Diversities & Inequalities:
Global, (Trans)national & Particular Citizen Identifications
Purposes and Standpoints
MacPhearson
uses the case study of the Tibetan diaspora in Canada, the U.S., and India to
examine three different approaches to integrating ethno-diversity into national
educational policy: integration; achievement; and sustainability. Canada
focuses on integration to create social cohesion, defined as a sense of trust
and civic participation that creates a common identity across cultural or
linguistic differences. The U.S. focuses on achievement, with MacPhearson
noting that Americans are more likely to tolerate inequality if some
marginalized people can join the ranks of the elite. One concern with both the
U.S. and Canada is that racialized people who find success often do so at the
cost of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. India, however, focuses on
sustainable ethno-diversity through participatory pluralism. Many Indians are
trilingual and the country has a tradition of giving minority groups free reign
over their own cultural traditions and education. The downside to participatory
pluralism is that the success or failure of these systems lies within the
cultural groups themselves, not the state.
Engel
and Siczek examine national education policy frameworks from the U.S., the
U.K., Canada, Ireland, and Australia to determine their respective stances on
global citizenship education. They found that all five countries focused on
education as a commodity to increase national wealth, produce more competitive
citizens, expand the influence of their countries globally and, in the case of
the U.S., enhance national security. There was little to no mention of “global
community” or “shared humanity” in their findings. This is at odds with the
UNESCO goals of global education, leading Engel and Siczek to posit that any
strategies for internationalization established by individual states are bound
by their national aims, limiting their ability to form true global citizens.
Dryden-Peterson
and Mulimbi examine the history of Botswana to determine how civic education
played a role in its becoming one of the most peaceful countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa. The three main factors they identify are: high levels of wealth
redistribution after independence from Britain, so all people feel like they
have a role in society; high rates of education across all ethnic groups, not
only the majority Tswana; and increased funding in primary education giving all
citizens a link to government services and concepts of state citizenship.
Through these methods, Botswana has transformed their conflicts from horizontal
to vertical and avoided the civil unrest of their neighboring countries.
Theory and Evidence
Both
MacPhearson and Engel and Siczek use available literature from the countries
they examine. They analyze national education policy documents from each
country, with Engel and Siczek using a data analysis tool that lets them
analyze how many instances of specific words or phrases there are in a given
policy. Dryden-Peterson and Mulimbi use policy documents, interviews, and
public polling data from the Afrobarometer survey.
Comparisons and Synthesis
MacPhearson’s
argument that, within education policy, multicultural integration and
achievement are fruitless in the long-term without sustainability, seems to be
a direct response to the findings of Engel and Siczek. The latter show that the
national governments of the top five “Anglo-Saxon” countries that are
destinations for international students – Canada, Australia, Ireland, the U.K.,
and the U.S. – have little in the way of explicit policy goals that match
UNESCO’s intent to promote globalized democratic citizenship education. Engel
and Siczek often use the term “commodity” when referring to how these countries
view the concept of globalized education; the neoliberal model at work here
reduces the complexity of global education to supply and demand, casting
students as widgets.
Conversely, Dryden-Peterson
and Mulimbi show, in their analysis of Botswana, how a country’s education
policy can change course to meet the needs of its citizens without bending to
corporate interests. However it could be argued that Botswana does not function
as an equal comparison to the five aforementioned countries; Botswana built its
education system for the expressed purpose of not descending into civil war as
its neighbours had done, while the countries that Engel and Siczek examine did
not face that existential risk – not accounting for the tensions between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
It would be interesting to
explore the future of Botswana’s education system if the country moves towards
increased global integration and interdependency. Would they also market their
system to other Sub-Saharan states as a premier destination for international
education, for the express purpose of generating capital? Once the existential crises of war have been
removed and concepts of citizenship are enforced through hegemony, would the
education system naturally creep towards neoliberalism?
Applications and “So What” ?
Canada prides, and markets,
itself as being a multicultural country. However, after reading this week’s
articles, I wonder if the Canadian concept of “multiculturalism” needs to be
rethought, particularly as it applies to how we inculcate our current and
future citizens. A student learning to be a citizen in Scarborough will have a
very different cultural experience than one learning the same lessons in rural
Alberta. As hard as Canada has worked to establish a unique culture for itself,
and to entrench those values in students, it could be argued that it has always
been a patchwork country of regions held together more so by geography than shared
cultural identity.
I currently teach at a high school in
Scarborough, with many difference races and ethnicities present in the school
and staff. I have also taught overseas with Blyth Academy, catering to the
children of some of Canada’s wealthiest families. Although there will always be
some similarities between high school students, the concepts they have of what
it means to be a Canadian citizen vary wildly – some of my students in Scarborough
are landed immigrants whose parents clean homes for a living; one Blyth student
I taught came to Pearson Airport in her own private helicopter. How do I teach
both those students that as Canadian citizens, both their cultures have equal
weight? Can both cultures be sustainable and successful, or is the immigrant
forced to acquiesce to normative structures in order to survive?
REFERENCES
Dryden-Peterson, Sarah, & Mulimbi, Bethany (2017). Pathways toward
Peace: Negotiating National Unity and Ethnic Diversity through Education in
Botswana. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), 58-82. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/689614
Engel, Laura, & Siczek, Megan. (2018). A cross-national comparison
of international strategies: global citizenship and the advancement of national
competitiveness [Canada, Australia, Ireland, UK, USA). Compare, 48(5),
749-767. doi:10.1080/03057925.2017.1353408
MacPherson, Seonaigh. (2018).
Ethno-cultural diversity education in Canada, the USA and India: the experience
of the Tibetan diaspora. Compare, 48(6), 844-860.
doi:10.1080/03057925.2017.1362547
