scapegoat for an extraordinary array of political and social evils.’ (Phillips 2007: 3). Disenchantment with multiculturalism had led to policy corrections in place like Australia, the Netherlands and Britain, leaving the impression is that with the possible exception of Canada, multiculturalism is in retreat (Koopmans et al. 2005; Joppke: 2004; Gregg 2006; Levey 2009; cf. Meer & Modood, 2008).

NATIONAL IDENTITY & INCLUSION PROJECT Working Paper #4: Education and the Failures of Transformative Multiculturalism1 Catherine Frost, McMaster University

While the complaints against multiculturalism as theory and as practice differ, both originate in a common a concern over failings in social transformation. In essence, the charge is that multiculturalism is either too rigid with regard to culture, or it’s excessively one-sided, and protects some people’s identities while sacrificing others. This paper argues that critics are correct in identifying the social transformation element as the weak link in the multicultural chain. Leading multicultural accounts often rely on voluntarist and aspirational forms of public engagement to achieve social transformation, along with concepts of public education more suited to unitary modes of identity than to the multivalent needs of a multicultural population. Moreover, the heavy emphasis on compulsory education as a vehicle for change creates issues of fairness and efficacy, because even if it was possible to create new multicultural societies using compulsory education, it’s not clear that making children and newcomers serve as the vanguard of social change is appropriate.

Multiculturalism has faced serious criticism as normative theory and as social practice, much of which reflects a concern that it may obstruct cultural and transformation. This paper argues that multiculturalism has, in fact, an inherently transformative mandate, but that the strategies for social transformation found in leading accounts leave much to be desired. Their emphasis is on achieving change through reforming public culture, immigrant integration, and public education. But the public culture strategy is largely voluntary and aspirational, while the immigrant integration strategy is a by-product of the public culture and education strategies. This leaves education as the key transformational strategy, yet by casting children and immigrants as the unwitting vanguard of multicultural transformation, the approach places a critical social task on the shoulders of society’s most vulnerable. Multicultural theory can address this weaknesses, the paper argues, by developing a more broad-based transformative approach.

There were high hopes for multicultural theory, but in practice the approach seems to breed as much strife as it does reconciliation, and in the words of one theorist, has become ‘the                                                         

Where multiculturalism stands today Both practically and theoretically multiculturalism has proven a difficult sell. Why? Critics claim that the approach consciously or unconsciously endorses a view of cultures as fixed ‘things’ (Abizadeh, 2002: 500, f19) and fear it will have a conservative influence, slowing down or stalling important processes of

Comments welcome, please do not cite without permission of the author at [email protected].

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cultural change by pandering to paternalism (Okin 1999; Shachar 2001) or general backwardness (Barry 2000).

requires considerable social change in order to work. This theme is already present in many major statements of multicultural theory, which emphasize the importance of social transformation. The difficulty is that a great deal of the debate on multiculturalism has focused on the kinds of rights or privileges go with cultural minority status, or the best institutional forms to adopt, or on what grounds such accommodations can be justified. Much less attention has been paid to the transformative element, and without it, the approach risks setting culture up as something static. While most multicultural theorists would reject the idea of static cultures, their critics continue to chide them for this very thinking, meaning it’s not an easy association to avoid. This may be because the only tangible strategy for social transformation that multiculturalism theory has recommended with any regularity is education policy. And as this paper suggests, this strategy proves inadequate on a number of levels.

This concern with cultural rigidity is echoed in a layman’s understanding of multiculturalism that effectively says: if you’re a minority, especially one that has experienced some disadvantage, you don’t have to change your culture unless you want to. This strikes me as a serious misreading of multiculturalism. Yet the expectation that cultural change can be halted in the name of accommodating group identities serves to raise the stakes on social difference and makes multiculturalism a source of conflict rather than a resource for its resolution. The rift is deepened the appearance of ‘unilaterality’ (Joppke 2004: 224), being the idea that minorities don’t have to change their cultures, but majorities do. The sense that multiculturalism is a one-sided approach, catering only to minorities, just about guarantees its political failure.

To renew its place in politics – practical and theoretical – multicultural theory must put its transformative mandate front and centre. That is the message of new works by theorists such as Anne Phillips (2007) and Tariq Modood (2007), whose recent works emphasizes the role of cultural interpretation and the fluidity of group identity. The transformative element has never been entirely absent from the approach, of course. Ayelet Shachar, for example, outlined the idea of “transformative accommodation” in her 2001 book Multicultural Jurisdictions. In it, Shachar argued that multiculturalism could be used to advance equality and justice for vulnerable minority group members through innovative forms of jurisdiction-sharing. This idea – that multiculturalism is, at heart, a transformative rather than conservative approach – is what I call transformative multiculturalism. The best resources for this approach, as these

This idea of multiculturalism is far removed from its original intent. Multiculturalism was intended to ensure that no one is unfairly disadvantaged because of their culture. The term “unfairly” is key here, because cultural difference will always have consequences in the real world, and not all of them qualify as injustices. Multiculturalism aims to identify situations where those consequences merit apolitical response, and to recommend mechanisms to address them. This reading of multiculturalism doesn’t include any guarantees about the preservation of cultural content. Because it is not the cultures that are the focus of interest, it is the bearers of culture that matter. In fact, as I will suggest in this paper, far from guaranteeing cultural preservation, multiculturalism actually

 

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theorists suggest, are the normal dynamics of cultural change. But the process must be consciously engaged if multiculturalism is to serve all groups fairly.

approach, one that has been articulated in the works of theorists such as Will Kymlicka in Canada and Bhikhu Parekh in Britain. Likewise David Miller combines the multicultural approach with a renewed awareness of nationality and social solidarity so his views on multicultural identity seem relevant given a renewed concern with social unity.

This paper does not set out an account of what transformative multiculturalism should look like, in part because it is beyond the scope of one paper, and in part because interesting work in this regard has already been undertaken by Phillips and Modood, as well as Shachar’s jurisdictional-based approach. Instead, the paper aims to highlight problems with existing transformative strategies of multicultural theory, and with the reliance on education in particular. The hope is that by demonstrating the significance of the transformative element, and the need for a more robust strategy in this area, it will help with the emergence of a new approach.

While there are important differences between these approaches, for the purposes of this discussion they will be considered under the multiculturalist label, on the grounds that they share three important features. First, they all argue for the moral and/or political significance of cultural or group identity. Second, they all call for political recognition, rights or accommodation based on this significance, and third they all see negotiated coexistence under conditions of equality and fairness as preferable to separation in cases of cultural or identity conflict.

MULTICULTURALISM’S TRANSFORMATIVE MANDATE This paper argues that the failures of multiculturalism as a transformative theoretical approach, or its failure to develop an adequate transformative strategy, have contributed to its practical problems and to the sense of theoretical incompleteness detected by critics. To examine this weakness, this paper will review the transformative element involved in multicultural theory as it appears in several leading accounts, and consider the kinds of strategies they recommend. It turns out that although there are recommendations around public culture and the integration of immigrants, education policy is the lynchpin to the transformative effort, because it is both direct and compulsory.

This third element in the definition – negotiated coexistence under conditions of equality and fairness – is at the root of the transformative element in multicultural theory. Because multicultural theory presumes that many states have not achieved equality and fairness among constituent group identities, and that such fairness cannot be delivered through ‘benign neglect’ (Kymlicka 1995: 113), and that working on fairness and equality requires deep social adjustment. As David Miller explains, national identities must be ‘stripped of elements that are repugnant to the self-understanding’ of minority populations, while minority populations must in turn ‘shed elements of their values’ which would be an obstacle to developing new forms of shared identity (1995: 142). Or in Kymlicka’s terms it means ‘repudiating’ the idea that the state belongs to any particular group, along with expectations around assimilation or

Multiculturalism encompasses a range of possible approaches, and even finding a common terminology to cover this variety can be challenging. Yet there is an identifiable theoretical core to the

 

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‘exclusionary nation-building.’ It also means embracing new forms of ‘recognition and accommodation’ and making amends for historical injustice (Kymlicka, 2003: 150).

measures, ‘multination states cannot survive’ (Kymlicka, 1995: 13). This form of allegiance and social unity cannot be modeled on old ideas of national unity because it must be a product of the interaction between the groups and individuals that make up the state, under conditions of fairness and equality. But since the composition, self-understanding, and aims of a diverse population will change over time, this shared understanding must also be open to constant re-negotiation. Its contents ‘remain subject to dispute’ (Parekh, 2000: 221), it must never become ‘some preformed definition’ but rather reflects ‘a continuing process of collective self-definition,’ one ‘in which many voices can join’ (Miller, 1995: 88, 172, 127). All this suggests that the adjustment process multiculturalism envisions will be an ongoing exercise rather than a one-off effort. This expectation, that a multicultural population will be able to simultaneously thin and build their identity, translates into a mandate for social transformation.

These processes aimed at stripping, repudiating, and shedding elements of collective identity, are demanding tasks for the political order. Kymlicka explains that the dominant identity must be thinned, in order to become more inclusive (2001: 40). The difficulty is Kymlicka draws many of his insights about multiculturalism from the Canadian example, yet many would argue that Canada’s thin multicultural identity is a unique phenomenon (Winter 2007). Other counties may find thinning a more difficult process, and even Kymlicka sounded a note of caution over the exportability of the Canadian model (2007: 107). So how to achieve the identity-adjustment multiculturalism requires remains an open question. Even if the Canadian process can be replicated, thinning alone won’t be sufficient. The kind of identity that multiculturalism envisions is not merely what is left over after the thinning process is complete. Multicultural theory also presumes that maintaining social unity in diverse populations will require special attention to forms of belonging and mutual understanding. Bhikhu Parekh explains that ‘a common culture is vital to the unity and stability of a multicultural society’ (2008: 222) and that such a society must ‘[a]t all costs… find ways of holding itself together’ until ‘common interests and mutual trust’ can be built (2000: 207). Indeed the deeper the diversity in a population, the greater the effort required to hold the population together in order to accommodate the diversity (Parekh, 2000: 196). Without some form of ‘allegiance’ that develops alongside new multicultural

 

So if multiculturalism has a significant transformative mandate, how should it be achieved? Perhaps the most candid response comes from Kymlicka who acknowledged that: ‘it is not clear’ how states can go about creating a new mode of solidarity or shared identity ‘where it does not already exist’ (1995: 191). At best, he thinks, we can require state and institutional reforms but it’s a different matter to hope that individuals adopt new ways of thinking and interacting (2003: 148). Parekh holds out hope for the transformative potential of cultural exchange. He sees change taking an organic form, with a new shared culture emerging as a kind of ‘unplanned growth’ (2000: 221). Unlike Kymlicka’s institutional model, Parekh’s transformation is not the work of

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governments and ‘cannot be officially engineered,’ (2000: 222), although it is ‘likely to develop’ when ‘the spirit of multiculturality flows freely’ (2000: 224). David Miller is somewhere between the two, trusting in the power of open debate and a shared public life to cultivate new attachments. Like Kymlicka he emphasizes the reform of state institutions to ‘maximize the chances for... open dialogue’ (1995: 150). Like Parekh he also emphasizes providing an ‘environment in which the culture can develop spontaneously’ (1995: 88).

exercise. He recommends sharing national myths (1995: 36), consuming the same media and ‘cultural artifacts’ (1995: 32), and if necessary, the common identity should be consciously developed and ‘constitutionally embodied’ (1995: 178, 180). Parekh, who favours an organic approach to social change, thinks public policy can occasionally advance the development of a multicultural public culture through measures such as: support of intercultural associations; sending spokespeople to cultural events; integrating new cultural content into galleries and museums; establishing consultative communities for public initiatives; developing new forms of political deliberation and remaining open to different political values; and ensuring adequate representation for minorities in the public realm (2000: 222-4).

While the extent or mechanism of change may vary, when it comes to actual strategies, these different theorists all touch on three major areas. First, they contemplate transformation through public culture, second, they detail efforts aimed at the integration of newcomer or minority populations, and third they stress the role of education policy. Examining these three areas highlights how critical educational strategy has become to multicultural transformation.

What’s notable about the public culture strategy is that it often remains at a very general level of discussion. The common theme involves facilitating the development of new understanding by ensuring cultural encounters take place under favourable conditions. But the strategy itself is largely passive and aspirational. It aims at setting the conditions for social change and then hoping it develops. It looks for a form of transformation that will reshape the sense of shared belonging, but it sees this process as best kept outside the direct influence of public policy (Parekh, 2000: 222).

Public culture Despite differences in their approach, Kymlicka, Parekh and Miller all agree that a fundamental transformation must take place in public culture, as part of a multicultural order. Even Kymlicka who distinguishes a purely state-level, institutional form of multiculturalism says that without an accompanying change in personal intercultural interactions, such states can also ‘be seen as failures, or at least as disappointments’ (2003: 156). But Kymlicka is reluctant to require extensive changes in public culture, seeing it as voluntary rather than obligatory (2003: 165). Miller, as noted, stresses the importance of developing a readiness to participate in public debate for democratic purposes but he also stressed state-sponsored intercultural dialogue to underpin this

 

Immigrant integration New immigrants represent a key population for the multicultural approach. While most states already have diverse populations, many with long-standing minority groups, there are additional challenges associated with the constant inflow of new individuals and families. Addressing the needs of this newcomer population

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– both in terms of accommodating new identities, and ensuring a smooth introduction to the existing forms of shared identity within a state – is a key concern.

Education There is an exception to the rule that public policy should facilitate but not direct multicultural transformation. That exception involves education policy. Multicultural education can be seen through two lenses; either as a minority right (minority language education, separate schools, etc.) or as form of preparation for citizenship. The transformative payoff is linked to education as citizenship preparation, and is therefore universal in design. This paper focuses on this second approach, and especially on how education can be a means to transform citizenship for the future.

In the case of immigrants, the emphasis is generally on removing barriers to participation. That may mean anti-racism measures, housing programs, second-language training, and even attention to economic opportunities (Parekh 2008: 90-92; Kymlicka 2001: 161-171). But immigrants can also be required to undergo some level of training and preparation for citizenship, and therefore present an opportunity to develop new civic skills, promote a new understanding of intercultural relations, and forge new ideas on national identity. But of course this is only true so long as they are required to undergo certain integration measures as part of the immigration process. Once they achieve full citizenship their participation generally reverts to the voluntary approach associated with public culture.

The right kind of education is seen as ‘vitally necessary’ (Parekh, 2008: 94) to developing support for multicultural measures and this view is widely held among multiculturalists. But there isn’t a clear consensus on how it should be organized, or what should be on the curriculum. For Kymlicka, the focus should be on specific content like languages, history, etc., to promote “transnational identity” (2001: 312). For Miller, the focus should be on developing attachments to the state, and belonging among its population (1995: 142-3). And Parekh believes education should primarily aim at developing a certain kind of personal character – one with a ‘sympathetic imagination’ keen to understand and appreciate cultural difference (2000: 227).

In reality immigrant integration is a by-product of the other two strategies. It involves removing barriers, providing opportunity structures, and then hoping that integration into the public culture takes place smoothly, spreading the intercultural experience along the way. And it involves using the integration process to develop skills and attachments not unlike the ones aimed at by education policy. The only difference being that it provides an opportunity to educate or re-educate an adult population on its civic and intercultural responsibilities, an opportunity that doesn’t often arise for the general population in a multicultural state. If there is anything distinct about this strategy, it would be the concern with economic or employment issues, but even this is aimed at removing barriers to participation without ensuring any particular form of engagement.

 

Another difference appears when it comes to education for newcomer populations. For Miller it’s especially critical that education ensures immigrant children are ‘inducted’ into their new national identity (1995: 142). In fact he believes education can act as a ‘counterweight’ to the influence of the family of origin to make sure that the children more fully integrate (1995:

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142). In contrast, Parekh thinks that if it’s done sensitively enough, education can avoid the possibility of inter-generational ‘rupture’ that worries many immigrant families and combat the drive to create separate education systems (2008: 94). More will be said on the impact of these inter-familial tensions in the discussion that follows, but for now its worth noting that these contrasts may be especially marked because education is one of the few proactive measures associated with multicultural transformation.

arguing that when minority students saw themselves reflected in positive ways, their chances of personal success would be improved (Banks 2004). Critics objected to the artifice in these reforms, and questioned their relevance for well-rounded learning (Glazer 1997; Rorty 1995). In the end the debates over multicultural education culminated in a kind of truce, captured in Nathan Glazer’s book title, We’re all multiculturalists now (1997). But while Glazer acknowledged the need to reform the delivery of education in the US, his arguments on behalf of multicultural education were aimed at addressing a systematic and persistent failure in social equality, particularly in the case of Black Americans. To put it another way, Glazer, like many combatants on both sides of the culture wars, was not trying to create a new mode of American coexistence, so much as perfect the existing one, whose ideals had never been fully realized.

So although there are different strategies associated with the transformative mandate of multiculturalism, this paper will focus primarily on the education element. Because in contrast to the public culture element, it is proactive rather than aspirational, and represents a focused effort to introduce new ways of thinking and behaving to a population. Moreover, whereas the public culture approach can remain somewhat vague, aiming at a ‘spirit of multiculturality’ (Parekh, 2000: 224) or other intangible goals, education involves concrete decisions on curriculum, school organization, pedagogical standards etc. Making it the most direct strategy currently contemplated under a multicultural approach. Meaning that if multicultural transformation is to work, education is the lynchpin to that exercise.

So although much ink has been spilled over multicultural education, its not clear how helpful this debate has been when it comes to understanding the role of education as a strategy for multicultural transformation. For one thing the aims of American-style multicultural education are different from the kinds of multiculturalism Kymlicka, Parekh and Miller have in mind. Indeed several education theorists make a point of stressing that ‘multicultural education’ is not to be confused with ‘multiculturalism’ and even go so far as to reject ‘multiculturalism’ on the grounds that it encourages essentialism or balkanization, echoing concerns from the theoretical debate (Ladson-Billings, 2003).

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION Before proceeding further it is helpful to say a few words about multicultural education, as it has been the focus of a longstanding debate especially in the US, eventually culminating in the so-called ‘culture wars’ (Glazer 1997: 38). At issue was the idea that education was key to either reinforcing or overcoming disadvantage, particularly racial disadvantage. Advocates sought curriculum changes to provide greater recognition for minorities,

 

The aim of multicultural education, as explained by its advocates is to produce engaged citizens, keen to pursue social justice. As James A. Banks put it the goal is to ‘help foster a just and

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inclusive pluralistic nation-state that all citizens and groups will perceive as legitimate’ (2004: 12), and to ‘teach them to care about other people’ (1997: 13). Cultural recognition and respect is key to this process because it avoids social alienation and the kind of ambivalence that turns off learning and engagement. Done right, it can create citizens who are willing to challenge the status quo in the name of a higher good (2008: 137). In the process such an education will help perfect the American social union or ‘unum’, which started out, with good ideals but fell well short of its aspirations (Banks 1997: 4).

Although she later softened this position, saying that recognition might open possibilities for transformation so long as it was not entrenched in any long-term way (2003, 81-2). In other words there is still a tension that Banks has not addressed between the desire to recognize identity and the desire to avoid rigid cultures. Because ‘critical multiculturalism,’ sees identity categories as expressions of social and institutional power, and cultural relations as a procedural problem to be corrected (McDonough, 2008: 330). The approach doesn’t factor in the value individuals place on culture or their ‘particular contribution to making lifeworlds meaningful and persuasive’ (McDonough, 2008: 3312).

The difference between this approach and the one multiculturalists outline is that here education is used to transform motivation rather than identity. Its focus is the motivation to learn, seek justice, and feel attached to an existing political project. But the radical-justice-seeking tendencies of multicultural education run into problems as the drives to both recognize and problematize identity collide. Because approaches like Banks’s are modeled on the idea that a disadvantaged group can have its identity recognized. This aim is in turn based on the idea that identity provides a fixed horizon (Young 1989), leading to a slippery conceptual slope that ends with identity looking like a fixed thing to be accommodated – the very problem multiculturalist critics have highlighted. Aware of these difficulties, Banks tries to balance the ideal of recognition with commitments to problematize cultural identity. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, Banks argues that education will be truly transformative once we deliver not just recognition but also the tools to question cultural attachments (Banks, 2008: 134).

Even if the kind of iconoclastic approach to cultural identity Banks has in mind simply aimed at unseating dominant identities in the name of social equality it could still run into problems. Because unseating a system of social power and cultural capital is not the same as establishing new forms of cultural engagement, meaning the approach may have a deconstructive, but not a constructive impact. As one scholar explains, multicultural education ‘may engender disenchantment with prevailing cultural capital, thereby eroding its value,’ yet it is ‘unlikely to create an alternate state of enchantment… required for cultural capital to exist’ (Olneck, 2000: 336). There is good reason, therefore, to make a distinction between multicultural education, and education as a transformative strategy for multiculturalism. One reason is that the multicultural education approach is transformatively limited, at least in the American context, and focuses on perfecting an existing union and concept of citizenship, based on a pre-defined concept of social justice. It is only minimally a process for re-negotiating

Yet in the essay that Banks cites, Fraser advises against affirming cultural identities because of the risk of reification (Fraser 1995).

 

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terms of coexistence, and re-creating the forms of unity, citizenship and justice that go along with it. Moreover, the approach faces significant conceptual problems of its own when it comes to cultural identity – it is caught between essentializing it in the name of recognition, deconstructing it in the name of critical thinking, and dismissing it as an artifact of power imbalances. While there are many connections between the themes of these two debates, it would be a mistake to see them as functionally integrated. Multicultural theorists see education as a way to introduce new forms of coexistence in a population, and primarily focus on promoting the widespread legitimacy of multicultural and intercultural social habits. The education theorists discussed here see it as a way of remediating a flawed social union, and focus on improving the status of marginalized groups.

multiculturalism envisions? There are a number of concerns on this score. For one thing the strategy is partial rather than universal, and focuses on an unenfranchised subsegment of the population in a way that may invite social conflict and put vulnerable members of society at the centre of it. It also appears to be influenced by dated ways of thinking about social change and shared identity, and its not certain that schools are an appropriate site for practicing some of the key skills required for multicultural forms of change. Partial One limitation of this strategy is that at any given time the strategy addresses only a sub-section of a population, and focuses on a group that is in large part defined by their limited political influence. At any given time only a small percentage of the population will be in school, or in the integration process required to acquire citizenship. At a minimum this means the strategy can’t guarantee that new, thinner forms of identity will become generalized throughout the population, at least until the replacement strategy has run through a full generation. This strategy also gambles that this group will be strongly influenced by the experience of multicultural education, and resistant to any reformation of those new ideas by the larger society.

EDUCATION AS REPLACEMENT STRATEGY The multicultural theories considered here all emphasize the importance of reaching those still in school and those new to the population with important messages about the cultures around them. What these target groups have in common is their status as outsiders or temporary outsiders to the political realm. They are potential future members, of course, and should with time come to assume full status of political membership. But they are exposed to this process during, and often because of, their position outside of the political debate. This means that when it comes to identity transformation, education is being used as a kind of replacement strategy. The new additions to the population are exposed to concepts and practices designed to support new modes of belonging and identity, and are expected to carry these messages into their life as full citizens. Can this approach provide the identity transformation and civic attachments that

 

Who is targeted Multicultural education at the primary and secondary level, as well as immigrant integration, focuses on the disenfranchised – those who have not yet achieved full political membership. It is this very status that explains why their choices are constrained, why their understanding of cultural coexistence is not left to the voluntary and aspirational measures directed towards public culture at large. Is this fair? In essence, this strategy makes a

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disenfranchised group shoulder the burdens of transformation, and casts them as the vanguard of a new mode of identity. Even if it works, there is an issue here, as to whether responsibility has been inappropriately shifted. This is especially true if we think of this population as being expected to lead the transformation process in the face of a broader population that may be reluctant to change its ways. If the new additions to a population are taught to understand things in a different way than what informs the thinking of dominant groups, the potential for misunderstanding or even discord is unavoidable. Indeed recent studies suggest that some second generation immigrants experience significant psychological stress, often related to parent-child conflicts (Reitz and Somerville 2004: 397-8), reinforcing the idea that the focus on children, and especially children of immigrants, put these groups under additional stress.

and even if those efforts produced a system of integration, it is still legitimate to ask whether it is fair to place children on the frontlines of a social battle that is really the responsibility of the larger society and the enfranchised adult population that runs it. Moreover, in the civil rights era, desegregation struggles were fought out on a broad social front and children’s experience in the classroom was a small part of a larger reform effort that included mass public mobilizations and constitutional challenges. In the case of multicultural transformation, it is the children’s identity, motivation, and sense of the public sphere that is to be a key instrument of change. Who is not targeted Equally troubling is who is not targeted through the education strategy. It is the politically dominant, those with full citizenship rights, and whose views and civic skills might be influenced by, but not directly shaped by, state policy. What does it mean to bring up a new generation through the schools whose thinking may differ significantly from the population around them? If the expectations surrounding multicultural transformation require that we must wait for generational change to do its work, and for new forms of attachment to become widespread in this way, this strategy would still require a majority population that is prepared to intentionally put its own forms of attachment out of business. Because the curricula for public and civic education, and the services to immigrant populations, are policies decided by the existing political membership. So while it’s conceivable that existing populations will embrace the imperative for change, it is not a foregone conclusion especially since they’re not the focus of active measures aimed at social transformation. If it starts to be uncomfortable, why assume the post-school-age population won’t be an obstacle to real change?

To put it more pointedly, are we setting up situations of identity conflict between younger generations and older, unreformed groups? The suggestions by Miller that education can be a ‘counterweight’ to the influence of immigrant families (1995: 142), or Parekh’s comment that families fear ‘rupture’ with their multiculturally-educated children (2008: 94) seems to confirm this scenario. Given tensions between children and parents in traditional families, immigrant or otherwise, this conflict is not to be minimized. Are we in some part responsible for this conflict by making youngsters and newcomers the chief instruments of identity change? There is of course a parallel here between the role of education in multiculturalism and the American civil rights movement, where children were at the centre of struggles to desegregate schools. But just because children have been put in this situation before,

 

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transformational strategy not only gambles that a partial education effort will be sufficient, and that the newly educated population will not become unwitting victims of social conflict, and that a multicultural curriculum will not be turned back by an unreformed majority population. It also gambles that these new forms of thinking will be resistant to the reformation of those messages by the larger society

Or we might ask, how will these existing populations be motivated to embrace thinned identities, when the main measures designed to promote them are aimed at a different sub-segment of society? Indeed it sets up potential for a mis-match in a population between those for whom new, thinner, forms of identity and attachment are the legitimate ones, and others who may still be attached to older thicker forms. And there is always the potential that this mis-match can translate into forms of social tension, which would be especially problematic if these tensions demarcated a line between, say, immigrant populations, and an existing population still attached to older ideas.

Old paradigms Why does multicultural theory place so much stock in education policy’s capacity to create a new multicultural citizen? Could it be that this faith in the power of state institutions to form character, and lead social change, arises from older models of social transformation? Ernest Gellner argued that mass education was key to the rise of statist nationalism. The ‘standardized, homogenous, centrally sustained high cultures’ that it made widespread served a dual purpose (1983: 55). They provided mobile, interchangeable workers for the new industrial economy, and lent legitimacy to a political order built largely around language groups (Gellner, 1983: 57-62). Gellner offers a powerful account of how the massive social and identity shift associated with the arrival of nationalism had its roots in changes in education. But why assume that a system that worked so well for developing national identity, would also work for a form of identity that challenges this tradition? If Gellner is right, and the mass education system was perfectly suited to create unitary nationalism, it might prove a poor tool for promoting its alternative.

Assumptions about identity The partial quality of the education strategy presents a concern when it comes to the potential for social conflict, yet aside from the fairness issues this raises there are other practical questions to consider, because the education strategy is based on several assumptions about identity that are worth examining. For example, why assume that education is more powerful than home environment, peer group, or family in the formation of identity, cultural thinking, or concepts of belonging? If any or all of these other influences played an especially significant role, any progress made through multicultural education could well be counteracted. To put it another way, if multiculturalism requires social transformation, why assume that identity will flow upwards from the least powerful in society, especially given the role of social power in shaping identity experiences? Why assume that when they get out of the education system students will retain these ways of thinking, rather than adopt those they see around them, especially among the dominant groups in society? So this

 

The faith in public education may also have roots in another account of the rise of statist nationalism. Benedict Anderson theorized that the spread of print and literacy had a large

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influence on the development of national identity. Like Gellner he believed that language groups, and the newspaper-reading public in particular, provided fertile ground for the national idea to take root (Anderson, 1983: 40-43). The mass education system was born during the rise of print culture and largely organized around its communication practices. Yet print is no longer the dominant communications form, dwarfed by the spread of digital communications. In focusing efforts at social transformation on an education system still dominated by print culture we are using something that served the old, Gellnerian, industrial society based in traditionalist nationalism, rather than cultivating new institutions or practices suited to a digital era.

Realistically, schools are not one of the places where social conflict unfolds. However much controversy there may be about the common curriculum, and over schools as public institutions, classrooms themselves are not the actual venue for such engagements. Instead they are generally sheltered from the full level of disagreement. We expect schools to be structured, to guide student learning and to show them how to manage the processes of civic life, but not to throw them into the midst of social turmoil. Yet if the classroom is a sheltered social space, set aside from the full brunt of public disagreement, in order to create an opportunity for learning, can it also provide an adequate education in how to negotiate cultural disagreement at full-force? There’s no question that relevant skills can be cultivated and that Parekh’s ‘sympathetic imagination’ (2000: 227), Kymlicka’s intercultural awareness and Miller’s shared national attachments can all contribute to an individual’s preparation for such situations. But when it comes to the negotiation of identity difference in its most loaded form, this is not a skill that can easily be developed in the early stages of education.

Identity negotiation There is one final concern to be considered when it comes to the role of education in multicultural transformation. If multiculturalism means more than the creation of a new institutional order, but also involves the readiness to negotiate new forms of cultural coexistence, then one of the key skills a multicultural transformation must cultivate is the capacity to negotiate identity conflict. But are schools the right place to develop these skills?

CONCLUSION For multiculturalism to work in a diverse population, some kind of social transformation is required. This is the message delivered in leading accounts of the theory, whether they emphasize rights and institutional forms like Kymlicka, intercultural sensitivity like Parekh, or renewed forms of national identity like Miller. Even where small, self-isolating groups are allowed to opt out, turn inward, and focus on their own forms of cultural life – something both Parekh and Kymlicka envision – they stress that this cannot be the dominant form of political coexistence. A critical level of

Schools are sites where social and political choice is specifically constrained. We don’t give youth the option to decide what to study, or ask them to determine what is relevant and worthwhile when it comes to shared identity or means of coexistence. Yet this is precisely the skill we need to develop within a multicultural population – the capacity to negotiate the most contentious issues of social meaning. In other words, it is critical that multicultural citizens have not only an awareness of the cultural diversity, but also the capacity to weather deep disagreements.

 

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political capital is required in the form of a readiness for, if not an enthusiasm for, the new mode of cultural coexistence.

level of discord within a population. If the aim of multiculturalism is to advance forms of understanding and coexistence this is clearly counterproductive.

So multiculturalism has a vital transformative mandate, yet the strategy for achieving such change is far from clear. The focus on transformation in the public culture is often ill-defined and aspirational. The immigrant integration approach depends on a combination of public culture changes and education measures to work. And while it is more concrete in focus, the emphasis on education is troubling, since it amounts to a replacement strategy that makes newcomers the unwitting instruments of social change, and quite possibly accelerates conflict among dominant/non-dominant individuals. Education remains a critical tool in preparing newcomers for full participation in citizenship, and this much should remain a key element in multiculturalism. But relying on it to change as opposed to reproduce the contours of citizenship puts an unfair burden on vulnerable members of society.

How can these difficulties be addressed? First, multicultural theory must more clearly articulate its transformational mandate. However much it aims to respect cultures and national identity, multiculturalism requires a significant aspect of fluidity as an ongoing reality of politics. Because multiculturalism is not about any one identity in particular, neither can it insulate any culture from the processes of social change. Rather it is about how identities and cultures coexist in evolving circumstances, and how multicultural measures can support collective and individual wellbeing for populations that bear a variety of evolving identities. Second, multiculturalism must develop a broader-based strategy for transformation. This is a significant task, and this is not the place to attempt to outline it, but it is possible to identify a few features that should be part of a new strategy. For one, it should avoid subdividing the population and creating different patterns of change among different sub-groups. Such fracturing creates potential for exclusion and conflict. Instead it must work across the entire population as inclusively as possible. What this suggests is that the public culture strategy should take the lead when it comes to transformation, and education should be complementary to these efforts, but not the main avenue of change. But this means the approach to transforming public culture must move from passive and aspirational, to concrete and direct. Multiculturalists have been understandably reluctant to follow this path, since it risks heavy-handed government approaches. This caution is appropriate and the forms this

Given this situation it is hardly surprising that there is disillusionment with the practical implementation of multicultural policy. There are ambitious transformation goals to multiculturalism, but the tools or strategy to support them have not kept pace. And when the transformative side of the equation looks weak, it leaves the approach open to charges of essentialism, insincerity or incoherence. If multiculturalism aims to introduce a new mode of identity, or a new way of living with difference, it will need different tools than those used to build conventional forms of national identity. Yet in leaning heavily on education measures it is leaning on the very institution linked to the rise of traditionalist nationalism. Moreover, introducing such a change cannot be a partial exercise without setting up some

 

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strategy could take require careful consideration before being endorsed.

REFERENCES

The idea that multiculturalism has a transformative mandate is not unprecedented, of course. What sets apart approaches that adopt this view is the way they integrate social change as an immediate part of multicultural policy. Both Modood’s ( 2007) and Phillips’s (2007) work, for example, emphasizes how culture or collective identity are not finite things to be accommodated, but processes to be continually interpreted in everyday life. By highlighting this dynamic these approaches help address both the critical and layman’s understanding of multiculturalism, shifting the emphasis from one-sided cultural conservatism towards the many possibilities for social and cultural evolution.

Abizadeh, A. (2002) ‘Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation? Four Arguments’, American Political Science Review 96(3): 495-509. Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities, Rev. ed. London: Verso. Banks, J.A. (2008) ‘Diversity, Group Identity, and Citizenship Education in a Global Age’, Educational Researcher 37(3): 129-139. Banks, J.A. (2004) ‘Introduction: Democratic Citizenship Education in Multicultural Societies’, in J.A. Banks (ed.) Diversity and Citizenship Education, pp. 3-16, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Banks, J.A. (1997) Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society. New York: Teachers College Press. Barry, B. (2000) Culture and Equality. Cambridge: Polity. Fraser, N and Honneth, A. (2003) Redistribution or Recognition: A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange. New York: Verso. Fraser, N. (1995) ‘From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post-socialist’ age’, New Left Review 212: 68-93. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. New York: Cornell University Press. Glazer, N. (1997) We’re All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gregg, A. (2006, March) ‘Identity crisis. Multiculturalism: a twentieth century dream becomes a twenty-first century conundrum’, Walrus Magazine. http://www.walrusmagazine.ca/articles/2006.03society-canada-multiculturism/ (accessed 20 April 2009). Joppke, C. (2004) ‘The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy’, British Journal of Sociology 55(2): 237-57. Koopmans, R., Statham, P., Giugni, M. and Passy, F. (2005) Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kymlicka, W. (2007) Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Once they are recognized as a basis for experimentation and fluidity, and when there is confidence in the multicultural measures that support those processes, existing cultural and identity practices become potential resources for change rather than merely obstacles to it. Because cultural practice represents a focus for the interpretive work that Modood and Phillips highlight in their accounts. To put it another way, culture and even national identity (whether minority or majority) provide potential sites of negotiation for new forms of identity and coexistence. Meaning we can shift the burden of transformation from education policies back towards engagement in the public culture. Work has already begun to account for the ways that multicultural policies change the social and cultural landscape they address. Mapping these dynamics and consciously engaging them should yield a transformative form of multiculturalism that avoids the problems of cultural rigidity without burdening particular groups with special responsibility for social change.

 

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Kymlicka, W. (2003) ‘Multicultural states and intercultural citizens’, Theory and Research in Education 1(2): 147-69. Kymlicka, W. (2001) Politics in the Vernacular. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (2003) ‘New Directions in Multicultural Education’, in J.A. Banks and C.A. McGee Banks (eds) Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Levey, G.B. (2009) ‘What is living and what is dead in multiculturalism’, Ethnicities 9(1): 75-93. Meer, N. and Modood, T. (2008) ‘The Multicultural State We’re in: Muslims “Multiculture” and the “Civic Re-balancing” of British Multiculturalism’, Political Studies [Online early access] DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00745.x. Published online: 20 August 2008. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgibin/fulltext/121383134/PDFSTART (Accessed April 20, 2009). McDonough, T. (2008) ‘The course of ‘culture’ in multiculturalism’, Educational Theory 58(3): 321-342. Miller, D. (1995) On Nationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Modood, T. (2007) Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. Cambridge: Polity. Okin, S.M. (1999) ‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?’, in J. Cohen, M. Howard and M.C. Nussbaum (eds) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Olneck, M. (2000) ‘Can Multicultural Education Change What Counts as Cultural Capital?’, American Educational Research Journal 37(2): 317-48. Parekh, B. (2008) A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdependent World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Parekh, B. (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phillips , A. (2007) Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

 

Reitz, J.G. and Somerville, K. (2004) ‘Institutional Change and Emerging Cohorts of the “New” Immigrant Second Generation: Implications for the Integration of Racial Minorities in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration 5(4): 385-415. Rorty, R. (1995) ‘The Demonization of Multiculturalism’, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 7: 74-75. Shachar, A. (2001) Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winter, E. (2007) ‘Neither “America” nor “Quebec”: constructing the Canadian multicultural nation’, Nations and Nationalism 13(3): 481503. Young, I.M. (1989) ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’, Ethics 99: 250-74.

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