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Multicultural Nations
James A. Banks
To cite this article: James A. Banks (2009) Diversity and Citizenship Education in Multicultural
Abstract
Immigration is increasing racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistics, and religious
diversity in nations around the world, which is challenging existing
concepts of citizenship and citizenship education. In this article, I argue
that nation-states need to construct novel ideas about citizenship and
citizenship education that accommodate new population groups but also
foster national unity. Multicultural nation-states need to balance unity
and diversity. I describe the challenges to citizenship caused by diversity
and argue that citizenship education should be transformed and help
students to develop reflective cultural, national, and global identifications
and a commitment to take civic action that will make their communities,
nation, and the world more democratic and cosmopolitan.
Key words: immigration, diversity, citizenship, citizenship education,
multicultural citizenship, multicultural education
across nation-states been as numerous and rapid or raised such complex and
difficult questions about citizenship, human rights, democracy, and education.
Many worldwide trends and developments are challenging the notion of
educating students to function in one nation-state. These trends include the
ways in which people are moving back and forth across national borders, the
rights of movement permitted by the European Union, and the rights codified
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
practice that lasted from 1869 to 1969. These children are called The stolen
generation. Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, issued a formal
apology to the stolen generation on February 13, 2008. In order to embrace
the national civic culture, students from diverse groups must feel that it
reflects their experiences, hopes, and dreams. Schools and nations cannot
marginalize the cultures of groups and expect them to feel structurally
included within the nation and to develop a strong allegiance to it.
Citizenship education must be transformed in the 21st century because of
the deepening diversity in nations around the world. Citizens in a diverse
democratic society should be able to maintain attachments to their cultural
communities as well as participate effectively in the shared national culture.
Unity without diversity results in cultural repression and hegemony, as was
the case in the former Soviet Union and during the Cultural Revolution that
occurred in China from 1966 to 1976. Diversity without unity leads to
Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state, as occurred during the
Iraq war when sectarian conflict and violence threatened that fragile nation in
the late 2000s. Diversity and unity should co-exist in a delicate balance in
democratic multicultural nations.
Nations such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany are struggling
to balance unity and diversity. A French law which became effective on
March 15, 2004 prevented Muslim girls from wearing the veil (hijab) to state
schools (Bowen, 2007; Lemaire, 2009; Scott, 2007). This law is a
manifestation of la lacit as well as a refusal of the French government to
deal explicitly with the complex racial, ethnic, and religious problems it faces
in suburban communities where many Muslim families live. The riots in
France in 2005 indicated that many Arab and Muslin youths have a difficult
time attaining a French identity and believe that most White French citizens
do not view them as French. On November 7, 2005, a group of young Arab
males in France were interviewed on PBS, the public television in the United
States. One of the young men said, I have French papers but when I go to
the police station they treat me like I am not French. The French prefer the
term integration to race relations or diversity. Integration has been officially
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Gonalves e Silva (2004) also makes the important point that becoming a
citizen is a process and that education must facilitate the development of
civic consciousness and agency within students. She provides powerful
examples of how civic consciousness and agency are developed in
community schools for the children of Indigenous peoples and Blacks in
Brazil. Osler (2005) maintains that students should experience citizenship
directly within schools and should not be citizens-in-waiting.
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problems, concepts, and issues across nations, such as the need to prepare
students to function within as well as across national borders. The Bellagio
conference also concluded that these shared issues and problems should be
identified by an international group that would formulate guidelines for
dealing with them.
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and politically alienated within the national civic culture, as many Muslim
youth in French society are today (Lemaire, 2009).
Members of identifiable racial groups often become marginalized in both
their community cultures and in the national civic culture because they can
function effectively in neither. When they acquire the language and culture of
the mainstream dominant culture, they are often denied structural inclusion
and full participation into the civic culture because of their racial, cultural,
linguistic, or religious characteristics (Alba & Nee, 2003; Gordon, 1964).
Teachers and schools must practice democracy and human rights in order for
these ideals to be internalized by students (Dewey, 1959).
When schools and classrooms become microcosms and exemplars of
democracy and social justice they help students acquire democratic attitudes,
learn how to practice democracy, and to engage in deliberation with students
from other ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups (Gutmann, 2004;
Osler & Starkey, 2009). As Dewey (1959) stated, all genuine education
comes through experience (p. 13). Kohlbergs idea of democratic, just
schools exemplifies the concept of democracy in action in schools (Schrader,
1990). Kohlberg created a cluster school within a high school in Cambridge,
Massachusetts that ran as a just community. Each individual within the school
- whether student or staff - had a vote in deciding school policies. The just
community school was characterized by participatory democracy with
teachers and students having equal rights, emphasis on conflict resolution
through consideration of fairness and morality, and inclusion of
developmental moral discussion in the curriculum (Kohlberg, Mayer, &
Elfenbein, 1975).
A lot of work must be done in nations around the world before most
teachers actualize democracy and social justice in their curricula, attitudes,
expectations, and behaviors (Banks, 2009). Multicultural democratic nations
need to find ways to help students develop balanced and thoughtful
attachments and identifications with their cultural community, their nation,
and with the global community. In some cases, such as in the European
Union and in parts of Asia, it is also important for citizens to develop a
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of their roles in the world community. Students need to understand how life
in their cultural communities and nations influences other nations and the
cogent influence that international events have on their daily lives. Global
education should have as major goals helping students to develop
understandings of the interdependence among nations in the world today,
clarified attitudes toward other nations, and reflective identifications with the
world community. I conceptualize global identification similar to the way in
which Nussbaum (2002) defines cosmopolitanism.
Cultural Identification
The Individual
National Identification
Global Identification
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Globalism and
Global Competency
(Cosmopolitanism)
Stage 6
Multiculturalism and
Reflective Nationalism
(Cultural National Identity)
Cultural
Ethnocentrism
Stage 5
Biculturalism
Stage 4
Cultural Identity
Clarification
Stage 3
Cultural
Encapsulation
New
Discovery
Of
Cultural
Identity
Cultural
Psychological
Captivity
Stage 2
Stage 1
A DREAM DEFERRED
The riots in France in 2005 evoke memories of this poem by African
American poet Langston Hughes, who lived from 1902 to 1967. The
marginalization and identity quests by racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and
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religious groups around the world are caused by a dream deferred. Hughes
writes (1963):
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
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James A. Banks is the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies and
Founding Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of
Washington, Seattle. He is a past President of the American Educational Research
Association (AERA) and of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).
Professor Banks is a specialist in social studies education and in multicultural
education, and has written more than 100 articles and written or edited 20 books in
these fields. His books include Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global
Perspectives; Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies; Cultural Diversity and
Education: Foundations, Curriculum and Teaching; and Educating Citizens in a
Multicultural Society. Professor Banks is the editor of the Handbook of Research on
Multicultural Education and The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural
Education. He is also the editor of the Multicultural Education Series of books
published by Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Professor Banks work in
multicultural education is known and influential throughout the world. His books have
been translated into Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
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