Cultural Education - Cultural Sustainability

Minority, Diaspora, Indigenous and Ethno-Religious Groups in Multicultural Societies

Zvi Bekerman, Ezra Kopelowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135598792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume is a path-breaking contribution to the study of efforts of diaspora, indigenous, and minority groups, broadly defined, to use education (formal and informal) to sustain cultural continuity while grappling with the influences and demands of wider globalizing, nationalizing, or other homogenizing and assimilatory forces. Particular attention is given to groups that use educational elements other than second-language teaching alone in programs to sustain their particular cultural traditions. The focus of the book on cultural sustainability changes the nature of questions posed in multicultural education from those that address the opening of boundaries to issues of preserving boundaries in an open yet sustainable way.

As forced and elective immigration trends are changing the composition of societies and the educational systems within them -- bringing a rich diversity of cultural experience to the teaching/learning process -- diaspora, indigenous, and minority groups are looking more and more for ways to sustain their cultures in the context of wider socio-political influences. This volume is a first opportunity to consider critically multicultural efforts in dialogue with educational options that are culturally particularistic but at the same time tolerant.

Academics will find this an excellent reference book. Practitioners will draw inspiration in learning of others' efforts to sustain cultures, and will engage in critical reflection on their own work vis-à-vis that of others. Teachers will realize they do not stand alone in their educational efforts and will uncover new strategies and methodologies through which to approach their work.

PART I
The State as a Determining Factor for Cultural Sustainability

The rise of the centralized state is a key part of the modern experience. The power of the modern state is located in the ability to reach all individuals within its realm very quickly in order to demand compliance to policies promulgated by state institutions. Yet, next to the power of the state to demand compliance is the possibility that the same legal and political framework can offer “citizenship rights,” which we will see below are critical to understanding how a minority group might sustain its culture.

On one hand the centralized state is suspicious of minority groups—where do the members of a minority group fall vis-à-vis the demand for obedience to the rule of law pushed forward by the state and the universal system of education that most modern states use as a primary tool for socializing citizens to the moral regime it deems correct? Yet, on the other hand, that one legal system is applied to all individuals living within a state’s jurisdiction holds out the possibility of protection to minorities and the promotion of rights to a life that might otherwise be impossible.

The manner in which the dialectic between the individual bound by the obligations of citizenship and the right of the same citizen to promote the culture of his or her minority group plays out differently from country to country. Section I offers six case studies, each elaborating on the interaction between states and citizens who belong to minority groups. The common theme, which we elaborate on at the end of this introduction, is the split personality of the modern state—on one hand suspicious of minorities, while on the other hand providing a framework that, for a variety of reasons, protects and enables minority existence.

We encourage you to consider the tension between majority and minority that appears in each chapter. Allowing for the difference in power, members of both share responsibility in the dialogue and both need to consider continually the issues that are part and parcel of living in a multicultural society. The manner in which this majority/minority relationship plays out is very much determined by the nature of the state and its approach to minority rights in a given country.

The first three chapters focus on the Muslim and Jewish experience in England and the Netherlands, and the Jewish minority group in Israel, while Chapters 4–6 focus on minority groups in China. The difference between the first three chapters and the Chinese case studies is that the former portray majority/minority relations in democratic contexts, while the latter focus on the authoritarian Chinese state. Yet, despite the obvious differences between democratic and authoritarian regimes we will see that the hegemonic power of the state is a universal variable that shapes the minority experience—the question is how does the hegemonic power of the state actually play out and what is the impact on the effort of minority educators to create cultural sustainability?

The Impact of the State on Cultural Education—Cultural Sustainability in Democratic Contexts

Each author offers a different angle on issues central to thinking about cultural education—cultural sustainability in democratic contexts. Geoffrey Walford shows the possibilities for minority groups when citizenship rights enable the establishment of schools dedicated to cultural sustainability. In contrast, Chen Bram depicts the hegemonic side of state power that operates through the creation of bureaucratic categories for handling the education of minority groups. Through the bureaucratic process the state reduces the extent to which the cultural autonomy described by Walford can actually play out.

The tension between the processes of cultural autonomy described by Walford and cultural homogenization described by Bram illuminate a central dilemma that anyone concerned with cultural education—cultural sustainability must tackle. Marie Parker-Jenkins addresses this dilemma by weighing in on the side of the liberal state. She asks what is the extent of the obligations that the state should impose on “faith-based schools” in order to ensure the sustainability of common public norms that bind all citizens to a common public sphere.

Geoffrey Walford illuminates the processes by which distinct cultural groups are able to promote semi-autonomous educational communities through a comparison of the development of Moslem schools in England and The Netherlands. Walford examines the effect of state funding policies within the context of immigration patterns over the last 50 years. The Muslim minorities have very different cultural backgrounds in the two countries, with most of the Dutch coming from Morocco and Turkey and most of the English originally coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. The paper shows how these different cultural backgrounds have influenced the nature of Muslim schooling in these two countries and the diversity of different Muslim schools within each country.

In Chapter 1 Walford ties together the macro-variables of national context and the cultural traditions of the Muslim immigrants through the concept of “communities of practice.” Within the community of practice we are able to examine the development and practices needed to create the cultural space necessary for minority groups to sustain themselves within a school environment.

The concept of “communities of practice” enables us to see that individuals do not fashion identity in a vacuum, but within a trajectory as they move within and between communities. Schools constitute and are constituted within the web of multiple-communal memberships. The result is a sophisticated understanding of the interaction of the state, national origins of immigrant groups, and the place of educational institutions within minority communal life, all of which enables an understanding of the role schools play in reproduction of educational and social inequalities and their capacity to help or hinder social and political integration.

In Chapter 2 Chen Bram reverses the equation stated by Walford. While Walford shows the positive side of multicultural practices, Bram demonstrates, in the Israeli context, how the same multicultural policies often lead to disempowerment and misrecognition of socio-cultural diversity and the needs of immigrant populations.

Bram tells a classic story of unintentional outcomes by analyzing bureaucratic “categories” as used by representatives of the Israeli state for dealing with immigrant groups. Bram illustrates the processes of recognition, non-recognition, and misrecognition and their importance to cultural sustainability and multicultural policy.

The case study focuses on the relationship of state bureaucracies in Israel to ethno-cultural immigrant groups originating from the former Soviet Union in general and Caucasian Jews in particular. In order to “absorb” the immigrants the state creates bureaucratic categories by which to organize social services but, in so doing, the Israeli state also sets the terms of discourse between majority and minority with clear implications for the provision of citizenship rights and the possibility of Caucasian Jews achieving cultural sustainability in the Israeli context.

Finally, in Chapter 3 Marie Parker-Jenkins compares the development of Jewish and Muslim schools in Britain. In direct contrast to Bram and, indeed, to most authors in this volume, Parker Jenkins does not regard the state as a suspicious actor. Rather, Parker-Jenkins embraces a classic liberal doctrine that views the state as a positive actor in society, in so far as it creates universal norms to which all citizens should abide. She then poses questions as to whether more should be asked of faith-based schools, especially those funded by the state, regarding the monitoring of legal limits on the curriculum so as to ensure accordance with the values and principles of human rights and democracy.

The Impact of the State on Cultural Education—Cultural Sustainability in an Authoritarian Context

While Walford, Bram, and Parker-Jenkins’s chapters focus on democratic contexts, the next three chapters provide a stark comparison, focusing on the meaning of “multiculturalism” and cultural sustainability in the context of the Chinese authoritarian state. Each chapter considers challenges confronting minorities in China today. We learn from the three case studies that the relationship between the majority Han culture and minority groups is complex and filled with ambiguities. Certain groups have managed to create the institutional and cultural infrastructure required for cultural sustainability, while others find themselves under sustained attack from the Chinese state.

Jing Lin provides a macro-overview of the state of higher education among Chinese minority groups and the complex relations of globalization, education, and cultural identity. The chapter focuses on the complex relations between the Chinese state and minority groups as seen through policies of assimilation, preferential treatment, and control. The chapter also explores critical efforts at sustaining minority cultures, such as the creation of minority higher education institutions, bilingual education, and the current strategy of the Chinese Government for promoting multiculturalism within an authoritarian framework.

Bing Wang’s chapter focuses on one Mongol high school in China and evaluates the implementation of Chinese multicultural education policy vis-à-vis the experience of this particular school. The study shows that current Chinese policy towards ethnic groups, while guaranteeing a variety of cultural freedoms and rights, is plagued by contradictions that are leading to the assimilation of Mongol culture. Wang suggests that Mongol cultural sustainability depends on structural reforms, including further decentralization and greater autonomy for minority education institutions.

In comparison to the Mongol experience, in which a degree of cultural autonomy is permitted by the Chinese state, a more draconian picture is painted by Seonaigh MacPherson and Gulbahar Beckett in their study of the threats Mandarin Chinese language and culture pose to the Uygur and Tibetan languages and cultures. In particular they examine the injustice of Chinese rule over the region and the imposition of educational policies and practices as de facto assimilation. They finally describe the struggles of the Tibetans and Uygurs in sustaining their communal identity and illustrate the complex effects of educational modernization and its possible role in the rise of fundamentalism and even cessation.

A Spectrum that Runs from More to Less Cultural Autonomy—But an Autonomy that is Never Complete

The six chapters in this section, when taken together, enable us to learn how the dialectic between the cultural autonomy that is vital for cultural sustainability and the hegemonic and homogenizing power of the state plays out. We are offered a view of a spectrum of minority educational experiences that ranges from more to less cultural autonomy.

On one hand it is clear that, in the contemporary democratic contexts described by Walford and Bram, the state encourages its citizens to promote the sustainability of their particular cultures through multicultural policy. In Walford’s case study we learn that state policies can enable the critical amount of cultural autonomy needed for cultural education—cultural sustainability at the level of the local community. Yet from Bram’s chapter we learn that these same multicultural policies bring with them the weight and power of bureaucratization. In order for the state to extend the right of cultural sustainability it must create categories by which to fund and implement its policies. At the moment of bureaucratization, the right of individual citizens to shape the educational space necessary for cultural sustainability is necessarily limited.

Thus, on one hand, limits on cultural autonomy are part and parcel of living within a democracy—this is the point that Parker-Jenkins addresses in her chapter. Yet, on the other hand, if we do not focus on the positive side of the equation, namely the communities of practice of the type Walford describes and how they might navigate the impediments and dangers put in place by the state, then we will remain unable to promote coherent policies capable of leading to vital forms of cultural education—cultural sustainability.

A primary difference between authoritarian and democratic contexts is that state power and the demands of the majority group to assimilate are closer to the surface of everyday life and more easily seen. Yet even within the Chinese context we learn that there are some circumstances in which minority groups can fashion a degree of autonomy. In Sheena Choi’s chapter on Korean exceptionalism in the next section of this book, we will even see that, in the case of Koreans under Chinese rule, a great deal of cultural autonomy is granted by the state. However, in the case studies addressed by the chapters in this section we learn that the autonomy granted by the Chinese state is relatively limited. The result is to weaken the cultural group—too much centralization of state power and not enough autonomy for the minority group to create a viable counter-culture needed for cultural education—cultural sustainability.

CHAPTER 1
Muslim Schools in England and The Netherlands: Sustaining Cultural Continuity

GEOFFREY WALFORD

Introduction

The last decade or more has seen the development of new schools in both England and The Netherlands designed for children from families of minority faiths. In England there are now more than eighty Muslim schools, as well as schools for Sikhs, Seventh Day Adventists, Hindus, and Greek Orthodox Christians, mainly serving the children of first- or second-generation immigrants. However, in contrast to the long-standing state funding of Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Jewish schools, most of these newer schools serving religious minorities are fee-paying private schools.

In The Netherlands there has been a similar widening of the diversity of schools, again mainly responding to the needs of children of immigrants. There are now thirty-four Muslim schools, as well as a smaller number of schools serving Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists. In contrast to England, practically all of these schools are fully funded by the state on a level at least equivalent to other Dutch schools.

This chapter reports some of the findings from a four-year Spencer Foundation-funded comparative research project into state policy on separate schools for religious minorities in England and The Netherlands. This wider project focuses on two religious groups, evangelical Christians and Muslims, but the focus here will be on Muslim schools where, in both countries, there has been a recent growth in the number of such schools. Apart from the investigation of documents, the research has involved interviews with national policy makers and representatives and with head teachers and teachers from a sample of schools. Short periods have also been spent in ethnographic observation within these ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I The State as a Determining Factor for Cultural Sustainability
• PART II Communal Infrastructure and Cultural Sustainability in Different National Contexts
• PART III Formal Educational Institutions and the Battle Against the Hegemony of Liberal Culture
• PART IV Everyday Life and the Medias of Cultural Transmission
• PART V Cultural Education—Cultural Sustainability: The Parameters of Cultural Dialogue in the Context of Hegemony
• Contributors