Languages in a Global World

22. Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States – 393

Chapter 22 Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States 1 By Massimiliano Tarozzi *

In recent decades, Europe has developed responses to the increasing presence of immigrant students in schools. In particular, “Intercultural Education” is now consid ered by the European Union as the official approach to be used for the integration of immigrant students and minority groups into their new culture. However, despite the attempt of the EU to define common policies and practices, each European Country has developed its own approach. In this chapter, the different approaches attempting to define policies and practices will be outlined. In particular “Assimilationism,” and “Differential exclusion” will be addressed as forebears of the Intercultural model. Moreover, there is a significant gap between the EU “official” educational model for national policies. Another gap is between the official education policies and what teachers and schools actually practise. Finally, pros and cons of the mainstream European intercultural approach will be discussed and compared with the model prevailing in North America.

* University of Trento, Italy

The opinions expressed and arguments employed in this chapter are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries. This chapter and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.

LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012

394 – 22. Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States

Introduction I visited New York last year. The very first thing I wanted to do was to take a ferryboat from Battery Park in Manhattan to see two symbols, two founding myths of the United States: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. While the Statue of Liberty embodies the founding principles of this Country, above all liberty, but also independence and human rights, the Ellis Island federal immigration station, represents its roots, the source of future generations of Americans. Nowadays it can reasonably be considered a sacred site, a place to honour one’s own ancestors and to exalt the myth of the birth of a Nation, as demonstrated by the museum which celebrates the immigration and the American Immigrant Wall of Honor surrounding the island. Few international tourists visited Ellis Island (they prefer to continue the tour to see the more world-famous Statue of Liberty), but there were many affected Americans visiting the ancient immigration station, seeking for the origins of their family. Over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who first arrived in America through the island before dispersing all over the country. But also for a European, in particular for an Italian, it was moving to tread the soil where nearly 5 million of my compatriots passed through in only 50 years (1880‑1930). On account of the intensity and the ferocity with which Europe and Italy deal with the issue of immigration today, a place where immigration is glorified as a founding myth certainly struck me as proof of a huge difference. Then I discovered that Americans too have an ambivalent attitude toward immigration. As M. and C. Suarez-Orozco observed “immigrants are loved but only looking backward” (Suarez‑Orozco, Suarez‑Orozco and Todorova, 2008, p. 359). Today immigration is publicly seen throughout Europe as a menace, related to fears, to crime, to diseases, to terrorism, to the worst face of Islam (see Cho, Christoph, O’Donnell, all this volume). Unfortunately, this is sadly true in particular for my country where xenophobic posters stand out in the streets on the eve of the voting. Xenophobic political parties across Europe are dangerously achieving widespread success using these fears and portraying immigration as a hostile invasion, whereas progressive parties are very careful not to take too liberal positions about an issue that can shift millions of votes. School and public education is one of the public spheres where a fundamental challenge to immigrant integration arises. Everywhere, across Europe, governments assign to schools the work to accomplish that social goal, which other parts of the society ignore. Moreover, schools are required to rethink their organisational structures and their curriculum to face an increasing number of immigrant students. In this chapter I intend to address the issue of the school integration of foreign students, by comparing the pedagogical premises of various public policies prevailing in different European countries. Secondly, on the basis of research data, I will explore the gap existing between public policies and practices occurring day by day in schools. From these analyses pros and cons of the mainstream European intercultural model will be highlighted and subsequently compared with the multicultural model, prevailing in North America.



Data and figures I would start by presenting a general overview of the situation of students from migrant background in European schools, portraying their remarkable growth year by year, and some data about school achievement. According to the PISA 2006 data,2 within EU countries, immigrants make up at least 10% of the school population at age 15. In some countries (such as Spain, Ireland or Italy), that percentage has increased three or four times since 2000. In Italy it has multiplied by ten in the last ten years (Ministero Pubblica Istruzione, 2008). This remarkable increase of immigrant pupils in Italian schools in the last two decades is a matter of national concern. The public school system has new challenges to face and new problems to solve. But we have a short memory. Ironically, Italy has been one of the leading European sources of emigration for more than a century. Currently, there are 4 million Italian citizens living abroad and about 60 million people of Italian origin outside the borders of Italy. Another, less explored in Europe but extremely relevant, question is the immigrants’ academic achievements. International surveys points out that, despite the official policy of inclusion and education for all expressed in public education policies, for students from migration background underachievement and drop-outs are today unsolved problems in the majority of the European countries (MIUR, 2005; Commission of the European Communities, 2008; PIRLS, 2006).

Intercultural education as official policy at EU level In the last two decades, Europe has developed its various responses to the increasing presence of immigrant students in schools. Although it is almost impossible to paint a uniform portrait of the European approach, given the huge difference between 27 European countries, I will attempt to discuss some of the policies that have been developed throughout the continent. According to a consistent set of directives, recommendations and guidelines coming from the European Commission and many other supranational institutions and organisations,3 Intercultural Education is nowadays considered by EU as the official approach to be used in school for the integration of immigrant students and ethnic minority groups. In addition, introducing new generations to the idea of European integration has been strongly promoted by the EU. A focus on cultural diversity and Intercultural Education is present in the educational policies of most member states of EU (Eurydice, 2004). An EU report shows that only Iceland and Bulgaria do not mention IE in their education laws and guidelines. Italy has provided systematic responses for dealing with students with migrant backgrounds in school later than other countries, which is why it could profit from the experience of others and, above all, from the educational direction by the Council of Europe. Consequently, Italy is perhaps the country that has formally adopted the intercultural model as a national policy more completely than other European country. This commitment toward Intercultural Education has resulted in coherent school policies along the years, which have designed a consistent framework addressing Intercultural Education. But, what is Intercultural Education? I would define it as an approach aimed at improving and facilitating cultural relationships, starting by recognising diversity, and then promoting dialogue and exchange. Its key concept is cultural mediation, seeking to LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012

396 – 22. Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States negotiate among cultures’ viewpoints, assumptions, values, beliefs. According to the Italian legislation “To choose the intercultural standpoint means not to limit [schooling] to a mere strategy for immigrant pupils’ integration, nor to a compensatory special measure. It means, on the contrary, to assume the diversity as a paradigm of the school identity itself, as an opportunity to open up the entire system to all differences (origin, gender, social level, school history)” (MPI, 2007, pp. 8‑9). Here is what the law states both at National and European level. We will see, however, that everywhere in Europe, and in particular in Italy, Intercultural Education has been received and practised in school as a formal label, vague and ambiguous, based on a equally vague and formal recognition of the difference.

Two gaps Although the general consent surrounding the intercultural approach both as public policy and as school practice, there are two deep gaps revealing the conventional value of this approach and undermining substantially its educative effectiveness and its political coherence. The first significant gap is between EU institutions approach and national policies. Despite the attempts of many European Institutions to define and to promote a common policy and shared practices, each European country has developed its own approach. The second gap can be found between the official education policies and what really happens within the classrooms. Here the Intercultural Education approach does not seem to have caught on indeed. I will address the first, by briefly comparing public policies and school models, and the second, by referring to some research data.

First gap: EU vs. national policies Among several European countries, differences in the national application of European directives and non‑binding recommendations immediately appear. This is obvious since, across Europe there are different migration flows and several political cultures, which both encourage different measures to deal with migrant pupils and ethnic minority groups. That is why alternative models can be found in the practices of certain European countries. By using the term “model” I refer to an “educational model”, which I define as a systematic frame of reference, politically constructed, able to conceptually organise goals, methods on the basis of (possibly) explicit assumptions. I will summarise different models prevailing in different European countries during recent years: Assimilation France

1960s‑80s

Multiculturalism UK/ Nordic Countries

1970s‑80s

Segregation Germany

Interculturalism Italy – EU

1990s‑present 1960s Assimilationist education

1970s

Differential exclusion

Germany

Multicultural education

UK, Nordic countries

Intercultural education

1980s

1990s

2000s

France

Italy, EU



Each of these diagrams is, necessarily, a form of simplification of complex situations. Being well aware of it, with this table I am primarily trying to highlight distinctive elements of the intercultural model, by contrasting it with alternative models. The development from the assimilation and segregation models to the next step, has to do with a fundamental turn: the choice of an integrated instead of separated model. Some countries, where school system is traditionally more rooted in solidarity than in meritocracy, like France or Italy, had historically a pedagogical attention to the integration of diverse pupils. In this case, choosing integration is a precise political and pedagogical option rooted in a long and noble political tradition, which consider the school as the main socialisation agency within the state. Examples of this choice were the integration of disabled pupils within the normal classroom, or the integration of internal migrant students like in Italy the southern workers’ children in the schools of the richer and more productive north. The integration vs. separation divide could also be reflected in the intervs. multicultural divide, where multiculturalism, unlike interculturalism, does not assign the same value to the school as a socialisation agency. However, across Europe the terms “Intercultural Education” and “multicultural education” are used with similar meanings in different scholarly discourses. Namely, while multicultural prevails in some countries (mostly the United Kingdom, but also the Netherlands and Nordic countries), intercultural is spread over in the continental Europe, in the overall European policies and, curiously, in francophone Canada. But, in Europe these terms are used as synonyms, both as umbrella-terms subsuming a number of approaches and directions. Assimilation and separation (or differential exclusion) models are two different facets of homologation. Both of them are approaches which do not recognise any value to the difference and do not assign any importance to collective identities, and in particular to the cultural identity. I will briefly explain these two approaches by referring to France and Germany, which I chose, respectively, as examples of assimilation and segregation. Although their models have considerably changed over the years however, as we will see, it is possible to trace a specific national tradition, related to their history, their colonial past, their political culture, their immigration situation and the presence of ethnic minority groups within their borders.

Assimilation In France, beginning from the Post-Napoleon epoch onwards, society assigns to the school the mandate to build a shared feeling of national cohesion and to build a civic national identity (Lemaire, 2009). Moreover, the secularity tradition – i.e. the non‑religious or lay feature of the public institutions, which is called laïcité – which is typical of school and other French public institutions considerably contributed to reinforce a republican model based on French values and beliefs. Within this model there is little or no space for communitarian identity and cultural belonging (Perotti, 2003; INRP, 2007). Based on that, it is evident that the key word of the policies towards immigrants in schools is integration. Public school plays a crucial role in promoting integration. In creating citizens, French language plays a major role as a tool for integration and it is considered an absolute priority within the school system. This model can be called assimilation because it requires newcomers to abandon or to cancel their culture of origin and to absorb that of the host country. Beyond the good intentions of the idea of integration, assimilation is based on two, often tacit, assumptions: on the one hand, cultural difference is seen as a deficit, something that should be overcome LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012

398 – 22. Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States in order to access to integration processes. Therefore, it proposes a “compensatory” approach, based mostly on learning the language of the host country, as a means to access the national culture, in which France is deemed as a universal system, unique and indivisible. On the other hand, culture, in particular the dominant one, is seen not as a culture among the others, but as a universal. There is, here, an ethnocentric presupposition, according to which republican culture is the expression of a universal rationality and of ethical values rooted in the human rights. Hence, it follows that the school is aimed at allowing individuals to access this rationality and these universal values, liberating them from the ties of belonging to groups. It must be observed that also in France the debate is very harsh and in the last 30 years the traditional republican model, universalist and assimilationist, has been passionately criticised and in some sense overcome since the 1970s, when the intercultural approach had been conceptualised and practised by scholars (Abdallah‑Pretceille, 1996).

Segregation – differential exclusion In the 1970s in Germany, the main approach used to deal with the education of the immigrant workers’ children was called “instruction for foreigners” (Ausländerpädagogik) (Portera, 2008). This approach set up specific intervention strategies addressed exclusively to foreign students and it required the establishment of “separate” paths only for them. The reasoning behind this choice was that the migration projects of foreign workers were supposed to be only temporary and so their perspective would be to return to their native countries as soon as possible. So maintaining their native languages in German school was considered a preparation for return. Separate schools or separate classes would provide training essentially focused on learning basic notions required to temporary immigrants for living in the host country. The core curriculum was, consequently, improving German as a second language. Soon, however, many criticisms were raised about this model, which soon showed its practical and political limits. Some who were supposed to be temporary migrants, in fact would settle, as usually happens in the migratory process, and therefore their educational needs radically changed. Moreover, and most important, ethnocentric and discriminatory assumptions supporting this educational model were denounced. Strong internal criticisms and the pressure of international institutions, claimed for a radical change of the typically German model of separate classes. As a consequence, the theoretical model of the education for foreigners has been, de facto, overcome by the end of 1990s (Luchtenberg, 2009), with the introduction of mixed classes and the adoption of an intercultural paradigm. Nevertheless, some traces of this original view still persist, even in the today’s intercultural context, as Germany still adopts temporary separate measures, like providing separate assistance for immigrant children outside mainstream classes as a transitional support for less than a year (Eurydice, 2004).

Second gap: Intercultural “official” model and school practices Educational research and teachers’ experiences tell another story. They reveal that there is a wide gap between the intercultural model in school practice and the official educational policy as well as the scholarly debate which advocates this approach. Although teachers should have an intercultural model to organise their pedagogy dealing with immigrant pupils, they seem not to have a clear, shared frame of reference about how to promote integration and foster intercultural activities. Hence, this gap between what the LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012


law requires and what teachers and schools actually practice leads to what I refer to as the “ghost model” of Intercultural Education. In 2005‑06 I carried out qualitative research among teachers and principals within the Northern Italian province of Trento and published it as a book, entitled “The meaning of interculture” (Tarozzi, 2006). I was the principal investigator of a group including teacherresearchers. Our goal was not to investigate classroom activities per se, but to locate within them how teachers interpret intercultural practice. According to sources, there is enough evidence to indicate that, despite efforts, funding and resources allocated to it, Intercultural Education is still ineffective (Sleeter and Grant, 1999) and that it does not pervade the normal routines of schools. There are many reasons for this: a) Intercultural Education is not systematically included in teacher education programmes, b) there is a big effort in teaching the host language, and above all c) the main goal of school systems is selective rather than inclusive. At the same time, the history of legislative acts tells us that starting in the early 1990s, after a brief assimilationist interlude, the Intercultural Education model was established and still is enforced, formally confirmed by every single government, both conservative and progressive, in the last quarter century. This widespread consensus is bizarre, considering the harsh conflicts that usually characterise political debate about immigration and public policies related to it. The explanation that emerged from our research was that there is a large gap between the practice and their meaning. Practices may be coherent with public policies, but meanings are impregnated with visions rooted in lived experience. This research is a grounded theory within a phenomenological framework aiming at exploring the meaning that practitioners give to the ambiguous notion of “Intercultural Education” (and the actions that they associate with it). Our research questions were: a) What models do teachers have for dealing with immigrants in schools? b) What does the term “intercultural” mean to teachers? c) What practices do they associate with it? Data were collected mainly through in-depth interviews with 41 teachers and principals (from 12 urban and rural schools in the area of Trentino). Other sources of data were observations, documents, and focus groups with participants as evaluation workshops. From this research, an interpretive theory emerged showing that despite general formal consensus around the name of a precise integration model, teachers seem not to have a shared frame of reference, which can lead their practices toward real Intercultural Education. But since they actually put into practice many Intercultural Education activities, they act as if they had one. However, their “model” is not properly defined, because it is not able to conceptually organise goals, methods, activities and assessments on the basis of explicit assumptions. Yet, since it organises the practices and gives them a meaning, it functions as a ghost model, one that works as if it were so. Teachers and principals engage in a lot of activities, without a (theoretical, political or even pragmatic) framework which gives them meaning. So there is a conflict between practices and meanings. Every time there is a gap between practice and meaning, there are two possible consequences: a) integralism, dogmatism or b) indifference, sceptical relativism. In both cases the primary consequence is that it becomes impossible to consider Intercultural Education a radical approach. What remains is an ambiguous, muddled approach which generates in its practitioners a sense of frustration, bewilderment, and isolation.



Critique of intercultural education From the previous comparisons among European public policies and from the research about school practices, some shortcomings of the Intercultural approach emerge. As a ghost model, from a practical point of view it cannot establish anything but superficial, ingenuous and exotic practices; from the public standpoint, there is a scarcity of attention to social justice. From a practical point of view, Intercultural Education has been criticised for its theoretical poverty. Being a ghost model, it is unable to establish coherent and sound practices. Too often Intercultural Education is broken into episodic and sporadic “intercultural hours”, disconnected from any project or educational planning, dramatically superficial and flattened into a stereotypical aspect of a culture. The main impulse for this comes from its exotic curiosity rather than real purposes of assuming the difference itself as a “paradigm of the school identity itself” (MPI, 2007). Multi-ethnic food parties, henna tattoos, hurried presentations on Islam, etc. are typical examples of this limitation. These superficial school activities are called in France la pédagogie du cous-cous and in the United Kingdom the “3 S education” (Saris, Samosas and Steel band) [Indian clothes and food and Caribbean percussion instruments]. Improvisation, banalisation and stereotypes are the unavoidable consequences of such activities. These ineffective micro-projects fail to achieve their radical goals like restructuring school curricula, ameliorating the relational climate, opening discussion of instructional euro centrism, exposing forms of exclusion, and making students aware of the way in which domination functions. From the policy point of view, I pointed out a limited concept of equality. This is maybe the major shortcoming of Intercultural Education, as it emerged from my analysis of public policies. In this context cultural equality means “equal evaluation”, and is therefore relativistic, whereas social equality, meaning “equal opportunities”, also takes into account the idea of justice and, more concretely, of the unequal distribution of power and resources. In fact, some British scholars criticise Intercultural Education for paying too much attention to cultural relationships, to the risk of excluding of all the other questions affecting immigrants in schools (Brandt, 1986; Mullard, 1984). Intercultural Education fulfils its scope when the equal value and equal dignity of every culture is recognised at least theoretically, when teachers teach that no culture is superior to another. But there is another equality to be accomplished within a democratic society: the one that guarantees to all the cultures the same rights. In other words, a concept of justice as equity. For these reasons some scholars have come to the conclusion that the intercultural model is, by its own nature, inapplicable to reality (Donati, 2008); ideally it tends to cultural harmony, but abstractly and is not convertible into real (political) practices or social action. Is the intercultural a ghost model because it is not yet mature, not sufficiently theoretically elaborated and reinforced by praxis? Or is it a constitutive limitation of the model itself which is per se inapplicable and consists only of an ideal direction? The question is open-ended, and has no unique answer. However, a comparison with the United States can help both sides to find non‑definitive solutions, which work on the practical plane.

Mutual contributions among the United States and EU I do not have the space, here, to adequately compare multicultural education, prevailing in North America, with Intercultural, mainstreaming in Europe. However, I would like to conclude my chapter with some highlights, coming from this comparison, between two different scholarly discourses. There are of course deep historical, cultural and theoretical LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012


differences between the two contexts in dealing with cultural difference and the social and educational responses to it. While the intercultural model is highly problematic, as we have seen, the multicultural model has also been widely criticised. It has had the undeniable merit of posing the category of diversity from the margins to the mainstream of the social and political interpretation of the contemporary society. But it has offered univocal response to manifold changes; it has raised basic questions, to which has been unable to offer adequate and convincing responses. In conclusion, I’d like to stress that strong points of America’s approach can nicely respond to the European weak points. And vice versa. There are two lessons that America can teach us, and two lessons that can be learned from our European experience.

First lesson from the United States: Education is politics In the United States, multicultural education has had from the very beginning an eminently political character. It was born in the 1970s, stimulated by the civil rights movement (and in Canada by the debate about diverse citizenship of cultural minorities). There is a wide awareness among professionals and laymen that schooling has to do with political decisions that are never neutral (Nieto, 1996). In this sense Multicultural Education cannot be understood in a social and political vacuum. In fact, no educational philosophy is worthwhile unless it focuses on raising the achievement of all and giving students an opportunity to become full citizens. Diversity in the United States is a matter of fact. There are different ways to respond to this situation, but all of them have to do with social inequality. In the United States diversity of race, gender, culture, disability and sexual preference make sense as a claim to fill the gap of inequality. Here education can play a major role to promote equality of rights and opportunities, starting from equal academic achievement. Both from a radical perspective based on critical theory, and from a liberal‑democratic one, following Dewey, public education is always considered the “great equaliser”, which is supposed to remove the barriers of class and to provide all students with an equal education (Dewey, 1916). In Europe, Intercultural Education is a predominantly technical approach. It is a strategy of schooling, a teaching method, or at most an educative horizon, always related more to practice rather than to political action. It is a perspective which operates only on the surface of phenomena and leaves untouched the profound structure of social dynamics that cultural confrontation implies and which is rich in consequences on the educational plane. Therein lies one of its main limitations. Intercultural Education faces social and political issues which neither begin nor end within the classroom.

First lesson to the United States: Immigration and culture In the EU, Intercultural Education has been a response to the recent issue of immigration and not a model for the integration of linguistic or cultural minorities. Immigration is considered a key issue both at European level and by every national state, which requires appropriate responses from the education. There are 191 million immigrants throughout the world. This status represents better than others the contradictions and conundrums related to diversity and its recognition. The migrant is the most realistically emblematic condition of today’s planetary economy and culture. But the United States seems not to understand this very well, since it keeps tackling it as a local problem. In Europe and in the United States recent immigration is a burning planetary question. By 2005, there were over 35 million immigrants living in the LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012

402 – 22. Intercultural or multicultural education in Europe and the United States United States, 12.5% of United States population (Census 2006), and some estimate that by 2040, a third of children will be growing up in an immigrant household. (Suarez‑Orozco, Suarez‑Orozco and Todorova, 2008). This phenomenon is due to the global economy, and it is not an autonomous process without any relation to other international processes. It is also due to the economic involvement of the rich countries in the global economy and not only to the poor socio-economic conditions of the developing countries (Sassen, 1998). In this sense, measures to repel immigrants at the border and to block or deport illegal immigrants are completely useless. Bush’s plan to build a 700‑mile fence along the border with Mexico, the United States’ second most important commercial partner, is highly questionable. We need a more sophisticated approach. The EU is not a good example of coherent and unitary policies for immigration, but on the educational plane, Intercultural Education is based on the acceptance of newcomers.4 It operates in an emergency, not to guarantee the rights to stable communities. This priority has limitations but it has also given rise to a huge debate and school innovations about topics like the insertion of students during the year, bilingualism and the teaching of a second language (L2). One’s native language is certainly a civil rights issue, but it assumes new meanings within the European framework, where, for the same demographic situation, plurilingualism is a widely promoted asset. Within multilingual Europe there is a widespread assumption that in a global society, monolingualism is a dangerous anachronism and bilingualism (see Worden, this volume), as a form to guarantee the same rights to the non‑English speakers, is only a limited response.

Second lesson from United States: Social justice education In the United States, diversity and diversity recognition make sense only within a social justice framework. Multicultural education is a mean to deal with social justice issues. It is social justice education (Nieto, 1996). To recognise the equal dignity of cultures is not enough. Equality must be recognised within a framework of social justice. According to the European sociologist Wieviorka, there is no difference without inferiorisation and dominion and, conversely, domination is a concept which cannot be employed with individuals, but only with collective categories (Wieviorka, 2001). Therefore, multicultural education not only aspires to accepting and respecting cultures, but it aims at empowering students, and it cannot be defined without specific attention to academic achievement for all. In Europe only recently (and only after the 2006 PISA test) we begin to combine diversity and school achievement. As I said earlier, the adoption of a limited concept of equality is one of the main shortcomings of the Intercultural Education practice. The European approach should pay more attention to social justice, to socio‑economic factors which impact school achievement (see Christoph, this volume). America is teaching Europe that diversity and justice are not necessarily incompatible, but can be thought of together.

Second lesson to United States: Hybridisation or métissage The prevailing education approach in Europe stresses intentionally the prefix “inter-” to outline the special attention paid to the relationship, the exchange, the dialogue among cultures, as well as their mixing, the “fusion of horizons” to quote Gadamer. On the contrary, American multiculturalism has stiffened the cultures. As provocatively denounced by Bourdieu, the debate on diversity has been monopolised by the North American approach (Bourdieu and Vaquant, 1999), for this reason it disregards phenomena of hybridisation, mixture, Creolisation typical of the European debate.5 LANGUAGES IN A Global WORLD – Learning FOR BETTER CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING – © OECD 2012


Cultural anthropology, post-modern thinking and post‑colonial approaches produced new visions which stress the mixing rather than the collective difference. Collective difference surely offers its members instruments to claim cultural rights and to take social action on their basis, but they are necessarily based on an absolutised concept of identity. If “race” (for human beings) is a biological and genetic lie, cultural anthropology tells us that ethnic identity is an anthropological mystification (Fabietti, 1996). Cultures never exist in their pure state, nor can they ever bounded or objectively labelled. Ethnic identities are always “mestizos”. Metissage, which allows also the production and not only the reproduction of the difference, cannot find any political or juridical expression. Multiculturalism does. It offers political responses to recognition demands. But in doing so it ends up petrifying differences. On the educational plane, as in the artistic and creative ones, it is possible to evaluate the hybrid dimensions of individuals as members of a group without losing subjectivity or the membership to a collective difference. Learning has always to do with combination and mixture. However, the focus on diversity or on mixture do not designs two conflicting moral or political philosophies. We do not have to chose, nor to affirm the primacy of the one over the other, but we should understand what belongs to every single logic, without confusing the planes and spheres in which it is possible to use the one or the other. A hundred years ago, immigrants from Italy arriving on Ellis Island had minimum education, but they reached middle class status, thanks to Fordist economic development. What would happen today to the new-coming immigrants if they dropped out school? They are condemned to poverty and marginalisation. Economy today cannot guarantee justice and equal opportunities. This is definitely a task for a fairer education (see Christoph, this volume).

Box 22.1. Linguistic equation vs. cultural equation In mathematics, 1 + 1 equals 2 (1 + 1 = 2). When there is an apple on the table, and we add one more apple, the apples on the table become 2. In languages, 1 + 1 also equals 2 (1 + 1 = 2). When a person speaks one language, and she or he acquires one more language, the languages s/he speaks become 2. Now, how about culture? Do 1 + 1 still equal 2? Keeping the mathematical and linguistic equation of 1 + 1 = 2 in mind, let us imagine people who immigrated to foreign countries when they were children. They speak the mother tongue when they first came to the host country, which means that they speak “one” language. Then, they learned the second language, the native language of the host country after they settled down. Now, they speak “two” languages. Until here, the equation, 1 + 1 = 2 has no problem. However, what about the cultures? Before they came to the host country, they have “one” culture (based on region). After they came to the host country, do they get to have “two” cultures? My answer is definitely “No.” They have “more than” 2 cultures. One might be their native culture and the second might be the host country’s culture. But is that all? No, there should be at least one more, some compound form of those two cultures. Usually we call it “immigrants’ culture” in Korea. Let us narrow down the scope more in-depth into the Korean‑American. The Korean‑Americans obviously have a different kind of culture of their own compared to general local Koreans. But at the same time, they also understand and possess the Korean and American culture respectively. And even in Korean Americans, depending on which foreign country they immigrated to, the immigrants’ culture should be vary. Thus, in culture, the equation for 1 + 1 = 2 does not make sense. It should be the inequation, 1 + 1 > 2 (Figure 22.1).



Box 22.1. Linguistic equation vs. cultural equation (continued) Figure 22.1. Difference between language and culture equations

L1

+

L2

=

L1

L2

C1

+

C2

=

C1

C2

C3

C4

….

Specifically, in Korea, there is a district where Korean-Americans visit very often but the local Koreans do not. In that district, songs played in restaurants or the way how people dress is totally different. It is somewhat “exotic” compared to where local Koreans’ often visiting places. Such “exotic” culture is “beyond 2” of the equation 1 + 1 = 2. I will call such formula a “cultural (in)equation”, contrasting to those mathematical and linguistic equations. In cultural equation, 1 + 1 does not equal 2. What makes me confused here is the discrepancy between the linguistic equation and the cultural equation. This is because language and culture are critically inter-related each other. But despite of such high correlation between language and culture, the equations are obviously in discord. As I said before, the word “bilingual” means to speak two languages, but the word “bicultural” does not mean to have only two cultures. In other words, the person has not only the Korean and American culture separately but also the third culture, which is a new culture resulting from the combination of Korean and American culture. And there should be fourth or fifth culture as a result of combining two cultures. Now, I want to expand one more radical argument about the relationship between culture and language. Generally, it is regarded that language and culture have equal status, but I argue culture is more complex and has much stronger impact than language. Radically speaking, languages belong to people, people belong to culture. Specifically, languages could be inside a person and the person utilises and dominates languages, on the other hand, cultures could be outside a person and the person is affected by cultures. This is also related to the different equation of culture and language that I have mentioned above. As Figure 22.2 shows, languages are finitely fixed (like fixed 2 languages with L1 and L2), on the other hand, cultures have more varieties (like C1, C2, C3, C4, etc.), a person who has 2 languages can belong to more than 2 cultures because of the difference of equations. Figure 22.2. Relationship between language and culture C1

C2

C3

L1

L1 L2

C4

L1 L2

L1 L2

L2

There is no prior research to be able to prove my argument. But if additional research develops to investigate this argument of the unequal relationship between culture and language in the future, I hope that “learning languages in a globalising world” would have more abundant and various elements to reflect on. Sumi Kim, Korea



Notes 1.

The present chapter is part of a larger research project, supported by a Fulbright research grant in 2009. A slightly different version of this paper has been presented at Harvard Graduate School of Education (27 October 2009).

2.

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is a survey co‑ordinated by OECD on school performance of 15‑year‑old students.

3.

Council of Europe (2003) joint declaration on “Intercultural Eeducation in the new European context”; Eurydice report (2004), “Intercultural education and EU members state education policies”; European Commission (2008), Green Paper, “Migration and mobility: challenges and opportunities for EU education systems”; “European year of intercultural dialogue” (2008).

4. By the way, there is no translation for one of the key words of Intercultural Education: accoglienza, accueil. “Acceptance” has a quite a different meaning and does not encompass the idea of solidarity. 5. Once again there is no English word for métissage with a positive connotation.

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