Routledge International Handbook of Multicultural Education Research in Asia Pacific

Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, Moosung Lee, Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, Moosung Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351179935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica multiculturale

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.

Part 1

Conceptualizations and perspectives

1

Diversity and citizenship education in multicultural nations¹

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 non-Muslim 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, 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 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 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 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 (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 i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: multicultural education research in Asia Pacific
• Part 1 Conceptualizations and perspectives
• Part 2 Teaching, learning, and curriculum
• Part 3 Leadership and policy
• Part 4 Equity and social justice in the context of diversity
• Index