Three educational values for a multicultural society: Difference recognition, national cohesion and equality

Abstract

Educational aims for societies comprising multiple ethnic, cultural and racial groups should involve three different values—recognizing difference, national cohesion and equality. Recognition of difference acknowledges and respects ethnocultural identities and in educational contexts also encourages mutual engagement across difference. National cohesion involves teaching a sense of civic attachment to a nation and to one’s fellow citizens of different groups and identities. ‘Multiculturalism’ has traditionally been understood to support the first value but not as much the second, a charge made by ‘interculturalism,’ a newer idea in Europe and francophone Canada. But Tariq Modood, this year’s Kohlberg Memorial Lecturer, has argued that national integration has always been a goal of multiculturalism. However, neither multiculturalism nor interculturalism has placed sufficient emphasis on equality as a social and educational ideal. Equality is a complex idea that involves both equal treatment by teachers of students from different groups, and also relative equal student outcomes among different groups.