each culture and take the good things from it’: 292

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Awa: There are, for example, mixed marriages. Aman: In our part of Paris? That’s rare! Teacher: In Germany there are many marriages between Germans and Turks. Selim: That’s just to get the papers, that’s all… (starts laughing) I will marry a beautiful German woman: tall and blonde! Esin: Stop it! For girls it’s not the same, for them it looks worse. They would have to renounce their family and their origins. Teacher: Is there any difference if a Turkish man marries a French woman? Esin: Oh yes, for us a man can convert a woman, but a woman cannot convert a man. Teacher: Oh, that’s why parents are stricter with daughters. Esin: Yes… for us that’s a maxim. Aman: For us, it’s the same. If I had a French boyfriend I would abandon my parents. Julie [ethnically French]: In my family, I’m not allowed to have a Muslim boyfriend, friends yes, but no further. My mother doesn’t want it. She says it would be difficult, because of religion. Their religion doesn’t give women the same place in the family, she doesn’t want me to have problems. Aman: That’s not religion; people are different – (adds whispering:) these are prejudices.

In spite of Aman’s insight that any such collectivising assumptions are prejudices, all of them basically accepted the situation as it was. Aman and Esin had stated themselves that girls were expected to observe different norms from boys in their families, so it would have been hard to oppose Julie’s argument that she would face difficulties and not be granted an equal position if she married a Muslim. In spite of the shared, and admittedly stereotyped, judgement of other groups as being less ‘modern’ and less equal in gender relations than the French majority, it seemed out of the question for girls like Esin or Aman to disregard their parents’ ideas on marital choice. When Esin answered, ‘Yes, for us, a man can convert a woman, but a woman cannot convert a man’, she was supporting her parents’ concern to maintain a distinct profile concerning the French, which in this case was defined with reference to her Islamic religion. Giving up one’s primordial relationships in order to attain the presumed equality in a partnership was apparently not tempting. Moreover, the very idea of greater equality between French partners, which dominated this classroom discussion, is not necessarily a reliable condition. Eighteen-year-old Sefiye, who came to France at the age of eleven, commented, for example, that, in France, too, boys had more rights than girls. As the pupils from ethnic minority groups all tended to rate the 293

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ideal of equality in France as lip-service more than reality with respect to the situation at school, in the neighbourhood and not least with respect to the supposedly universal category of ‘French’, why should they believe in it with regard to gender relations? Keeping up affiliations with one’s own culture group appears to be the better option in any case, for it ensures a specific emotional backing that these young people wished to keep but which they could not associate with ‘becoming French’. Another girl from a Turkish immigrant family, Emel, said about marriage partners: ‘It is normal for him to be Turkish, it’s better. That’s what I want. I never thought that I would be able to stay with someone from another culture, and I will never do so, although he must be born in France.’ Her last remark, like Saloua’s previous reference to a collectivity of North Africans, whether of Tunisian or Algerian origin, is telling, for it makes it clear that the notion of a different ‘culture’ that they are aiming to defend does not relate to their parents’ countries of emigration but to their immigrant culture in France. In this respect, the idea of different ethnic groups vis-à-vis the ethnic French signifies a vernacular taxonomy similar to that of being Ausländer in Berlin. As children of immigrants, they want recognition of their families’ cultural contributions to the immigration country which is not met by the abstract concept of republican equality and the instrument of French citizenship. In their refusal to keep their other background out of negotiations, ethnic minority youths in Paris also resembled their Rotterdam peers’ unwillingness to regard their families’ cultures as potential inhibition. Assimilatory pressure is much more explicit in the French setting, but basically the dilemma remains the same: despite the possibility of French or Dutch citizenship, cultural otherness is not recognized to their satisfaction. In both cases it was objected to.

Conclusions The whole complex of cultural difference is a well-known and multi-stranded topic among pupils from immigrants’ families in all four of the countries covered in our research. At school they encounter the dominant national conceptualisation of differing cultures, while at home the issue comes up when inter-generational crises arise and their parents and relatives blame them for becoming like the Dutch, French, German or English. The positions young people take in opposition to the norms and rules their parents insist on are then often interpreted in terms of culture and stimulate parental fears of losing their own particular features and traditions. Actually, this is not very surprising: ‘indigenous’ parents, whether ethnic French, German, English or Dutch, might also use the argument of other people’s bad influences when they experience their children becoming distant while growing up. In the case of immigrants, the same idea of heteronomous alienation easily draws upon cultural bias: every dif294

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ference can be attributed to culture by parents whose concerns regarding cultural erosion, owing to the structural minority situation in the immigration country, leads to constant suspicion regarding their children’s behaviour. Thus, their own parents, just like the surrounding majority societies, draw boundaries of culture in order to distinguish their own characteristics. In all four sites of our research, ethnic minority pupils were similar in following the prevailing descriptions on this point: they talked about their original backgrounds as something ‘other’ and reproduced the assumption of existing cultural and ethnic differences. In view of the convergence in reproducing these dichotomies, the divergent tones and strategies of argument used in doing so are all the more interesting. In conceptualising cultural differences, pupils mostly followed the hegemonic forms of argument of the surrounding society and as a result showed how far they have assimilated structural elements of the respective discourses about the meanings of culture and the otherness of immigrants. Minority pupils in Berlin replicated the dominant perception of other cultures as collective ‘mentalities’ that were produced through family upbringing. They also took up the topic of economic issues and lower rates of achievement in comparison with the Germans. Their parents’ backgrounds were mostly described in terms of inadequacies: being less affluent and stable, not functioning so well, not being so liberal, nor able to compromise or discuss things openly. In the Netherlands and Britain, it seems to be much easier to define positively what one’s own culture stands for. Pupils in Rotterdam showed that they had adopted the notion of cultures as shaping different life-styles but also as being of equal value: all different cultures were said to have something positive, for example, being more polite than the Dutch. This idea was also characteristic of the situation in London: the terminology of multicultural Britain, where all the different cultures are supposed to make a positive contribution to society, was fully accepted and also sensitively defended against being violated. Only in Paris, where pupils are expected to treat cultural peculiarities with programmatic indifference and strict relegation to the private sphere, did they not follow this direction but insisted instead on their cultural differences as a crucial and indispensable aspect of their position in society. However, views of what these ubiquitously asserted cultural differences are did not consist of clearly structured statements but were dynamic and fluid, above all internally contested and subject to contextual negotiations. Repeatedly we have seen in pupils’ statements that their approaches to cultural distance were highly circumstantial. They made use of and applied the concept of cultural difference to changing collectivities: sometimes their dissociative comparisons concerned their parents, sometimes Turkey as a whole, sometimes the ‘West’ against an obscure ‘non-West‘, Muslims against Christians, and so on. For them, being different contains a variety of meanings depending on the circumstances under which this is articulated. This suggests a mélange of identi295

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fications which simultaneously evokes belonging to different groups, while acknowledging that the relevance of such membership is situationally specific. In this respect the young people we encountered confirm Baumann’s finding that a congruence between community and culture tends to be claimed in the dominant discourse, but is rather denied in the demotic discourses ‘of the people’ (1996: 10). However, the essence of cultural difference remained quite undisputed, and as a result adolescents’ own discourses retained a quality of reification in most of our examples: cultural differences and the co-existence of different ethnic groups were reproduced as matters of fact that were ‘naturally there’, even though the young people’s own performances and their shifting applications of the idea of otherness could very well serve to question the whole concept of contained cultures. Many minority pupils we met defined experiences of difference not only towards the majority population but also towards their parents. However, switching between the two ‘worlds’ or ‘cultures’ was not treated as trapping them or tearing them apart ‘between cultures’, but was seen as reflecting a factual discrepancy of expectations that could be handled situationally. At home, norms of behaviour and rules differ from those outside, yet most pupils were not only familiar with playing the game in two ‘different cultures’, but also strove to dissolve the misinterpretations of both ‘camps’. Above all, this often took the form of correcting and defending either side against the other. They felt distanced from their parents’ views, an experience that might be further radicalised when visiting their parents’ countries of emigration and meeting relatives there. Consequently, against parents and the people back home, the countries of immigration might be defended. At school, however, they might defend their origins against culturalist suspicions and biased judgements about the miserable migrants who were inhibited because of their traditional cultures. By stressing their individual freedom of choice, any suggestion that their own particular backgrounds might hinder social participation was rejected. The pupils from migrant families all treated ‘the multicultural society’ as a reality and only rated the presumed cultural otherness as problematic if it was used as an argument against themselves which produced unequal treatment or distorted representation. However, the extent to which this idea of internal plurality runs counter to the dominant national imagination and its suggestions for handling the other cultural affiliations is not the same. The idiom of the multicultural society is officially acclaimed in Britain and the Netherlands, but not at all in France or Germany. The corresponding options regarding additional identification, namely dual citizenship and hyphenation, are models that circulate throughout Europe in different proportions and create different spectrums of association and dissociation for post-immigration young people. When it comes to concepts of integration and to tools such as formal citizenship, the question of how their different backgrounds could be accommodated in the construction of the greater collectivities gained primary importance for the young people from 296

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ethnic minorities. Depending on the dominant scheme of classification regarding cultural diversity within the nation, their self-placements varied. In Paris, where common French citizenship is meant to transcend all ethnic and cultural particularities, the egalitarian ideal was judged as a theoretical construction that pupils did not experience as a feasible reality. The identity discourses of pupils in Lycée Fernand Braudel were marked by opposition to the official ideal that French citizenship and identity are fused together. Instead of valuing the ethnically blind concept of republican equality in France, pupils from immigrant families brought into the discussion the effects of conceptual exclusion that persisted in spite of their formally belonging to the French Republic. Violating these strong taboos, they often referred to each other with reference to ethnic categorisations, insisting, against the agenda laid down by their teachers, that cultural differences matter and deserve to be taken notice of. In spite of the universalist discourse, their daily lives have remained particular realities, and they did not want this particularity to be denied but to be recognized in public. They responded to the indifference imposed towards their private backgrounds through the creation of intermediate identities and the favoured concept of dual citizenship, in order to do justice to their double status. The frequent use of ethnic labels was also observed in daily practice in the school in London. Yet unlike the situation in France, this does not mean any violation of the dominant discourse and self-imagination of multicultural Britain, where ethnic minorities are distinguished from the English as equally legitimate communities, and the umbrella identity of being British is offered in addition. The fact that hyphenation was mostly preferred for self-description suggests that adolescents from immigrant families saw no obstacle in their particular cultural backgrounds to the simultaneous claim of fully belonging to British society. The co-existence of disparate cultures that is entailed in the construction of Britishness – which offers, theoretically, the same community rights to all ethnic groups – is part of the dominant rhetoric that minority pupils in London adopted with their articulation of hyphenated identities. However, the affirmative strategies of multiculturalism and the recognition of difference as a legal resource open the way to claims being made on behalf of particular groups, which in turn may lead to jealous competition. The central aspect in the London school was not the visibility of cultural and ethnic diversity, but fairness: arguments revolving around impressions of injustice towards ethnic minorities were characteristic. This phenomenon points to problems that stem from the dominant model of the multicultural society, namely segmentary boundary effects of the concept of a social mosaic, in interaction with a heightened awareness of anti-discrimination that relies on individuals being perceived as group members. Like the young people in London, those in Rotterdam saw no problem in reconciling their cultural otherness with being Dutch citizens. To be British or Dutch in the sense of an overarching umbrella identity was accepted, because in 297

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both cases a project of internal plurality can be drawn upon that prevents any serious dilemma over being, for example, Turkish. What the pupils in Rotterdam objected to were the subtle assimilationist pressures to overcome any sort of otherness, being presented to them in the form of a specially targeted policy and the related terminology, with a tendency to define immigrant cultures as possible inhibitions. They rejected the well-intended official category of allochtonen due to its implicit valuation that allochtonen are in need of positive action. By preferring the less stigmatising term buitenlander, pupils from immigrant families emphasised their willingness to participate, together with the stage of integration they had already reached. Although also sounding exclusivist, this term was merely supposed to describe, without any negative connotations, what they would like to have acknowledged, namely their additional cultural background that differs from Dutch culture as they perceive it. Through this move, they rejected the assimilationist orientation of the dominant integration model and the idea that their original culture was a problem. Those immigrants who are defined as posing a problem by way of the policyinclined concept of the allochtonen – roughly speaking, that is, those from the South and the East – are also the proverbial foreigners in Germany, where they are perceived as representing true cultural otherness. The hierarchical effect between different groups of immigrants is similar, but there are no different terms in German for people who are presumed to have problematic cultural backgrounds as against those who simply hold a different citizenship: all are foreigners, Ausländer. For most children of immigrants in Berlin, both was true: only very few had German citizenship but most were still foreign nationals, and with their ‘oriental’ origins they simultaneously represented profoundly different others. With a prevalent imaginary that equates ethnos and demos within the framework of a shared cultural and historical communion, the inclusion of immigrants is not provided for in the German concept of the nation, and no terminology exists either to express internal diversity: there are Germans and others, the non-Germans. Hyphenation and dual citizenship are rather frowned upon. As an attempt in that direction, neologisms like ‘Germano-Turks’ (Deutschtürken), ‘Other Germans’ (Andere Deutsche) or ‘Afro-Germans’ (Afrodeutsche) are sometimes used, particularly in left-leaning media, but they still have the tone of campaign vocabulary, calling for the recognition of a mixture of origins and identifications that is otherwise not yet contained in ‘being German’. Under these obstructive circumstances, ‘foreign’ pupils cannot easily shift or blur the boundaries of Germanness. Given its romantic construction along ancestral lines and its roots in a vaguely outlined occidental culture, the central conflict in the German case concerns the inconsistent relationship between ethnos and demos to define ‘the German people’. Since this concept contains no attempt to recognize any value in the cultural differences they represent, the immigrants’ children in Berlin argued much more from a defensive position, and their processes of self-location involved more strategies of 298

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dissociation than was the case in London or Rotterdam. Their vernacular taxonomy coincided exactly with the dominant ‘us–them’ dichotomy between ‘Germans’ and ‘foreigners’ (Ausländer). Yet by adopting the residual category for all non-Germans, they sorted themselves clearly into the discursive field of German society and collectively turned away from orientation towards the context of their parents’ emigration. As was the case with the Dutch term buitenlander, from the viewpoint of the German Ausländer youth, the category expresses exactly their position in society: being culturally different in relation to the Germans, but also in relation to their parents’ original background. The claim to recognition is also one of the legitimacy of being different, but there is a striking inability to phrase it in positive terms which is connected with the blind spot that immigration signifies in the dominant discourse in Germany and the lack of any acknowledgement of ethnic and cultural plurality in the concept of the nation. Strategies of identification are therefore restricted to and in fact mostly took the form of stressing either local affiliations or an emotional distance from Germanness, whilst consenting to economic, political or social conditions in German society. Ironically enough, both tentative strategies are also recurrent elements in the discursive field that surrounds the ambivalence of German national identity, thus again providing fine examples of the discursive assimilation of young people from immigrant families in Berlin. There is no doubt that, in all four civil cultures, the adolescents from ethnic minorities were engaged in continuous negotiations of identities which implied the need to manoeuvre carefully between the competitive demands and pressures exerted on them, both inside and outside the school context. Given the insistence on their cultural peculiarity as a crucial source of identity, pupils clearly stated that any advocacy about how they should make their minds up amounts to an interference that denies their equal participation in society. They were opposed to being pinned down as minorities. As Turkish, Kurdish or Arab pupils in a British, French, German or Dutch school, they wanted to be treated in a fair and just way like anyone else, neither as an exotic species nor as disadvantaged individuals being offered positive discrimination. At the same time they did not want to jeopardise relations with their parents or dismiss their own cultural traditions as being of lesser value than those of the majority culture. In circles of friendship among their peers, they displayed internal tolerance in accepting diversity as a value-neutral condition, this also being their shared vision of what society should ideally look like. Their being different should be accepted as a legitimate source of identity, yet it should not be used to exclude them or to doubt their equal competence. All four cases have in common the fact that pupils from migrant families dissociated formal citizenship and identity as a solution to the dilemma of partly competing, partly also overlapping, identifications. In the settings of these nation states, where identification with the greater collectivity of the nation is supposed to link the political framework 299

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of the state with the people as its sovereign and protective community, these pupils’ creative conflations of identity are apt to challenge the very axiom of national citizenship as the crucial source of collective identity. Since cultural differences were treated as indispensable aspects of their identities detached from citizenship, hyphenation and the option of dual citizenship were valued highly so as to indicate the legitimacy of ethnic and cultural diversity within national projections. As they all declared themselves to ‘be both’ to some extent – Turkish and German or French, Surinamese and Dutch, etcetera – the interrelationships of identity and citizenship bothered them far more than any formal rights, such as the right to participate in elections, regarding the question of naturalisation. The attractiveness in ‘becoming’ Dutch, German, French or British in the cultural as well as in the formal political sense was assessed by all of them as depending on the recognition of inner cultural and ethnic plurality. How this argument was pursued differed in each case, reflecting the process of civil enculturation that had already been undergone. Since the national contexts of classification and the related dominant categories of inclusion and exclusion are not the same, processes of association and dissociation followed different rationales. Depending on these discursive circumstances, sometimes pupils attached new meanings to old terms, and sometimes group labels were rejected entirely. Yet in all cases, there was a reference to the particular dominant discourse – its images and rhetoric – that was recognizable in the different modes of argumentation. The adolescents’ own views regarding cultural difference articulated their interests in attaining equal acknowledgement by using the means and conceptualisations that marked the specific discourses in each of the four civil cultures. Discursive assimilation became visible in this mirror. But moreover, the different modes of negotiating minority interests cast light on the unintended costs of each nation state’s practices of inclusion and exclusion. Immigrants of the so-called second or third generation, not less than their elders, act on the grounds that they are pre-constructed as ‘the others’ in the dominant discourse of the immigration country. Each of the civil cultures coshapes ethnicity and ‘produces’ its ‘own’ unmistakeable minorities. This implies structural power relations turning out to such minorities’ disadvantage. The common baseline of the post-migration young people’s self-placement in the different discursive fields was thus not a struggle with the different competing ‘cultures’ but negotiating the valuations of otherness in favour of being integrated into the imagination of the dominant concepts. This means in fact an increasing civil competence in the context of minority-majority relations.

Notes 1. See in particular the topical analysis above, Chapter 3.

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2. The use of pejorative expressions that disparage others as dirty was also reported from our London school, where one of the Turkish boys, Kazim, complained that ‘We are called dirty Turks, bloody Turks, etcetera by English and Arab [meaning in this case black] pupils’. In her work on ethnic identity options in the USA, Mary Waters has confirmed that people basically cited the same set of positive values, yet each family attributed them to their own ethnic background, whether they were of Portuguese, German, Irish, Italian or Polish descent (Waters 1990). Many ethnic jokes rely on this principle as well (see Mannitz 1992) and quote a notorious set of universally negative traits: ‘stupidity, dirtiness, brute force and excessive sexuality are generally viewed as negative and can be linked to any target group’ (Apte 1985: 127). 3. Mary Douglas (1966) has shown that sexuality is paradigmatic of drawing symbolic boundaries, so that purity discourses that focus on sexuality are likely to develop as remedies against fears of cultural erosion. This is an experience they share, especially girls. Parents’ fears of losing children culturally are counteracted by the fortification of symbolic boundaries: constant suspicion regarding scope for action and social contact takes hold, and gender roles and sexuality become central themes in the negotiation of cultural difference and group identity. The idea that cultural differences are about gender roles, which we encountered in all four cases, to a large part seems to be rooted in these inter-generational conflicts, which are ethnicised, as well, by immigrant parents. 4. ‘Ossis’ is a term for the former GDR Germans and ‘Wessis’ the counterpart for the former FRG Germans, both of which have derogatory undertones. 5. The West German criminologist Christian Pfeiffer has argued that xenophobia is more widespread in the former GDR because of the repressive educational norms that were inculcated in East German state child-care institutions. This hypothesis came under heavy attack to begin with, but it has recently been confirmed and stated more precisely by the East German educational scientist and psychotherapist Annemarie Karutz. Neither children nor nursery school personnel would ever have learned to handle conflicts in the GDR system because the existence of conflicts would have been denied in a socialist society. Subordination being the highest aim, any deviation would have been treated with reference to a strict polarity between well-adapted and evil deviants; and the resulting education would still take effect (cf. the report on the Conference ‘Socialisation and Prejudice’, 10.–11.7.99, held at the Technical University in Berlin, in die tageszeitung, 12.7.99). 6. Apparently he understood the pejorative term Kanake, translated here as ‘wog’, as referring specifically to Turks. This understanding seems to be more widespread: the German-Turkish author Feridun Zaimo˘glu (1995) has published a book on second- and third-generation Turks in Germany with the title Kanak Sprak together with a corresponding theatre piece called Kanak Attak. Likewise, the Turkish rap band ’Islamic Force’, which comes from the Kreuzberg district in Berlin, changed its name to Kan.Ak. 7. In this respect the immigrants’ children in Berlin fully agree with the general findings about national identity in West Germany being a matter of altogether rather negative references (Rossteutscher 1997). 8. It is exactly this line of thought which is followed by the Centre for Turkish Studies in Bonn. To encourage acceptance of the Turks in Germany and get rid of the widespread images of inadequacy, the Centre never wearies of stressing the economic benefits that Germany derives from its Turkish population, from their purchasing power, their high demand for high-quality branded products, and not least the numbers of jobs they create directly. Take, for example, their handbook ‘Turks in Germany’ (Sen and Goldberg 1994) or the structure of argument in ‚ many articles and books written by the Centre’s President, Faruk Sen (e.g. Sen and Goldberg ‚ ‚ 1996). Press releases of their latest survey of Turkish businesses in Germany stress the great

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readiness for self-employment and a trend towards forming companies in innovative branches of commerce as being characteristic of the Turkish population in Germany. In 1998 Turkish enterprises had a turnover of more than DM 46 billion and employed 265,000 people, one fifth being ‘of German descent’ (cf. die tageszeitung, 1.7.99). Thus, market conditions are used in seeking recognition, a good example of enculturation in the dominant discursive field. 9. This figure is correct for West Germany before the 1990 unification; probably without realising this, he excludes the GDR Germans from his account. 10. This shift is also common among ethnic Germans themselves, and the Kiez in Berlin is a proverbial example of small neighbourhood areas that imply local identity options. In a survey that focused upon a secondary school in the Berlin borough of Kreuzberg, the researchers found the same practice of identification: pupils stressed that they were Turks, but Turks in and of ‘multicultural Kreuzberg’ (Fischer et al. 1996: 96). 11. This process of assimilating a dominant discourse resembles what Gerd Baumann observed in Southall in London, where the young inhabitants of Southall responded to being classified as Asians by creating a comprehensive ‘Asian culture’ (1996: 153–7), thus likewise performing a ‘turn against the internal divisions rooted in their parents’ pre-emigration cultural heritages’ (ibid.: 157). 12. ‘An allochtoon is somebody who differs on grounds of race or other clearly visible characteristics from the original inhabitants of our country’ (Luijsterburg 1996: 7). The logic of this terminology and the related meanings of cultural diversity in the Netherlands have been analysed in detail in Chapter 3. 13. The information booklet issued by the school every year states that pupils who are only allowed to follow regular lessons will certainly not succeed or feel at home at school. This undesirable position is phrased as follows: ‘Is your child allowed to take part in working weeks? No! Will your child join LSB? No! Will your child attend class evenings? No! Can we discuss this? No!’ (Tinbergen Lyzeum 1997). 14. Pupils who come late to Huxley School have to present themselves at the general office and explain why, then they are given a form to prove that their being late was registered. They have to present this registration slip to the teacher when entering the classroom and get it signed, and it finally has to be handed in to their tutor who controls absences and latenesses in the attendance register for his class. 15. As part of the naturalisation process in France, one may transform one’s name into a French one (françiser). Richard’s parents have made use of this option so that their surname does not sound French by coincidence but is in fact a genuine, so to speak ‘officially recognized’ French one. 16. Chaldeans are Monophysite Christians from southern Armenia and the Kurdish region around Mossul, and the term is used as an equivalent for Armenian Christians. The difference in dogma between Armenian and Aramaic Orthodox Christianity that Fehmi and Richard stress goes back to the historical conflict over Monophysitism, which was declared a heresy by the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Chalcedon creed is upheld by the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical and all the Orthodox Churches except for the Armenian, Ethiopian, Coptic and Syrian-Jacobite Churches, which are Monophysite denominations. One could hence interpret the two boys’ insistence as an argument to prove their religious beliefs’ proximity to the Roman Catholic belief that prevails in France. 17. This has, for instance, been the case with ‘Asian culture’ in Southall (Baumann 1996: 155); see note 11 above.

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18. Radcliffe-Brown argued that joking is an ideal means of removing the underlying tensions in asymmetrical social structures (1952a, 1952b). It is indeed one of its characteristics that it suspends the existing order of authority without risking any ‘serious’ offence: ‘Since its [the joke’s] form consists of a victorious tilting of uncontrol against control, it is an image of the levelling of hierarchy, the triumph of intimacy over formality, of unofficial values over official ones’ (Douglas 1968: 366, emphasis added). For a detailed analysis of social practices that make use of the non-serious repertoire and their meanings in the context of power-related group constructions, see Mannitz 1992. 19. See the Chapter ‘Representing the Nation in History Textbooks’, and the analyses of how immigrants are conceptualised in dominant discourses in Chapter 3 on the ‘Taxonomies of Cultural Difference’.

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„ EPILOGUE

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„ Limitations, Convergence and Cross-overs Sabine Mannitz

It was our intention as a research team to understand how the identifications of young people from post-migration backgrounds are contextually constructed, and what factors account for this process. In order to investigate these connections empirically, the project focused on the civil cultures of four Western European countries and aimed to trace their influences on minority identifications in schools as crucial agents of enculturation. Schools transmit the ideals and preferred styles inherent in each of the civil cultures to the next generation, they promote the ideal role of ‘the good citizen’ and rehearse the rules of the game for participation in wider society at different levels of daily school life. The versions of these civil cultures that are conveyed in textbooks were the easiest to grasp, yet they represent totalising images of what pupils should ideally pick up. In the analysis of school books, we learnt about the contents that are chosen to be passed on in each case, as well as the aspects that are left out of the collectives’ imagination. It has been especially important to trace how the educational challenges of cultural diversity in school are taken up in different ways which are part of each country’s dominant civil culture. Implications regarding socialisation and discursive integration are set up differently in each of the respective hegemonic discourses. However, this could not tell us about the effective application of the visions present in the various textbooks and curricula. Actual practices, and the related ranges of outcome, are something else, and in each school, the tasks and skills young people are expected to apply are filtered and absorbed in particular ways as they pass through different protagonists. While focusing on the process of ‘civil enculturation’, therefore, we needed to take the very interface into consideration: what happens in the ‘black box’ of the classroom? Consequently, our next analytical step was directed towards the very 307

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structure of the school day. In searching for the implicit pedagogical agenda, we examined especially the informal skills and routines involved, among which are the axiomatic rules of debate, a preference for decisions by either majority or consensus, or the legitimacy of arguing overtly sectionalist interests. To identify the extent to which pupils from a background of immigration master the civil conventions of the society they are living in, we concentrated on their processes of negotiation inside school situations. From these empirical studies, a picture emerged with clearly recognizable inter-relations between the dominant model of favoured structures of knowledge, practices like actual styles of teaching, concepts of argumentation and conflict resolution, and the styles of identity management that minority pupils displayed in each of the four cases. Our initial proposition could thus be verified as consisting of a demonstrable connection between the role of schools in mediating the dominant civil culture of each nation state, the influence of this upon the identifications of adolescents from immigrant families, and the resulting nexus between the particular discourses of civil culture and young people’s discourses connected with their selfplacement. Given the material we collected on how minority pupils pursued their arguments and handled the notion of their cultural otherness, we are able to speak of a ‘discursive assimilation’ that reflects on the processes of civil enculturation they have undergone. In other words we could witness how ‘national’ these pupils have become. Our research has re-validated schools as the crucial institutions through which programmatic ideas of civil society are transmitted and put into social practice, and it demonstrated the particular impact of this on pupils from minority backgrounds. In each civil culture unmistakable influences are exerted on them which help shape their ‘own’ minorities. Post-migration adolescents in all four settings did not simply master the prevailing civil conventions. They have evidently internalised them and effectively made use of them in their strategies of identity management. This consequence of the civil enculturation process turned out to be most visible on the discursive level, where conceptualisations were negotiated that concerned their own positions vis-à-vis the surrounding majority society, together with criteria and views regarding how to assess the presumed cultural differences between their home situations and wider society. In these contexts, their discourses were remarkably coloured as being of German, French, Dutch or British origin. Despite these discursive differences, however, there were also cross-cutting phenomena that limited the scope of nationally specific enculturations. Our hypothesis with respect to all these data regarding convergence is that they reveal a second dimension of enculturation beyond the national frameworks of the four civil cultures: as well as becoming German, French, Dutch or British, these young people have apparently adopted types of globally marketed youth culture. This will be argued in what follows by reviewing data that have already been discussed in previous chapters through thick descriptions, which suggest that pupils either reach the limits of the civil cultures or consciously annul the latter’s boundaries. 308

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The first part of this section will reconsider all the convergent phenomena and daily routines that indicate orientations to collectivities that exist beside or beyond those within nationally specific frameworks. The question being pursued here is how their migration background comes into play in respect of pupils’ styles of self-presentation and their socialising practices. The second part will treat the ‘post-national utopia’ that minority pupils articulated as their response to the built-in shortcomings, limitations and uncalculated consequences that stem from the particular constructions of cultural otherness in each case. These data concern minority pupils’ views of their place in society with regard to the distribution of chances and their future opportunities to lead the ‘good life’ they have in mind.

Individualising the Pursuit of Happiness The school is a stage where children from different backgrounds meet and interact with each other, partly of their own free will, but also in classroom situations under circumstances of obligation. Pupils cannot disengage from interactions in this setting but need to take a position regarding the choice of friends, personal dress or explicit opinions about their stand in society. How one presents oneself, for example, with respect to preferred dress, school-friends, or personal views of an immigrant experience, becomes subject to various forces, rules and expectations that exert an influence upon pupils as competing arenas of social control. For one thing, a certain clothing style might be intended as a sign of adolescents’ dissociation from their parents, but by some of their peers it might still be interpreted as too conformist to constitute adequate rebellion. Internal contestation and social control among peers can thus imply several pressures towards a uniform adherence to style, or similarly, towards non-conformity. What is finally chosen as one’s own preference, however, not only constitutes a statement at the level of peer expectations, it also entails positioning in the eyes of other ‘audiences’ involved, such as parents (maybe together with some kind of wider community surroundings) or teachers. Although this is a general condition that affects all young people, for the children of immigrants the minority–majority relationship constitutes a powerful additional pattern: among the options for self-presentation, the additional role of the poor migrant is always present in the picture. From all three angles - peers, family, and the majority society - the migrant situation seems pre-defined to involve particularities with respect to the expected style of identification and social belonging. The positions that ethnic minority pupils might choose are hence always embedded in structural power relations. They face ethnicised or culturalist images about themselves that depict them as representatives of otherness or as members of migrant ‘communities’, and their personal performances tend to be 309

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assessed from such angles of collectively defined roles. The respective conceptualisations also entail ideas as to what migrants’ presentations of self indicate in view of their participation in national civil cultures and the political public. Take, as an example, socialising practices: a friendship circle of ethnically German girls will not arouse any special attention from their teachers in Berlin; however, if a group consists only of ethnically Turkish girls, this is very likely to provoke comments about their apparent lack of efforts to integrate. The preferences of post-migration youths tend to be interpreted as expressions of a certain stage in the continuum representing different stages of integration, the two poles being the majority society and minority ‘communities’. In spite of these ideas of ‘cultural communities’, which we found in the dominant discourses about migrants in all four cases (even in France, where, by totally rejecting any public reference to ethnic background, the concept is of greatest significance), and which were specifically taken up in pupils’ negotiations concerning their identities, there is at the same time a remarkable transnational convergence in their visible ways of marking identities. If we first reconsider the dress styles observed among immigrants’ children at the four schools, what they all had in common was their being detached from frameworks of either national particularity or the family’s migration background. Roughly speaking, three main orientations were visible in all four schools. One trend contained elements of a black American counter-culture, with hip-hop and breakdance, the famous baseball caps, and a vogue for spraying graffiti and tags. Referring to ethnic elements and exotic connotations, this ‘cool’ casual style has become a commercialised part of modern metropolitan clothing on a global scale and actually represents a standardised fashion that appears in the form of a sub-cultural code. The second, most frequently displayed orientation concerning dress consisted of following a more mainstream fashion trend defined by the values of big international promotion campaigns, involving jeans, leisure and sports labels. The products of this mainstream are clearly ranked with reference to internationally advertised models of consumption, and the range of desirable objects was unambiguously influenced by pupils’ use of globalised media. Finally, the most respectably dressed Muslim girls, with their modest fashions, formed another style, which we also encountered in the four fieldwork situations. As with the other outfits, this also relates to a context which is neither national nor specifically ethnic but signifies membership of the transnational Islamic community. They consciously displayed a gender identity1 that differs from all pre-defined interpretations of role models in our northwestern European civil cultures but which was stressed as being fully in accordance with the idea of self-determination. Again and again these girls emphasised that it was their own personal decision to wear the Islamic fashion of ‘covering up’. Although these more or less similar styles were all represented in the four schools, the tensions between them were not the same but depended on local 310

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contexts: for instance, the same ‘cool’ style of baggy oversized trousers, caps and particular sorts of trainers were connected with different tables of social allocation in the four cases. While we could not observe any ethnic patterning in this style in Berlin or Rotterdam, the ‘ghetto look’ served as a clear distinction marker for black pupils in London (and was therefore avoided by Turkish pupils at Huxley Comprehensive School). In Paris, on the other hand, it was preferred by North African pupils (and again therefore avoided by Turkish pupils at Lycée Fernand Braudel). This indicates an internal contestation between the different minority groups. Sadi, a sixteen-year-old Turkish boy who had come to France in 1989, said about this competitive relationship: Sometimes I don’t care and dress like a Turk. Then I dress in a nice way; I wear nice clothes. The French congratulate me and say, ‘You’re well dressed’, but the Arabs joke with me: ‘Ah! He’s a Turk!’ Deep in my heart I would like to dress like a Turk, but I cannot, I rather prefer not to.

Social control in this case seems to focus suspiciously on attempts to curry favour with the French majority and betray the common minority position. Although ‘the French congratulate’ Sadi, he prefers to dress less nicely and thus avoids being made fun of by his North African school-fellows. What this also reveals is that the presentation of self follows criteria that are not easily observable from the outside. Sadi apparently has a clear image in mind of how Turks dress. His North African school-mates might judge the style he prefers as pretentious. His parents may be proud to see him dressed ‘nicely’. His French teachers may consider his outfit, which is meant to make him look ‘like a Turk’, either outdated or ‘typically migrant’, or else interpret him as being dressed ‘like a French person’, thus either appreciating that this indicates his degree of integration or deploring it for being over-conformist. In all the schools one can find these simultaneous competing pressures, with the message of particular clothing styles diverging from group to group, among staff members no less than among pupils. However, the fact that Sadi’s dressing ‘like a Turk’ is not appreciated by other minority pupils might also point to another circumstance. Despite the locally specific textures of meanings and group pressures, what ethnic minority pupils in the four countries had in common was that most made symbolic reference to different projects on the level of internationalised codes with their dress styles and therefore shifted orientation away from the bounded settings of their parents’ origin. However, very few of them expressed this turning away as explicitly as Seher from London: My mother always tells me not to put on make-up and wear tight trousers. Honestly, sometimes it’s too much: gossip, gossip, gossip! Everyone gossips about what people wear, what they buy. Sometimes I can’t stand it... People should choose their 311

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own way... But people don’t respect other differences as much as religions. Sometimes I don’t like the way they look at us when I go out with Mum. My mum wears old-fashioned stuff with a village headscarf.

She locates the problem of ‘gossip’ or discriminatory perceptions clearly with people who do not respect differences in personal dress and gaze at immigrants like her mother, yet it is also clear that Seher herself does not want to be looked at in the same way. Obviously she also considers her mother’s clothes old-fashioned and distances herself from her type of headscarf, which she calls a ‘village’ style. This idea again shows modes of assessment at work which cannot easily be deciphered from outward observers’ positions that use a phenomenological approach only. Of course, dress elements like the headscarf are visible to everyone, but they might not have the same meaning for everyone. Since some codeswitching and borrowing of elements from other styles was on the whole quite normal, it is even more questionable whether the elements that hit the observer right in the face are necessarily the main distinctive signs. For girls who wore headscarves and long skirts too, aspects of the general style of youth culture were also attractive: many of them preferred the same bulky high-heeled shoes as their most up-to-date fashion-oriented classmates or wore shirts of the latest design. Such stylish requisites and subtleties would easily be judged irrelevant if one were to consider the headscarf as the main or even the only identity marker, but in fact rather small items can be of crucial importance among the adolescents themselves. With disparaging remarks like, ‘She wears those old-fashioned Turkish shoes’, Turkish pupils sometimes mentioned such code elements as having significance among themselves which would probably not have caught the attention of the researchers at all. The phenomenon of staging that works with conspicuous consumption as an entry ticket to, and marker of group belonging, is evidently not restricted to the codes and stylistic elements we were already familiar with and could thus decode rather easily.2 The fact that the young people actually attributed great importance to sophisticated signs of distinctiveness and conspicuous consumption that followed in-group criteria became visible to us in particular situations only, and also in the pupils’ general opposition to restrictions. The schools in London and Paris have explicit rules regarding clothing and as such limit the range of options available in self-presentation. No ‘ostentatious’ religious symbols are accepted at the Lycée in Paris, while a specific school uniform is obligatory3 for all pupils up to Year 11 in Huxley Comprehensive. The idea behind the uniform was explained by the Deputy Head in terms of promoting a common school identity. Pupils’ different (economic) backgrounds should not lead to feelings of alienation because of an inability to attain some desirable objects. However, this practice was not appreciated very much by the pupils themselves because it restricts their choice. Consequently, many pupils in London tried to circumvent the regulations concerning uniformity by making 312

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the ‘boring’, ‘unbearable’ and ‘disgusting’ style more colourful with accessories like caps or conspicuous jewellery. Virtually the same disapproval of regulations regarding clothing could be observed in Paris: we cannot know whether Muslim girls would dress in an explicitly religious styles if no rules were imposed, but the fact that pupils, including the ethnically French, organized collective protests against the banning of headscarves indicates that they would have preferred unlimited choice. Attempts to control the symbolic space of the body in the form of parental standards or a school’s dress regulations were not appreciated at all. Rebellion against being told how to present oneself became most virulent in cases of open refusal to accept suggested models, yet the emphasis on the individual choice of strategies of distinction was a common denominator. All pupils alluded specifically not to a particular ethnic or national background, but to the creed of individualism itself. By following this principle, ethnic minority pupils distanced themselves from their parents and the image of the miserable migrant, which indeed signifies their discursive assimilation and civil enculturation, although not into any nationally specific civil culture. Professing the ideal of complete style individualism is typical of all Western European societies. Instead of allowing ‘decent’ headscarf girls to be placed on one side of the integration continuum and jeans-wearing fashion addicts on the other, the underlying mechanisms of self-placement indicate instrumental competence in respect of codification. The remarkable absence of all too offensive elements, like really extreme colours for hair or make-up, provocative body piercings, tattoos or punk hairstyles in the dress codes of young people from immigrants’ families, sustains this competence as well, although in relation to different codes: dissociating oneself from one’s parents’ expectations by directly affronting them seemed to be consciously avoided. With respect to patterns of socialising, we observed similar modes of argumentation: highly individualised motivations were given for choice of friends, whether they had the same ethnic background or not. When asked what determines friendships, Grade 10 pupils in Berlin mentioned ‘the relationship’, ‘how a person behaves’, ‘the same interests’, ‘hobbies’ and ‘sometimes also the language’. Even if all these circumstances led to homogeneous circles of friends with respect to cultural or ethnic background, this was denied as being the crucial criterion among peers. Unlike many of the first- and second-generation immigrants who tend to stress that friendships are built more easily on the grounds of sharing the experience of migration and particularly a common memory of life ‘back home’, their children placed the emphasis elsewhere: Robert: That’s up to behaviour. How a person behaves. What is the same goes together: same hobbies and so on, basketball or whatever, that’s mostly the same people then… Sabine Mannitz: Does ‘Birds of a feather flock together’ mean that Turks prefer 313

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other Turks as friends? Mucahit: Not at all! Sabine Manniz: But it’s true that you are mostly together with Turks, right? Mucahit: All Turks, just one German. I’ve known them from childhood, that’s why.

The same individualist approach was adopted by Turkish girls at Nikolaas Tinbergen School in Rotterdam, who always met up in-between and after lessons. When Fadime explained why Hilal did not belong to their circle, she referred to Hilal’s personality in a very similar fashion to that in which pupils spoke about friendship in Berlin: ‘Hilal is cocky’, Fadime said. ‘She considers herself better than other Turks. That’s why she doesn’t socialise with us. It is probably because she’s Alevi.’ The fact that Hilal lacks moderation and decency is deplored, a judgement that again reveals internal competition within the minority. But even though Hilal’s cockiness is situated in relation to her Alevi background, it is emphasised that the reason for not being friends with her is her somewhat arrogant character, and Fadime declares that it is Hilal who avoids the others, not vice versa. Hilal herself said about this: I don’t know all the Turkish pupils at this school; why should I, when I don’t socialise with them? I have my own friends, mostly Dutch, some Turkish and some of other nationalities. I don’t have to socialise with somebody because she’s Turkish. Besides, most of my friends are not at this school. When I say ‘friends’ at school, I mean the ones you talk with, sit together with during breaks and so on. You don’t have to meet them outside school.

As we saw when considering the self-presentation, we also encountered very individualised outlooks on friendship. To be friends with those with whom they feel to share that, as distinct individuals, they have the most in common, seems to be an issue that involves justifying themselves against their parents - many of whom apparently expect ethnicity or a common original background to be utterly decisive - and against society at large, where these factors are regarded as if they signified non-integration or withdrawal into an ethnic niche. Although ethnicity as such was denied as a friendship factor, the individual’s stated choice in this respect does, of course, include the right to be friends just with other Turks. Ayse, Jale and Done in London were very good friends both in and outside school. When asked why they always stick together, Jale replied: ‘We have known each other for quite a while and share the same tastes in music and going out. We also study together. We visit each other at the weekends, and when our parents see we are together it’s easy to get their permission to go out.’ Even though their practice was admittedly a successful strategy to obtain permissions from their parents, having the same tastes was the decisive factor. Internal differences that are expressed through preferred styles of dress, hobbies or music, 314

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actually determine choices with regard to socialising, but they are again not easily observable to outsiders, who might be tempted to state that Turks most often form a crowd with other Turks. Like the explanations of friendship, remarks about other Turkish pupils revealed that avoidances were also due to personal traits such as being cocky, or because they ‘listen to more traditional music than I do’. Serife in Rotterdam expressed it like this: I socialise with people with whom I have much in common. You share the same opinions and views, then you feel more at ease because you do not have to explain why you see things the way you see them. You do not have to argue, and they accept you the way you are and think. Then it doesn’t matter whether it is a Turkish girl or a Surinamese or Dutch. It is just because you apparently share something, and that’s why you feel attracted to somebody.

All these preferences were argued for as following individual choice, a personal life-style and the consumer’s taste. Such orientations signify a clear shift away from their parents’ migrant attitude to suspend living and save money for a brighter future involving a return to their places of origin. The immigrants’ children turn away from the self-contained misery of many migrants’ living conditions in their host societies. They are unmistakably rooted in the ‘here and now’, and they also subscribe to the hedonistic ideals that have become characteristic of a globalised youth culture that can also be observed among ethnically Dutch, German, French and English young people. Since global consumption patterns or, in the case of Muslim girls, religion as a transnational collectivity shape the horizon, this is not a phenomenon one could squeeze into any national civil culture. A superficial observation of the pupils’ appearance at the four schools, their clothing styles and patterns of socialising, might have led to the conclusion that one could swap a pupil from, say, the Parisian school for one in Rotterdam. On the level of outwardly observable aspects of style, socialising with peers and other daily practices, we found great similarities in the four schools, an aspect that is altogether well-documented in work on youth culture. As concerns immigrants’ children, this can be regarded as the ‘Westernisation’ of people with different cultural backgrounds. But despite convergence on the level of personal day-to-day routines, there is at the same time considerable variation between the four countries that were shown to be rooted in the characteristic dominant discourses regarding the cultural practices of these ‘others’. We have seen that the same signs and symbols, be they headscarves or caps, are given different meanings in different settings. Thus the same phenomena as, for example, statistically measurable consumption habits that might be identical in London and Berlin, do not tell us anything about the attached meanings for the people concerned. It simply shows that pupils all make use of the same set of attributes, standardised stylistic elements, etcetera, which have been made freely avail315

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able, but the implications differ with local circumstances. The outwardly identical fashion for caps that was cherished mostly by black boys in London and therefore avoided by the London Turks crossed all ethnic distinctions in Berlin. Such imitation or avoidance practices can only be understood when they are contextualised with the taxonomies of group difference and the pupils’ own discourses of identification. As the analysis of the adolescents’ negotiations of identity also showed, it is necessary to follow how they argue an avoidance or preference to arrive at its meaning. The effective reference schemes of global consumerism, individual free choice and hedonism show that civil enculturation is not limited to national specificities. The young people’s parallel forms of representation indicate a larger process of globalisation on the level of consumption ideals and therefore represent a limitation on the influence of national civil cultures. This is equally valid for pupils with an ethnic majority background. Nevertheless, when being exercised from a minority position, it might mean other statements, motifs and visions.

Competitive Social Mobility Important aspects of minority pupils’ views about their prospects in society are shown in their opinions about their position at school and how this relates to their family’s migration history. Do they have the feeling that too little or too much attention is given to their immigrant background? Do they consider the way their school deals with pupils’ origins satisfying, or is their vision of another kind, and how is society at large assessed in this respect? The vast majority of immigrants’ children we observed and interviewed seemed mostly concerned with such issues connected with being an ordinary pupil rather than with their special position as members of a societal minority. They did not want to be victimised by a heavy emphasis on their background. Concepts of ‘intercultural education’ which propose all sorts of special provisions at school and demand attention either to the immigrants’ cultural otherness or to cultural diversity in general, did not appear to bother the pupils as much as their opportunities for getting a good occupation in the future. We encountered the ambitions that are typical of immigrant situations, namely to move beyond the parent generation’s status as quickly as possible. Being regarded as miserable foreigners who need extra help to reach this goal, received hardly any support, and positive action or anti-discrimination measures were not particularly appreciated either. The extent to which school could enable them to be successful in mastering subjects was altogether given much greater importance than the extent to which their cultural backgrounds got attention or respect. No exceptions or special regulations were demanded, only fair treatment and equal opportunities for the chance to participate in working life. 316

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Many throughout the four schools displayed a clear achievement-oriented and individualistic view towards existing competition in society: circumstances influence your initial chances to a certain extent, but each individual is responsible for mastering his or her own future. Ideas about structural disadvantages, such as blaming the system for failure, were only picked up by a small number of pupils, and in that respect their views very much reflected the general 1990s emphasis on competitiveness. Along with this tendency to see everyone as architects of their own futures, the prevailing mood was rather to reject institutionalised anti-discrimination and affirmative action measures. This reveals a far-reaching internalisation of the meritocratic ideals that characterise the ‘liberal’ civil societies, but the mistrust of quota systems might also hint at an awareness of the risks of re-ethnicisation and stigmatisation that may accompany target-group policies. Being given an opportunity or a job through explicit positive allocation criteria still carries a greater risk of raising doubts about a candidate’s qualification in terms of achievements than the well-established practice of applying implicit allocation criteria to prefer, for instance, men before women in top positions. Moreover, quotas rely on the slightly absurd principle of having to define target collectivities in order to prevent discrimination of members who belong to that particular group. The extent to which this unfortunate relation was seen, and the ways in which the arguments in favour of equal conditions were phrased, again followed different lines and mirrored the particular limitations of each civil culture vis-à-vis the position assigned to newcomers. In the Netherlands, one of the two declared multicultural societies in our sample, where minorities are officially categorised and certain groups of allochtonen or ethnic minorities recognized as needing targeted integration help, pupils were especially eager to distance themselves from any such collectivising perspectives and to stress their individuality and personal merits instead. A strong emphasis on hard work in order to attain good marks was characteristic of many Turkish pupils at the Nikolaas Tinbergen School, who were also aware of the fact that they were moving upward not only in comparison with most of their Turkish peers in the Netherlands, who only reach the lowest VBO exams (that is, preparation for vocational training) but also, and particularly, with their parents. For Dinnur, who attended the Grade 5 HAVO, this was important beyond the level of personal success, since his achievements should also falsify the denigrating underestimation of Turks: ‘My father was an agricultural worker before he came to the Netherlands. He went to primary school for a couple of years, that’s all. I will become a technical engineer... I want to show that we [Turks] are able to do well.’ Concealed in Dinnur’s individual ambition to reach the highest possible status is an allusion to the built-in contradiction of Dutch integration policies in using targeting as a means of overcoming inhibitions, and implicitly stigmatising ethnic minorities like Turks as not being equally competent in social participation and success as the 317

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authochtonen Dutch. Dinnur wanted to dissolve this image of inhibition. Although school offers them in general a means of pursuing their goal of upward mobility, it is not a site of unspoilt satisfaction. The same criticism Dinnur expressed indirectly about collectivising perceptions and inequality of treatment could also be heard as a concern within their school. Many Turkish pupils felt that they were constantly forced to correct images and stereotypes about their parents’ home country or their religion. Havva from Grade 6 VWO remarked of Dutch classmates and staff: ‘When a foreigner does something wrong, they think that we are all the same, or they have distorted information about Islam, especially about women in Islam, whom they consider stupid and unable to follow higher education.’ When Melek and Serife, also from Grade 6 VWO, discussed the issue, Melek spoke of her impression of being treated worse than Dutch pupils by some teachers because of her Turkishness. Serife doubted this, but Melek insisted, ‘There are teachers who are not honest with us. They say, “I do not make distinctions”, but in fact they do. There are teachers who would prefer to see us leave school than stay here, I tell you!’ Serife admitted that not everyone liked foreigners and that this was true everywhere, but, on the whole, their school was all right in its treatment of foreigners. She compared the Tinbergen to another secondary school she had attended before: I was at a school with a lot of foreigners before, but I did not like the school at all. They did not pay attention to individual pupils. It was too impersonal... What I like about this school is that it is more organized in a way. The teachers are closer to the pupils and they do not mind whether you are Turkish or Dutch. You know that many Dutch people expect girls with a headscarf to become housewives, standing at the sink. At this school they don’t. They stimulate you to achieve better, not all of them, of course, but most of them. I have the feeling that they act differently when too many foreigners are in a school, they treat you more as member of a group then and not as a person.

They did not want to be treated ‘as member of a group’ that is pre-defined and imagined by the Dutch. For the same reason, Nezife from the Grade 5 went a step further when she commented about the school’s tasks: ‘They must look at every pupil individually. For me it is more important that I am able to consult a teacher, that they have time to listen to you, than that they remind me every time that I’m a foreigner.’ Although the ideal of an approach that considers each person individually was shared among them, Nezife was apparently more aware of discriminating effects as possible concomitants of an attention to the differences in pupils’ backgrounds. Zeki, in the same Grade 6 as Serife, one of the highest achieving pupils at Tinbergen, put forward this idea more outspokenly by rejecting teachers’ approaches to cultural diversity. Zeki did not like the way teachers talked about the impact of the foreigner status: 318

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Of course it is nice when they take your background into consideration, but most of the time it is pointless. I am proud to be Turkish and I am interested in my background: I am a member of a Turkish soccer team and we are good. I expect the school to respect my background. They must be on their guard against discrimination at school, but what is most important is that they enable me to achieve the highest level and prepare me for further education. That is the main task of the school. What do I care for a teacher who always talks about discrimination and the position of foreigners when he cannot teach properly. That’s just speaking claptrap, isn’t it? [Dat is toch gezeik?]

This objection to too much jabbering is an unmistakable reproach to the Dutch civil culture of endless discussions and consultations, with the moral obligation of seeking a consensus despite differences. Zeki evidently regards the Dutch ideal of a compromising route towards a consensus that embraces all groups in society as a lot of fuss about nothing, torrents of words that might lack clarity or results, but that are above all unnecessary and miss the crucial point. The moral lesson of the dominant discourse, namely not to make an issue of assumed ethnic and cultural differences in society but to play them down in favour of the Dutch ‘harmony model’ of conflict-avoidance was in a way taken up by the Turkish pupils: they did not ask for special recognition on the basis of their different personal background. But what is more, they did not even want the kind of attention that was devoted to them as a result of well-intended policies of integration, because of the inherent definition of them as a problem. In their view, being Turkish does not mean any particular disadvantage, nor is it a special circumstance requiring attention in the form of multilateral explanations and negotiations. Their family’s history of immigration, like their ‘other’ culture and religion at home, should rather be treated as a private matter, something one can be proud of like Zeki, but not something that should enter the evaluation of their personal merits and performances. With its pre-defined group categories in order to absorb the ‘new’ phenomenon of cultural differences into the inclusive consultative democracy, the politics of multiculturalism in the Netherlands seems to attribute greater importance to these ‘differences’ than the concerned minority members do themselves. The political concept appears culturalist in that it presumes cultural differences are the crucial basis for assessing competence for participation in society. From the viewpoint of the Turkish pupils in Rotterdam, these two issues are not connected at all. The Nikolaas Tinbergen School’s strategy of preferably breaking down ethnic-group patterning was appreciated by the pupils, but not judged as being practised always with satisfying coherence. On the one hand, pupils were asked to refrain from practices that teachers interpreted as a withdrawal into their ethnic group, such as speaking Turkish, while for themselves this was nothing but a routine means of communication; on the other hand, they were exposed to the extra pressure of explanation that belies the school’s self-defin319

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ing notion of ‘just so many odd individuals who are equal in principle’. Volkan’s statement about voting, which we discussed in the context of identity management, made this unbalance very clear: why should he justify himself for not making use of his voting right? He asked classmates and teacher whether it would make him any less Dutch if he was not interested in politics, thus drawing attention to the greater pressure he is under to demonstrate civic virtues as a naturalised citizen than would ever be expected of ethnic Dutch citizens. The collectivising perception of cultural groups that prevails in the dominant Dutch rhetoric was claimed to act against the ideal of equal treatment when used to measure the degree of civic inclusion attained. The allochtonen pupils in Rotterdam demanded that public efforts towards immigrant equality in economic and social respects as well as in political participation should leave their (private) right to be culturally different out of discussion, a claim that sounds as if they had the French concept of normative indifference in mind. In Britain, the second confessed multicultural society, hegemonic discourses likewise take the existence of ethnic and cultural groups or ‘communities’ for granted, while active discrimination is simultaneously made a prosecutable offence. The twofold approach of supporting the development of identity within one’s ethnic group and fostering cultural community awareness as a source of personal strength, whilst on the other hand working to prevent stigmatisation from belonging to this very same group,4 implies a different dilemma from the attempt in the Netherlands to play down differences. Unlike the Dutch emphasis on a levelling, inter-subjective consensus, the core of the British concept of multiculturalism seems marked by the liberty of particular interests. The main problem inherent in strong minority rights is obviously a constant concern about discrimination and misrepresentation which triggers off jealous competition on the basis of alleged group privileges. Let us recall some examples of this. Zeynep’s complaint that her teacher would readily have let her into class and would not have asked for her registration slip for entering the lesson late if she had been an English pupil drew immediately on such a group perception. She did not refer to other individual pupils in the class whom she might have noticed not being troubled in similar situations, but instead played the ethnic card: ‘He is treating me differently because I’m Turkish’, a serious accusation, particularly in the setting of extensive antidiscrimination laws. Ethnic minority pupils in London know very well how powerful a reproach of unequal treatment can be. The case of Selim illustrates this too: when his religious education teacher explained the Buddhist re-incarnation belief by saying that he might be born as a squirrel in his next life, he mobilised his parents and finally succeeded in obtaining a formal apology from the teacher for this ‘insult’, which the teacher said was merely intended as a harmless joke. The dominant anti-discrimination discourse appears to stimulate a high degree of sensitivity going beyond mere alertness and producing an atmosphere of constant suspicion which can even become paralysing. The fact 320

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that Turkish teachers in Huxley School were unwilling to take action in mediating in a serious conflict between Turkish and English pupils because they might have been accused of preferential treatment in favour of the Turks indicates how delicate the situation is. Individual disadvantages and feelings of injustice were easily shifted to collective features like the explanatory pattern of a group stigma in London. Pupils’ opinions about their position in school and its relation to wider society showed further arguments of this kind. Although most Turkish pupils at Huxley also expressed the hope of reaching beyond their parents’ levels of education and income, they were rather pessimistic about their chances to move upwards socially and economically, by making reference to collective conditions, such as the bad image of their school. Even pupils who were about to sit A-level examinations did not regard this success optimistically. Rusen was just such an Alevel pupil who hoped to break the circle of merely reproducing the working class. He planned to work in tourism. Initially he had aimed at a ‘more prestigious’ career such as being a lawyer or an accountant, but the poor facilities at his school had made him lower his sights somewhat: When I decided to do A-levels, I was hoping to get a degree in law or accountancy. It did not take me long to realise that I do not have much of a chance, given the competition... The church school and its pupils nearby, they have better teachers, buildings and success rates. Our school, on the other hand, is the school least likely to be chosen in the area. This is not fair: from the beginning I became disadvantaged.

These feelings were shared by other pupils at Huxley Comprehensive. In a discussion on potential employment opportunities, organized by the school’s career service, several pupils pointed out that there was no real equality of chances in society. The debate was chaired by a black pupil who asked about her schoolfriends’ plans and expectations after school: black girl: Look at our school and its achievements: by coming here we were forced to remain at the bottom. Turkish girl: If we had money, I would have gone to a private college. When you finish at a private college, you will have more chances to go to university and have a better job. Turkish boy: May I ask our year head how many pupils became lawyers, doctors and engineers etcetera? I think previous records will tell us something about the quality of our education and our chances for employment. Teacher: I am afraid I do not have such records. Chair: Let’s move on to the job market and discuss our chances of getting a job. black boy: Well, there is obvious discrimination in this country, especially against 321

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blacks. We study and work hard but get nowhere. Look at how many young black people there are out on the streets with no job. white English boy: Come on! There are also lots of white people out on the streets. My father has been unemployed for the last two years, and we are squeezed into a small council flat like many low-income people! Another Turkish boy: I think we should concentrate on the quality of education rather than on employment at this stage, because without a good education no one gets a decent job. black girl: There are lots of black people with good degrees but they are denied many opportunities. Look at Parliament, for example: how many black MPs do we have in this country? I think that tells us lots of things about racism and the discrimination we may face in this country in the future.

Although the debate was supposed to centre around their current situation in education and orientation towards the job market, the discussion quickly widened to cover the lack of equal opportunities, racism and discrimination, and the impact of class and social inequalities. Their argument draws on a taken-forgranted process of class reproduction that depends on a diversified school system: only well-equipped schools like private colleges ensure the high quality of education one needs to get a decent job, and without money one cannot attend such schools. However good one’s own school results may be, they will not make up for the sad fact that Huxley School is bad and poor in comparison to such private colleges. The ideal of identification with one’s school as a community seems to have developed into an anticipation of collective stigma here. Moreover, these pupils declared the British policy towards immigrants, which discourages all direct and indirect discrimination with a series of legislative acts and behaviour codes, as inefficient. As in the Dutch case, they consented to the social ideal of equal opportunities but did not think that the programme was matched by reality. Encouraged to develop a consciousness of their ‘cultural communities’ as they were, they applied this concept in the form of a collective articulation: ‘We study and work hard but get nowhere,’ said one of the black boys in the discussion. The Turkish girl, together with another black classmate, saw the poor school conditions as creating an obstacle to any option other than ‘remaining on the bottom’. Such petrifying self-victimisation appears to be the unintended consequence of a well-intended programme of awareness that aims to make pupils sensitive to any unfairness. It is exactly these effects that the French school is designed to prevent through its normative denial of any differences between pupils other than those of different individual abilities. Since any attention to pupils’ various backgrounds, let alone a multiculturalist adaptation of curricula, is inconceivable in France as a major violation of the formal norm of republican equality, pupils from ethnic minorities in Paris do not have to cope with or argue against any 322

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open interpretations of their otherness. However, as it is not supposed to matter at all who they are in private, they cannot invest their cultural peculiarities as positive resources either. Due to the taboo placed on pupils’ social, cultural and economical particularities, there is no place for those who experience their ‘other’ personal background as so different that they wish to discuss it, or as so essential that they may not want to ignore it. The consequence of this programmatic culture-blindness is a pressure to assimilate, which demands alienation from the private sphere if the latter is not in line with the public style of rationality in the French Republic. In spite of the promise that opportunities are equal for all, those pupils whose home situation conforms to the demands of the state are in fact privileged because the offer of participation is bound to strong principles that are not put up for debate. Wanting to negotiate about the conditions to take part in the republican enterprise of rationality can easily be considered irrational and can lower one’s chances of success or even lead to complete exclusion, as was the case with those girls who insisted on their Islamic dress codes. Although the republican programme is meant to facilitate societal inclusion for everyone equally, and particularly so with the help of state schools, pupils who violate the formal framework are excluded rather than treated as partner with whom to negotiate the rules of their participation at eye-level. In practice, therefore, the final goal appears to be of lesser value than the principles laid down, and pupils who assess these goals against the background of their practically relevant experiences hit up against state discrimination and conceptual exclusion. Schools are not all equal, as they are supposed to be, nor is the equation of French citizenship with identity deemed feasible. Despite the materially good conditions at Lycée Fernand Braudel, its pupils took part in demonstrations to complain about being disadvantaged. In fact there was a considerable mobilisation by schools in areas around Paris during the term the fieldwork was carried out. Teachers and pupils organized several demonstrations in central Paris to demand better working and learning conditions in their schools, which pupils from Lycée Fernand Braudel joined. Their participation was rather surprising, because the other schools that were protesting were basically calling to be given the recognized status of a zone d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP) for better material equipment, which Lycée Fernand Braudel had already. When the pupils explained why they joined these demonstrations, they argued that they were being discriminated against: a boy from their Lycée had been rejected in the preparation classes for a concours in one of the renowned Parisian elite Lycées in spite of his good exam results. The promise of equal opportunity rights for everyone to move up the educational and social ladder if their knowledge-related success justifies it was therefore declared to be mere assertion. However anticontextual, outwardly neutral and objective the concours may in fact be, the entry conditions for the selection process are still contextual, and pupils clearly recognized that subtle mechanisms of symbolic distinction and differential 323

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exclusion are at work. The credibility of a system that puts formal equality at the centre of self-definition and connects it with the promise of equal opportunities evaporates when the selection and hierarchical classification of candidates still functions according to other hidden criteria. The built-in limitation of the French scheme appears to consist of a reciprocal dynamic process of legalistic inclusion leading to more subtle practices of exclusion. Sefiye’s case also indicates that this was a recognized circumstance. She was planning to go back to Turkey for further education. After passing through the Lycée, she would study law or political science in Turkey because her father had told her that it would become difficult to do so in France since she would at some point be hindered by an effective hidden racism. Also, at the level of identifications, ethnic minority pupils in Paris insisted on the truths of their daily lives that are particular despite all universalist discourses of equality. They knew too much about the differences that are created by others to exclude them, to believe that one need only forget about the differences in order to produce equality. In one classroom discussion, a pupil from a Chinese family said that he only had to look in the mirror to see that he could never be regarded as French. As long as this dimension is not taken into account in the dominant conceptualisation of the French people, ethnic minorities are likely to hold up their intermediate identities against the provocation of indifference, which almost seems to reflect the British vision of multiculturalism. Most pupils of foreign origin who attended the Lise Meitner School in Berlin were also quite pessimistic of their chances of obtaining a desirable position in society. The fear of not having the chance to participate in the system at all was widespread, but due neither to their ‘bad’ school nor their status as foreigners. Although their school has as bad an image as those in London or Paris, this was not a factor that pupils in Berlin saw as spoiling their future chances. The level of the final school examination was thought to be more important than the particular quality of the school. This partly reflects the fact that German secondary schools are not (yet) in a competitive market situation like those in Britain, nor rated in ‘charts’ of baccalaureate exams like the French Lycées. Nevertheless, even though it may not be because of the particular school they attended, the perspective was shared among the immigrants’ children in Berlin that one would very likely have to forget any higher ambitions. Like their counterparts in the other three schools, they had the same typical post-migration desire to go beyond their parents’ relatively low status in terms of qualifications, income and prestige. The very expectation that equal access in competition for jobs should be guaranteed on the basis of achievement was also acclaimed and judged in basically the same way as that of their German school-friends, whom the foreign pupils saw as being in the same boat. Many of them knew older friends or relatives who had applied for numerous jobs but remained unskilled and unemployed after school, even though they might have passed the highest possible examination, the German Abitur. A girl from a Croatian family, Grade 12: 324

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Recently we had a discussion with Grade 13. They had just come from careers guidance in a frustrated mood and said that formerly you were told that, with the Abitur, all doors would be open to you, you could do whatever you liked; and now, all the doors are closing: no place at university, no vocational training. For job training that is supposed to be done with Hauptschulabschluss [the lowest general school examination in Germany], I don’t have to pass the Abitur! Should I become a hair-dresser with the Abitur? Why should I? And training vacancies are really so scarce; fifty people apply for one place!

So these young people were clearly experiencing the fact that the pressure for selection has changed with the ‘democratisation’ of high-school education: they anticipated a situation in which the highest school examination, the one which entitles to university access, might no longer be sufficient for an ordinary whitecollar position. Astonishingly, however, they did not blame any particular form of discrimination or subtle process of distinction for this ‘closing of the doors’, but considered it a logical consequence of the generally desperate labour market: competition had simply become harder, according to their views. Special disadvantages springing from their own immigration background were rejected, as in this out-of-class discussion among pupils from migrant families in Grade 12: Dimitra: It’s a general problem. Meera: I think nowadays, what you are capable of…if you are better than the others, you are taken, whether you are a foreigner or not. Bujar: Exactly! Meera: These days, you are accepted if you’ve got what it takes. Bujar: Yet mostly you do not even get a chance to show what you are able to. Melanie: Yes. Songül: To prove that you are capable of something, you must have experience; one must have a beginning, but what do you do if there is no company to give you that opportunity? How do you want to begin? A small example: my whole former grade from the Mittelstufe [meaning they left school two years before with a lower school exam]...somehow they all just hang around! The labour market is like that!… Dimitra: Well I think such problems [like discrimination against foreigners in the labour market] actually occur quite rarely, difficulties with applications and so on. From the moment you have good marks and also adequate behaviour... Songül: But what should those do who don’t have such good marks and haven’t been able to develop so well? Dimitra: They should have taken greater pains! Then it makes no difference if you are a foreigner or not. 325

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To be a foreigner was not assessed as limiting the possibility of success here. Possible failures in getting a job were rather related to a lack of personal qualifications like working hard, or to a general shortage of jobs. In the presence of mostly negative images about other cultures, which shape the dominant setting of discourses in Berlin, ethnic minority pupils might be particularly interested in avoiding such collectivising culturalist perspectives in order to steer clear of any suspicion. In addition to this dimension, even though these young people all knew about discrimination against foreigners, they primarily expressed a shared feeling of equally belonging to the current ‘community of fate’, that is the hopelessness after school. This was said to affect everybody and to make the general competition harder: ‘nowadays’, only the better ones are taken, ‘foreigner or not’, and ‘these days’ one needs to really satisfy the requirements in order to be accepted. The stressful situation on the German (and one may add in particular the Berlin) labour market, and the scarcity of opportunities for further education or vocational training prepares the stage for a collectivising desperate assessment that makes hardly any distinction at all between Germans and foreigners. Like the pupils’ own group identity as foreigners, which places all ethnic groups in a residual, negatively defined category as not being German, the assumption of equally bad opportunities on the labour market is comparatively global and in effect similarly pacifying. It seems as if the total ignorance of the immigrants and their particular experiences in hegemonic German discourses has stimulated a perception in which others’ group-specific circumstances appear to be an issue of negligible importance. The existence of cultural differences had the status of some common-sense self-evident fact of daily school life. Ethnic patternings were not particularly discouraged, nor was the situation regarding migration given any special attention. This lack of attention to the experience of migration has apparently created an inability to define what might be special about one’s own background. It leaves the impression that the Dutch ideal of avoiding conflicts by ‘playing down’ ethnic or cultural particularities was ultimately achieved in Berlin. Similar to the striking – and empirically incorrect – denial of any special disadvantage for foreigners on the German labour market, several incidents that would definitely have led to accusations of discrimination by teachers in, for example, the Huxley School, met with no reaction at all at Lise Meitner School. As if they were not entitled to complain, the foreigners often chose silence in preference to protest. Comparing this reservation with German pupils’ immediate reactions to teachers’ ‘insulting behaviour’, it emerged that pupils’ strategies in Berlin depended tremendously on the hierarchised legitimacy of interventions. As long as they do not hinder the routines of daily business, ethnic minorities are not paid any special attention. Yet in critical situations, it becomes evident that there is no established basis to allow an argument on the same footing, but a paternalistic system of submission to the advice of experts 326

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and their definition of the problem is put into action. This German specialty does not help foster any structural improvement but reconfirms the unbalanced situation of foreigners vis-à-vis Germans. Parallel to the inability to define in positive terms what immigrants could possibly contribute, there is a second inability to express at least instrumentally how they might participate. As we discussed in detail earlier, one significant incident of this kind occurred when a Grade 12 class was discussing the potential implications of Muslim headscarves, the teacher arguing, with republican enthusiasm, that Muslim headscarves basically contradict the German constitution’s principle of gender equality, meaning that they could be banned as in French schools. Two Muslim pupils in the class, a girl and a boy, were particularly unwilling to follow this argument and referred to the constitutional principle of religious freedom and the existing multicultural society, arguing that excluding girls who wore headscarves meant discriminating against them. The teacher replied that the ‘multicultural society’ was an illegitimate justification that had nothing to do with the German state order or constitution. Still the boy, Ümit, insisted on knowing, ‘What are the Germans afraid of?’, thus making his teacher furious: surely everybody knew the background to sensitivities concerning ideological symbols in Germany – all he needed to do was mention the swastika in this context. But for the Turkish boy, this reference was not the explanation in itself, which the teacher took for granted: Ümit went on to say that he would not mind there being swastikas in the room, for he had his opinion anyway, which was not going to be changed by other people’s swastikas. At that point, the teacher stopped the discussion! Yet Ümit’s question hit the nub of the problem in German civil culture: pupils should learn to draw conclusions from the history of the Weimar Republic and develop a firm, consciously controlled personality that cannot fall prey to totalitarianism. Ümit’s idea that other people’s ideological symbols would not bother him fully accords with this; in addition, institutional precautions were introduced in the post-war West German Grundgesetz against misuse of power and freedom, which the Weimar constitution did not have. Constant mistrust and fear for the fragility of democracy is even less understandable in this context, but if pupils articulate their lack of comprehension of such precarious issues, they seem to be easily given up as hopeless cases. As soon as the idealised balance of internalised control by individual conscience and family-supported integrity begins to waver, it slips easily into a puzzled incomprehension and speechlessness. This sort of withdrawal affected the pupils from immigrant families far more often than ethnic Germans. When one takes this into consideration and recalls the path of silent irritation that was most often chosen, it is all the more interesting how much the young ‘foreigners’ in Berlin were concerned by inequalities on the level of the world economy. Their additional knowledge of certain other countries, namely those of their parents’ origin, were then given emphatic expressions in their proposals for improvements and ideals of justice: 327

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Meera: Me personally, I want to contribute to improving the position of the socalled Third World countries, so that one trades with them; one could do so much in that respect. Songül: Or when you know that, around the corner, people are dying in a war and you can’t do anything about it, that’s so awful!… One should support others and do something about it. When a country is well off, it should also support others. Bujar: …to establish a balance in the world so that there are no rich and poor people, otherwise there will always be conflicts...

Their ideal of peaceful solutions to problems is related to fair trade and a balance being established between rich and poor countries by increasing support for the latter. In full accordance with the German approach to defining solidarity from the angle of the market, where economic issues decide matters of social peace, equal access to resources is argued to be a basic prerequisite for improvement on the global level. The demand for a stable future refers directly to economic justice and is expressed in terms of equal chances for all in participating in the system, meaning that there should be ‘a balance in the world’ or, in the local context, guaranteed access to economic participation: Ranya: Equal rights for all! Meera: Equal opportunities must be created,... guaranteed work... Melanie: At least vocational training for all... Bujar: Maybe, there should be less competition.

Although the idea of guaranteed jobs reminds one of the rhetoric of the welfare state, what the young people mentioned to begin with was not public funding to ensure social security but the opportunity to earn their own incomes: it is not an authoritarian welfare state that is envisaged but a fair market. Competitive selection is accepted, although it should take place in an arena of equality or, as Bujar expressed it, ‘There should be less competition’. Before individual merit finally decides the competition, equality of opportunity should be achieved, it being the state’s task to equalise circumstances by guaranteeing equal chances with respect to education, a sufficient number of vocational training places and finally access to the labour market for all. The simultaneous predominance of these merit-orientated views in all four cases could be read as a convergent reflection of the globalisation discourses that have in the last decade contributed to an erosion of the welfare state notion of solidarity. There is yet another dimension to the strong arguments in favour of a fair market. As we have already seen in the adolescents’ identity discourses, this concern has to do with their special position and their related experiences as members of ethnic minority groups. Despite all the different discursive strate328

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gies adopted in arguing their own positions in particular settings, there was a common baseline for the four civil cultures: the immigrants’ children all articulated their demand to be treated in a just and fair way like everyone else, neither as an exotic species nor as clients deserving for positive discrimination. They treated cultural particularities as identity resources which they did not want to suspend, overcome or forget, let alone allow to be defined as inhibiting factors by the majority population. This argument took different forms: with respect to lessons about culture-related problems in Berlin or Rotterdam, the attention given to cultural difference was not appreciated because of its ethnicising effects and the resulting assimilationist pressures, however unintended. With respect to the promise to disregard cultural background in allocating opportunities in London or Paris, such differences were insisted upon as having a factual significance, as effective instruments of distinction and exclusion not less than as positive sources of self-assurance of the sort that in Paris was reserved for the concept of Civilisation.

Conclusions All the visible points of convergence in terms of personal presentation and dayto-day routines indicate a high degree of intimacy amongst the immigrants’ children with prevailing conventions of how to codify their own public appearances, although not according to nationally contained codes but on the level of a globalised variety of styles. Ethnic minority pupils are no different in this respect from those of their school-mates who do not have a background in migration. Shared ideals of consumption and the attributes of the ‘good life’ they are striving for are not ethnically differentiated but follow preferences of individual taste and interests. Even though these pupils’ convergent performances are related to different group taxonomies and social hierarchies, not having the same meanings in all four cases, their processes of enculturation are not only marked by the nationally specific civil cultures, which limits this explanatory framework. The second topical complex in which we encountered highly convergent phenomena concerned pupils’ visions of what a just society would look like from the view of minorities providing cultural experiences other than those of the majority populations. With their shared demands for a value-neutral recognition of their being different and for equal access to the arena of achievement-based competition, the children of the immigrants reach specific constraints that consist of the deficits and inner discrepancies that each civil culture has vis-à-vis the integration of newcomers. The unintended consequences of each integration model, which become visible at this point, need to be taken into consideration on a theoretical as well as on a practical political level. 329

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What the foreigners face in German political culture is an excessive scepticism that tends to suspect people of undermining the liberal democratic order by a lack of upright commitment. Clearly derived from the experience of how the Weimar Republic, the ‘democracy with too few democrats’, came to a horrifying end, there is apparently not much trust in the institutional order of the democratic state as such. The additional criterion of internal conviction comes into play as the indispensable drive to keep a liberal democracy going. This scepticism concerning genuine constitutional loyalties and the internalisation of democratic virtues impose, among other factors, special constraints on newcomers, whose loyalties and values are particularly mistrusted. In spite of the programmatic relevance of conviction and the central position given to the individual conscience, in practice a paternalistic system gains ground whenever the high demands of the ideal preconditions are not met: one has to either keep a low profile to join the common platform or submit to the experts’ advice. The presumed fragility of democracy, an external opacity of rules, and the difficult circumstances of a concept of the nation that draws on vague criteria such as a shared culture or ‘fate’ and that has only recently been freed of the ancestral principle, in turn reproduces a vacuum of uncertainty regarding immigrants’ possible role. In Berlin, pupils with an immigrant background did not mention any special respect in which their particular culture could add to the whole. Instead they resorted to wider collectivities, such as that of ‘the foreigners’, the general employment situation, the new state that would have to be founded to host all the hybrid identities or, when claiming injustice, an order of global fairness to be established instead of the present unjust terms of trade. Within the narrowness of German civil culture itself, limitations and paternalism easily come to predominate and evidently prevent any challenging articulations that might express the newcomers’ claim to belong to German society in positive terms. Somewhat opposed to the constant scepticism of the German self-reflective style, the problem in France seems to consist rather of too much self-confidence in the correctness of the French model of Civilisation. The belief appears to prevail that a coherent application of republican principles will almost automatically lead to equality and justice. Being granted access to this grand pivotal force should be valued as a precious gift that facilitates not only societal but likewise personal progress. From the perspective of the newcomers, it is no less an expression of arrogance not to take their cultures of origin into account on an equal footing. Under these circumstances French citizenship, which is meant to be the main tool of integration, is not regarded as satisfying by the pupils concerned. Equality is officially pushed as the main aim, but with an insistence on the existing framework of rules that might actually attribute greater importance to formal equality than to its actual results. Furthermore, the young people come to realise that the objectified system does not prevent the application of 330

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effective distinction strategies which use hidden codes, symbolic and implicit criteria, to exclude them. In the English school, pupils similarly declared the British rhetoric in favour of equal opportunities to be mere lip service. A heightened sensitivity to discrimination, which relies on the strong minority rights enshrined in positive action programmes, seems to cause a constant concern about discrimination and triggers off jealous competition among pupils based on ethnic group perceptions. The notion of a social mosaic creates segmentary boundary effects when pupils from ethnic minority groups measure and assess their individual chances of upward mobility. As in the German situation, they tended to fall back on collectivising schemes of explanation, yet not as something that rules out existing differences in relief and pacification, but as a ball and chain that keeps one at the bottom of society. The paradox is that, of the two nation states that define themselves as multicultural, the one that cherishes existing diversity without reservation as a positive collective asset ends up with minority members who see their social position as being characterised by negative liabilities. The second declared multicultural project, namely the Dutch one, displays less enthusiasm for the cultural diversity that has emerged in society and describes it rather as a challenge requiring special efforts in order to attain intersubjectivity again. Even before they can make up their minds and articulate their own interests, immigrants seem to be absorbed into predefined target groups and to find themselves exposed to discussion and consultation processes ultimately leading to the dissolution of profiled viewpoints, euphemistically called consensus. With the rush to advance immigrants through policies designed to overcome the presumed inhibitory effects of certain other cultures, the implied assimilation pressure, in the sense that allochtonen newcomers need to become better citizens than the authochtonen Dutch, is hardly concealed. Although not demonstrated with such proud rigour as is characterised by the French pursuance of their own Civilisation concept, there also seems to be a lot of selfsatisfaction and paternalistic benevolence involved in the Dutch impetus to integration. The gift of Dutchness shall be responded to with extraordinary participation in, and grateful acclamation of, the process of reaching consensus. Cultural diversity is therefore a scheduled topic in school, and suggestions as to how these cultures might be merged within the social consensus model as individualised life-styles occupied many classroom discussions. The unintended consequence of this overkill in discussion was that many minority pupils would rather avoid this pointless gezeik, and even defied it by rejecting the categories proposed and the exemplary behaviour expected. Tired of constantly having to correct culturalist images of the authochtonen Dutch, the favoured option of the children of immigrants in Rotterdam was to leave cultural differences completely out of the argument. Paradoxically, therefore, the Dutch attention to the presumed differences appears to produce the sort of demand that the French school aims to achieve 331

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through its denial of difference. On the other hand, due to the particular restraints they encounter in the French setting, ethnic minority pupils in Paris displayed an insistence on their ‘other’ backgrounds that sounded as if they had invented the British idea of multiculturalism afresh. At the same time, their peers in London expressed their overall consent to this multicultural vision but declared that it was not reflected in reality, thus turning the idea of cultural and ethnic diversity into a bias characterised by jealousy in its measurement of differential treatment. While these three political projects all entail ideas of how immigrants should either be incorporated into societies defined as multicultural or inspired to participate in a universal venture of Civilisation, no positive concept of this sort is given significance in the German case. Therefore in a way the most extreme situation in the four case studies was the phenomenon of young people from ethnic minorities in Berlin who estimated to face hardly any problems because of their foreign status. Almost reminiscent of the Dutch ‘harmony model’, the children of the immigrants in Berlin played down the impact of their background and treated the existing diversity as if it were already a politically acknowledged circumstance in society, so that it was not necessary to make a special issue of it. Although the adolescents we met evidently all share the same ideal of the value-neutral recognition of taken-for-granted differences within the public sphere, the particular limitations of each civil culture are reached at this point. While appealing fundamentally to the very ideals of the four civil cultures, namely the idea of a fair market of free exchange, equal access to it and provision of opportunities on the basis of merit, this vision does not harmonise so easily with the restrictive self-definitions of any of the four nation states. In all four examples, therefore, ethnic minority pupils ultimately argued against the excluding effects that are entailed in the dominant images of otherness and in favour of being included in the national imaginaries while still being culturally different. The fact that we found these striking similarities shows that there is indeed a parallel process taking place in all countries of our sample – whether this is on a northwestern European level, within a transatlantic ‘Western World’ or more comprehensively on a global scale cannot be answered by our research – of enculturation into a pluralist public sphere that transcends the particularities and imagined borders of our individual nation states.

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Notes 1. The fact that dress codes are gendered is no big news: dress codes are means of expressing identities, and that includes gender identities. The mainstream sports or fashion outfits like the groomed untidiness of the ‘ghetto look’ do involve different ranges of style elements for boys and for girls. In this respect, modesty-concerned Islamic girls were an exception, for we could not recognize any clear male counterpart to their outfit. 2. All the different styles can be described in terms of such staging. We might have said that the trend of mainstream label-orientation reveals heaviest emphasis on conspicuous consumption. However, this would have left the observers’ unbalanced competence in perceiving matters unconsidered: we were able to observe the inner contestation within this mainstream much better than, for example, differentiation within the ‘ghetto-style’ faction, because of our own biased perceptions and (media-driven) habits of consumption. Thus, the fact that the cumulative effects of ‘poor’ label selection must be avoided in order to ensure group access was for us most easily observable with respect to the range of globally marketed product names which we simply know better than the logos of different baseball caps or types of Turkish shoes. The idea of symbolic consumption in the group only makes sense if one contributes to the group with an attractive life-style product from a hierarchised order. The relevant mechanisms in the USA, which at least in this respect is the indisputable trendsetter, has been described by Waters (1990). As a practice of distinction, this does not only hold valid for teenagers pursuing the globally recognized big labels. Hierarchisation may have increased in radicalised efficiency with globalised marketing, but it is definitely not restricted to the range of the famous products. 3. Not all schools in Britain have such a compulsory school uniform, and even within the same local borough as Huxley, some state schools do not apply a policy regarding uniforms. However, most private and denominational schools do have school uniforms. The Huxley School uniform consists of black trousers or skirt, with other clothes in bright blue, and black shoes. 4. This tension becomes recognizable in all the competing definitions of what ‘racism’ or ‘discrimination’ might cover and how they might be countered. To some extent, the official definitions of unlawful practices collide with local policies of providing equal opportunities. The legal framework of the Race Relations Act of 1976 has made discrimination unlawful and defines racial discrimination, as representing one aspect of racism, in four ways: direct and indirect discrimination, segregation, and victimisation (cf. Haringey Council Education Services 1998b: 6 f.); Haringey’s education services have also defined ‘stereotyping’ in relation to their equal opportunities policy as not tolerable, in the sense of ‘attributing over-simplified characteristics of a whole group to each of its members. This results in individuals being seen as representative of a group rather than persons in their own right’ (ibid.: 24). On the other hand, target-group policies are taken for granted as a means of ruling out discrimination through positive action, which itself proceeds on the basis of seeing people as group members.

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Gerd Baumann studied musicology and social anthropology at the Universities of Cologne and Belfast. He has taught anthropology at the Universities of Oxford, London, Brunel West London, New Mexico, and currently Amsterdam. Among his more recent books are: Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London (Cambridge University Press 1996) and The Multicultural Riddle: Re-Thinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities (Routledge 1999). His present interests are focused on: Grammars of Identity / Alterity: A Structural Approach (Berghahn 2004). Beate Collet studied at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main and Nantes before doing her Ph.D. at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Since 1998, she has worked at the Faculty of Anthropology and Sociology, Université Lumière 2, Lyon, and is attached to various research institutes. Her work primarily concerns sociological theories of integration, social action, and citizenship in comparative perspective. She has contributed to several books on mixed marriages, among them: Grenzüberschreitend heiraten (Fribourg 2000) and Liberté, Egalité, Mixités Conjugales’ (Paris 1998) Riva Kastoryano is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Paris) and teaches at the Institute for Political Sciences (CERI) in Paris. Her work focuses on the relationships between identity and states, and on minority and community formations in western democratic societies. Her most recent book is: La France, l’Allemagne et leurs immigrés: Négotier l’identité (Paris: Armand Colin 1997), translated into English as: Negotiating Identities. States and Immigrants in France and Germany (Princeton University Press 2002). Sabine Mannitz studied Ethnology and Political Sciences at the Universities of Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main. Having worked at both the European University of Frankfurt (Oder) and the University of Essex, she is currently a Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research, Frankfurt am Main. Having published several articles on education and migration, she turned her attention to the identifications worked out by post-migration youth in Germany. Her most 335

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recent article is: ‘Turkish Youths in Berlin: Transnational Identification and Double Agency’, in New Perspectives on Turkey, Issue 28, 2003. Werner Schiffauer studied Turkish, anthropology, and ethnology at the University of Frankfurt am Main and has worked on the transformations of rural and urban Turkey; Turkish immigration into Germany; Islam in Europe; and the comparative analysis of European multicultural societies. He teaches at the European University Viadrina at Frankfurt (Oder). His most recent books are: Fremde in der Stadt. Zehn Essays über Kultur und Differenz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1997) and: Die Gottesmänner. Islamisten in Deutschland. Eine Studie zur Herstellung religiöser Evidenz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2000). Thijl Sunier studied Turkish and Cultural Anthropology at the Universities of Utrecht and the Free University at Amsterdam and has since been working at the Universities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. He has published numerous articles on Islam and Muslims in Western Europe and Turkey, as well as on nation-building, citizenship, and religious minorities. His most recent books are: Islam in Beweging (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis 1996) and Emancipatie en subcultuur (IPP 2000). He is currently preparing a comparative study of nationbuilding and Islam in the Netherlands, France, and Turkey under the working title: The Politics of Diversity. Steven Vertovec studied social anthropology at the University of Oxford and has published widely on migration, religious minorities, multiculturalism and transnationalism. He is Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Director the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre for Migration, Policy and Society. He is the author of: Hindu Trinidad (Macmillan 1992) and The Hindu Diaspora (Macmillan 1997), and editor, or coeditor, of several books including: Islam in Europe (Macmillan 1997), Migration and Social Cohesion (Elgar 1999), and Conceiving Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press 2002).

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„ Bibliography

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Walzer, M. 1992. ‘The civil society argument’. C. Mouffe and E. Laclau (eds.), Dimensions of Radical Democracy. London: Polity Press, 89–107 Waters, M. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press Weber, E. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press Welsch, W. 1997. ‘Transkulturalität’. Universitas No. 607, 16–24 Wenning, N. 1996. Die nationale Schule. Öffentliche Erziehung im Nationalstaat. Münster and New York: Waxmann White, S. 1979. Political Culture and Soviet Politics. London: Macmillan Wicker, H.-R. 1996. ‘Von der komplexen Kultur zur kulturellen Komplexität’. H.R. Wicker, J.-L. Alber, C. Bolzmann, R. Fibbi, K. Imhof and A. Wimmer (eds.), Das Fremde in der Gesellschaft. Migration, Ethnizität und Staat. Zürich: Seismo Wierviorka, M. 1997. Une société fragmentée? Le multiculturalisme en débat. Paris: La Découverte Willis, P. E.1981. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press Yalçin-Heckmann, L. 1993. ‘Are fireworks Islamic? Towards an understanding of Turkish migrants and Islam in Germany’. The Anthropology of Ethnicity: A Critical Review. Amsterdam: unpublished reader of the workshop ‘Ethnicity, Language and Religion’ Young, I. M. 1989: ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship, Ethics, 99: 250–74 _____1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press Zaimog˘ lu, F. 1995. Kanak Sprak. 24 Misstöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Hamburg: Rotbuch-Verlag Zentrum für Türkeistudien (ed.) 1994. Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik. Ein Handbuch. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag Zolberg, A. R. and L. W. Long 1997. ‘Why Islam is like Spanish: cultural incorporation in Europe and the United States’. Presentation at the Conference of the International Sociological Association, June 1997 in New York City. Revised Version 27.8.1997: unpublished manuscript

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A

assimilation, discursive 3, 7, 210, 242, 299, 300, 308, 313 see also integration, civil and integration assimilationism 140, 158, 272, 274, 286, 290, 298, 326 asylum, political 72, 77, 79 autochtone 71, 72, 73, 74, 268, 271, 272, 274, 275, 318, 331 see also allochtone, foreigner, indigenous and native autonomy 1, 43, 114, 130, 175, 212 see also freedom and liberty awareness 33, 34, 56, 66, 83, 86, 104, 106, 113, 129, 136, 149, 151, 152, 155, 171, 172, 176, 177, 178, 183, 187, 198, 202, 206, 207, 233, 263, 267, 275, 276, 281, 283, 286, 292, 297, 317, 318, 320, 322

accommodation 101, 122, 123, 236 see also assimilation achievements 12, 28, 62, 67, 75, 87, 91, 99, 107, 151, 165, 170, 174, 188, 196, 197, 200, 201, 204, 206, 208, 209, 213, 260, 284, 295, 317, 321, 324, 329 action, affirmative 167, 283, 317 action, collective 44, 233, 280 action, positive 108, 298, 316, 331, 333 adjustment, situational 182, 184, 196, 202 alienation 51, 93, 116, 171, 178, 250, 254, 294, 312, 323 allocation, social 256, 261, 273, 311, 317 see also selection allochtone 28, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 84, 85, 137, 156, 157, 161, 266, 267, 270, 273, 274, 298, 302, 317, 320, 331 see also autochtone, foreigner and guestworker ambitions 4, 28, 77, 189, 199, 200, 204, 208, 278, 316, 317, 324 see also upward mobility anti-authoritarianism 191, 198, 199, 200 anti-discrimination, anti-racism 61, 66, 80, 84, 107, 115, 282, 283, 297, 316, 317, 320 see also positive discrimination assimilation, cultural 4, 133, 141, 143, 149, 158, 162, 165, 250, 257, 269, 272, 274, 276, 282, 286, 290, 294, 295, 298, 323, 329, 331 see also accommodation

B backwardness 73, 77, 80, 161, 247, 248, 271 Berlin 5, 8, 13, 17, 24, 26, 31, 32, 76, 78, 79, 82, 86, 87, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 111, 113, 117, 118, 120, 121, 131, 132, 138, 140, 148, 149, 152, 155, 159, 160, 162, 164, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 220, 223, 227, 231, 233, 235, 237, 243, 244, 245, 250, 251, 255, 257, 258, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 274, 281, 282, 283, 285, 289, 292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 301, 302, 310, 311, 313, 314, 349

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universities 40 see also London

315, 316, 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, 332 see also German, Germanness, Germany bien commun 11, 12, 56 body 30, 313 see also dress codes, embodiment, headscarf, physical education and sports boundaries, cultural 37, 38, 41, 63, 67, 68, 69, 73, 81, 83, 87, 88, 92, 95, 98, 109, 113, 126, 142, 150, 161, 179, 222, 223, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 243, 244, 246, 251, 254, 255, 260, 261, 266, 276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 290, 295, 297, 298, 301, 309, 331 boundaries, nation-state 3, 4, 7, 12 boundaries, social 8, 12, 21, 32, 60, 214 British, Britishness, England, Englishness culture 1, 2, 5, 9, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 57, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 81, 82, 83, 84, 102, 104, 115, 116, 123, 133, 142, 151, 152, 162, 173, 240, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 292, 295, 296, 297, 320, 322, 324, 331, 332 democracy 35, 36, 37, 55 education 3, 9, 25, 28, 34, 35, 36, 41, 56, 65, 107, 116, 151, 163 language 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 195 nationalism, nationality 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 42, 57, 61, 70, 71, 82, 83, 84, 147, 160, 275, 276, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 294, 297, 300, 308 pupils 41, 134, 233, 234, 240, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 286, 294, 299, 301, 308, 315, 320, 321, 322 religion 35, 69, 105, 108, 109, 110, 115, 116, 118, 122, 123, 128, 129, 130, 132, 138 schools 4, 9, 16, 17, 24, 27, 29, 32, 33, 38, 41, 42, 45, 54, 55, 56, 58, 108, 128, 130, 132, 133, 141, 150, 151, 160, 162, 178, 187, 192, 201, 206, 207, 281, 324, 331, 333 society 57, 66, 104, 105, 109, 128, 132, 151, 201, 276, 282, 297 teachers 126, 130, 183, 184, 280

C Christianity 35, 40, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 139, 140, 142, 218, 219, 220, 224, 225, 256, 257, 280, 284, 295, 302 see also Islam, Jewish, Jew, Judaism; Muslim and religion citizen 7, 8, 9, 50, 55, 81, 98, 102, 114, 162, 163, 176, 202, 205, 289, 307, 320 citizenship 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 25, 27, 34, 43, 67, 68, 69, 72, 74, 77, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 93, 96, 114, 125, 148, 150, 154, 157, 158, 161, 162, 174, 206, 223, 242, 243, 246, 262, 263, 264, 270, 271, 272, 274, 277, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 297, 298, 300, 323, 330 see also nationality citizenship, dual 84, 85, 86, 265, 271, 288, 296, 297, 298, 300 see also naturalisation citizenship, formal 242, 262, 263, 266, 270, 274, 286, 287, 288, 292, 297, 299 see also naturalisation civic culture 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 15, 235 civil culture 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 24, 25, 31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 89, 91, 93, 103, 109, 111, 113, 114, 128, 133, 147, 148, 154, 155, 159, 160, 164, 165, 172, 202, 203, 205, 210, 237, 239, 307, 308, 313, 315, 317, 319, 327, 329, 330, 332 civil enculturation 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 31, 32, 107, 165, 198, 210, 266, 287, 300, 307, 308, 313, 316 civil rights see rights, civil civil society 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 37, 45, 56, 58, 91, 176, 308, 317 civilisation 36, 39, 40, 67, 69, 70, 81, 83, 286, 289, 290, 329, 330, 331, 332 350

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conflict of values 11, 15, 34, 36, 68, 76, 81, 89, 93, 96, 97, 98, 113, 120, 123, 129, 140, 153, 179, 188, 207, 230, 232, 234, 237, 240, 252, 271, 274, 277, 280, 298, 301, 328 see also deviance and norms conflict resolution 3, 32, 66, 98, 118, 120, 122, 130, 133, 164, 185, 186, 188, 205, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 240, 254, 279, 280, 301, 308 conscience 2, 5, 9, 13, 14, 23, 24, 27, 32, 60, 64, 70, 86, 94, 97, 98, 102, 105, 114, 115, 121, 133, 141, 142, 143, 176, 177, 178, 184, 187, 201, 199, 201, 203, 216, 225, 226, 231, 239, 254, 261, 263, 309, 310, 313, 322, 327, 330 consensus, political 260 consensus, social 4, 32, 55, 58, 70, 76, 83, 85, 98, 102, 105, 110, 113, 115, 119, 130, 131, 133, 138, 143, 155, 220, 227, 228, 239, 267, 269, 274, 308, 319, 320, 331 Constitution 27, 32, 53, 94, 99, 117, 118, 121, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 170, 205, 287, 327 consumer, consumerism 40, 201, 252, 315, 316 contestation, internal 295, 309, 311, 333 contract 22, 23, 25, 79, 157, 173, 178, 201 control, social/state 8, 11, 45, 47, 64, 79, 94, 95, 98, 114, 116, 132, 158, 159, 168, 169, 175, 190, 192, 194, 196, 200, 203, 205, 212, 220, 223, 237, 238, 246, 273, 275, 292, 302, 309, 311, 327 convergence 2, 102, 106, 109, 110, 116, 118, 246, 295, 307, 308, 309, 310, 315, 328, 329 courtesy 18, 30, 139, 140, 154, 184, 191 see also civility and propriety cross-overs 307 culture see civic culture, civil culture, youth culture and political culture culture, reifications of 15, 16, 31, 109, 209, 226, 251, 268, 276, 296 see also dominant discourse, majorities and minorities curricula, formal/explicit 5, 9, 12, 13, 31, 34, 37, 40, 58, 62, 67, 81, 82, 91, 95, 96, 104, 115, 117, 144,

civility 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, 22, 23, 25, 164, 165, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 178, 182, 183, 185, 189, 190, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203, 204, 259 see also courtesy and propriety class 2, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 64, 68, 71, 126, 143, 176, 177, 185, 186, 197, 200, 202, 205, 206, 207, 271, 322 classification 11, 12, 37, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 66, 73, 79, 81, 151, 167, 169, 190, 205, 209, 242, 243, 244, 251, 257, 265, 266, 269, 270, 273, 282, 285, 289, 297, 300, 302, 324 codes, cultural 66, 129, 149, 177, 186, 189, 310, 312, 313, 322, 329, 331 collective representations 15, 57, 232, 243 see also representations collective rights see rights, collective commitment 11, 16, 27, 32, 43, 44, 55, 57, 61, 76, 80, 82, 97, 132, 150, 157, 171, 172, 176, 187, 191, 192, 193, 202, 217, 218, 238, 263, 272, 330 common good 38, 45, 47, 50, 55, 57, 70, 98, 102, 109, 171, 172, 202, 216, 225, 238 see also bien commun and intérêt général community 8, 13, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 73, 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 89, 90, 91, 98, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 123, 128, 131, 132, 138, 142, 143, 147, 151, 153, 155, 160, 161, 173, 174, 175, 202, 203, 210, 238, 239, 240, 242, 250, 255, 266, 275, 276, 277, 289, 296, 300, 309, 310, 320, 322, 326 community languages see language and mother tongue community rights see rights, collective competition 2, 12, 22, 31, 55, 90, 109, 129, 160, 177, 197, 200, 204, 247, 282, 286, 297, 299, 300, 309, 311, 314, 316, 317, 320, 321, 324, 325, 326, 328, 329, 331, 333 conflict avoidance 7, 13, 45, 71, 76, 81, 131, 142, 155, 231, 233, 234, 239, 240, 269, 319, 326 conflict of interest 97, 124, 236, 240, 321 351

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272, 278, 281, 282, 288, 290, 299, 312, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 327, 329, 331, 333 discrimination, religious 144 discussion, techniques of 46, 74, 82, 85, 90, 99, 100, 102, 106, 110, 112, 117, 118, 124, 130, 132, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149, 153, 163, 182, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 220, 222, 225, 227, 237, 238, 239 see also assimilation, discursive and integration distinction 16, 58, 69, 72, 81, 107, 109, 176, 177, 178, 197, 201, 211, 219, 244, 256, 257, 277, 311, 313, 316, 318, 323, 325, 326, 329, 331, 333 diversity 43, 45, 48, 81, 98, 104, 105, 106, 107, 113, 114, 116, 122, 124, 128, 151, 152, 155, 165, 169, 176, 179, 245, 248, 253, 256, 268, 274, 276, 284, 290, 298, 299, 322, 331, 332 see also pluralism diversity, cultural 13, 25, 34, 43, 61, 62, 64, 66, 70, 71, 74, 82, 109, 111, 124, 161, 259, 264, 268, 269, 273, 276, 277, 286, 289, 297, 300, 302, 307, 316, 318, 331, 332 diversity, ethnic 43, 66, 68, 70, 81, 82, 151, 155, 161, 271, 275, 277, 289, 297, 300, 332 dominant discourse see discourse, dominant dress codes 131, 140, 277, 311, 312, 313, 323, 333 see also body and embodiment Dutch, Dutchness, Netherlands culture 1, 5, 6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 28, 30, 32, 33, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 57, 58, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 81, 83, 85, 111, 112, 113, 131, 155, 157, 161, 162, 221, 225, 226, 228, 235, 238, 239, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 294, 295, 296, 298, 300, 302, 317, 318, 319, 320, 322, 326, 331 democracy 2, 15, 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 55, 58, 73, 85, 111, 122, 123, 137, 157, 229, 239, 267, 270, 274 education 13, 15, 28, 42, 72, 75, 116, 122, 211, 212, 217, 222, 237, 238, 239, 268

148, 159, 151, 160, 163, 200, 210, 211, 212, 220, 240, 241, 281, 286, 322 see also curricula, informal and extra-curricular curricula, informal 9, 12, 13, 33, 58, 67, 81, 82, 95, 322

D democracy 13, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 54, 55, 56, 70, 94, 112, 171, 209, 217, 222, 238, 261, 319, 327, 330 deviance 11, 242, 301 see also conflict and norms difference, cultural 1, 2, 3, 15, 16, 22, 36, 47, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79, 83, 84, 87, 92, 112, 124, 143, 178, 217, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 259, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 281, 282, 283, 285, 287, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 303, 308, 319, 326, 329, 331 difference, ethnic 2, 3, 16, 65, 66, 232, 239, 240, 256, 281, 285, 289, 295, 319 difference, religious 89, 106, 107, 109, 115, 116, 124, 132, 143, 218, 229, 245, 284, 285 discipline 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 17, 23, 31, 64, 65, 87, 93, 124, 125, 133, 134, 164–207 see also conflict, deviance, norms and sanctions discourse, civil-cultural 133 discourse, cultural 60, 72, 84, 86, 87, 88, 109, 246, 249, 255, 259, 266, 268, 271 discourse, dominant 36, 61, 73, 84, 120, 121, 124, 128, 130, 132, 134, 135, 138, 141, 197, 209, 226, 240, 243, 245, 282, 283, 296, 297, 299, 300, 302, 303, 310, 315, 319, 320, 326 see also elites; minorities and culture, reifications of discourse, emic 271 discrimination, cultural 24, 27, 35, 61, 73, 84, 107, 120, 123, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 143, 182, 210, 230, 232, 235, 236, 237, 255, 263, 270, 352

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language 72, 148, 149, 150, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 161, 163, 220, 221, 227 nationalism, nationality 3, 15, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 58, 71, 72, 73, 83, 85, 112, 116, 161, 270, 271, 272, 273, 294, 297, 299, 300, 308, 318, 320, 331 pupils 28, 134, 136, 137, 149, 217, 218, 219, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 238, 266, 271, 272, 273, 294, 299, 308, 314, 315, 318, 320, 332 religion 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 122, 123, 133, 142, 218, 226 schools 4, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 55, 56, 115, 116, 122, 130, 133, 138, 141, 150, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 192, 212, 217, 225, 228, 238, 241, 332 society 42, 45, 46, 57, 70, 71, 73, 74, 85, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 136, 157, 161, 238, 269, 271, 272, 274, 276 teachers 181, 219 see also Rotterdam

itarian, gender, inclusion, nationality and opportunities ethics 95, 112, 113, 114, 115, 142, 199, 224, 225, 265 ethnic diversity, treatments in class 17, 22, 55, 66, 68, 70, 78, 81, 82, 94, 99, 121, 124, 134, 135, 151, 161, 204, 214, 234, 237, 240, 241, 243, 244, 266, 267, 271, 274, 275, 277, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 289, 290, 297, 300, 322, 324, 332 see also ethnicity, definitions of ethnicity 11, 43, 108, 123, 128, 223, 286, 289, 300, 314 see also boundaries, cultural, dominant discourse, elites, majority, minority, native and classification exclusion 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 35, 56, 60, 77, 78, 81, 86, 89, 94, 102, 116, 120, 121, 127, 130, 131, 132, 148, 153, 161, 167, 168, 169, 173, 177, 197, 201, 230, 233, 236, 237, 239, 240, 261, 265, 266, 270, 285, 286, 287, 297, 298, 300, 323, 324, 329 see also citizenship, equality, inclusion and self-exclusion expulsion 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 133, 134, 135, 207, 209, 234, 280, 292 extra-curricular 27, 30, 103, 132, 166, 172, 190, 191, 206, 273 see also curricula extremism 46, 48, 51, 54, 57, 138

E egalitarian 30, 69, 90, 167, 168, 201, 202, 203, 246, 289, 297 see also democracy, elites, equality, exclusion, participation elites 2, 7, 9, 40, 197, 201, 323 see also democracy, equality, exclusion and participation emancipation 12, 39, 57, 67, 69, 73, 83, 84, 90, 93, 132, 167, 171, 178, 190, 202, 291 embodiment 22, 201 see also space England, English see also British, Britishness and London Enlightenment 88, 114 equality 8, 15, 22, 23, 29, 32, 39, 40, 43, 56, 57, 65, 67, 69, 81, 85, 93, 99, 117, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126, 130, 136, 139, 141, 142, 144, 152, 156, 160, 161, 167, 169, 170, 172, 179, 201, 202, 203, 205, 219, 226, 238, 240, 241, 242, 247, 268, 282, 283, 284, 285, 287, 289, 293, 294, 297, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 327, 328, 330 see also citizenship, egal-

F fairness, fair treatment 38, 51, 56, 66, 107, 144, 152, 160, 162, 164, 175, 194, 196, 220, 240, 276, 281, 297, 299, 317, 328, 329, 330, 332 families 6, 11, 12, 24, 62, 67, 70, 71, 72, 82, 93, 100, 101, 105, 120, 124, 125, 131, 132, 134, 137, 148, 149, 161, 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177, 178, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 209, 225, 226, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 254, 257, 259, 261, 264, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 274, 275, 276, 277, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 301, 308, 353

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310, 313, 316, 319, 324, 325, 327 see also generation and parents fascism 37, 38, 45, 46, 47, 55, 65, 260, 266 see also National Socialism foreigner 73, 78, 82, 160, 238, 255, 256, 263, 264, 265, 266, 270, 285, 288, 289, 318, 325, 326 see alsoallochtonous, authochtonous, citizen, native and guestworker French, Frenchness, France civilisation 70, 81, 83, 286, 289, 330, 331 culture 1, 5, 14, 15, 16, 41, 57, 67, 68, 69, 70, 81, 83, 84, 85, 89, 93, 114, 116, 120, 123, 125, 127, 131, 133, 135, 142, 150, 158, 161, 166, 172, 173, 176, 179, 183, 189, 200, 201, 202, 205, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 296, 297, 300, 310, 311, 313, 322, 323, 324, 330, 332 democracy 39, 41, 44, 55, 57, 67, 69, 84, 90, 93, 127, 141, 143, 158, 162, 179, 205, 206, 240, 242, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 297, 324 education 3, 9, 22, 32, 84, 85, 99, 117, 125, 126, 134, 138, 158, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 176, 177, 178, 197, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209 language 23, 67, 68, 127, 147, 148, 150, 158, 159, 161, 162, 290 nationalism, nationality 2, 9, 14, 33, 38, 39, 41, 42, 48, 67, 74, 83, 85, 90, 135, 161, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 300, 302, 308, 311, 320, 323 pupils 39, 41, 58, 68, 134, 135, 150, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 299, 308, 311, 315 religion 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 99, 102, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 120, 128, 135, 240, 302 schools 14, 17, 27, 30, 32, 33, 38, 55, 56, 67, 68, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 114, 116, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134, 138, 139, 141, 150, 158, 161, 162, 166, 167, 171, 172, 175, 176, 179, 189, 190, 192, 195, 201, 202, 203, 204, 209, 283, 291, 322, 324, 327, 332

society 91, 125, 158 teachers 173, 190, 206, 285, 311 freedom 6, 27, 47, 53, 57, 74, 88, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 114, 120, 121, 122, 123, 137, 141, 142, 143, 199, 200, 229, 246, 249, 262, 267, 273, 296, 327 see also freedom of conscience, liberty and religious freedom freedom of conscience 121, 141, 142 fundamentalism 74, 84, 112, 131, 218, 274

G gender 32, 74, 108, 123, 175, 186, 188, 245, 246, 247, 273, 274, 283, 293, 294, 301, 310, 327, 333 generation, first 1, 72, 254, 313 generation, second 24, 68, 72, 300, 301, 313 generation, third 68, 72, 300, 301 German, Germanness, Germany civilisation 330, 332 culture 1, 5, 7, 12, 15, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 100, 101, 102, 111, 115, 116, 121, 123, 131, 133, 134, 139, 140, 143, 154, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 173, 176, 199, 200, 203, 221, 224, 225, 231, 237, 243, 244, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 265, 282, 292, 293, 294, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 326, 327, 328, 330, 331 democracy 2, 27, 37, 49, 51, 54, 56, 58, 77, 81, 86, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 114, 117, 118, 121, 132, 139, 140, 141, 143, 170, 205, 206, 209, 266, 298, 327 education 14, 17, 28, 33, 41, 47, 48, 55, 58, 78, 94, 95, 96, 101, 102, 114, 115, 131, 133, 140, 148, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177, 178, 181, 188, 196, 197, 198, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 217, 237, 245, 301, 325 language 27, 34, 86, 100, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154, 160, 161, 162, 163, 182, 185, 187, 199, 207, 214, 223, 250, 291, 292 nationalism, nationality 3, 15, 17, 33, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 354

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history books see curricula, schoolbooks and textbooks Holocaust see National Socialism home-school relations 62, 174, 187, 207 housing 7, 77, 126, 166, 197, 205, 258 Human Rights 65, 112, 120, 222 see also rights, civil; rights, collective and rights, individual hyphenation 68, 82, 265, 272, 277, 296, 297, 298, 300

72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 94, 96, 98, 100, 117, 131, 133, 139, 141, 144, 160, 163, 206, 237, 238, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 271, 274, 282, 291, 293, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 308, 326, 327 pupils 48, 79, 80, 101, 117, 133, 139, 140, 141, 152, 185, 186, 207, 208, 213, 215, 216, 223, 231, 232, 244, 245, 246, 249, 251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 260, 261, 262, 264, 282, 308, 310, 314, 315, 324, 326 religion 81, 94, 95, 100, 102, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 116, 118, 123, 133, 140, 142 schools 13, 17, 26, 29, 32, 33, 48, 56, 94, 99, 100, 116, 117, 121, 133, 139, 140, 141, 142, 149, 150, 155, 159, 160, 162, 170, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 187, 189, 192, 196, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 232, 258, 281, 299, 324 society 51, 81, 121, 132, 141, 143, 153, 154, 160, 202, 244, 250, 255, 259, 262, 265, 266, 299, 330 teachers 80, 183, 184, 189, 191, 223, 259 teaching of 198 universities 94, 209, 301 globalisation, cultural 315, 316, 318, 329, 333 guestworker 72, 78, 100 see also labour migration

I identification 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 30, 31, 47, 50, 55, 56, 61, 76, 81, 82, 89, 92, 101, 109, 171, 172, 173, 175, 179, 197, 200, 202, 203, 205, 242, 243, 253, 255, 256, 259, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 272, 276, 282, 288, 291, 295, 296, 298, 299, 302, 307, 308, 309, 316, 322, 324 identity 2, 3, 22, 29, 34, 61, 65, 67, 70, 71, 82, 83, 104, 115, 128, 131, 132, 222, 239, 240, 242, 243, 250, 251, 255, 256, 260, 261, 265, 266, 272, 276, 277, 284, 285, 287, 291, 297, 299, 300, 301, 302, 308, 310, 312, 316, 320, 323, 328, 329, 330, 333 identity, collective 11, 25, 73, 83, 201, 243, 270, 300 identity, cultural 24, 25, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 83, 115, 153, 157, 244, 264, 266, 274, 276, 277, 282, 301, 320, 326 identity, intermediate 158, 161, 289, 297, 324 identity, markers of 22, 82, 131, 162, 243, 251, 256, 257, 271, 275, 288, 297, 299, 300, 310, 312, 333 see also dress codes identity, national 2, 34, 58, 85, 87, 257, 261, 299, 301 imaginaries, national 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 33, 43, 56, 132, 242, 332 immigration 10, 34, 35, 47, 58, 61, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 84, 98, 105, 132, 148, 154, 183, 223, 253, 276, 294, 295, 296, 299, 300, 308, 319, 325 inclusion 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 25, 32, 43, 44, 45, 47, 56, 60, 78, 89, 93, 107, 110, 115, 116, 155, 160, 161, 173,

H halal 4, 130, 235, 239 headscarf 25, 69, 83, 89, 90, 96, 99, 101, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 155, 161, 169, 179, 180, 189, 190, 203, 218, 219, 229, 240, 248, 249, 312, 313, 315, 318, 327 hedonism 311, 312 histories, national 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 60, 63, 66, 77, 78, 81, 86, 88, 91, 92, 110, 111, 240, 261, 281, 303, 327 355

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laïcité 89, 90, 91, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 133, 139, 144 see also secularism languages 24, 35, 61, 62, 63, 147, 150, 151, 156, 158, 160, 164, 187, 199 see also mother tongue liberalism 26, 38, 40, 45, 88, 92, 114 liberty 14, 17, 27, 32, 41, 57, 81, 90, 91, 92, 118, 121, 205, 237, 320 see also freedom and freedom of conscience London 5, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 61, 65, 67, 74, 82, 83, 102, 103, 105, 107, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 137, 148, 159, 166, 173, 174, 178, 187, 197, 201, 210, 232, 243, 275, 276, 277, 278, 281, 282, 283, 285, 289, 295, 297, 299, 301, 302, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 320, 321, 324, 329, 332 see also British, Britishness, England, Englishness

177, 178, 197, 220, 225, 228, 234, 235, 239, 240, 242, 270, 272, 273, 298, 300, 319, 320, 323, 324 see also exclusion indifference 70, 83, 84, 85, 141, 198, 284, 286, 287, 289, 295, 297, 320, 324 indigenous 73, 263, 273, 294 see also autochtone and native individual rights see rights, individual individualism 13, 98, 123, 131, 136, 144, 174, 226, 268, 309, 313, 314, 317, 331 integration, civil 83, 120, 154, 158, 161, 162, 163, 255 integration, concept of 1, 16, 84, 85, 93, 143, 154, 163, 169, 176, 178, 196, 202, 242, 250, 257, 263, 269, 271, 272, 286, 290, 296, 298, 310, 311, 317, 329, 330 see also assimilation, discursive and participation integration, discursive 210, 307 integration, economic 261 integration, political 51, 81, 264, 287, 291, 317 intérêt général, bien commun 11 see also common good internalisation 7, 8, 27, 55, 97, 98, 154, 158, 159, 178, 179, 181, 184, 198, 201, 202, 203, 204, 211, 222, 228, 237, 274, 282, 285, 291, 292, 308, 317, 327, 330 Islam 74, 88, 89, 91, 92, 96, 99, 100, 102, 105, 106, 109, 111, 112, 114, 116, 120, 121, 122, 129, 135, 137, 217, 218, 219, 220, 224, 228, 246, 268, 273, 274, 318 see also Muslim

M majorities 13, 15, 32, 36, 45, 68, 72, 73, 82, 91, 118, 134, 245, 248, 249, 250, 254, 257, 261, 265, 266, 272, 275, 276, 278, 282, 285, 291, 293, 295, 296, 299, 300, 308, 309, 310, 311, 316, 329 see also minorities marginalization 10, 27, 132, 133 see also exclusion and minorities mentality 76, 80, 81, 82, 87, 217, 244, 251, 265, 278, 292 merit, meritocratic 15, 165, 169, 197, 198, 200, 209, 317, 328, 332 methodology 5, 8, 14, 16, 34 minorities 1, 15, 16, 24, 36, 40, 43, 44, 45, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 72, 73, 75, 85, 89, 94, 98, 102, 109, 110, 122, 130, 131, 132, 138, 147, 151, 152, 154, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 232, 234, 240, 243, 246, 250, 254, 256, 257, 261, 262, 266, 269, 271, 273, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 287, 289, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 322, 324, 326, 328, 329, 331, 332 see also majorities mobilisation, collective 75, 274

J Jewish, Jews, Judaism 12, 35, 51, 80, 81, 88, 117, 118, 138, 261, 275 joking 65, 223, 256, 281, 285, 286, 290, 301, 303, 311, 320 justice, distributive 205, 330 justice, social 27, 56 see also democracy, equality and participation

L labour migration 78, 84, 250 see also asylum, immigration, inclusion, exclusion and guestworker 356

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mobilisation, ethnic 234, 240 mobilisation, segmentary 280 modernity 12, 88, 92, 114 mother tongue 24, 131, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 163 see also language multiculturalism 9, 10, 24, 25, 31, 37, 43, 47, 48, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 76, 81, 82, 83, 84, 104, 107, 109, 112, 115, 116, 120, 128, 129, 133, 139, 140, 143, 151, 152, 160, 227, 243, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 276, 277, 282, 283, 295, 296, 297, 302, 317, 319, 320, 322, 324, 327, 331, 332 Muslim 4, 16, 35, 69, 75, 76, 92, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 108, 112, 116, 118, 120, 121, 122, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 167, 189, 190, 191, 195, 203, 218, 229, 230, 235, 236, 245, 246, 247, 248, 273, 274, 276, 293, 310, 313, 315, 327 see also Christianity, Islam, Judaism and religion

neutrality 89, 90, 91, 95, 98, 99, 118, 120, 123, 125, 144, 227, 231, 280, 286 non-nationals 1, 6, 10 see also citizenship, democracy, nationalilty and participation norms 2, 4, 12, 45, 62, 80, 88, 116, 143, 149, 164, 165, 168, 169, 174, 175, 183, 186, 188, 196, 198, 204, 224, 225, 239, 247, 248, 249, 252, 254, 283, 284, 287, 293, 294, 296, 301 see also conflict, deviance and sanctions

N

P

nation-state, paradoxes of 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 43, 86, 331 National Socialism 45, 46, 47, 51, 53, 54, 56, 80, 81, 98, 99, 140, 171, 209, 213, 214, 254, 257, 258, 260, 261, 264 nationalism 3, 9, 10, 13, 16, 34, 36 see also citizenship, elites, exclusion, inclusion, natives, non-nationals and rights nationality 3, 4, 6, 10, 27, 34, 62, 72, 78, 84, 108, 151, 242, 264, 286, 287, 289 see also citizenship, civil culture, democracy, minorities, non-nationals and participation native 16, 28, 153 naturalisation 77, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 163, 262, 264, 271, 272, 277, 287, 288, 289, 300, 302, 320 Neighbourhood 30, 110, 115, 136, 137, 166, 167, 190, 198, 234, 244, 278, 294, 302 see also housing and suburb Netherlands see Dutch, Dutchness, Netherlands and Rotterdam

parents 16, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 46, 47, 61, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 86, 96, 97, 108, 117, 118, 122, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156, 158, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 197, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 223, 231, 244, 245, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 262, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 271, 273, 275, 276, 278, 281, 285, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 302, 309, 311, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 320, 321, 324, 328 see also community, family and generation Paris 5, 13, 17, 22, 24, 26, 31, 32, 58, 59, 67, 74, 83, 93, 94, 95, 99, 111, 113, 120, 150, 157, 158, 162, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 178, 182, 184, 185, 189, 190, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 209, 210, 243, 283, 284, 288, 289, 291, 293, 294, 295, 297, 311, 312, 313,

O opportunities, equal 62, 66, 107, 128, 156, 161, 166, 167, 170, 178, 195, 197, 200, 201, 282, 283, 317, 322, 323, 328, 331, 333 Otherness, the Others, othering 60, 68, 69, 76, 79, 80, 81, 86, 115, 142, 153, 242, 243, 244, 255, 259, 261, 264, 274, 294, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300, 308, 309, 310, 316, 322, 332

357

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322, 323, 324, 329, 332 see also French, Frenchness, France participation 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 27, 33, 41, 44, 48, 50, 55, 57, 67, 70, 73, 74, 76, 81, 83, 85, 93, 97, 102, 110, 113, 122, 131, 132, 134, 156, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 171, 173, 175, 188, 196, 199, 201, 205, 206, 208, 212, 216, 220, 221, 235, 238, 241, 243, 249, 262, 263, 264, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 296, 298, 299, 300, 307, 310, 317, 318, 319, 320, 323, 324, 325, 328, 331, 332 peer group 148, 149, 175, 243, 255, 267, 272 peer pressure 309 physical education 121, 128, 129, 130, 180 see also body, embodiment and sports pillarisation 6, 110, 111 pluralism, cultural 10, 13, 25, 35, 57, 61, 84, 116, 243, 266, 268, 269, 272, 281, 284, 299, 300 pluralism, political 1 see also citizenship, democracy, equality, nationality and participation pluralism, religious 88, 105, 107, 109, 113, 115 see also secularism and religious freedom political correctness 7, 64 see also democracy, dominant discourse, exclusion, inclusion, majorities, minorities positive action 108, 298, 316, 331, 333 see also action and affirmative positive discrimination 73, 270, 299, 329 see also anti-discrimination and anti-racism power 8, 15, 37, 38, 43, 46, 53, 55, 87, 94, 99, 124, 171, 180, 183, 185, 205, 206, 213, 243, 246, 263, 282, 291, 300, 301, 303, 309, 327 see also conflict, democracy, deviance, dominant discourse, elites, exclusion, norms, participation and sanctions prejudice 51, 73, 112, 118, 136, 180, 185, 214, 286, 293, 301 see also reification, stereotypes and stigma primordialism 11, 12, 39, 40, 69, 93, 142, 167, 171, 202, 284, 293

private 9, 14, 15, 22, 47, 57, 67, 68, 69, 83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 108, 113, 114, 116, 117, 122, 127, 133, 150, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 189, 202, 203, 206, 240, 250, 284, 295, 297, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 333 privileges 39, 57, 102, 143, 262, 320 progress 39, 40, 41, 67, 68, 92, 94, 107, 111, 176, 229, 286, 330 propriety 18 proselytism 69, 120, 125, 129 public 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 24, 25, 26, 30, 45, 50, 56, 57, 58, 68, 69, 70, 72, 77, 83, 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 102, 113, 114, 116, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 133, 139, 142, 143, 147, 150, 151, 156, 158, 161, 164, 171, 172, 174, 176, 178, 179, 189, 192, 193, 201, 202, 203, 208, 211, 216, 258, 285, 286, 287, 288, 292, 297, 310, 320, 323, 328, 329, 332 purification 92, 93, 102, 110, 164, 165, 169

R Race, racism 27, 62, 64, 65, 72, 73, 84, 108, 123, 151, 175, 231, 240, 282, 302, 322, 324, 333 see also antidiscrimination, democracy, exclusion, inclusion, participation and pluralism rationality 14, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 55, 58, 67, 68, 83, 90, 91, 93, 113, 114, 116, 133, 161, 172, 323 recognition 56, 65, 70, 82, 83, 84, 85, 91, 93, 94, 102, 105, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123, 151, 160, 206, 236, 243, 264, 265, 266, 271, 272, 274, 282, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 294, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 319, 329, 332 religion 40, 43, 58, 67, 68, 69, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 175, 189, 219, 225, 226, 245, 247, 250, 257, 268, 274, 275, 284, 285, 288, 358

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290, 293, 312, 315, 318, 319 see also Christianity, civil religion, Islam and Muslim religious freedom 88, 95, 99, 114, 119, 122, 141, 142, 143, 327 see also secularism and liberty representations 1, 4, 15, 21, 40, 44, 55, 60, 79, 84, 96, 98, 109, 110, 111, 115, 170, 194, 208, 242, 243, 280, 285, 286, 296, 316, 320 see also collective representations Republic, republicanism 2, 10, 22, 23, 27, 31, 32, 37, 39, 41, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 67, 69, 70, 77, 79, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 98, 99, 118, 123, 125, 147, 150, 158, 161, 162, 169, 178, 179, 196, 205, 213, 237, 240, 260, 285, 289, 291, 294, 297, 322, 323, 327, 330 republican values 143 responsibility 7, 17, 25, 31, 47, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 76, 80, 82, 94, 95, 98, 102, 108, 113, 114, 121, 124, 128, 152, 156, 167, 168, 169, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199, 202, 203, 205, 206, 220, 221, 224, 229, 237, 238, 261 revolt, revolution 38, 41, 42, 48, 50, 51, 87, 199, 205, 206, 242, 260, 267 rights, civil 16, 25, 98, 207 rights, collective 43, 55, 57, 65, 124, 236, 237 rights, equal 160, 262, 277, 328 rights, individual 122, 123, 124, 142 Rotterdam 5, 7, 13, 17, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 42, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 83, 110, 113, 116, 120, 130, 131, 136, 137, 149, 151, 155, 157, 166, 173, 174, 181, 184, 188, 201, 210, 211, 234, 237, 243, 266, 268, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274, 283, 285, 289, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 311, 314, 315, 319, 320, 329, 331

secularism, secularisation 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 114, 116, 117, 120, 122, 127, 130, 131, 133, 227, 284 selection, selective allocation 9, 11, 33, 38, 42, 196, 197, 201, 204, 260, 266, 323, 324, 325, 328, 333 see also allocation self-discipline 7, 64, 65, 175, 192 self-exclusion 121, 239 self-presentation 281, 309, 312, 314 socialisation 33, 93, 98, 102, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 176, 177, 178, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189, 190, 195, 198, 199, 202, 203, 204, 245, 251, 267, 301, 307 see also civil enculturation, family, generation and sanctions solidarity 8, 76, 135, 164, 171, 201, 220, 259, 290, 328 space, management of social 21 sports 6, 40, 46, 121, 124, 126, 130, 180, 195, 199, 206, 310, 333 see also body, embodiment and physical education stereotypes 33, 39, 64, 65, 107, 112, 131, 133, 136, 184, 225, 227, 232, 233, 246, 249, 253, 254, 268, 273, 274, 286, 290, 291, 293, 318, 333 see also reification, prejudices and stigma stigma, stigmatisation 64, 66, 74, 79, 131, 155, 205, 244, 248, 265, 270, 273, 278, 283, 291, 298, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322 subculture 43, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 83, 84, 116, 268, 310 see also dominant discourse, generation, majority culture and minority culture suburb, suburban 26, 31, 68, 119, 126, 127, 131, 167, 201 see also housing and neighbourhood supervision 2, 7, 91, 95, 102, 126, 167, 168, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 190, 192, 195, 200, 205, 209

S T

sanctions 156, 165, 189, 192, 195, 196, 202, 203, 208, 279 see also conflict, deviance, elites and norms schoolbooks 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 37, 45, 48, 54, 56, 59, 73, 77, 100, 111, 112 see also curricula, textbooks

targeting, target-group 73, 75, 271, 273, 275, 298, 301, 317, 331, 333 taxonomy, dominant 58, 60, 76, 77, 84, 242, 243, 256, 260, 271, 272, 274, 284, 294, 299, 304, 316, 329 359

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taxonomy, emic 266, 277 textbooks 6, 15, 33, 34, 36, 33, 38, 42, 48, 55, 56, 60, 61, 69, 70, 72, 74,76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 86, 91, 92, 99, 102, 104, 111, 112, 116, 120, 225, 259, 269, 274, 282, 286, 290, 303, 307 see also curricula and schoolbooks Third World 79, 259, 328 tolerance 17, 32, 34, 44, 48, 56, 65, 96, 107, 113, 115, 120, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137, 141, 151, 184, 186, 235, 299 totalitarianism 47, 48, 79, 80, 92, 98, 100, 118, 205, 206, 261, 327 see also National Socialism tradition, traditional 24, 37, 40, 62, 64, 68, 77, 79, 80, 91, 95, 98, 101, 104, 105, 112, 114, 123, 128, 133, 142, 143, 168, 196, 207, 234, 237, 242, 247, 249, 251, 252, 253, 267, 275, 276, 282, 289, 294, 296, 299, 315 Turkish, Turkishness, Turkey culture 16, 61, 70, 72, 73, 78, 117, 149, 152, 153, 161, 187, 188, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 246, 248, 252, 253, 257, 263, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 276, 289, 290, 294, 300, 301, 302, 312, 333 education 17, 77, 149, 301, 324 language 62, 65, 66, 72, 131, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 198, 270, 275, 276, 278, 279, 280, 290, 320 nationalism, nationality 16, 17, 62, 63, 64, 72, 78, 82, 83, 96, 101, 136, 148, 151, 162, 187, 188, 233, 244, 246, 250, 256, 262, 265, 271, 272, 276, 277, 279, 280, 284, 291, 293, 294, 298, 314, 318, 319, 320 pupils 13, 16, 66, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 99, 101, 128, 135, 137, 139, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 178, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 207, 208, 210, 214, 221, 222, 223, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 244, 245, 246, 249, 250, 252, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 267, 268, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 284,

290, 291, 292, 299, 301, 310, 311, 312, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 327 schools 138, 139, 148, 182 teachers 66, 153, 158, 249, 321 teaching of 160

U unemployment 78, 79, 86, 132, 166, 205, 207, 213, 214, 258, 261, 270 upward mobility 169, 177, 197, 291, 318, 331 see also ambitions us–them 81, 256, 268, 299

V Verlan 290 violence 24, 36, 37, 51, 54, 112, 136, 164, 178, 183, 186, 188, 192, 233, 234, 241, 261, 278, 279 see also deviance, discipline and sanctions

X xenophobia 185, 260, 301 see also racism

Y youth culture 71, 308, 312, 315

360