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ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION RESEARCH IN ASIA PACIFIC
This handbook for educators and researchers consists of an unparalleled set of conceptual essays and empirical studies that advance new perspectives and build empirical ground on multicultural education issues from 10 different selected societies in Asia Pacific.This unique, edited book will be a solid resource particularly for graduate students, educators, and researchers involved in multicultural education, given its multiple balances in terms of 1) conceptual essays, empirical studies, and practical implications; 2) contributions from emerging scholars, established scholars, and leading scholars in the field; and 3) comprehensive coverage of key subareas in multicultural education. Given the growing need for in-depth understanding of multicultural education issues in the Asia Pacific region where we have witnessed increasing human mobility and interaction across countries and societies, this edited book is the only research-based handbook entirely focusing on multicultural education in Asia Pacific. Yun-Kyung Cha is a Professor at the College of Education, Hanyang University, South Korea, the former President of the Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME), and the Editor-in-Chief of Multicultural Education Review. Seung-Hwan Ham is an Assistant Professor at the College of Education, Hanyang University, South Korea. Moosung Lee is a Centenary Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia, and the Co-Editor of Multicultural Education Review.
The Routledge International Handbook Series The Routledge International Handbook of Creative Learning Edited by Julian Sefton Green, Pat Thomson, Ken Jones and Liora Bresler The Routledge International Handbook of Teacher and School Development Edited by Christopher Day The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning Edited by Peter Jarvis The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education Edited by James A. Banks The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching Edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Positive Psychology Edited by Nick Brown, Tim Lomas and Francisco Jose Eiroa-Orosa The Routledge International Handbook of Higher Education Edited by Malcolm Tight, Ka Ho Mok, Jeroen Huisman and Christopher C. Morpew The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education Edited by Natalia Kucirkova, Catherine E. Snow,Vibeke Grover and Catherine McBride The Routledge International Handbook of Early Childhood Play Edited by Tina Bruce, Pentti Hakkarainen and Milda Bredikyte International Handbook of Positive Aging Edited by Rachael E Docking and Jennifer Stocks Routledge International Handbook of Schools and Schooling in Asia Edited by Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee Routledge International Handbook of Multicultural Education Research in Asia Pacific Edited by Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION RESEARCH IN ASIA PACIFIC
Edited by Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee
First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter,Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-83124-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-17995-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of contributors
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Introduction: multicultural education research in Asia Pacific Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee
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PART 1
Conceptualizations and perspectives
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1 Diversity and citizenship education in multicultural nations James A. Banks
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2 Probing beneath meanings of multicultural education Christine E. Sleeter 3 Multicultural education and human rights: toward achieving harmony in a global age Susan Markus and Francisco Rios 4 Toward post-national societies and global citizenship Francisco O. Ramirez and John W. Meyer 5 Intercultural and international understanding: noncentric knowledge and curriculum in Asia Jagdish Gundara
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37 51
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Contents PART 2
Teaching, learning, and curriculum
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6 “Consensus not conflict”: harmony and multicultural education in Singapore Li-Ching Ho
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7 Who is Hong Kong? Diversity in postcolonial Hong Kong curriculum91 Liz Jackson 8 Curricular challenges to human rights in the Mekong: disputed histories, contested identities Will Brehm
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9 Commitment and inconsistency in teaching tolerance: the new curriculum in Indonesia Lyn Parker
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10 Multicultural education through multicultural literature in Korean primary schools Kyung Mi Shin, Seongdok Kim, and Moosung Lee
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PART 3
Leadership and policy
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11 Moral leadership from multicultural perspectives Wing On Lee
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12 Historicizing hegemonies: Chinese school policies in postwar Singapore and Hong Kong Ting-Hong Wong
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13 Inequality and realizing the education of a “Good Citizen” Takehiko Kariya
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14 Understanding multicultural Japan: four frameworks Ryoko Tsuneyoshi
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15 Perceiving multicultural Australia: policy changes and curriculum directions201 Nado Aveling
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16 Multicultural education policy in South Korea: current struggles and hopeful vision Carl A. Grant and Sejung Ham
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PART 4
Equity and social justice in the context of diversity
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17 Making Tibetans in China: educational challenges and harmonious multiculturalism231 Gerard A. Postiglione 18 Hui students in eastern China: a call for multicultural social justice education JoAnn Phillion and Yuxiang Wang
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19 Chinese immigrant students and cross-boundary students in Hong Kong: a call for equity through culturally relevant teaching practices Celeste Y. M.Yuen
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20 Monolingualism in multicultural Australia: paradoxes and challenges Misty Adoniou
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Index286
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CONTRIBUTORS
Misty Adoniou is a Senior Lecturer in Language Literacy and Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) at the University of Canberra. She is a past-President of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, TESOL Greece, and a past Chair of the Affiliate Leadership Council of TESOL International. Her research interests include schooling for students from refugee backgrounds, teacher standards, and early career teachers. Email: Misty.Adoniou@ canberra.edu.au Nado Aveling is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Murdoch University, Western Australia, with responsibilities for teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in social justice studies. Research areas include culture and schooling, anti-racism education, indigenous research methodologies, and gender studies. Her research is grounded within a critical, postcolonial/feminist framework, and while broadly focusing on anti-discriminatory education, her more recent research has focused on the use of autobiographical narratives to deconstruct the normativity of “whiteness” and the social construction of gendered and racialized subjectivities. Email: [email protected] James A. Banks holds the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies, and is the founding director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association and of the National Council for the Social Studies. His books include Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies; Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum, and Teaching; Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society; and Race, Culture, and Education:The Selected Works of James A. Banks. He is the editor of the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education; The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education; Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives; and the Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education. He is also the editor of the Multicultural Education Series of books published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University. His life and career are profiled on the video archive “Inside the Academy” http://insidetheacademy.asu.edu/jamesbanks. Email: [email protected] Will Brehm is an Assistant Professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study at Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan). His research interests focus on the intersection of comparative education
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and international relations. He is currently conducting a research project that explores historical memory and schooling across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. He also conducts research on higher education regionalization in Southeast Asia, consults for the World Bank in Cambodia, and hosts a weekly podcast on education, globalization, and society called FreshEd. Email address: [email protected] Carl A. Grant is Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Professor in the Department of Afro American Studies. He has written or edited 25 books or monographs in multicultural education and/or teacher education. He has also written more than 135 chapters, chapters in books, and reviews. He served as President of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) from 1993–1999; the editor of Review of Educational Research (RER) 1996–1999, he is a former classroom teacher and administrator; Chairperson of the Department of Afro American Studies (1987–1990); Chairperson of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction (2002–2005). He has been a Fulbright Scholar in England, researching and studying multicultural education. Email: [email protected] Jagdish Gundara is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Culture, Communication, and Media at the University College of London Institute of Education. He holds the UNESCO Chair in International Studies and Teacher Education at the School of Culture and Lifelong Learning and was appointed the Director of the newly re-established International Centre for Intercultural Studies in June 2012. He was also appointed as the first Head of International Centre for Intercultural Education in 1979 and retained this position till 2006. His research areas include media and sustainable development, active citizenship, and intercultural and comparative education. Email: [email protected] Sejung Ham is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on transnational migrant education. She has been worked as a research team member on topics of multicultural education, education of immigrant and North Korean migrants in Korea, and experiences of international students at US universities. Email: [email protected] Li-Ching Ho is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include global and multicultural civic education and environmental citizenship education. She has published numerous articles in Teachers College Record, Journal of Curriculum Studies, and Theory and Research in Social Education. Email: [email protected] Liz Jackson is Associate professor of Curriculum and Policy Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include philosophy of education, moral education, and global studies in education. Jackson’s book Muslims and Islam in U.S. Education: Reconsidering Multiculturalism (Routledge, 2014) won the 2015 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Book Award and the University of Hong Kong Research Output Prize in Education. Jackson currently holds the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong Early Career Scheme Award for her project, Representation of Ethnic and Religious Minorities in School Textbooks: Aligning Multiculturalism and Liberal Studies (2013–2015). Email: [email protected]
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Takehiko Kariya is Professor in the Sociology of Japanese Society at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies and the Department of Sociology at University of Oxford. He obtained his PhD in sociology at Northwestern University. He came to Oxford in 2008 from the University of Tokyo, where he had long taught sociology of education. His main areas of research are in sociology of education, social stratification, school-to-work transition, education policies, and social changes in postwar Japan. His recent publication is Education Reform and Social Class in Japan (Routledge, 2013). He has published 15 single-authored books in Japanese. Email: [email protected] Seongdok Kim is a Associate Program Director in the Department of PhD Organization Development at Assumption University of Thailand. Her scholarly and professional interests include comparative and international development education, multicultural education, organizational behavior, and organization and development. She has worked on projects and workshops with a diverse set of institutions including the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding in South Korea, UNICEF in India, and the Vietnam Institute for Education Sciences. Email: [email protected] Moosung Lee is the youngest person to hold one of the University of Canberra’s prestigious Centenary Professorships. Prior to joining the University of Canberra, he held appointments as Associate Professor and Founding Deputy Director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of Hong Kong. His research areas are multicultural education, social capital, lifelong learning, professional learning communities, and the International Baccalaureate. Email: [email protected] Wing On Lee is a Distinguished Professor at Zhengzhou University. He has 20 years of senior management experience in higher education. He was previously Vice-President and Chair Professor of Comparative Education at the Open University of Hong Kong (2014–2017) and Dean of Education Research at National Institute of Education, Singapore (2010–2014). He has also previously served at Hong Kong Institute of Education as Vice President (Academic) and Deputy to President, Acting President and Chair Professor of Comparative Education, Founding Dean of the School of Foundations in Education, Head of two Departments and Centre for Citizenship Education (2007–2010). In 2005, he was invited by University of Sydney to be Professor and Director (International). Prior to his service in Australia, he had served at the University of Hong Kong as Associate Dean of Education and Founding Director of Comparative Education Research Centre. He has served on many strategic committees in his public services, such as Chair of Research Ethics Board on Population Health for the National Healthcare Group and Conference Ambassador for Singapore Tourism Board in Singapore, and Education Commission, Central Policy Unit, Curriculum Development Council and Quality Education Fund in Hong Kong. Prof Lee is a world-renowned scholar in the fields of comparative education and citizenship education. He has published over 30 books and 170 journal articles and book chapters. He is former President of the World Council of Comparative Education (2010–2013) and has served as Honorary Professor in many esteemed universities, including the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney and Beijing Normal University. Email: [email protected]. Susan Markus, PhD, is a Licensed Professional Counselor. Susan holds a BSW, an MS in Counselor Education and a PhD in Educational Leadership. She teaches adjunct in the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences Division of Social Work. Her research interests include social determinants of health and equity, storytelling for social justice, and connecting health
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and education to address youth health disparities. She provides community and organizational consultation in mobilizing for social change and is a Photovoice consultant, working with marginalized groups to empower their voices for individual and collective social action. Email: [email protected] John W. Meyer is Professor of Sociology (and, by courtesy, Education), emeritus, at Stanford University. He has contributed to organizational theory, comparative education, and the sociology of education, developing sociological institutional theory. Since the 1970s, he has studied the impact of global society on national societies (some papers are collected in Weltkultur:Wie die westlichen Prinzipien die Welt durchdringen, Suhrkamp, 2005; a more extensive set is in G. Kruecken and G. Drori, eds, World Society: The Writings of John W. Meyer, Oxford, 2009). In 2003, he completed a collaborative study of worldwide science and its effects (Drori et al., Science in the Modern World Polity, Stanford). Recent collaborations study the impact of globalization on organizations (Drori et al., eds, Globalization and Organization, Oxford, 2006; Bromley and Meyer, HyperOrganization, Oxford, 2015). He now studies the world human rights regime, and world curricula in mass and higher education. He has honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics and the Universities of Bielefeld and Lucerne. Meyer received the American Sociological Association’s Career of Distinguished Scholarship award for lifetime contributions to the field and to studies of education and of globalization. In 2015, he received the Career of Distinguished Scholarship award in sociology from the American Sociological Association. He is a member of the US National Academy of Education. Email: [email protected] Lyn Parker is an anthropologist who has specialized in the study of contemporary Indonesian society and culture. Her latest book (with Pam Nilan) is Adolescents in Contemporary Indonesia (Routledge, 2013). She has recently co-edited (with C. Y. Hoon) a special issue of South East Asia Research on Education for a Tolerant Multicultural Indonesia (2014). Apart from education, her research interests include gender relations, development, and environmental sustainability in Indonesia. Email: [email protected] JoAnn Phillion is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. She teaches graduate courses in curriculum theory and multicultural education, and an undergraduate course in preservice teacher development. Her research interests are in immigrant student education, multicultural education, and teacher education in international contexts. She has directed a teacher education summer immersion study abroad program in Honduras since 2002. She is also involved in teacher education and research in Hong Kong and China. Email: [email protected] Gerard A. Postiglione is Associate Dean for Research, Chair Professor in Sociology and Educational Policy, Humanities and Social Science Prestigious Fellow, and Director of the Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. He published more than 140 journal articles and book chapters, and 15 books, including Education and Social Change in China, and China’s National Minority Education. He is editor of the journal Chinese Education and Society and of four book series about China. His research focuses on access and equity in higher education. Email: [email protected] Francisco O. Ramirez is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. His current research interests focus on the rise and institutionalization of human rights and human rights education, on the worldwide rationalization of university structures and
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processes, on terms of inclusion issues as regards gender and education, and on the scope and intensity of the authority of science in society. His comparative studies contribute to sociology of education, political sociology, sociology of gender, and sociology of development. Much of his scholarship focuses on education, citizenship, and development issues, including the origins and expansion of mass schooling, the acquisition and diffusion of women’s citizenship rights, and, more recently, the challenge of the rise of an international human rights regime. His work has contributed to the development of the world society perspective in the social sciences. Recent publications may be found in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Sociology of Education, American Journal of Education, Comparative Education Review, and Comparative Education, among others. His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and by internal university funds. He was a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Studies of the Behavioral Sciences, 2006–2007. He received the student-initiated School of Education Faculty Advising award for 2007–2008. He obtained his PhD in Sociology from Stanford University (1974) and his BA from De La Salle University (1966). E-mail: [email protected] Francisco Rios, Dean, Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University, received his PhD from University of Wisconsin and worked at California State University San Marcos and University of Wyoming (UW). His research interests include teachers of color, Latinos in education, and teacher education with a multicultural focus. He has been Senior Associate Editor of Multicultural Perspectives, Journal of National Association for Multicultural Education; 2005 Fullbright Fellow at Pontifica Universidad Católica Valparaíso in Chile; founding director, UW’s Social Justice Research Center; Distinguished Scholar Mid-Career Award recipient, American Educational Research Association; and is 2014–2016 President, National Association for Multicultural Education. Email: [email protected] Kyung Mi Shin is an independent consultant in literacy education. She earned her master’s degree in literacy education with a focus on multicultural literature from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in the US. She was a public school teacher in primary schools in Seoul, South Korea, and was an instructor in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are literacy education, teaching Korean as a foreign language, and special education. Email: [email protected] Christine E. Sleeter is Professor Emerita in the College of Professional Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, where she was a founding faculty member. She has served as a visiting professor at several universities, most recently University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research focuses on anti-racist multicultural education and teacher education. She has published more than 100 articles and 19 books, including Power,Teaching, and Teacher Education (Peter Lang, 2013) and Diversifying the Teacher Workforce (with L. I. Neal and K. K. Kumashiro, Routledge, 2014). Email: [email protected] Ryoko Tsuneyoshi is a professor at the Graduate School of Education,The University of Tokyo, and is the present Director for the Center of Excellence in School Education (2013–2015), executive board member of the Science Council of Japan, and is on the executive committee of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan and the Japan Educational Research Association. She earned her PhD at the Department of Sociology, Princeton University. She conducts cross-cultural comparisons of schooling through fieldwork, and she has also written extensively
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on multicultural issues. Her books include: The Japanese Model of Schooling: Comparisons with the United States (RoutledgeFalmer, 2001), and Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan (coedited with K. Okano and S. Boocock, Routledge, 2010). E-mail: [email protected] Yuxiang Wang received a PhD from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue University in 2010. Prior to coming to the United States, he was Associate Professor at Anhui University in China, where he conducted research and published articles in the area of language and culture. His research interests are in multicultural education, teacher education, and narrative inquiry with a focus on issues of race, gender, cultural identity, minority language and culture, and social justice. Email: [email protected] Ting-Hong Wong is associate research fellow of Sociology Institute, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He is the author of Hegemonies Compared: State Formation and Chinese School Politics in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong (RoutledgeFalmer, 2002). He has also published in international journals, such as British Journal of Sociology of Education, Comparative Education Review, Journal of Historical Sociology, and History of Education. He is now researching education politics in colonial and postcolonial Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Email: [email protected] Celeste Y.M. Yuen is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research areas include intercultural studies, teacher intercultural competence, subjective well-being, spiritual health, and student engagement. After earning her doctorate from the UCL-Institute of Education, University of London, she has been actively engaged in researching Chinese immigrant and South Asian minority students and related policies in Hong Kong.
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INTRODUCTION YUN-KYUNG CHA ET AL.INTRODUCTION
Multicultural education research in Asia Pacific1 Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, and Moosung Lee
Over the last decades, various perspectives of multicultural education have been developed or proposed by academics and research communities. In this regard, Banks (2014) summarizes that multicultural education has been viewed variously as an idea, a concept, a reform movement, and/or a process (p. 1). Such diverse notions of multicultural education reflect different sociocultural, religious, linguistic, and political contexts shaping multicultural education issues. Alongside this multiplicity of understandings of multicultural education, we believe that there are universal elements or common features that inform us about multicultural education.That is, we view multicultural education as a “field” where scholars and researchers strive to (re)construct the value of social justice, diversity, equity, and human rights through educational discourses and policies that appreciate cultural differences among both individuals and groups. As such, we also view multicultural education research as a research field that aims to 1) scrutinize inequality, discrimination, and injustice, which are often institutionalized in schools and permeate into our everyday lives; and 2) develop ideas, practices, and policies related to multicultural education (e.g., multicultural literacy, sensitivity, competence, perspectives) that help us to live together with others. In line with this scholarly view, this handbook aims to embody our understanding of multicultural education in the context of Asia Pacific in particular. In recent years, multicultural education has received significant attention from educational policymakers, educators, and researchers in Asia Pacific with accelerating economic and cultural globalization processes and demographic changes in the region. There is a growing need for a better understanding of multicultural education issues in the region where we have witnessed increasing human mobility and interaction across countries, especially in terms of aiding the development of multicultural competences and understandings in organizations in both public and private sectors. Indeed, multicultural education has become regarded as an indispensable vehicle to prepare future citizens for their knowledge and skills needed to live in culturally diverse societies in a globalized era. Indeed, the legitimacy of the need for multicultural education has been consolidated by highly rationalized global education discourses, stressing education for living together with others (Cha, Gundara, Ham, & Lee, 2017). Such legitimacy has been also reinforced in education systems across many Asia Pacific countries and societies. At the same time, however, it should be noted that such global education discourses – which can be called “global grammar” – of multicultural education are often re-contextualized differently across societies in Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the global grammar shapes a solid 1
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discursive grounding about why and how multicultural education ought to be embodied in education systems globally. Furthermore, the global grammar appears to provide more or less similar sets of institutionalized rules and/or foundations that function as systemic components of multicultural education in the form of policy and curriculum, for example. On the other hand, the local interpretations of multicultural education – which can be called “local semantics” – are actively articulated by various local agents and communities, which appear to result in varying formations and functions of multicultural education within individual education systems (cf. Cha et al., 2017). Interdependence between the global grammar and the local semantics in multicultural education is evidenced in education systems in Asia Pacific. Empirical investigations on such interdependence are richly offered in this handbook. In sum, the handbook demonstrates that Asia Pacific is an emerging geographical space where multicultural education is embraced as an integral part of global educational discourses while also being dynamically reshaped by the local dialects of multicultural education. Reflecting the emerging phenomenon, this handbook provides an unparalleled set of research papers that aim to advance theoretical perspectives of multicultural education and to build empirical groundings on multicultural education issues from 10 selected societies in Asia Pacific: Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. These 10 societies are purposefully selected in order to map out various geographical boundaries and cultural aspects of multicultural education issues in the region. For example, the selected societies range from small but dynamic societies (e.g., Hong Kong and Singapore) to large countries (e.g., China and Australia). Also, the selected countries include both emerging multicultural countries (e.g., South Korea and Japan), ethnically diverse countries (e.g., China and Indonesia), and a largely uncharted society in terms of multicultural education (e.g., Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand). Chapters in the book are organized into four parts. Each part consists of four to six chapters. Chapters in Part 1 aim to expand existing conceptualizations of multicultural education and to elaborate perspectives of multicultural education, which can be applied to understanding multicultural education issues in Asia Pacific. To this end, key theorists in the field illuminate theoretical or conceptual linkages among citizenship, diversity, and human rights through the lenses of multicultural education. Taken together, the five chapters in Part 1 present a valuable array of conceptual frameworks or perspectives for understanding multicultural education. Specifically, James Banks in Chapter 1 sheds light on how migration within and across nation-states complicates issues around citizenship, human rights, democracy, and education. He emphasizes the role of cultural identifications in the complex intersection of citizenship, human rights, democracy, and education by concluding “strong, positive, and clarified cultural identifications and attachments are a prerequisite to cosmopolitan beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, and the internalization of human rights values.” Christine Sleeter in Chapter 2 interrogates how terms such as “multicultural education” play a steering role in framing problems and shaping discourse communities, which in turn influence practices in schools.To achieve this, she probes the meanings embedded in four conceptions of multicultural education: 1) appreciating national cultural differences, 2) appreciating international cultural differences, 3) anti-discrimination and social justice, and 4) anti-discrimination and global justice. Her analysis of each conception provides a framework for multicultural education researchers to examine assumptions behind particular school practices around multicultural education in specific contexts. Susan Markus and Francisco Rios (in Chapter 3) frame multicultural education as a human right for all students. They further specify three dimensions of multicultural education as a human right: 1) psycho-cultural rights, 2) socio-cultural rights, and 3) cultural democratic rights. Based on this conceptualization,
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they discuss how multicultural education can maximize benefits by conceptually rooting itself in human rights principles, including “the right to learn about oneself, to learn about others, and to learn citizenship skills associated with a deep democracy in a global age.” In Chapter 4, Francisco O. Ramirez and John W. Meyer capture notable global trends in school textbooks. They identify that social studies and civic textbooks around the world are increasingly highlighting the importance of human rights and diversity as universal values. Their findings draw attention to “a new cultural dynamic, one in which world society itself is becoming the compelling collective with which we are expected to identify.” We think that multicultural education appears to facilitate this new identification. In Chapter 5, Jagdish Gundara provides a number of important ideas and concepts in discussing noncentric knowledge and curriculum in Asia from the lens of intercultural education. His discussion encompasses a critique of neo-liberal economic globalization, problematizing Eurocentrism in knowledge production, and advocating the public value of education in order to propose the notion of noncentric knowledge and an inclusive Asian curriculum. His conceptualization of a noncentric curriculum appears to further ignite the scholarly discussion of developing inclusive and shared value systems through school curriculum multicultural education. Chapters in Part 2 address more practical issues of multicultural education in formal school settings; teaching, learning, and curriculum. A value-added aspect of Part 2 is that it situates core issues in school settings from relatively small societies (i.e., Hong Kong, Singapore) to nation states (i.e., Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, South Korea, and Thailand) with a variety of target groups, such as Muslim minorities and South East Asian communities in Hong Kong, and students in Singapore, for example. Alongside the focus on socially disadvantaged groups in Part 2, several chapters in Part 2 also address important government documents related to teaching and curriculum in Indonesia, Singapore, and South Korea, plus the three countries in the Mekong. Specifically, Li-Ching Ho (Chapter 6) critically looks at the Singapore government’s approach toward multicultural citizenship education. According to her, the primary goal of multicultural education in Singapore is harmony, given that addressing tensions by different ethnic, religious, and cultural affiliation is critical for the government. Nonetheless, she argues that the summative high-stakes examination in Singapore seriously constrains the authentic implementation of multicultural education by eroding motivation and time for teachers to conduct in-depth explorations of social and political issues related to multiculturalism. In Chapter 7, Liz Jackson aims to problematize how minorities are discussed in Liberal Studies textbooks by raising a question “Who is Hong Kong?” She shows the minimal representation of ethnic and religious diversity in school textbooks, which signifies a lack of mutual understandings among Chinese and non-Chinese Hongkongers, and Hongkongers and New Arrivals. She suggests that intercultural education promoting dialogical encounters across these groups is critical, apart from “moral and national education” recently proposed by the Hong Kong government. In Chapter 8, Will Brehm contributes to filling a research gap about curricular issues in multicultural education in the Mekong region – Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Specifically, looking closely at the case of human rights and history textbooks in the three countries, he demonstrates that each country’s curriculum can be understood as explicit (i.e., Laos), implicit (i.e., Thailand), and null curriculum (i.e., Cambodia). Based on this typology, he convincingly argues that the three types of curriculum collectively illuminate “challenges facing supranational efforts to create a curriculum advancing human rights – and therefore multiculturalism – in the Mekong.” In Chapter 9, Lyn Parker provides useful and updated information about multicultural education in the context of Indonesia. Specifically, she provides an overall picture of the new curriculum introduced to Indonesia in 2013 and its linkage to teaching religious tolerance, which is one of the foremost
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goals in multicultural education in Indonesia. By focusing on two subjects (i.e., Character and Religious Education, and Citizenship and Pancasila Education), she demonstrates that although important, the new curriculum has a serious mismatch: “While Citizenship Education strongly promotes tolerance, in accord with the overall objectives of education in Indonesia, Religion is taught within a confessional mode, aiming to enhance piety and faith rather than interreligious tolerance.” She, thus, concludes that there is an awkward disparity and inconsistency between the two subjects, which undermine their contributions to a whole-school approach to teaching tolerance in schools. In Chapter 10, Kyung Mi Shin, Seongdok Kim, and Moosung Lee propose “multicultural literature-based multicultural education” as a tool for facilitating multicultural teaching practices in South Korean primary schools. Since they view the multicultural literature as windows, mirrors, and vehicles for students to reflect upon themselves and to understand others better, they argue that multicultural literature-based multicultural education is needed. At the same time, they suggest several important prerequisites for successful implementation of multicultural literature-based multicultural education. Chapters in Part 3 shed light on organizational or societal issues related to multicultural education – i.e., leadership and policy. A group of leading scholars in the field of multicultural education was assembled in order to address leadership and policy issues related to multicultural education. Specifically, Wing On Lee’s Chapter 11 provides an in-depth review of types of leadership outlined by Michael Fullan, Max Weber, Chris Hodgkinson, James Collins, and Thomas Sergiovanni. Drawing on this review, he argues that the moral imperative of leadership is the common and core part of leadership in the aforementioned writers’ view of leadership. He further argues that such an emphasis on moral leadership is also found in Confucian philosophies as the essence of leadership ideas. In this regard, he suggests that moral leadership is where East meets West (or vice versa), which has great implications for leadership in multicultural organization settings. In Chapter 12, Ting-Hong Wong compares policies on Chinese schools in postwar Singapore and Hong Kong. He illuminates how the two societies handled Chinese schools differently, mainly due to different racial-ethnic demographic compositions (Singapore as a multiethnic society vs. Hong Kong as a largely mono-racial society). His chapter also contributes to multicultural education research by showing the importance of a comparative approach in understanding how racial–ethnic factors play out in the formation of multicultural education policy. In Chapter 13, Takehiko Kariya begins with a concise review of education reforms in Japan since the 1990s. Drawing from the review, he emphasizes that the concept of good citizenship has been clearly articulated in the reform discourses. He pays special attention to how the nurturing of good citizens, equipped with problem-solving skills and communication skills in response to multicultural societies, has been regarded as an important dimension of education reform in Japan. In response to this, his investigation of large-scale panel data provides a critical perspective for the reform direction by demonstrating that nurturing good citizens is unequally shaped by individual students’ family backgrounds. In Chapter 14, Ryoko Tsuneyoshi provides four keywords that help us to understand multiculturalism in Japan: internationalization, human rights, multicultural coexistence, and globalization. She further conceptualizes how each of the keywords can function as a framework of multicultural education by capturing the new landscape of diversity, where the integration of diverse ethnic populations in Japan moves from conventional assumptions and perceptions of “homogeneity to diversity.” In Chapter 15, Nado Aveling provides critical discussions about Australian multiculturalism with a focus on policy and curriculum. Based on the overview of the historical and socio-political context of Australian multiculturalism, she evaluates multicultural Australia by noting that “while the past has seen policies that sought to assimilate everyone to a preconceived standard of Australianness grounded in the infamous ‘white Australia’ policy, the present appears superficially to be 4
Introduction
more open to diversity at all levels; whether in skin pigmentation, religion, or language.” In line with this critical perspective, she further discusses the need for curriculum and teacher education to enable future teachers to teach multicultural education in ways that are socially just. In Chapter 16, Carl A. Grant and Sejung Ham explore multicultural education policy in South Korea. Using the conceptual framework of “politics of difference and five different approaches of multicultural education” discussed by Grant and Sleeter (2008), the authors argue that South Korea’s multicultural education policy treats newcomers as “different (and deficient).” As such, they call for multicultural social justice education in order to debunk prejudices at play in the politics of difference and thereby deconstruct the rhetoric of multicultural education policy in South Korea. Part 4, the last section of the book, moves toward relatively less-charted areas of multicultural education. This is important in order to expand the field of multicultural education and contribute to identifying future directions of multicultural education research. Specifically, the chapters illuminate lived experiences of socio-economically marginalized (and linguistically disadvantaged) student groups through empirical studies, e.g., mainland Chinese immigrants and cross-boundary students in Hong Kong, ethnic minorities in rural areas of China, and immigrant and indigenous people in Australia. While each chapter in Part 4 addresses distinctive social groups, they are aligned with the issues of equity and social justice in the context of diversity. In Chapter 17, Gerry Postglione addresses multicultural education issues facing Tibetans in China. He first illuminates the lack of quality learning opportunities and its linkage to Tibetan’s underachievement behind other ethnic minority groups in China. Furthermore, he raises the critical issue of how state schooling may impede the cultivation of harmonious multiculturalism – “the result of an education that promotes an ethnic identity able to adapt to multiple roles and situations” – for Tibetan students. While his analysis is based on Tibetan students, the findings appear to be applicable to other ethnic minority groups in China. In Chapter 18, JoAnn Phillion and Yuxiang Wang delve into another neglected ethic minority group of China in multicultural education research. The authors discuss the educational experiences of Hui students in China and its impact on their identity construction. Through a literature review, the authors identify that Hui students’ educational experiences are quite similar to those of Tibetan students in China, in terms of educational policies imposed on them, the minimal representation of minority culture and knowledge in textbooks, and teachers’ lack of culturally responsive pedagogical practices. The authors conclude that such schooling policies and practices influence the identity construction of Hui students negatively by removing Hui heritage, language, and knowledge by imposing mainstream Han language, culture, and knowledge. Therefore, the authors call for multicultural social justice education in China. In Chapter 19, Celeste Y. M. Yuen explores the roles of teacher professionalism in promoting equity for Chinese immigrant students and cross-boundary students in Hong Kong. In the first place, she critically reviews the receptivity and responsibility of Hong Kong schooling system toward the aforementioned student groups with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Next, she convincingly illuminates why culturally relevant teaching practices are the core part of teacher professionalism in realizing equity for culturally diverse student groups in Hong Kong. In Chapter 20, Misty Adoniou focuses on issues of multilingualism and its implications for multicultural education in Australia. Her historical review sheds light on how a multilingual population has been governed by a “monolingual mindset” (Clyne, 2005) and details the consequences. As an example, she argues that current policies focus more on “unity in an Australian society” rather than “diversity in a multicultural society.” As such, she stresses that schools and teachers as agents of change should provide the way forward for placing community languages on the national agenda. 5
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In sum, this handbook, as a first of its kind, provides a conceptually interconnected as well as empirically grounded volume to explore multifaceted dimensions of multicultural education. This covers theories and perspectives; teaching, learning, and curriculum; leadership and policy; and diversity and social justice. We believe that this edited book provides a solid resource, particularly for graduate students, educators, and researchers involved in multicultural education, given its multiple balances of 1) theoretical essays, empirical studies, and practical implications; 2) contributions from emerging scholars, established scholars, and leading scholars in the field; 3) subareas of multicultural education (e.g., teaching, learning, curriculum, policy, leadership, theories, perspectives, social justice, and diversity); and 4) geographical coverage in Asia Pacific. Although this volume is primarily for researchers and graduate students in Asia Pacific, it would also be helpful to research communities beyond Asia Pacific who desire to expand their understanding of multicultural education issues and research internationally. We hope that this handbook would be a primary source for multicultural education research in Asia Pacific and can provoke further research dialogues within Asia Pacific and beyond.
Note 1 The work on editing this volume was supported in part by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2014S1A5A8018225).
References Banks, J. (2014). An introduction to multicultural education. Boston, MA: Pearson. Cha,Y., Gundara, J., Ham, S., & Lee, M. (2017). Multicultural education in glocal perspectives: Policy and institutionalization. Singapore: Springer. Clyne, M. (2005). Australia’s language potential. Sydney: UniNSW Press. Grant, C., & Sleeter, C. (2008). Turning on learning: Five approaches for multicultural teaching plans for race, class, gender and disability. San Francisco, CA: Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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PART 1
Conceptualizations and perspectives
1 DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN MULTICULTURAL NATIONS1 JAMES A. BANKSDIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
James A. Banks
Assimilation, diversity, and global migration Prior to the ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the aim of schools in most nation-states was to develop citizens who internalized national values, venerated national heroes, and accepted glorified versions of national histories. These goals of citizenship education are obsolete today because many people have multiple national commitments and live in more than one nation. However, the development of citizens who have global and cosmopolitan identities and commitments is contested in nation-states around the world because nationalism remains strong. Nationalism and globalization coexist in tension worldwide. The number of recognized nation-states increased from 43 in 1900 to approximately 190 in 2000. The number of international migrants living abroad grew from 154 million in 1990 to 232 million in 2013, which was 3.2 percent of the world’s population of 7 billion (United Nations, 2013). Democratic nations around the world must deal with complex educational issues when trying to respond to the problems wrought by international migration in ways consistent with their ideologies and declarations. Researchers have amply documented the wide gap between democratic ideals and the school experiences of minority groups in nations around the world (Banks, 2009). The chapters in The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education describes how students such as the Maori in New Zealand, Muslims in France, and Mexican Americans in the United States experience discrimination in school because of their cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic differences. In 40 chapters written by scholars in various nations, The Companion describes the educational experiences of diverse groups worldwide. When they are marginalized within school and treated as the “Other,” ethnic minority students, such as Turkish students in Germany and Muslim students in England, tend to emphasize their ethnic identity and to have weak attachments to their nation-state.The four Muslim young men who were convicted for bombing the London subway on July 7, 2005, had immigrant parents but were British citizens. However, they apparently were not structurally integrated into British mainstream society and had a weak identification with the United Kingdom and nonMuslim British citizens. Democratic nation-states and their schools must grapple with a number of salient issues, paradigms, and ideologies as their populations become more culturally, racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse. The extent to which nation-states make multicultural citizenship possible, 9
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the achievement gap between minority and majority groups, and the language rights of immigrant and minority groups are among the unresolved and contentious issues with which diverse nations and schools must deal. Nations throughout the world are trying to determine whether they will perceive themselves as multicultural and allow immigrants to experience multicultural citizenship (Kymlicka, 1995), or continue to embrace an assimilationist ideology. In nation-states that embrace Kymlicka’s idea of multicultural citizenship, immigrant and minority groups can retain important aspects of their languages and cultures as well as have full citizenship rights. Nations in various parts of the world have responded to the citizenship and cultural rights of immigrant and minority groups in different ways. Since the ethnic revitalization movements of the 1960s and 1970s, many of the national leaders and citizens in the United States, Canada, and Australia have viewed their nations as multicultural democracies (Banks, 2009; Banks & Lynch, 1986;). An ideal exists within these nations that minority groups can retain important elements of their community cultures and participate fully in the national civic community. However, there is a wide gap between the ideals within these nations and the experiences of ethnic groups. Ethnic minority groups in the United States (Nieto, 2009), Canada (Joshee, 2009), and Australia (Inglis, 2009) experience discrimination in both the schools and the wider society. Other nations, such as Japan (Hirasawa, 2009) and Germany (Lutchtenberg, 2009), are reluctant to view themselves as multicultural. Historically, citizenship has been closely linked to biological heritage and characteristics in both nations. However, the biological conception of citizenship in Japan and Germany has eroded within the last decade. However, it left a tenacious legacy in both nations. Castles (2004) refers to Germany’s response to immigrants as “differential exclusion,” which is “partial and temporary integration of immigrant workers into society – that is, they are included in those subsystems of society necessary for their economic role: the labor market, basic accommodation, work-related health care, and welfare” (p. 32). However, immigrants are excluded from full social, economic, and civic participation in Germany. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the French have dealt with immigrant groups in ways distinct from the United States, Canada, and Australia. La laïcité is a tenacious concept in France, the aim of which is to keep church and state separate (Lemaire, 2009). La laïcité emerged in response to the hegemony that the Catholic Church exercised in France over the schools and other institutions for centuries. A major goal of state schools in France is to ensure that youth obtain a secular education. Muslim students in French state schools, for example, are prevented from wearing the hijab (veil) and other religious symbols (Bowen, 2007; Scott, 2007). The genesis of the rigid sanction against the veil is la laïcité and the dominance of the Catholic Church in French history. In France, the explicit goal is assimilation (called integration) and inclusion (Castles, 2004). Immigrant groups can become full citizens in France but the price is cultural assimilation. Immigrants are required to surrender their languages and cultures in order to become full citizens.
Multicultural citizenship and cultural democracy Multicultural societies are faced with the problem of constructing nation-states that reflect and incorporate the diversity of its citizens and yet have an overarching set of shared values, ideals, and goals to which all of its citizens are committed (Banks, 2007). Only when a nation-state is unified around a set of democratic values such as justice and equality can it protect the rights of cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups and enable them to experience cultural democracy and freedom. Kymlicka (1995), the Canadian political theorist, and Rosaldo (1997), the U.S. anthropologist, have constructed theories about diversity and citizenship. Both Kymlicka and Rosaldo argue that in a democratic society, ethnic and 10
Diversity and citizenship education
immigrant groups should have the right to maintain their ethnic cultures and languages as well as participate fully in the national civic culture. Kymlicka calls this concept “multicultural citizenship;” Rosaldo refers to it as “cultural citizenship.” In the United States in the 1920s, Drachsler (1920) used cultural democracy to describe what we call multicultural citizenship today. Drachsler (1920) and Kallen (1924) – who were Jewish immigrants and advocates for the cultural freedom and rights of the Southern, Central, and East European immigrants – argued that cultural democracy is an important characteristic of a democratic society. They maintained that cultural democracy should coexist with political and economic democracy, and that citizens from diverse groups in a democratic society should participate freely in the civic life of the nation-state and experience economic equality.They should also have the right to maintain important aspects of their community cultures and languages, as long as they do not conflict with the shared democratic ideals of the nation-state. Cultural democracy, argued Drachsler, is an essential component of a political democracy.
Balancing unity and diversity Cultural, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious diversity exists in most nations (Banks, 2009). One of the challenges to diverse democratic nation-states is to provide opportunities for different groups to maintain aspects of their community cultures while constructing a nation in which these groups are structurally included and to which they feel allegiance. A delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nations and of teaching and learning in democratic societies (Banks et al., 200l). Unity must be an important aim when nation-states are responding to diversity within their populations. Nation-states can protect the rights of minorities and enable diverse groups to participate only when they are unified around a set of democratic values such as justice and equality (Gutmann, 2004). In the past, nations have tried to create unity by forcing racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities to give up their community languages and cultures in order to participate in the national civic culture. In the United States, Mexican American students were punished for speaking Spanish in school, and Native American youth were forced to attend boarding schools where their cultures and languages were eradicated (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). In Australia, aboriginal children were taken from their families and forced to live on state missions and reserves (Broome, 1982), a practice that lasted from 1869 to 1969.These children are called “The stolen generation.” On February 13, 2008, Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, issued a formal apology to the stolen generation. In order to embrace the national civic culture, students from diverse groups must feel that it reflects their experiences, hopes, and dreams. Schools and nations cannot marginalize the cultures of groups and expect them to feel structurally included within the nation and to develop a strong allegiance to it. Citizenship education must be transformed in the 21st century because of the deepening diversity in nations around the world. Citizens in a diverse democratic society should be able to maintain attachments to their cultural communities as well as participate effectively in the shared national culture. Unity without diversity results in cultural repression and hegemony, as was the case in the former Soviet Union and during the Cultural Revolution that occurred in China from 1966 to 1976. Diversity without unity leads to Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state, as occurred during the Iraq war when sectarian conflict and violence threatened that fragile nation in the late 2000s. Diversity and unity should coexist in a delicate balance in democratic multicultural nations. Nations such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany are struggling to balance unity and diversity. A French law that became effective on March 15, 2004, prevented Muslim girls 11
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from wearing the veil (hijab) to state schools (Bowen, 2007; Lemaire, 2009; Scott, 2007).This law is a manifestation of la laïcité as well as a refusal of the French government to deal explicitly with the complex racial, ethnic, and religious problems it faces in suburban communities where many Muslim families live. The riots in France in 2005 indicated that many Arab and Muslin youths have a difficult time attaining a French identity and believe that most white French citizens do not view them as French. On November 7, 2005, a group of young Arab males in France were interviewed on PBS, the public television in the United States. One of the young men said, “I have French papers but when I go to the police station they treat me like I am not French.” The French prefer the term integration to race relations or diversity. Integration has been officially adopted by the state. Integration is predicated on the assumption that cultural differences should be eradicated during the process of integration (Hargreaves, 1995). The London subway and bus bombings that killed 56 people and injured more than 700 on July 7, 2005, deepened ethnic and religious tension and Islamophobia in Europe after the police revealed that the suspected perpetuators were Muslim suicide bombers (Richardson, 2004).The young men who were convicted for these bombings were British citizens but apparently had weak identities with the United Kingdom and non-Muslim British citizens.
Citizenship and citizenship education A citizen may be defined as a “native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its protection.” This is the definition of citizen in Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1989, p. 270). This same dictionary defines citizenship as the “state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen” (p. 270). Absent from these minimal definitions of citizen and citizenship are the rich discussions and meanings of citizen and citizenship in democratic, multicultural societies that were presented by a group of scholars in a conference I organized and chaired in Bellagio, Italy, in 2002 (Banks, 2004a). The scholars at this conference stated that citizens within democratic multicultural nationstates endorse the overarching ideals of the nation-state such as justice and equality; are committed to the maintenance and perpetuation of these ideals; and are willing and able to take action to help close the gap between their nation’s democratic ideals and practices that violate those ideals, such as social, racial, cultural, and economic inequality (Banks, 2004a). Consequently, an important goal of citizenship education in a democratic multicultural society should be to help students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to make reflective decisions and to take actions to make their nation-states more democratic and just (Banks, 2007). To become thoughtful decision-makers and citizen actors, students need to master social science knowledge, clarify their moral commitments, identify alternative courses of action, and act in ways consistent with democratic values (Banks & Banks, Clegg, 1999). Gutmann (2004) states that democratic multicultural societies are characterized by civic equality, toleration, and recognition. Consequently, an important goal of citizenship education in multicultural societies is to teach toleration and recognition of cultural differences. Gutmann views deliberation as an essential component of democratic education in multicultural societies. Gonçalves e Silva (2004), a Brazilian scholar, states that citizens in a democratic society work for the betterment of the whole society, and not just for the rights of their particular racial, social, or cultural group. She writes: A citizen is a person who works against injustice not for individual recognition or personal advantage, but for the benefit of all people. In realizing this task – shattering
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privileges, ensuring information and competence, acting in favor of all – each person becomes a citizen. (p. 197) Gonçalves e Silva (2004) also makes the important point that becoming a citizen is a process and that education must facilitate the development of civic consciousness and agency within students. She provides powerful examples of how civic consciousness and agency are developed in community schools for the children of Indigenous peoples and Blacks in Brazil. Osler (2005) maintains that students should experience citizenship directly within schools and should not be “citizens-in-waiting.” In the discussion of his citizenship identity in Japan, Murphy-Shigematsu (2004) describes how complex and contextual citizenship identification is within a multicultural nation such as Japan. Becoming a legal citizen of a nation does not necessarily mean that an individual will attain structural inclusion into the mainstream society and its institutions or will be perceived as a citizen by most members of the mainstream group within the nation. A citizen’s racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious characteristics often significantly influence whether she is viewed as a citizen within her nation. It is not unusual for their fellow American citizens to assume that Asian Americans born in the United States emigrated from another nation. They are sometime asked, “What country are you from?” Brodkin (1998) makes a conceptual distinction between ethnoracial assignment and ethnoracial identity that is helpful when considering the relationship between citizenship identification and citizenship education. She defines ethnoracial assignment as the way outsiders define people within another group. Ethnoracial identities are how individuals define themselves “within the context of ethnoracial assignment” (p. 3). Muslims citizens of the United States who have a strong national identity are sometimes viewed by other Americans as non-Americans (Gregorian, 2003). Citizenship education needs to be changed in significant ways because of the increasing diversity within nations throughout the world and the quests by racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups for cultural recognition and rights (Banks, 2004a; Castles, 2004). The Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington has implemented a project to reform citizenship education so that it will advance democracy as well as be responsive to the needs of cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and immigrant groups within multicultural nation-states. The first part of this project consisted of a conference, “Ethnic Diversity and Citizenship Education in Multicultural Nation-States,” held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, June 17–21, 2002. The conference, which was supported by the Spencer and Rockefeller Foundations, included participants from 12 nations: Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Palestine, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The papers presented at this conference are published in a book I edited, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives (Banks, 2004a). One of the conclusions of the Bellagio Conference was that world migration and the political and economic aspects of globalization are challenging nation-states and national borders. At the same time, national borders remain tenacious; the number of nations in the world is increasing rather than decreasing. The number of United Nations (UN) member states increased from 80 in 1950 to 191 in 2002 (Castles & Davidson, 2000). Globalization and nationalism are coexisting and sometimes conflicting trends and forces in the world today (Banks et al., 2005). Consequently, educators throughout the world should rethink and redesign citizenship education
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courses and programs. Citizenship education should help students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function in their nations, as well as in a diverse world society that is experiencing rapid globalization and quests by diverse groups for recognition and inclusion. Citizenship education should also help students to develop a commitment to act to change the world to make it more just and democratic. Another conclusion of the Bellagio Conference is that citizenship and citizenship education are defined and implemented differently in various nations and in different social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. It is also a contested idea in nations around the world. However, there are shared problems, concepts, and issues across nations, such as the need to prepare students to function within as well as across national borders. The Bellagio Conference also concluded that these shared issues and problems should be identified by an international group that would formulate guidelines for dealing with them.
Democracy and diversity in a global age In response to the Bellagio Conference recommendations, the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington created an International Consensus Panel, which was supported by the Spencer Foundation in Chicago and the University of Washington. The panel wrote a publication titled Democracy and Diversity: Principles and Concepts for Educating Citizens in a Global Age (Banks et al., 2005).The Consensus Panel constructed four principles and identified 10 concepts for educating citizens for democracy and diversity in a global age (see Table 1.1). One of the important conclusions of Democracy and Diversity is that diversity describes the wide range of racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious variations that exists within and across groups that live in multicultural nation-states. Democracy and Diversity presents a broad view of diversity.2 The community cultures and languages of students from diverse groups were to be eradicated in the assimilationist conception of citizenship education that existed in nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. One consequence of assimilationist citizenship education was that many students lost their first cultures, languages, and ethnic identities (Wong Fillmore, 2005). Some students also became alienated from their families and communities. Another consequence was that many students became socially and politically alienated within the national civic culture, as many Muslim youth in French society are today (Lemaire, 2009). Members of identifiable racial groups often become marginalized in both their community cultures and in the national civic culture because they can function effectively in neither. When they acquire the language and culture of the mainstream dominant culture, they are often denied structural inclusion and full participation into the civic culture because of their racial, cultural, linguistic, or religious characteristics (Alba & Nee, 2003; Gordon, 1964). Teachers and schools must practice democracy and human rights in order for these ideals to be internalized by students (Dewey, 1959). When schools and classrooms become microcosms and exemplars of democracy and social justice, they help students to acquire democratic attitudes, learn how to practice democracy, and engage in deliberation with students from other ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups (Gutmann, 2004; Osler & Starkey, 2009). As Dewey (1959) states, “all genuine education comes through experience” (p. 13). Kohlberg’s idea of democratic, just schools exemplifies the concept of democracy in action in schools (Schrader, 1990). Kohlberg created a cluster school within a high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that ran as a just community. Each individual within
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Diversity and citizenship education Table 1.1 Principles and Concepts for Educating Citizens in a Global Age PRINCIPLES Section I. Diversity, Unity, Global Interconnectedness, and Human Rights 1 Students should learn about the complex relationships between unity and diversity in their local communities, the nation, and the world. 2 Students should learn about the ways in which people in their community, nation, and region are increasingly interdependent with other people around the world, and are connected to the economic, political, cultural, environmental, and technological changes taking place across the planet. 3 The teaching of human rights should underpin citizenship education courses and programs in multicultural nation-states. Section II. Experience and Participation 4 Students should be taught knowledge about democracy and democratic institutions, and they should be provided opportunities to practice democracy. CONCEPTS 1 Democracy 2 Diversity 3 Globalization 4 Sustainable Development 5 Empire, Imperialism, Power 6 Prejudice, Discrimination, Racism 7 Migration 8 Identity/Diversity 9 Multiple Perspectives 10 Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism Reprinted with permission from Banks, J. A., Banks, C. A. M., Cortés, C. E., Merryfield, M. M., Moodley, K. A., Murphy-Shigematsu, S., Osler, A., Park, C., & Parker, W. C. (2005). Democracy and diversity: Principles and concepts for educating citizens in a global age. Seattle: University of Washington, Center for Multicultural Education.
the school – whether student or staff – had a vote in deciding school policies. The just community school was characterized by “participatory democracy with teachers and students having equal rights, emphasis on conflict resolution through consideration of fairness and morality, and inclusion of developmental moral discussion in the curriculum” (Kohlberg, Mayer, & Elfenbein, 1975). A lot of work must be done in nations around the world before most teachers actualize democracy and social justice in their curricula, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors (Banks, 2009). Multicultural democratic nations need to find ways to help students develop balanced and thoughtful attachments and identifications with their cultural community, their nation, and with the global community. In some cases, such as in the European Union and in parts of Asia, it is also important for citizens to develop a regional identification. Nation-states have generally failed to help students develop a delicate balance of identifications. Rather, they have given priority to national identifications and have neglected the community cultures of students as well as the knowledge and skills students need to function in an interconnected global world. Nussbaum (2002) worries that a focus on nationalism will prevent students from developing a commitment to cosmopolitan values, such as human rights and social justice, values that
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transcend national boundaries, cultures, and times. She argues that educators should help students develop cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans view themselves as citizens of the world. Nussbaum states that their “allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings” (p. 4). Nussbaum (2002) contrasts cosmopolitan universalism and internationalism with parochial ethnocentrism and inward-looking patriotism. She points out, however, that “to be a citizen of the world one does not need to give up local identifications, which can be a source of great richness in life” (p. 9). Appiah (2006), another proponent of cosmopolitanism, also views local identities as important. He writes: In the final message my father left for me and my sisters, he wrote, “Remember you are citizens of the world.” But as a leader of the independence movement in what was then the Gold Coast, he never saw a conflict between local partialities and universal morality – between being a part of the place you were and a part of a broader human community. Raised with this father and an English mother, who was both deeply connected to our family in England and fully rooted in Ghana, where she has now lived for half a century, I always had a sense of family and tribe that was multiple and overlapping; nothing could have seemed more commonplace. (p. xviii) Nationalists and assimilationists in nations throughout the world worry that if they help students develop identifications and attachments to their cultural communities, then they will not acquire sufficiently strong attachments and allegiance to the nation. Kymlicka (2004) states that nationalists have a “zero-sum conception of identity.” However, identity is multiple, changing, overlapping, and contextual, rather than fixed and static. The multicultural conception of identity is that citizens who have clarified and thoughtful attachments to their community cultures, languages, and values are more likely than citizens who are stripped of their cultural attachments to develop reflective identifications with their nation-state (Banks, 2004b; Kymlicka, 2004). They will also be better able to function as effective citizens in the global community. Nation-states, however, must make structural changes that reduce structural inequality and that legitimize and give voice to the hopes, dreams, and visions of their marginalized citizens in order for them to develop strong and clarified commitments to the nation and its goals.
The development of cultural, national, regional, and global identifications Assimilationist notions of citizenship are ineffective today because of the deepening diversity throughout the world and the quests by marginalized groups for cultural recognition and rights. Multicultural citizenship and cultural democracy are essential in today’s global age (Kymlicka, 1995). These concepts recognize and legitimize the right and need of citizens to maintain commitments both to their cultural communities and to the national civic culture. Citizens must be structurally included within their nation in order to develop a strong allegiance and commitment to it. Students should develop a delicate balance of cultural, national, regional, and global identifications and allegiances (See Figure 1.1). These four identifications are highly interrelated, complex, and contextual. Citizenship education should help students to develop thoughtful and clarified identifications with their cultural communities, nation-states, and regions (Banks,
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Global Identification
Cultural Identification
THE INDIVIDUAL
National Identification
Regional Identification
Figure 1.1 Cultural, National, Regional, and Global Identifications Copyright © 2016 by James A. Banks
2004b). It should also help them to develop clarified global identifications and deep understandings of their roles in the world community. Students need to understand how life in their cultural communities, nations, and regions influences other regions and nations and the cogent influence that international events have on their daily lives. Global education should have as major goals helping students to develop understandings of the interdependence among nations in the world today, clarified attitudes toward other nations, and reflective identifications with the world community. I conceptualize global identification similar to the way in which Nussbaum (2002) defines cosmopolitanism. Non-reflective and unexamined cultural attachments may prevent the development of a cohesive nation with clearly defined national goals and policies (Banks, 2004b). Although we need to help students to develop reflective and clarified cultural identifications, they must also be helped to clarify their identifications with their nation-states. However, blind nationalism may prevent students from developing reflective and positive global identifications. Nationalism and national attachments in most nations are strong and tenacious. An important aim of citizenship education should be to help students develop global identifications. They also need
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to develop a deep understanding of the need to take action as citizens of the global community to help solve the world’s difficult global problems. Cultural, national, regional, and global experiences and identifications are interactive and interrelated in a dynamic way (Banks, 2004b). A nation-state that alienates and does not structurally include all cultural groups into the national culture runs the risk of creating alienation and causing groups to focus on specific concerns and issues rather than on the overarching goals and policies of the nation-state. To develop reflective cultural, national, regional, and global identifications, students must acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function within and across diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups. I have argued that students should develop a delicate balance of cultural, national, regional, and global identifications and allegiances. I conceptualize global identification in a way that includes cosmopolitanism, social justice, and human rights. I believe that cultural, national, regional, and global identifications are interrelated in a developmental way, and that students cannot develop thoughtful and clarified national identifications until they have reflective and clarified cultural identifications; and that they cannot develop a global or cosmopolitan identification until they have acquired a reflective national identification. Students from racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority groups that have historically experienced institutionalized discrimination, racism, or other forms of marginalization often have a difficult time accepting and valuing their own cultural heritages.Teachers should be aware of and sensitive to the stages of cultural development that all of their students – including mainstream students, ethnic minority students, and other marginalized groups of students – are experiencing and facilitate their identity development. I have developed a Stages of Cultural Development Typology that teachers can use when trying to help students attain higher stages of cultural development and to develop clarified cultural, regional, national, and global identifications (See Figure 1.2) (Banks, 2006). I believe that students need to reach Stage 3 of this typology, Cultural Identity Clarification, before we can expect them to embrace other cultural groups, attain thoughtful and clarified national and global identifications, and internalize human rights values. The typology is an ideal-type concept. Consequently, it does not describe the actual identity development of any particular individual. Rather, it is a framework for thinking about and facilitating the identity development of students who approximate one of the stages. During Stage 1 – Cultural Psychological Captivity – individuals internalize the negative stereotypes and beliefs about their cultural groups that are institutionalized within the larger society and may exemplify cultural self-rejection and low self-esteem. Cultural encapsulation and cultural exclusiveness, and the belief that their ethnic group is superior to others, characterize stage 2 – Cultural Encapsulation. Often, individuals within this stage have newly discovered their cultural consciousness and try to limit participation to their cultural group. They have ambivalent feelings about their cultural group and try to confirm, for themselves, that they are proud of it. In Stage 3 – Cultural Identity Clarification – individuals are able to clarify their personal attitudes and cultural identity and to develop clarified positive attitudes toward their cultural group. In this stage, cultural pride is genuine rather than contrived. Individual within Stage 4 – Biculturalism – have a healthy sense of cultural identity and the psychological characteristics to participate successfully in their own cultural community as well as in another cultural community.They also have a strong desire to function effectively in two cultures. Stage 5 individuals (Multiculturalism and Reflective Nationalism) have clarified, reflective, and positive personal, cultural, regional, and national identifications and positive attitudes toward other racial, cultural, ethnic groups, and religious groups. At Stage 6 – Globalism and Global Competency – individuals have reflective and clarified national, regional, and global identifications, 18
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Stage 6
Globalism and Global Competency (Cosmopolitanism)
Stage 5
Multiculturalism and Reflective Nationalism (Cultural National Identity)
Stage 4 Biculturalism
Stage 3 Cultural Identity Clarification
Stage 2 Cultural Ethnocentrism
Cultural Encapsulation
New Discovery of Cultural Identity
Stage 1 Cultural Psychological Captivity Figure 1.2 The Stages of Cultural Identity: A Typology Copyright © 2016 by James A. Banks
and internalize human rights values. They have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively within their own cultural communities, within other cultures within their nation-state, in the civic culture of their nation, and in their region, as well as in the global community. Individuals within Stage 6 exemplify cosmopolitanism, believe that people around the world should have human rights, and have a commitment to work to attain those rights. The 19
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primary commitment of cosmopolitan individuals is to justice, not to any particular human community (Gutmann, 2004). Strong, positive, and clarified cultural identifications and attachments are a prerequisite to cosmopolitan beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, and the internalization of human rights values.We must nurture, support, and affirm the identities of students from marginalized cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups if we expect them to endorse national values, become cosmopolitans, internalize human rights values, and work to make their local communities, nation, region, and the world more just and humane.
Notes 1 This chapter is a revised version of the author’s article (2009) published in Multicultural Education Review, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–28. 2 You can download a pdf of this publication at the Center for Multicultural Education website: http:// education.washington.edu/cme/
References Alba, R., & Nee,V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethnics in a world of strangers. New York, NY: Norton. Banks, J. A. (Ed.) (2004a). Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Banks, J. A. (2004b). Introduction: Democratic citizenship education in multicultural societies. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 3–15). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Banks, J. A. (2006). Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum, and teaching (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon Pearson. Banks, J. A. (2007). Educating citizens in a multicultural society (2nd ed.). New York, NY:Teachers College Press. Banks, J. A. (Ed.) (2009). The Routledge international companion to multicultural education. New York, NY & London: Routledge. Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M., & Clegg, A. A. (1999). Teaching strategies for the social studies: Decision-making and citizen action (5th ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Banks, J. A., Banks, C. A. M., Cortés, C. E., Merryfield, M. M., Moodley, K. A., Murphy-Shigematsu, S., Osler, A . . . Parker, W. C. (2005). Democracy and diversity: Principles and concepts for educating citizens in a global age. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Center for Multicultural Education. Banks, J. A., Cookson, P., Gay, G., Hawley, W. D., Irvine, J. J., Nieto, S., Schofield, J. W., & Stephen, W. G. (2001). Diversity within unity: Essential principles for teaching and learning in a multicultural society. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Center for Multicultural Education. Banks, J. A., & Lynch, J. (Eds.) (1986). Multicultural education in Western societies. London & New York, NY: Holt. Bowen, J. R. (2007). Why the French don’t like headscarves: Islam, the state, and public space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brodkin, K. (1998). How Jews became White folks and what that says about race in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Broome, R. (1982). Aboriginal Australians: Black response to White dominance 1788–1980. Sydney, Australia: George Allen & Unwin. Castles, S. (2004). Migration, citizenship, and education. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 17–48). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Castles, S., & Davidson, A. (2000). Citizenship and migration: Globalization and the politics of belonging. New York, NY: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1959). Experience and education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Drachsler, J. (1920). Democracy and assimilation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Gonçalves e Sliva, P. B. (2004). Citizenship and education in Brazil: The contribution of Indian Peoples and Blacks in the struggle for citizenship. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 185–217). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gregorian, G. (2003). Islam: A mosaic, not a monolith. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
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Diversity and citizenship education Gutmann, A. (2004). Unity and diversity in democratic multicultural education: Creative and destructive tensions. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 71–96). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hargreaves, A. G. (1995). Immigration, ‘race,’and ethnicity in France. London & New York, NY: Routledge. Hirasawa,Y. (2009). Multicultural education in Japan. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 159–169). New York, NY & London: Routledge. Inglis, C. (2009). Multicultural education in Australia: Two generations of evolution. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 109–120). NewYork, NY & London: Routledge. Joshee, R. (2009). Multicultural policy in Canada: Competing ideologies, interconnected discourses. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 96–108). New York, NY & London: Routledge. Kallen, H. M. (1924). Culture and democracy in the United States. New York, NY: Boni and Liveright. Kohlberg, L., Mayer, R. S., & Elfenbein, D. (1975). The just community school:The theory and the Cambridge cluster school experiment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Graduate School of Education. (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED223511). Retrieved August 15, 2007 from EBSCOHost ERIC database. Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kymlicka, W. (2004). Foreword. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. xiii–xviii). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lemaire, E. (2009). Education, integration, and citizenship in France. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 323–333). New York, NY & London: Routledge. Lomawaima, K.T., & McCarty,T. L. (2006). “To remain an Indian:” Lessons in democracy from a century of Native American education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Lutchtenberg, S. (2009). Migrants groups in Germany: Success and failure in education. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 463–473). New York, NY & London: Routledge. Murphy-Shigematsu, S. (2004). Expanding the borders of the nation: Ethnic diversity and citizenship education in Japan. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 303–332). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Nieto, S. (2009). Multicultural education in the United States: Historical realities, ongoing challenges, and transformative possibilities. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 79–95). New York, NY & London: Routledge. Nussbaum, M. (2002). Patriotism and cosmopolitanism. In J. Cohen (Ed.), For love of country (pp. 2–17). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Osler, A. (Ed.). (2005). Teachers, human rights, and diversity. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham Books. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2009). Citizenship education in France and England: Contrasting approaches to national identity and diversity. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 334–347). New York, NY& London: Routledge. Richardson, R. (Ed.) (2004). Islamophobia: Issues, challenges, and action: A report on British Muslims and Islamophoia. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham Books. Rosaldo, R. (1997). Cultural citizenship, inequality, and multiculturalism. In W. V. Florres & R. Benmayor (Eds.), Latino cultural citizenship: Claiming identity, space, and rights (pp. 27–28). Boston, MA: Beacon. Schrader, D. (1990). The legacy of Lawrence Kohlberg. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Scott, J.W. (2007). The politics of the veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, International Migration. (2013). Retrieved from http://esa.un.org/unmigration/wallchart2013.htm Webster’s encyclopedic unabridged dictionary of the English language. (1989). New York, NY: Portland House. Wong Fillmore, L. (2005). When learning a second language means losing the first. In M. M. SuárezOrozco, C. Suárez-Orozco, & D. Qin (Eds.), The new immigration: An interdisciplinary reader (pp. 289–307). New York, NY & London: Routledge.
Key concepts and ideas from the chapter 1 Global migration is increasing racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity in nations around the world, which is challenging existing concepts of citizenship and 21
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citizenship education. Consequently, conceptions of citizenship as well as citizenship education must be reformed in schools in multicultural nations in ways that will enable diverse groups to maintain important elements of their cultures, languages, and identities as well as become structurally integrated into their nation-state. Multicultural societies are faced with the problem of constructing nation-states that reflect and incorporate the diversity of its citizens and yet have an overarching set of shared values, ideals, and goals to which all of its citizens are committed. A delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nations and of teaching and learning in multicultural democratic societies. Unity without diversity results in cultural repression and hegemony. Diversity without unity leads to Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state. Citizens within democratic multicultural nation-states endorse the overarching ideals of the nation-state, such as justice and equality, are committed to the maintenance and perpetuation of these ideals, and are willing and able to take action to help close the gap between their nation’s democratic ideals and practices that violate those ideals, such as social, racial, cultural, and economic inequality. Consequently, an important goal of citizenship education in a democratic multicultural nation should be to help students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to make reflective decisions and to take actions to make their nation-states more democratic and just. Students should develop a delicate balance of cultural, national, regional, and global identifications and allegiances. These four identifications are highly interrelated, complex, and contextual. Citizenship education should help students to develop thoughtful and clarified identifications with their cultural communities and their nation-states. It should also help them to develop clarified regional and global identifications and deep understandings of their roles in the world community.
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2 PROBING BENEATH MEANINGS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION1 CHRISTINE E. SLEETERPROBING MEANINGS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
Christine E. Sleeter
Around the world, interest in variations of multicultural education is growing (e.g., Banks, 2004), although terminologies for it differ. For example, while some distinguish between multicultural and antiracist education (e,g., Dei, 1996), others argue a distinction between multicultural and intercultural education (e.g., Muñoz Sedano, 2000). In this chapter, I use the term multicultural education, recognizing that terminology and its meanings are locally contingent. Growth in interest is due to a variety of factors. One highly important factor is the expansion of global capitalism that has shifted locations of work, leading to increasing movement of peoples. As a result, many nations are experiencing large waves of immigration, and schools are struggling, often for the first time, with how to respond. South Korea’s interest in multicultural education has grown rapidly in recent years. A significant proportion of its marriages are international, with children of mixed marriages now entering schools. Although numbers of such children are small at the moment, some analysts project that by 2020, as many as 30 percent of children in Korean schools will be of mixed families (Immigration to South Korea, 2009). The growing importation of migrant workers, especially for manual labor, and the influx of educators, business people, and university students from abroad are further diversifying the population. Broward (2009) argues that Korea has passed the “tipping point” of diversification, and will become a multicultural society whether it wants to or not. These changes call into question Korea’s traditional image of homogeneity, as reflected in a special issue of Korea Journal (2007), which took up the question of “South Korean Society and Multicultural Citizenship.” Han’s (2007) analysis of the situation, in that issue, is particularly perceptive. He argued that Korea is currently experiencing deep ambivalence about its changing population. On the one hand, to bolster the case for important migrant workers and foreign wives, the government is aggressively attempting to popularize an image of a “healthy multicultural society” (p. 35), and images abound showing the harmonious coexistence of multiple cultural groups. On the other hand, in the wake of rapid Westernization, many Koreans long for greater expression of traditional Korean culture, which appears to be withering away. Han then analyzes relationships between the relative political power of different communities, expressions of culture, and positions taken about what multiculturalism means. Social class is one highly significant factor. While many Koreans view the cultures of professional class foreigners as having capital, Koreans tend to disdain cultures of low-skill migrant workers. Foreign 23
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wives, marginalized on the basis of gender as well as social class, are pressured most harshly to assimilate and to abandon expressions of the cultures of their countries of origin. When the Korean government sponsors cultural celebrations to proclaim the value of a multicultural Korea, it expects migrants to display expressions of traditional cultures of their homelands rather than their actual living circumstances in Korea. Han argues that, “Discourse on multiculturalism has become politically correct and mainstream in a relatively short period of time, paradoxically because Korea has thus far had little serious debate or argument over multiculturalism or the transformation of Korean society” (p. 35). Increased electronic global communication is facilitating exchange of ideas about what multiculturalism means.While multicultural discourse imported from other countries may offer useful analytical tools, Han (2007) cautions that policy should derive from Koreans analyzing the situation in Korea, rather than from imported foreign discourse. As terms like culture, multicultural, or intercultural move from one national context to another, it is important to pay attention to how such terms steer the framing of problems, construction of discourse communities, and subsequent shaping of practice in schools. Danziger’s (1990) view of knowledge as a “collective enterprise” helps us to examine how terminology steers thought and action. He describes knowledge production as “governed by definite rules that are reflected in the form of the product. The knowledge product . . . always takes the form of an ordered array of some kind. The nature of such an array depends on the ordering principles that are incorporated in the constituting practices” (p. 195). Investigating any body of knowledge involves uncovering the principles that order it, and the “human action and social relations” in which it was constructed – the communities, vested interests, and purposes in which the ordering principles make sense (p. 195). In this chapter, I probe rules that lie below the surface of four conceptions of multicultural education in a global context, and their implications for curriculum.This kind of analysis is useful because, as multicultural education migrates from one context to another, it is easy to assume consensus about its meaning. But assuming consensus truncates local debates about difference and justice, and elevates the power of some social constituencies to define lines of action, while silencing others. Figure 2.1 illustrates four conceptions of multicultural education as lying along two axes. The vertical axis differentiates between emphasis on cultural difference, and emphasis on equity
Emphasis on Culture
Global Perspective
Nation-Bound Perspective
Emphasis on Equity, Justice Figure 2.1 Multicultural Education in a Globalized Context
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and social justice. Emphasis on culture focuses on building understanding of cultural differences within a framework national or international consensus. Emphasis on equity and justice focuses on attending to inequitable power relationships among groups (see Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997). Although the poles of this axis are not mutually exclusive, theorists and practitioners at either end differ in their analysis of the fundamental problem that “difference” indicates, and consequent solutions. The horizontal axis differentiates between a nation-bound perspective and a global perspective (see Camicia, 2007). Emphasis on diversity within the nation tends to view national borders as fixed, and diverse communities within the nation as relatively self-contained. Emphasis on a global perspective situates the nation’s cultural diversity in an international context, giving at least as much attention to diversity outside national borders as within. As with the vertical axis, these are not mutually exclusive; practices can lie along the range of a continuum, but theorists and practitioners at either end of the poles differ. In what follows, I briefly present “ideal types” of each of these four conceptions of multicultural education in terms of underlying assumptions each is based on, ideas and actions each authorizes, and which discourse communities tend to promote and benefit most from each. I will draw some connections with South Korea as best I can, given my location in the United States. Since these four conceptions are differentiated by degrees of emphasis, there is, in practice, overlap and blurring among them. But I hope to show choices among assumptions and actions that may not be directly articulated when people take up multicultural education – choices that have consequent implications for whose perspectives are advanced and whose may be silenced.
Appreciating the nation’s cultural differences Fostering cross-cultural appreciation within a framework of national unity is probably the most common way that schools interpret multicultural education, particularly in the context of immigration. One can readily find examples of multiculturalism framed this way with regard to South Korea. For example, in an introduction to a university course about multicultural education in South Korea, Kim (2009) explains that, “Multicultural education begins with the notion that there are various cultural groups in the world, and each individual belong to at least one or more cultural groups at the same time. The purpose of multicultural education is to help students to enhance the values and attitudes for mutual respect for people, and to interact with others of different cultural backgrounds in more effective ways.” Similarly,Yoon (2007) describes multiculturalism as “an ideology or policy to help a society acknowledge, respect and co-exist with different races or cultural groups instead of trying to meld them forcibly into one” (p. 1). Both discussions frame the “diversity problem” within assumptions underlying a conception of multicultural education as teaching cross-cultural appreciation in order to build national unity.
Underlying assumptions A cultural appreciation conception of multicultural education assumes that schools should help to build national unity, and that differences among cultural groups should be accepted and acknowledged within a larger framework of unity. This conception views culture mainly as heritage passed down through the family, that offers a sense of personal identity and expression. Strongly assimilationist views of national unity emphasize weakening or eliminating ties to immigrant communities of origin, based on the assumption that without assimilation, groups will remain distinct. Kim (2006) points out, however, that one need not choose between cultural assimilation or pluralism, but rather search for basic values that diverse peoples share, while 25
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allowing people to retain expressions of culture and identity. In other words, cultivating national identity and respecting cultural identity can be complementary. Multicultural education as cross-cultural appreciation is usually taken up in response to conflict and/or school problems that ethnic minority students experience. Conflict, which may be expressed in a variety of ways such as name-calling or fighting, signals a problem; very often, absence of conflict (particularly in a relatively homogenous community) suggests that no problem exists. It is assumed that conflict results from ignorance about or prejudice against cultural, linguistic, or other characteristics exhibited by people who differ from each other, and that curriculum can build harmony by offering experiences and information about diverse groups – differences as well as similarities among groups, cultural contributions, and life ways. Academic problems of ethnic minority students are presumed to arise from conflict between the culture of the school and that of the home. For example, writing with reference to newly arrived immigrant students in Hong Kong who come from the Chinese mainland,Yuen (2002) points out that they have distinct needs: they speak a different dialect than that spoken in Hong Kong, they are generally from lower socio-economic backgrounds and are often behind academically, and many experience social conflict with Hong Kong students. As teachers learn to acknowledge, appreciate, and work with students’ culture, they can build bridges between minority students and the school curriculum.The cultural appreciation conception assumes that the social system is open to educated people, regardless of their backgrounds; success in school will lead to success in life.
Ideas and actions authorized To build cross-cultural understanding, this conception of multicultural education authorizes use of curricula that teach about cultural similarities and differences, and pedagogical processes such as exchanges and cooperative learning that enable students from diverse backgrounds to get to know each other personally. Children’s literature is a common vehicle schools use to do this. For example, Sandman (2004) suggests using first-person fiction that features characters who are immigrants from different places, and the same age as students in one’s classroom, as a way of developing students’ awareness of diverse cultural communities. At the same time, Shin (2001) points out that only teaching about cultural differences leads to stereotyping. In order to “prepare their students to be cooperative world citizens,” teachers need to help students “find the ways that we are connected” (p. 110). To support academic learning, a cultural appreciation conception of multicultural education uses culture and language as a departure point for academics. Welcome programs or Newcomer schools are a common way in which school districts prepare new immigrant students for transition into local schools. Classroom teaching links student background with academic learning. For example, McGinnis (2007) worked with Vietnamese and Cambodian middle school immigrant students in the United States, in a summer program for literacy development.The students “had been deemed by their public schools as ‘at risk;’ ” McGinnis wanted to “create a small space of caring and support for these students,” so she built a literacy curriculum around “their interests, knowledge, and social worlds” (p. 573). The program enabled the students to draw literacy practices and themes from their life experiences prior to and after immigrating, as well as popular youth culture forms such as rap. When students were encouraged to use their interests, linguistic repertoires, and cultural frames of reference as a basis for inquiry-based literacy projects, McGinnis found them to be capable learners. She argues that such projects might soften the cultural boundaries between immigrant students and their teachers.
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Cross-cultural appreciation can also be applied to other forms of difference, including religion, gender, disability, or region of the country. In the United States, for example, some teachers add appreciation of deaf culture to the curriculum, particularly by teaching signing and deaf theater. Teachers might also teach students about regional variations of speech, dress, or lifestyle. Contributions women have made to the nation is another way of teaching appreciation of a group that is undervalued.
Discourse communities most likely to benefit A cross-cultural appreciation conception of multicultural education is usually invoked by members of communities that are reasonably well off economically and politically, or those who see themselves as becoming reasonably well off once they master national culture and its systems. This includes members of the dominant society who are interested in cultural differences and want to remedy conflicts by building appreciation of differences. Han’s example of a “government-supported program intended to actively facilitate cultural exchanges between migrant workers and Korean society” (p. 43) is apropos. Members of non-dominant communities seeking more space and support for cultural (and sometimes religious) expression in schools, more acknowledgement of their histories and contributions, or simply acknowledgment of their very presence also often see themselves benefiting from a basic politics of recognition. But a cultural appreciation conception of multicultural education has limits. First, it can divert schools from ensuring that minority children master the academic tools they will need to succeed. For example, Law (2002) notes that in Taiwan some indigenous communities have objected to having to study local culture and language, rather than the dominant language as well as English – tools that would provide access to the mainstream. Leeman and Reid (2006) note that aboriginal students in Australia have often found study of traditional aboriginal culture imposed on them, when they are actually interested in other cultural formations, such as urban rap. Second, a “unity in diversity” conception of multiculturalism is sometimes adopted as a way of managing ethnic diversity while minimizing attention to the dominance of one ethnic group (Bokhorst-Heng, 2007). This conception does not emphasize significant critique of the nation-state itself and its institutions, power relations among groups in the nation, or perspectives that might question national unity or prioritize non-dominant cultural perspectives over national perspectives. As Han (2007) points out, the approach substitutes a discourse of culture for a discourse of survival.The “Other” becomes an object of study; the dominant culture and its institutions tend to go unquestioned (Leeman & Reid, 2006). Because of its muted or nonexistent critique of the nation-state and institutionalized relationships among groups, members of communities that have experienced a history of subordination often see a cultural appreciation conception as limited.
Appreciating international cultural differences International multicultural education, sometimes referred to as “cosmopolitanism,” differs from the conception above in its emphasis on other countries rather than on diversity within the nation. An influx of immigrants may lead schools to teach about countries from which immigrants come. (There can be considerable overlap between this and the previous conception of multicultural education when working with recent immigrants.) Cosmopolitanism is also often
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invoked as preparation for increased global travel, or as an accompaniment to international student exchanges or relocation of professional class families from abroad. Additionally, educators who are interested in other peoples around the world often use this conception. I have visited schools in the United States, for example, in which each classroom studies a different country, and then the school holds a culminating international fair.
Underlying assumptions Multicultural education as international cultural appreciation assumes that schools should and can help to build a more peaceful global village by teaching students to acknowledge and accept cultural differences among the world’s people. Usually, this conception views culture as lifeways within national borders of countries, implicitly assuming a fairly homogeneous and often traditional version of those national lifeways. As Dutt (1998) puts it, “The concept of nation-state in international relations is based on certain assumptions, such as that humanity is divided into nations and each nation is entitled to the right to self- determination, i.e. a state of its own” (p. 412). Therefore, ironically, nationalism often becomes an implicit core element of international multicultural education (Parker & Camicia, 2008). Increasingly, one finds theorists who advocate a cosmopolitan global identity in which individuals pick and choose from a range of cultural practices and identities drawn from around the world (e.g., Nussbaum, 1997). Cosmopolitan advocates champion a global identity they believe will replace more localized ethnic identities. As with the previous conception, conflict signals a problem that multicultural education is used to address. Conflicts may be in the local school or community, such as when large numbers of immigrants arrive. Or, educators may offer comparative education to attempt to address global political conflicts. For example, Yoo and Kim (2002) note that curricula offering students study of foreign languages and comparisons of the cultures, histories, economies, and political systems of different countries in relationship to Korea attempt to foster a “sound attitude” among future citizens (p. 10). Like the conception above, this one assumes that much global conflict results from ignorance about or prejudice against cultural, linguistic, or other characteristics of people who differ from oneself, and that curriculum can address this problem by teaching about “Others.”
Ideas and actions authorized To build international cross-cultural understanding, this conception of multicultural education authorizes curricula as well as international exchanges (real or virtual) that teach about national similarities and differences. For example, some schools with high numbers of immigrants from diverse countries invite students to bring clothing items and food from their native countries, as an entrée into studying a little about each country. Following the 9/11 attacks, many teachers in the United States developed interest in teaching about cultures of the Middle East and Arab world (Al-Hazzi & Lucking, 2007). Infusing positive depictions of the histories and cultures of different countries into textbooks is a response that is consistent with this approach.Yoo and Kim (2002) argue that ethnocentrism in South Korean textbooks presents a problem in cultivating citizens with an orientation toward world peace. In a discussion that specifically critiques negative images of Japan and North Korea, they argue that curricula should move away from teaching national superiority, and toward cultivating open-mindedness among students toward countries with which Korea will likely need to forge closer relationships. 28
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Discourse communities most likely to benefit An international cultural appreciation conception of multicultural education is usually invoked by those who are reasonably well off in the society, or see themselves as upwardly mobile within the global economic system. But as Calhoun (2003) explains, cosmopolitanism is an expression of elitism, of privilege: [W]hen cosmopolitan appeals to humanity as a whole are presented in individualistic terms, they are apt to privilege those with the most capacity to get what they want by individual action. However well intentioned, they typically devalue the ways in which other people depend on ethnic, national, and communal solidarities – among others – to solve practical problems in their lives. (p. 545) An international cultural appreciation conception is also often invoked by people who champion global peace. In the United States, for example, white educators who travel internationally, as well as international students, express interest in this conception of multicultural education. Powerful international organizations such as the World Bank also appear to favor it because of its potential for cultivating a global marketplace (Spring, 2008). Again, these constituencies tend to be well-off economically. Not all immigrant communities, however, experience this conception of multicultural education positively. Han’s (2007) discussion of conflict over who can define the content of a festival featuring immigrants, such as the Arirang festival, is pertinent here. While government sponsors insisted that the content focus on traditional cultures, migrant worker activists sought to bring attention to their experiences of marginalization in Korea. As Han explains, [T]he multicultural state of affairs on the part of migrant workers and internationally married families give rise to the concern that their actual problems are concealed by the discourse on multiculturalism that focuses on discussing cultural diversity or inter- cultural exchange and understanding. Their main interest remains in resolving the political and economic conditions endemic to international migration, or the problems pertaining to their living conditions and state of sojourn. (p. 47) When multicultural education is viewed as international cultural differences, communities least likely to benefit are ethnic or racialized communities within the nation’s borders who are routinely marginalized. The cosmopolitan view of a new global identity ignores the reality that identities are partially ascribed, and those from groups that experience discrimination cannot simply choose a new identity (Calhoun, 2003). Concerns of indigenous peoples, particularly, are ignored in this conception, as are other forms of marginalization. Conceptions that name, analyze, and challenge exploitation and oppression are more likely to be taken up by long-standing marginalized communities than are those that attend to culture without explicitly addressing justice.
Anti-discrimination and social justice Multicultural education that challenges discrimination seeks equal treatment of peoples, with full acceptance of their identities and backgrounds. While culture is part of the curriculum, 29
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the emphasis is on equity and justice, more than on cultural appreciation. Lee and Min (2005) point out that interest in working to eliminate discrimination in Korean society is relatively new, and that the most work has been done with reference to discrimination against women, people with disabilities, and people from poor regions of the country. Only recently has racial discrimination begun to receive attention due to the presence of immigrants and foreign workers, in the context of the common belief that Koreas are a single race of people who share the same blood. Writing with reference to Japan, Murphy-Shigematsu (2003) questions the myth of a homogeneous society made up of one race. He points out, Japan has never been as homogeneous as she appeared or wanted to be, and that the myth of homogeneity has until recently curtailed Japan’s ability to work constructively with its diverse students, especially in the current context of immigration. The problem, as Murphy-Shigematsu sees it, is that ethnic minority groups (including Koreans who immigrated to Japan) face discrimination, especially when definitions of who is Japanese render them “foreign.” Sharing cultural practices in the classroom does not address ways in which the “state struggles with its attempts to keep minorities marginal, disenfranchised, and disposable.” From the perspective of minorities, discrimination and racism that maintain their second-class status is what must be addressed. Rather than studying about groups, the focus is on power relationships between and among groups that differ by gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, and other factors.
Underlying assumptions An anti-discrimination and social justice conception assumes that while cultural heritages are important and often a source of strength, at least as significant are ways in which subordinate groups are routinely marginalized, discriminated against, and disempowered, within both schools and the larger society. As long as systemic discrimination exists, it is not enough to get a good education since one will continue to face barriers despite one’s education. The central problem needing attention is assumed to be the power of dominant groups to institutionalize discrimination and exploitation. An anti-discrimination approach also assumes that, while culture is central to identity, some cultural practices are better understood as adaptations to powerless and poverty than as a treasured inheritance. In the United States, for example, immigrants who work as unskilled laborers sometimes crowd multiple families into one apartment or small house. I have heard this practice described as a cultural preference for sharing, when it is actually a reaction to low wages and high rents. The goal of multicultural education as anti-discrimination and social justice is to strengthen collective power of disempowered groups, and to cultivate allies among dominant groups. This includes dismantling inequitable systems that are institutionalized in schools, such as tracking systems and special education programs that trap students from marginalized communities into lower levels of education. It also includes preparing young people as citizens to work for equity. Writing from the perspective as a Korean in the United States, Kim (2006) argues that although these ideas may be foreign to how multicultural education is usually conceptualized within Korea, it would behoove Koreans to analyze their own historic experience in the United States. There, Koreans faced racism in immigration policies as well as policies surrounding rights and access to resources within the country, and Koreans, along with other Asians, also experienced the designation of “perpetual foreigner.” He points out that the situation is reversed today as immigrants to Korea face very similar issues.
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Ideas and actions authorized To empower students from subordinate groups both intellectually and culturally, anti-discrimination social justice (sometimes also called “human rights”) conceptions of multicultural education generally begin with grassroots projects that explicitly recognize a community’s experience with oppression, and draw on that community’s history and knowledge as a source of power. In the process, such projects work to decolonize the minds of young people, who have often absorbed the dominant society’s negative images of them. A US example is the Mexican American/Raza Studies Department in Tucson, Arizona, initiated in 1998 following a petition by a group of Mexican American parents who wanted a Mexican American studies curriculum for their children. One of its projects is the Social Justice Education Project. Developed by Mexican American educators, a four-semester high school social studies curriculum that meets the state’s standards was adjusted to facilitate students’ critical consciousness about racial inequalities affecting their lives. The curriculum has three components: 1) critical pedagogy in which students create rather than consume knowledge, 2) authentic caring in which educators demonstrate respect for students as full human beings, and 3) social justice content that directly counters racism through intellectual frameworks that connect directly with students’ lived experience. The curriculum teaches about racial and economic inequalities from Mexican American perspectives, immersing students in university-level social theory involving concepts such as “hegemony” and “social reproduction.” Students conduct community-based research in which they gather data about manifestations of racism in their school and community, and use social science theories to analyze why these patterns exist and how they can be challenged, and then formally present their research to the community. Students who had been failing in school are now graduating and many are going on to college because of their experiences in this program (Cammarota & Romero, 2009). Drawing from Lee and Min’s (2005) discussion of discourses on discrimination in South Korea, one can suggest a curriculum designed to unpack and challenge gender discrimination. The authors describe three major discourses that justify gender discrimination despite legal prohibitions against it: Confucian, biological, and economic discourses. According to the Confucian discourse, sex discrimination is “based on sexual difference that is considered to agree with the order of the universe (Lee & Min, 2005, p. 133).” Similarly, the biological discourse locates sex differences in innate biological differences that justify treating gender roles and differential treatment. The economic discourse locates women’s work mainly in childbirth and childrearing, which are taken as more significant than women’s careers or labor force participation. A curriculum designed to challenge sex discrimination would begin by engaging students in analyzing fallacies of these discourses. Curriculum directed toward members of dominant groups aims to build allies for challenging institutionalized oppression, but ally-building curricula differ somewhat from curricula to empower members of subordinate groups. Writing about white people in the United States, for example, Tatum (1997) points out that most are initially unprepared to challenge racism because they have grown up seeing racism as “normal” and themselves as nonracial. Curriculum for cross-racial ally-building teaches about racism and white privilege, how white people have internalized these, and the work of allies of minorities “who spoke up, who worked for social change, who resisted racism and lived to tell about it” (p. 108). As allies learn about the work of other allies, they can learn to collaborative with members of marginalized communities on projects that challenge oppression and build justice.
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Discourse communities most likely to benefit While one can make a case that eliminating discrimination would benefit everyone, those who are most likely to benefit from and advocate for anti-discrimination are members of disempowered groups. For example, in a discussion of anti-racist education, Dei (1996) points out that while Canada espouses ideals of equity and justice, most Canadians, particularly Euro-Canadians, assume that inequities will disappear over time without direct attention. As a result, minority students continue to experience racism, and are the ones most likely to advocate anti-racism to challenge it. Not all oppressed peoples see themselves as sharing common concerns or identify with each other, however. Some subordinate groups, such as Burakumin in Japan (Gordon, 2006) or people with disabilities in any country, have been so silenced that the act of naming themselves and speaking to the nature of their oppression is, in itself, a political act that requires a shift in consciousness and collective courage. As Han (2007) points out, in Korea an expansion of a discourse about rights is opening space for other groups that have long been marginalized but silent to now advocate for their own rights. Because of its nation-bound character, however, this conception of multicultural education obscures concerns of broader communities that extend outside the nation’s borders, as well as relationships that cut across national boundaries. For example, many educators who confront racism and colonialism within the borders of the United States have been reluctant to critique US aggression in the Middle East, or US transnational corporations that have devastated the livelihoods of many people in Latin America and Asia, both of which prompt emigration of those who are displaced.
Anti-discrimination and global justice Global capitalism, having originated in the West but now incorporating much of the world, defines itself as human progress. Its powerful imagery suggests that the route to modernization and life in the 21st century invariably takes place through expansion of the economic marketplace. This imagery, however, hides power relations and an underlying ideology that enshrines reverence for private property and the marketplace over concern for the public and for political activism. Globally shifting patterns of job distribution, wealth, and power are realigning relations among peoples, leading to new social movements. For example, in summer 2006, large-scale protests took place in Korea against scheduled talks to establish a Korea–US Free Trade Agreement, because such international agreements, based on neoliberal economic principles, tend to benefit those with economic capital, at the expense of workers such as farmers and factory laborers (Doucette, 2006). In a discussion linking racism with global capitalism, Giroux (2005) points out that neoliberalism under global capitalism “attempts to eliminate an engaged critique about its most basic principles and social consequences” (p. 75). Within an ideology of individualism and competition for wealth accumulation, the economic subordination of people of color globally is simply not interrogated, and state responsibility for addressing racism is limited to policing individual acts of prejudice. Because racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination are bound up with distribution of power and resources globally, and because no nation is exempt from the reaches of global capitalism today, this conception of multiculturalism fuses anti-discrimination with work toward global justice.
Underlying assumptions An anti-discrimination and global justice conception of multicultural education assumes that elites tend to represent elite interests. Elites are bound up increasingly with large transnational 32
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corporations that negotiate power with and for them globally in order to expand access to exploitable labor, resources, and markets.This conception assumes that grassroots activist organizations have a better sense than elites of social justice both within the nation as well as globally; knowledge from the “bottom-up” is much better attuned to the nature of injustice than is knowledge from the “top down.” Postcolonial theorists, for example, often use indigeneity as a standpoint from which to critique power, knowledge, and identities as they are constructed by dominant Western writers and institutions. For example, Ninnes (2000) finds Australian and Canadian science textbooks that incorporate some indigenous knowledge, but frame it as a lifestyle of the past rather than as “a means of overcoming racism and cultural imperialism” (pp. 614–615). He recommends that curriculum writers form partnerships with indigenous and other marginalized communities in order to construct curriculum that actually works against racism and imperialism. This conception of multicultural education also sees the nation-state as limiting how we think about communities. Movements of peoples across national borders produce diasporas that continue to share culture, identity, religion and language, even though they may be scattered across nation-states. People in diverse nations who share not only culture and language, but also political/ economic status, may have more in common than those who share national citizenship (Ladson-Billings, 2004). Not only are immigrants into Korea members of global diasporas who may share common concerns resulting from their place within the global economy, but Koreans globally are also members of a diaspora who may share common issues.
Ideas and actions authorized Anti-discrimination and global justice conceptions of multicultural education are found in schools far less often than the previous three conceptions of multicultural education. I suspect that this is true because such a conception of multicultural education is both conceptually complex in its linkage of local and global politics, and most at-odds with prevailing school curricula. Curricula based on this conception seek to raise awareness of ways in which multiple forms of marginalization are continually structured through neocolonialism/global capitalism, in order to build global coalitions that can work for justice across borders. An example of such a curriculum in the United States is Rethinking Globalization (Bigelow & Peterson, 2002), which guides teachers in helping young people learn to connect colonialism and racism, historically as well as today. It begins by examining “how the world became divided between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries” historically, and how European and then US colonization produced global disparities in wealth (pp. 38–42). Today’s division between rich and poor is a legacy of this historic process as well as a product of ongoing racism connected with capitalism. Chapters examine how global profit-seeking systems, including transnational corporations, the International Monetary Fund, and structural adjustment programs, produce “colonialism without colonies” (p. 61) as they shift wealth from impoverished countries to wealthy countries and particularly transnational corporations. Chapters discussing global sweatshops, child labor, and food production illustrate how, under neocolonial globalization, human needs are subordinated to profit-seeking. For example, a page about Nike contrasts the average daily wage of workers in Indonesia, China, and Vietnam with the cost of a pair of Air Tuned Sirocco runners, CEO Phil Knight’s stock value in Nike, and the millions of dollars Nike pays high-profile sponsors. Bigelow and Peterson (2002) emphasize that although people exploit each other, the deeper issue is the system of profit that drives exploitation. Rethinking Globalization shows various strategies people use to fight back, and in the process helps readers to identify ways in which they can act in solidarity. 33
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Discourse communities most likely to benefit Katharine Ainger, writing in Rethinking Globalization, pinpoints the discourse communities most likely to benefit from an anti-discrimination and global justice conception of multicultural education: There is a section of the population that is just as present in the U.S. and in Britain – the homeless, unemployed people, on the streets of London – which is also there in the indigenous communities, villages, and farms of India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil. And all those who face the backlash of this kind of economics are coming together – to create a new, people-centered world order. (Bigelow & Peterson, 2002, p. 343) In other words, marginalized communities around the world constitute the discourse communities most likely to benefit, particularly to the extent that this conception of multicultural education supports organizing across national borders. However, as Harvey (2005) points out, neoliberalism under global capitalism has become a tool for restoration of elite power and private wealth accumulation. Torres (1998) notes that capitalist societies create and structure economic inequities in participation in formal systems; elites translate their economic power into political power. That power will be used to blunt critiques of global capitalism. One may speculate that it would be used to promote versions of multicultural education that rest comfortably within current power relations rather than challenging them.
Conclusion I offer this analysis of multicultural education in the context of globalization and the politics of knowledge as a tool for examining assumptions about school practice, and who stands to benefit most from which sets of practices. I encourage readers not to reduce these four ideal-types to flat, mutually exclusive depictions, but rather to use my analysis as a heuristic for analyzing meanings of multicultural education in specific contexts, and the social relations behind the production of any set of meanings. Different nations have different histories and contexts; multicultural or intercultural education must be fashioned locally, in response to local concerns, and involving a wide variety of actors negotiating how needs and concerns will be addressed (Leeman & Reid, 2006). At the same time, analytical tools that compare conceptions of multicultural education can help to broaden discussions beyond solutions to diversity, solutions that at first glance may seem obvious. By disrupting meanings that may seem common or commonsense, we may pave the way for broader dialogs about multicultural education, diversity, and justice.
Note 1 This chapter is a reprint of the author’s article (2010) published in Multicultural Education Review, vol. 2, no. 1. pp. 1–24.
References Al-Hazza, T., & Lucking, B. (2007). Celebrating diversity through explorations of Arab children’s literature. Childhood Education, 63(3), 132–135. Banks, J. A. (Ed.) (2004). Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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Probing meanings of multicultural education Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (Eds.) (2002). Rethinking globalization. Milwaukee,WI: Rethinking Schools Press. Bokhorst-Heng,W. D. (2007). Multiculturalism’s narratives in Singapore and Canada: Exploring a model for comparative multiculturalism and multicultural education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(6), 629–258. Broward, J. (2009, November 12). Korea at tipping point of multicultural society. Korea Times. Retrieved March 6, 2010, from www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/ news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=55370 Calhoun, C. (2003). Belonging in the cosmopolitan imaginary. Ethnicities, 3(3), 531–553. Camicia, S. P. (2007). Deliberating immigration policy: Locating instructional materials within global and multicultural perspectives. Theory and Research in Social Education, 35(1), 96–111. Cammarota, J., & Romero, A. (2009). The social justice education project: A critically compassionate intellectualism for Chicana/o students. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn, & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook for social justice education. New York: Laurence Erlbaum. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dei, G. J. S. (1996). Anti-racism education. Halifax, Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Doucette, J. (2006). Korean neoliberalism and empire. ZNet. Retrieved August 6, 2009, from www.zmag. org/znet/viewArticle/3589 Dutt, S. (1998). Identities and the Indian state: An overview. Third World Quarterly, 19(3), 411–433. Giroux, H. A. (2005). Spectacles of race and pedagogies of denial. In L. Karumanchery (Ed.), Engaging equity (pp. 59–78). Calgary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises, Ltd. Gordon, J. A. (2006). From liberation to human rights: Challenges for teachers of the Burakumin in Japan. Race Ethnicity and Education, 9(2), 183–202. Han, G. S. (2007). Multicultural Korea: Celebration or challenge of multiethnic shift in contemporary Korea? Korea Journal, 47(4), 32–63. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Immigration to South Korea. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 5, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Immigration_to_South_Korea Kim, J. (2006). Korea’s multicultural dilemma: A reflection from the historical experiences of Koreans in the U.S. Asia Cultural Forum. Retrieved March 6, 2010, from www.cct.go.kr/data/acf2006/multi/ multi_0403_Joon%20Kim.pdf Kim, S. M. (2009). Multicultural education in Korea: Current state, focus and problems. School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London. Retrieved March 6, 2010, from www.soas.ac.uk/events/ event50715.html Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). Culture versus citizenship. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 99–126). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Law, W. W. (2002). Education reform in Taiwan: A search for a national identity through democratization and Taiwanisation. Compare, 32(1), 61–81. Lee, S., & Min, M. (2005). Discourses on discrimination in Korea and their specifics. Women’s Studies Forum of the Korean Women’s Development Institute, 21, 133. Leeman, Y., & Reid, C. (2006). Multi/intercultural education in Australia and the Netherlands. Compare, 36(1), 57–72. McGinnis, T. A. (2007). Khmer rap boys, X-men, Asia’s fruits, and Dragonball Z: Creating multilingual and multimodal classroom texts. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50(7), 570–578. Muñoz Sedano, A. (2000). Hacia una educación intercultural: Enfoques y modelos. Encounters on Education, 1, 82–106. Murphy-Shigematsu, S. (2003). Challenges for multicultural education in Japan. New Horizons for Learning. Retrieved January 25, 2008, from www.newhorizons. org/strategies/multicultural/murphy-shige matsu.htm Ninnes, P. (2000). Representations of indigenous knowledges in secondary school science textbooks in Australia and Canada. International Journal of Science Education, 22(6), 603–617. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating humanity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parker,W. C., & Camicia, S. P. (2008). The new international education movement in U.S. schools: Civic and capital intents, local and global affinities. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, March, 2008, New York. Sandman, A. (2004). Contemporary immigration: First-person fiction from Cuba, Haiti, Korea, and Cambodia. Social Studies, 95(3), 115. Shin, E. K. (2001, May). Reaching beyond differences in multicultural education. The Social Studies, 109–112. Spring, J. (2008). Research on globalization and education. Review of Educational Research, 78(2), 330–363.
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Christine E. Sleeter Tatum, B. D. (1997). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? New York: Basic Books. Torres, C. A. (1998). Democracy, education, and multiculturalism. Comparative Education Review, 42(4), 421–447. Yoo, S. S., & Kim, H. J. (2002). The meaning of peace and the role of education in South Korea. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, March 3–6, 2002, Orlando, Florida. Yoon, I. J. (2007). Steps toward a multicultural Korea. Korea.net. Retrieved March 6, 2010, from http:// korea.net/news/News/newsprint.asp?serial_no=20071207014 Yuen, C.Y. M. (2002). Education for new arrivals and multicultural teacher education in Hong Kong. New Horizons in Education, 44–45, 12–21.
Key concepts and ideas from the chapter 1
Conceptions of multicultural education differ, depending on whether they emphasize cultural differences or social justice, whether they emphasize diverse groups within the nation or globally. 2 Many people believe multicultural education should emphasize appreciation of differences within a framework of national unity, but the main limitation is that this approach ignores most forms of discrimination and injustice. 3 Multicultural education viewed as building international cross-cultural understanding is often supported by people who advocate for world peace, but this approach may ignore concerns of minority groups within a given nation. 4 Many racial or ethnic minority groups view multicultural education as direct work to counter racism and other forms of discrimination in education as well as in society at large. 5 Of the meanings of multicultural education discussed in this chapter, perhaps the most comprehensive but least used focuses on building justice for groups experiencing discrimination world-wide, and challenges ways in which the global economy creates and reinforces inequality.
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3 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS SUSAN MARKUS AND FRANCISCO RIOSMULTICULTURAL EDUCATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Toward achieving harmony in a global age1 Susan Markus and Francisco Rios
The need to achieve harmony in a world defined by human diversity in all its manifestations – religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, etc. – is crucial for survival of the human species and the global planet.While the world has always been diverse due to the presence of indigenous people, interactions among people from diverse backgrounds occurs more substantially contemporarily due to immigration, displacement or forced relocation, and global movement of people for commercial, social, and political purposes. In crossing borders of difference, people do not leave their cultural orientations – value systems, worldviews, cultural repertoires of practice, etc. – in their home settings. This creates a need to foster new ways of being citizens in a world marked by the affirmation of difference, the reality of transnationalism, and the ideals of global harmony. Education is vital to this process, as highlighted by Stavenhagen (2008): In today’s globalised and interconnected world, living together peacefully has become a moral, social and political imperative on which depends, to a great extent, the survival of human kind. No wonder that education, it its widest sense is called upon to play a major role in this world-wide shared task. (p. 161) This chapter adds to the clamor of voices describing the role that multicultural education might play in this shared global task. These descriptions are found in books (see, for example, Banks, 2009b; Grant & Portero, 2011), journals (see, for example, the International Journal of Multicultural Education and Multicultural Education Review), and international symposia sponsored by professional associations (the Korean Association for Multicultural Education, the International Association for Intercultural Education, and National Association for Multicultural Education). The focus on understanding, respecting, and affirming diversity within the nation-state has historically been the primary focus of multicultural education (also called intercultural education2 in many nations) since its inception. Indeed, all societies are multicultural “in more than one sense, since, in addition to indigenous peoples, there are also national and ethnic minorities, immigrants from different cultures and other groups demanding their right to exercise their cultural identity” (Stavenhagen, 2008, pp. 171–172). We believe that most nation-states now recognize the immorality of forced cultural and linguistic assimilation, seeking instead to affirm difference while simultaneously promoting social unity. 37
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While some multicultural education in international and culturally diverse national contexts focuses on the value and practices of human rights education (Pimentel, 2006), we focus on access to quality multicultural education as a human right of its own accord, in which all students are entitled to an education that is multicultural. In this regard, we believe multicultural education can play a valuable role in the conception of human rights. We also assert that multicultural education can benefit from rooting itself in human rights principles: the right to learn about oneself, to learn about others, and to learn citizenship skills associated with a deep democracy in a global age.
Framing the need for multicultural education Humans understand and explain phenomena through conceptual lenses or cognitive frameworks (Bensimon, 2005). Ruiz (1984) reviews cognitive frames used to describe the need for bilingual education, explaining that bilingual education was once framed as a problem (focusing on English-only approaches to language diversity) and as an instrument to achieve assimilationist ends to get students to speak English quickly. Ruiz, however, argues for bilingual education as a human right, a means and an end to affirming language diversity. Correspondingly, we assert that various frames exist to describe the needs for multicultural education. Changing demographics and closing the achievement gap frame multicultural education as a way to solve problems; cross-cultural competence is often framed as a means of developing human relations skills and dispositions; countering colonization and hegemony is viewed from lenses to recognize and challenge systemic and structural inequities. We believe these frames extend and can be extended by viewing multicultural education as a human right.3
The foundations of multicultural education as a human right The proposition that multicultural education is a human right is rooted in viewing access to quality education and cultural diversity as internationally recognized rights. Inspired by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas’s (2000) scholarship on language diversity as a human right, we also draw on various international declarations on human rights and education rights, especially UNESCO’s Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2002), and the contemporary development of a declaration of education rights advanced by Jim Strickland (n.d.).
Access to quality education as a human right In initial contemporary international accords, access to education has been understood as an essential human right and a vehicle for advancing human rights.4 Article 26 of The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) explained: Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (p. 76) The focus of these efforts was on situating education – free, compulsory, and lifelong – as both a means and an end to human rights. Recently, the focus has shifted from access toward assuring quality educational experiences (Pimentel, 2006). For example, UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy focused on “improving 38
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the quality of education through the diversification of contents and methods” (Pimentel, 2006, p. 11). Threats to quality education include increasing neoliberal reforms that consider education an individual good, purchased for commercial interests, not as a public good for community responsibility (Pimentel, 2006). The concern is that neoliberalism in education leads to a “twotiered system that creates inequities rooted in social class, caste, and gender” (p. 8). The focus of education as a human right has primarily been described as an entitlement to the individual. In 1989, however, during the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child5 (United Nations, 1989), rights to education for individuals and for human rights purposes were affirmed and extended to include cultural rights. Article 29 states: States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to: (a) The development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential; (b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations; (c) The development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own; (d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin; (e) The development of respect for the natural environment.6 Article 29 considers education as central to development of the fullest human potential. The role of education to promote cross-cultural competencies associated with respecting differences and promoting human relations across those differences is made manifest. It also speaks to affirmation and respect for cultural rights and it values both current and heritage nations to which a child identifies. Article 30 of that same Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989) states: In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language. These articles effectively coupled cultural and linguistic diversity with human (individual) rights to education.
Cultural diversity: expanding the human rights discourse Spurred by globalization and the transnational movement of people, most nation-states now understand the need to assure both individual rights and collective rights of ethnic and national minorities, language groups, religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and migrant communities (Koenig & de Guchteneire, 2007). This gains significance as people demand full inclusion into society and recognition for their identities in the public sphere. This shift critiques the assumption that cultural homogeneity is required for civic unity. The previous ideology and discourse focused on rights of individuals and forging a culturally 39
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uniform national identity. This led to national policies and programs directed at achieving cultural homogenization, such as US Americanization efforts, since claims for ethnic or national recognition were described as threats to national unity. Challenging the assumption that cultural homogeneity is required for national unity raises important questions: how can recognizing group identity also assure trust and solidarity to the nation-state, and how can we reconcile group identity with individual rights for inclusion (Koenig & de Guchteneire, 2007)? The previous focus was on individual rights and national unity via cultural homogenization, which has shifted to a triangle of individual rights, social group identities, and national unity via cultural diversity within a democratic context.The question then becomes: which public policies and institutional arrangements can be developed to assure harmony within this triangle? At the same time, we ask, is allegiance to a nation-state a conception of citizenship no longer useful or only partially appropriate? We recognize multiple dimensions of citizenship, including legal, psychological, and political (Rusciano, 2014). But we also wonder about citizenship that speaks to, instead, the need for solidarity to global publics and citizenship as a way of living and being in the world. Ample public policies related to the human rights of individuals have been pushed as an international value supported by international organizations. Recently, this has extended to include equality and freedom from discrimination for ethnic and linguistic minorities and recent immigrants and the need for states to play a protective role for these groups. Following up from the 1992 Declaration of the Rights of Persons to belong to National or Ethnic, and Linguistic Minorities, in 1994, the United Nations clarified: Although the rights . . . are individual rights, they depend in turn on the ability of the minority group to maintain its culture, language, or religion. Accordingly, positive measures by States may also be necessary to protect the identity of a minority and the rights of its members to enjoy and develop their culture and language and to practice their religion, in community with the other members of the group. (UN doc CCPR General Comment 23: The rights of minorities, April 1994, paragraph 6.2) The United Nations states that the nation-state has a role to play in assuring the rights of people of differing social identity groups and that these rights, and the conditions for such, are respected and advanced (Diez-Medrano, 2007). Indeed, nation-states have adopted public policies to assure these rights, including affirmative action, anti-discrimination policies, and special minority protections (Koenig & de Guchteneire, 2007). But the context for diversity in each nation-state is different, because they are dynamic and have different historical trajectories, so “accommodating cultural diversity therefore requires finding highly context-sensitive pluralistic policy designs” (Koenig & de Guchteneire, 2007, p. 14). A vital document connecting affirmation of cultural diversity to human rights is UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2002), stating that as a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is to nature [and is also] essential to ensure harmonious interaction among people and groups with plural, varied, and dynamic cultural identities as well as a will to live together. (UNESCO, 2002, p. 4) 40
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Upholding cultural diversity as an essential human right, the declaration states that the defense “of cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. It implies a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms” (UNESCO, 2002, p. 4).
Affirming diversity in education as a human right Along with others (for example, Strickland, n.d.), we assert that education needs to make manifest human rights and cultural diversity in all aspects of schooling, including policies and practices, curriculum and instruction, organizational structures, educational outcomes, assessment practices, learning standards, etc. This is most clearly expressed in UNESCO’s statement on education for indigenous people. As Stavenhagen (2008) summarizes: UNESCO stresses the need for a linguistically and culturally relevant curriculum in which the history, values, languages, oral traditions, and spirituality of indigenous communities are recognized, respected and promoted. Indigenous communities are now calling for a school curriculum that reflects cultural differences, includes indigenous languages and contemplates the use of alternative teaching methods. (p. 168) We appreciate Du Preez and Roux’s (2010) acknowledgement that the meanings of both human rights and local cultural values need to be negotiated via dialogue since it “would be precarious to accept human rights values as univocal and not subjected to diverse interpretation” (p. 23–24). In this context, the broader universal values serve as “a kind of ‘floor’, an ‘irreducible minimum’, a mere threshold, which no way of life may transgress without forfeiting its claim to be considered good or even tolerated. Once a society meets these basic principles, it is free to organise its way of life as it considers proper” (Parekh, 1999, pp. 130–131).This is termed minimum universality (Parekh, 1999). These human rights values are understood as both legal and moral constructs.
Asserting multicultural education as a human right Multicultural education can assure access to quality education, affirm cultural and linguistic diversity, and promote broader human rights aims. We posit seven rights that multicultural education addresses when implemented authentically and robustly. We describe these seven rights separately but acknowledge their interconnectedness (Yuval-Davis, 1999). We also acknowledge that multicultural education is constrained unless public policies also attend to broader issues of social segregation, poverty and homelessness, unemployment or underemployment, etc. We suggest that two rights cluster around psycho-cultural rights: Seeing oneself reflected in the curriculum and epistemological justice. Three rights cluster around socio-cultural rights: freedom from discrimination, learning about and from others, and having a more universal understanding of reality. Finally, cultural-democratic rights include a human rights education and seeing oneself as an active agent in democratic development. See Figure 3.1.
Psycho-cultural rights Right to see oneself in the curriculum We begin discussion of the human right to a multicultural education with the individual’s right to see her or himself in the curriculum. Historically, a major purpose of education has 41
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CulturalDemocratic
• Agency and Democratic Participation • Human Rights Education
SocialCultural
• More Universal Vision • Learning About and From Others • Freedom from Discrimination
PsychoCultural
• Epistemological Justice • Seeing Oneself in Curriculum
Figure 3.1 Rights Addressed by Multicultural Education
been to subordinate the individual while promoting the political and economic interests of the State (Pimentel, 2006), resulting in the loss of cultural identity, via deculturalization (Spring, 2012), among vast majorities of students. Stavenhagen (2008) expresses, “the state model of a culturally homogenised nation does not fit the reality of a multilingual, multiethnic population” (p. 164). Banks (2009a) argues that assimilationist ideals result in students’ losses of connection with their families, communities, and cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identities, while being racially marginalized in national civic culture. According to Banks (2009a), teachers and schools in multicultural democratic nations can work together in a process of developing balanced and thoughtful attachments and identifications with their cultural community, their nation, and with the global community in order to become globally competent. According to Banks, “strong, positive, clarified cultural identifications and attachments are a prerequisite to cosmopolitan beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, and the internalization of human rights values” (p. 39). Education can play an important role in addressing losses created by assimilationist policies. Multicultural and human rights-based education in which each student sees her or himself in the curriculum can address historical educational inequalities. Education must respect and positively represent each student’s individual cultural background “so that each person can make the most of it in their personal journey and in their interaction with others. . . . They learn about their past, understand their present, and acknowledge their power to fight for their future” (Pimentel, 2006, p. 15). Pedagogical strategies to reflect all students in the curriculum require that teachers learn about students’ cultures and specific (local) cultural repertoires of practice (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003). This requires teachers to make meaningful connections with students. Pimentel (2006) states that, “Teachers become educators when they get fully aware of the surrounding world’s influence on every individual. . . . [T]hey must be open to the reality of the learners, get acquainted with their ways of being, adhere to their right to be. Educators choose to change the world with learners” (p. 14). 42
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Epistemological justice A second multicultural education and human right is learning that is inclusive of one’s own cultural worldview. This is the right to epistemological justice. The dominant epistemology is largely Eurocentric, fueled by Western ideals, which has deleted or significantly distorted knowledge systems of social groups throughout the world and over history. This results in restricted epistemological lenses through which we understand phenomena and embodies epistemological racism. Charlot and Belanger (2003) state: Social justice is not possible without cognitive justice, without recognizing the presence of different forms of understanding, knowing and explaining the world. All forms of knowledge have to be present and valued in relation to one another. Faced with the endless map of knowledges, the conclusion is that it is impossible to have a single general theory about the meaning of education and knowledge. Education needs to be a central task of the political system, and political power should help, not only by funding it, but also by having as a priority the fight against the obscuring of non-Western knowledge and local forms of education. (Charlot & Belanger, 2003; as cited in Chan-Tiberghien, 2004, p. 191) Epistemological justice can be viewed from an endless number of perspectives, including border epistemologies (Carter, 2010), epistemological diversity (de Sousa Santos, 2007), global competency (Banks, 2009a), decolonizing epistemologies (Smith, 2013), spirituality (Tisdell, 2006), and the human right to pursue the good life (Tai, 2010). Embracing ways of knowing that are produced in communities throughout the world opens infinite possibilities for global cognitive justice. Banks (2009a) argues that people have a right to access a variety of epistemological orientations and any expanded “learning” repertoires that result. For Gordon (1995), this is not merely about adding more information but reconstituting the conceptual systems that govern models of humanness and modes of being while recognizing and respecting each individual’s (culturally influenced) knowledge system. Resulting from community activism, universities have established academic programs and research centers to acknowledge, document, and extend these differing epistemological systems. Chan-Tiberghien (2004) relates, “Valuing and celebrating diversity – biological, cultural, cognitive, economic, and political – through critical pedagogy, cognitive justice, and decolonizing methodologies becomes a counter-hegemonic alternative” (p. 194).
Social-cultural rights Freedom from prejudice and discrimination Another right shared by multicultural education and international human rights is education free from prejudice and discrimination. This has been a fundamental concern to international human rights organizations. The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asserts: States undertake to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and must adopt effective measures, particularly in the fields of teaching, education, culture and information, with a view to combat prejudices, which lead to racial discrimination and promote understanding, tolerance and friendship amongst nations and racial or ethnical groups. (Stavenhagen, 2008, p. 162) 43
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Likewise, a central goal of multicultural education has been to combat prejudices and discrimination. Contemporarily multicultural educators recognize other levels at which prejudices operate (Scheurich & Young, 1997), including institutional structures that privilege some and oppress others. On the social level, discourses and ideologies of the dominant group shape differences. Philosophically, prejudicial frameworks dominate ontology, axiology, and epistemology. A central tenet of multicultural education is that reduction of racial and cultural prejudices is both possible and desirable (Bennett, 2001). Sleeter and Grant (2009) express that while anti-racism is most associated with a human rights approach to education, it is also consonant with all other approaches to multicultural education including social justice approaches. Banks (2004) describes five dimensions of multicultural education, including prejudice reduction. Nieto and Bode (2008) include anti-racism as central to their definition of multicultural education. Additionally, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has re-centered racism as a primary explanation for educational inequalities (Zamudio, Russell, Rios, & Bridgeman, 2011). Vandeyar (2003) provides an example of the resurgence of anti-racism work extending multicultural education in debates occurring in post-apartheid South Africa: “At the heart of these debates has been the concern that racism still survives in institutional practices across the country. This has led to. . . [a] shift from multicultural education to anti-racism education . . . from a preoccupation with cultural difference to an emphasis on the way in which such differences are used to entrench inequality” (p. 196).
Learning about and from others Learning about and from others is another human right supported by multicultural education. Stavenhagen (2008) explains that in learning about others, we help students attain “intercultural citizenship [which] takes us beyond cultural diversity to creative interculturality” (p. 162). UNESCO defines interculturality as “the existence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual respect” (Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Article 4.8, p. 5). We believe that students have the right to learn about one another, and that teachers must participate in this process with students. Pimentel (2006) describes Freire’s (1973) pedagogical perspective in which all people share power over education, rather than replicating one dominant philosophy: Teachers and learners share equally the experience of learning through questioning, reflecting, and participating; as a result, this process contributes to the enforcement of infinitely diverse human potentials, instead of refuting, weakening, distorting, or repressing them . . . the role of the teacher is crucial . . . sharing the experience of being in “quest.” (Pimentel, 2006, p. 14) Unfortunately, as Nieto and Bode (2008) express, “monocultural education is the order of the day in most of our schools. Because viewpoints of so many are left out, monocultural education . . . deprives all students of the diversity that is part of our world” (pp. 48–49). This affects all students, including indigenous peoples, students from non-majority cultural backgrounds, and white students. A right to learn from one another extends beyond borders of the local community to globally connected learning as well. As Stavenhagen (2008) asserts, “A truly multicultural society 44
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cannot exist simply as a collection of self-contained culturally distinct collectivities; these communities must be open to the rest of the world and their members but be free to interact with others” (p. 175).
Developing a more universal vision of reality All of the rights embodied in multicultural education converge to provide students with a more universal understanding of reality. Seeing oneself in one’s education, learning from an epistemologically just approach that is free from discrimination, and learning about and relating to others are all necessary to provide students with a more universal understanding of reality (revisit Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Section C, described earlier). This document speaks directly to the right of the child to a multicultural education that provides a more universal vision of reality than that which results from a monocultural education. Learning from and about multiple perspectives increases knowledge, enhances insight, and leads to better decision-making for self and others. Carter (2010) states, however, that “diverse knowledges must not be temporalized or historicized against a Eurocentric timeline of development” (p. 437). Likewise, Agada (1998) advises: multicultural content . . . needs to go beyond adding or substituting Afrocentric or Hispanic materials for Eurocentric materials in lesson units. To reflect the notions of relational knowledge, the interdisciplinary curriculum model ought to enable an appreciation of disciplines and subjects as perspectives or lenses for observing reality. (p. 88) Adichie (2009) cautions against the dangers of a single story, where viewing individuals, their cultures, and home countries from one stereotypical story that is told over and over again robs both the storytellers and the story’s characters of reality. In his seminal Talk to Teachers (1963), Baldwin summarized the immense value to all in a curriculum that would not teach a single story, but would provide a more accurate and complete understanding of reality: If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history. And the reason is that if you are compelled to lie about one aspect of anybody’s history, you must lie about it all. If you have to lie about my real role here, if you have to pretend that I hoed all that cotton just because I loved you, then you have done something to yourself.You are mad. (p. 44)
Cultural-democratic rights Human rights education The role of education to teach about and foster human rights has been evident since the earliest international agreements dedicated to achieving world peace. Human rights education acknowledges the right to an education but also aims to promote broader purposes of personal fulfillment, interdependence, and freedom (Pimentel, 2006). The ultimate goal of human rights 45
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education is empowerment (Pimentel, 2006), teaching students about their rights and defending themselves from abuse, about their obligations to others and being diligent about protecting the rights of others, and about human agency and how meaningful changes in pursuit of social justice can be carried out peacefully in collaboration with others (Pimentel, 2006). UNESCO Bangkok and the UN Special Rapporteur collaborated to develop A Manual on Rights-Based Education, to bring human rights standards into educational practice (Pimentel, 2006). The manual, with human rights law as its foundation, addresses the quality of education, expressing that it should be “learner-centered and relevant to learners, as well as respectful to human rights, such as privacy, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the participation of learners in the education process” (Pimentel, 2006, p. 14). Multicultural education also has a focus on human rights education. This includes teaching students democratic social participation skills via civic education. The focus of these efforts rests on the core principles of democracy, strategies for extending these principles, and respect for human rights (Banks et al., 2005). Diversity is an important facet of this work around human rights education. Gundara (2000) says, One of the ways to build bridges of understanding between and among people of various cultures and religions will require an increased appreciation of human rights and the base on which these are built, notably the concept of a shared acceptance of the premise of human dignity. In a period when alienation and cynicism are rife, the role of formal education as utilitarian is not enough. (p. 134) It includes teaching the interdependent nature of being in this world. In essence, human rights education stresses a relational way of being and shared responsibility as well as an interdependent construal of the self (Tai, 2010).
Knowledge of themselves as active agents and history makers Education and teaching are the seeds that will empower the growth of students into active change agents and history makers. Gundara (2000) highlights the role of teachers and education in empowering young people to resist marginalization through developing a voice in society: Without any concept of value through dignity, the alienation felt by the world’s excluded youth will continue to grow. . . [as] the result of experiencing injustice, marginalization or the lack of a voice . . . and teachers can obviously deal with this issue by developing suitable curricula and teaching strategies. (p. 134) Sleeter and Grant (2009) present and critique various approaches to multicultural education and express that a multicultural social justice approach “goes the furthest toward providing better schooling as well as creating a better society . . . based largely on social conditions that persist and that limit and often damage or destroy the lives of many people” (p. 229). The multicultural social justice approach engages all people – learners and educators, white heterosexual males and disenfranchised people, privileged and unprivileged – in a concerted, critical effort to analyze the circumstances of their lives and develop social action skills in powerful coalitions that gain strength by working together, across “race, class, and gender lines” (Sleeter & Grant, 2009,
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p. 216). By engaging students in this process of social action in schools and communities, students see power in building alliances across difference. A similar process has been described by Paulo Freire (1985) who “viewed empowering pedagogy as a dialogical process in which the teacher acts as a partner with students, helping them to examine the world critically, using a problem-posing process that begins with their own experience and historical location” (Sleeter & Grant, 2009, p. 213). Likewise, the Declaration of Education Rights (Strickland, n. d.) exists “to ensure that all young people can participate meaningfully in their education and gain the tools to build a just, democratic and sustainable world.” Human rights in education include the right of people to participate in decisions that affect them (Strickland, n.d.). It includes being an active agent to change socially unjust institutional structures, policies and practices “in an effort to challenge current state policies that discriminate against, or simply ignore people based on their socio-economic status, race, gender, dis/ability, religion or sexual orientation” (Grant, 2008, p. 9).
Conclusion We argue that contemporary understandings of human rights and education converge in productive ways with contemporary but especially critical multicultural education principles. They both share a belief that cultural diversity is essential for human rights, democracy, and social justice. As articulated by UNESCO’s (2005) Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions: “cultural diversity, flourishing within a framework of democracy, tolerance, social justice and mutual respect between peoples and cultures, is indispensable for peace and security at the local, national and international levels (p. 1).” The next step is moving these human right principles to actual educational practices. We believe that multicultural education could become THE premiere pedagogical framework from which this move from principles to practices might occur. This will require teacher training around multicultural education, reducing institutional resistance, changing the ideology and dialogue of ministry and state education officials, and building alliances with teacher associations and unions. Consider descriptions of what this might look like in actual practice as Nieto and Bode (2008) describe, as well as the recent publications by Au (2009) and Quijada Cerecer, Alvarez Gutiérrez, and Rios (2010). Fortunately, there are important models of what a multicultural and human rights-oriented approach to education might entail. At the heart of these are robust, authentic, and deep connections with indigenous, minority, and immigrant communities, who are seen as vital actors. These include the Atuarfitsialak program in Greenland, the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, the Maori of New Zealand, and the Student Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (India) (Stavenhagen, pp. 169–171). The goals of such programs must lead to interculturality, enlightened cosmopolitans, intercultural citizenship (Stavenhagen, 2008), and cosmopolitan citizenship (Chan-Tiberghien, 2004). Globalization should be used to facilitate development of such citizenships. Conversely, such programs must also include a critical eye toward critiquing the impact of globalization for narrow neoliberal purposes (Chan-Tiberghien, 2004). We wish to reiterate that multicultural education is not the only mechanism necessary to achieve human rights. As we have described earlier, students move across a range of social institutions and many schools remain sites of exclusion and discrimination. But multicultural education may be an initial (even if partial) entry point to preserving and extending students’ educational human rights.
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We sought to answer the questions, can education that is multicultural be considered a human right? Given the ways in which the two converge, we see tremendous possibility in the ways in which multicultural education advances universal human rights. The convergence of these two, in the words of Fitzsimons (2000), bring together “the conditions of possibility for education [and educators] at the intersection of the discourses of the integrated world order on the one hand, and those of the forces of difference on the other” (p. 515).
Notes 1 An earlier version of this paper, adapted herein, appeared in Multicultural Education Review (2011), vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 1–35. 2 See Portero (2011) for an extended discussion on the origins and uses of these two terms. 3 A comprehensive discussion of these frames can be found in Rios & Stanton-Rogers, 2011. 4 See Pimentel, 2006, for a historical overview of the development of education as a human right. 5 191 of 193 countries have ratified; the USA and Somalia have not (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). 6 Environmental justice and ecological literacy as well as environmental sustainability have recently become even more prominent given UNESCO’s Decade of Sustainability focus.
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Key concepts and ideas from the chapter 1
We need new ways of being citizens in a world marked by the affirmation of difference, the reality of transnationalism, and the ideals of global harmony. Education is vital to this process. 2 We focus on access to quality multicultural education as a human right of its own accord, in which all students are entitled to an education that is multicultural. 3 Multicultural education can benefit from rooting itself in human rights principles: the right to learn about oneself, to learn about others, and to learn citizenship skills associated with a deep democracy in a global age. 4 Human rights converge in productive ways with contemporary but especially critical multicultural education principles.They both share a belief that cultural diversity is essential for human rights, democracy, and social justice 5 Important models of what a multicultural and human rights oriented approach to education exist. At the heart of these are robust, authentic, and deep connections with indigenous, minority, and immigrant communities who are seen as vital actors.
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4 TOWARD POST-NATIONAL SOCIETIES AND GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP1 FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ AND JOHN W. MEYERTOWARD POST-NATIONAL SOCIETIES
Francisco O. Ramirez and John W. Meyer
[T]he independence movements in the Americas became, as soon as they were printed about, “concepts,” “models,” and indeed “blueprints.” . . . Out of the American welter came these imagined realities: nation-states, republican institutions, common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags and anthems, etc. . . . In effect, by the second decade of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, a “model” of the independent national state was available for pirating. (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 1991, p. 81). The model of the independent national state has dominated both the world and the researchers who seek to understand the world. Much scholarship has proceeded as if the world were nothing more than a growing number of nation-states competing with one another for resources. From this perspective, successful nation-states were seen as better at mobilizing their populations to labor for the common good and to fight and die for the nation. The common good is thus seen as the economic, political, and military interests of the nation-state, gauged in terms of accumulated wealth, political stability, and territorial security. Mass schooling, in this view, emerged as a nation-state project designed to transform transnational masses into national citizens. This transformation required two core elements: first, the cultural elaboration of the nation-state as a compelling collective with which all were to profoundly identify; and second, the political socialization of national citizens via schooling processes that would facilitate this identification. The cultural elaboration of the nation-state generated national myths and national heroes, often bundled in national histories characterized by progress-oriented trajectories. The political socialization of national citizens generated portraits of loyal and productive citizens linked to the nationalizing narrative. Much of the linking took place in schools, where a national identity took center stage. Schooling the masses furthered the cultural elaboration of the nation-state and the political formation of the national citizen. Both the formal and the hidden curriculum schooled the masses in a national direction. Schools were expected to satisfy the national need for both human capital and civic virtue. So when national society floundered, as with the loss of a war or a major economic setback, educational reforms flourished (Ramirez & Boli, 1987).
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Many of our own earlier studies have focused on the triumph of mass schooling as a nationstate project (e.g., Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992). We have analyzed the worldwide expansion of mass schooling and its citizenship production aims, the spread of compulsory school laws and national educational ministries, (e.g., Ramirez & Ventresca, 1992), and the rise of national languages in school curricula (Cha, 1991). Despite obvious cross-national differences with respect to cultural legacies and socioeconomic and political structures, mass schooling has indeed triumphed worldwide (Meyer & Ramirez, 2000; Ramirez & Meyer, 2002). Specific educational reforms come and go, but critiques advocating the de-schooling of society have failed completely (e.g., Illich, 1971). Mass schooling is taken for granted as a key institution through which national problems must be successfully addressed. Educational reforms are ubiquitous because the quest for national progress is endless. In recent decades, though, the educational world appears to be shifting from its earlier and exclusive emphasis on models of the independent national state to models of post-national societies. Such societies are seen as components of a more-global society rather than completely independent entities. And the persons within them are seen as human members of a world society, over and above their citizenship in national society. The national independence movements that gave rise to centuries of nationalism have given some ground to transnational movements that highlight the centrality of global human rights, the desirability of world peace and democracy, the danger of world environmental decay, and the imperative of sustainable and equitable development on a global scale. These movements and the nongovernmental organizations they spawn go hand in hand with international treaties and conferences that add up to a different world milieu that impinges on nation-states (e.g., Koo & Ramirez, 2009). Human, not solely citizenship, rights command policy attention.The environment becomes much more than resources to be exploited (Frank, Hironaka, & Schofer, 2000). And, peace and democracy movements clearly involve more than state actors. The world is increasingly a world of international nongovernmental organizations (Boli & Thomas, 1999).These organizations affirm standards for post-national societies and world citizenship, exercising “soft power” on a global scale. To be sure, the national state does not simply fade in this emergent global environment. Even as national sovereignty becomes more circumscribed in international affairs, national states are expected to enact the appropriate human rights, environmental, and peace and democracy standards. The content of these standards has shifted, from a mostly legal to an increasingly educational emphasis. Thus, human rights movements become human rights education endeavors (Ramirez & Moon, 2012; Ramirez, Suarez, & Meyer, 2006). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949) evolves to a General Assembly Declaration of Human Rights Education and Training (2012). A similar dynamic may be found as regards the environment and with respect to peace and democracy.The legal system is challenged, but so too are schools and universities.The transformative powers of education are emphasized anew but with global, not only national, issues at stake. In the emergent global environment, the good citizen (including the good young citizen) is actively engaged with the wider world (Bromley, Meyer, & Ramirez, 2011a).The ideal nationstate facilitates this engagement in multiple ways, notably including its intended curricula. In what follows, we first report on several interrelated cross-national studies of history, civics, and social studies textbooks. These studies identify global and regional trends in textbook content, suggesting the rise of post-national societies and global citizens. These studies also reveal the influence of transnational factors on the changing content of national textbooks. Next, we summarize research directions that focus on the changing character of higher education. The massification of higher education suggests that similar post-national currents and a more globalized perspective will be found in what were once hailed as laboratories of nationalism. We
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Toward post-national societies
conclude by briefly reflecting on the construction of models of post-national society and global citizenship, and the implications of these models for the nation-state.
Portraits of citizens, states, and society in textbooks around the world Textbooks are a crucial feature of the intended curricula of schools. And yet, textbooks are not readily available for a large number of countries over an extended period of time. This shortcoming has limited comparative studies of textbooks to cross-sectional designs or to case studies of a few countries over time. We have tried to partly remedy this shortcoming, using the extensive collection of textbooks at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany. This collection covers more than 60,000 textbooks coming from most countries in the world. Most of the collection covers the post-WWII period, though for some countries textbooks are available for earlier eras as well. The rationale for this collection was itself an early postwar effort to rectify excessive nationalism through curricular reforms of educational systems. We have elsewhere described our use of this collection, our efforts to add textbooks from other sources to this main source, and the strengths and limitations of the data and our analyses (Ramirez, Bromley, & Russell, 2009). Our first textbook analyses have involved data from about 500 secondary school history, civics, and social studies textbooks for about 70 countries, covering the period between 1970 and 2008. These analyses examined changes in textbook emphases on human rights (Meyer, Bromley, & Ramirez, 2010), on environmentalism (Bromley, 2011b), and toward foci on the interests, capacities, and empowerment of students (Bromley et al., 2011a). Our second textbook analyses are now underway and add geography textbooks to the textbooks identified above.These analyses will cover more than 700 secondary school textbooks for 100 countries, stretching back in time to 1950. This chapter addresses trends and findings from the first textbook analysis. Before we turn to these tendencies and associations, consider our earlier point about the changing world milieu emphasizing a world society. This is often discussed as globalization, and there is a rich literature that shows that in both the popular press and scholarly publications there are increased references to globalization (Guillen, 2001). Is there any evidence that a similar trend may be found in textbooks aimed at young people? Buckner and Russell (2011) indeed find such a trend. Between 1970 and 2005, the term globalization increasingly appears in textbooks. This trend is evident whether one calculates the increasing percent of textbooks or the increasing proportion of countries in which the term globalization is employed. The term often refers to economic globalization, but also to other global dimensions, such as a global environmental ecosystem. In a parallel analysis, the authors also find increases in references to the global citizenship of individual persons. Over a 25-year period, they find more textbooks in more countries referring not only to globalization but also specifically to global citizenship. The changing world milieu appears to impinge not only on national states and national legal norms and structures, but also on the educational materials aimed at young people. In the 21st century, young people are more likely to encounter the idea of global citizenship, and to do so in the familiar context of a school textbook. The changing world milieu has been discussed as a global dynamic that challenges the mono-cultural narrative that became taken for granted with the rise of nationalism in earlier centuries.This global dynamic emphasizes global citizenship and human rights on the one hand (cosmopolitanism) and respect for diversity (multiculturalism) on the other. Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are feared to undercut a sense of national identity in the American case
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(Huntington, 2004). But these are also endorsed as essential building blocks for more-authentic citizenship (Banks, 2004). The broader question, though, is whether the content of textbooks is changing across countries and changing in similar directions. That is, are there changes in the content of textbooks that indicate a rise in global citizenship emphasis? We address this question by looking at trends from 1970 to 2008 in our textbook data set on four distinct dimensions. First, we examine trends on an index of student centrism, comprised of a number of items characterizing a book by its appeals to student interests, activities, views, and capacities (for details, see Bromley et al., 2011a). The idea is that a global citizen is an empowered person. Second, we characterize books by the degree to which they emphasize human rights, in general – and for specific groups such as women and minorities (for details, see Meyer et al., 2010). Third, we construct a similar index characterizing books by their emphasis on social diversity – e.g., whether they discuss a range of groups (including children, women, or indigenous peoples) as members of society (see Bromley et al., 2011b). And finally, we characterize textbooks by whether they include a discussion of the environment – we suppose the world society is linked to a conception of the world as an ecosystem (for measurement, see Bromley, Meyer, & Ramirez, 2011b). To make the four measures comparable, we normalize them. That is, we calculate an overall mean score on each measure, and then characterize each book by how far it is, in standard deviation units, above or below this mean score. In the figures below, we show the best-fit line capturing the time trend for each variable, by region. While this procedure deemphasizes variations in mean score among the regional groupings, it nonetheless allows us to compare regions’ changes over time, despite their different starting points. We can note that textbooks from Western countries get higher scores, overall, on all four measures than do books from Asian countries or books from the remaining countries. Figure 4.1 looks at trends over time for all four of the measures for 161 textbooks from Western countries. All four trends are in the direction of greater emphasis. The upward trend in how much the textbooks are student centered is especially pronounced. But human rights and environment trends are also clear. A more-modest increase characterizes diversity emphases. Figure 4.2 looks at 284 textbooks from countries that are neither Western nor Asian – essentially the communist/post-communist world plus much of the developing world. The overall pattern is strikingly similar to that found in the first graph. We find sharp increases in student centrism, human rights, and environmental emphases. We also find a more-modest increase in diversity emphases. Figure 4.3 covers 82 textbooks from Asian countries. As regards student centrism, the changes in these textbooks are consistent with those in the earlier graphs. But neither human rights nor environmental emphases increase during this period. Moreover, diversity emphases actually decline. These surprising findings may actually reveal that Asian textbooks are indeed different. But they may also be due to the fact that only 11 countries from Asia are represented in this graph. To better understand these trends, consider the specific indicators that enter into the studentcentrism index and how their average values change across three periods: 1970–1984, 1985– 1994, and 1995–2008. Table 4.1 identifies eight indicators and clearly shows an increase in each of these indicators over time. For five measures of student centrism, the differences between the first and second periods are statistically significant. The differences between the second and third periods are statistically significant for all eight indicators. Changes in the overall index are driven by changes in all the indicators. Textbooks are increasingly designed to appeal to student interests, to engage students in projects and role-playing exercises, and to stimulate students via
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Predicted Normalized Score
1
.5
0
−.5
−1 1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Publication Date Student Centrism
Human Rights
Environment
Diversity
Figure 4.1 Textbook Trends in West
Predicted Normalized Score
1
.5
0
−.5
−1 1970
1980
1990
2000
Publication Date Student Centrism
Human Rights
Environment
Diversity
Figure 4.2 Textbook Trends in Non-West, Non-Asia
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Francisco O. Ramirez and John W. Meyer
Predicted Normalized Score
1
.5
0
−.5
−1 1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Publication Date Student Centrism
Human Rights
Environment
Diversity
Figure 4.3 Textbook Trends in Asia
Table 4.1 Changes in Student-Centrism in Social Science Textbooks
Indicators of Student Centrism (means) Pictures, esp. Child-Friendly (0–3) Assignments for Students (0–2) Projects for Students (0–2) Role-Playing for Students (0–2) Open-Ended Questions for Students (0–3) Text in Expanding Environments Format (0–3) Amount Children Discussed in Text (0–5) Mentions Children’s Rights (0–1)
1970–1984
1985–1994
1995–2008
(n = 97) 1.21 1.27 0.20 0.12 1.22 0.33 0.82 0.23
(n = 155) 1.47** 1.5** 0.43*** 0.24** 1.53** 0.32 0.88 0.14
(n = 213) 1.98**** 1.85**** 0.64*** 0.44**** 1.99**** 0.61**** 1.20** 0.28****
Source: Bromley et al. (2011a). ****p