Abstract
In response to Georgina Tsolidis, this paper considers whether multicultural education is itself a doxa. While acknowledging a post 9/11 backlash against multiculturalism and the emergence of a discourse around social cohesion within the public sphere, it questions whether this is simply a return to integrationism or more a reaction against the tired and perhaps outmoded identity politics that, from the 1980s, has increasingly framed multiculturalism as public policy. It explores how multiculturalism is performed in schools often fashioning culture or ethnic diversity as a form of exoticism through pedagogies of difference that, while well meaning, tend more towards exclusion than inclusion. Drawing on recent research in schools, it reveals how such forms of multicultural education may promote a kind of unreflective civility that, while providing a gloss of acceptance, often yields little more than a superficial community harmony that when tested reveals its fragility. The heresy inherent in this response is its questioning of the current doxa of multicultural education. It calls for a rethinking of policy and practice to encourage an ethics around difference that avoids essentialising that difference in the process and equips students with the tools for effective social participation to deal with the cultural complexity of the world in which they live.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Controversies in Education: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Policy and Practice |
Editors | Helen Proctor, Patrick Brownlee, Peter Freebody |
Place of Publication | Switzerland |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 129-137 |
Number of pages | 9 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319087580 |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |