Are We Ready for Critical Multiculturalism?

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Are We Ready for Critical Multiculturalism?

• Paul Ilsley
• Faculty of Behavioural Sciences
• University of Helsinki
• paul.ilsley_at_helsinki.fi
• 11.5.2010

2
Reframing...

• Is Finland ready for multiculturalism?
• Is multiculturalism ready for Finland?
• Context and Definition are critical to our
  understandings.

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• A human being is part of a whole, called by us
  universe, limited in time and space. We
  experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings
  as something separated from the rest-- a kind of
  optical delusion of our consciousness. This
  delusion is a prison, restricting us to our
  personal desires and to affection for a few
  persons close to us.
• Our task must be to free ourselves from our
  prison by widening our circle of compassion to
  embrace all humanity and the whole of nature in
  its beauty. Albert Einstein

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Lets Address the Question

• It depends.
• What does it mean to be an educated person in
  Finland?
• What are the multicultural attributes?
• What are the challenges?
• Competing values valuing competition
• Discourses of progressivism, goal achievement,
  practicality
• Nationalism embedded in EU sanctions
• One-way internationalism, traditions
• Environment of individualism, freedom,
  loneliness, and fear

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Central Questions

• What does multiculturalism mean?
• What is culture?
• What does it mean to be a multicultural person?
• (What does it mean to be an educated person?)
• Who are the stakeholders?
• Whose values are served by the various
  definitions?
• What are the implicit and explicit ideals of
  multiculturalism?

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The Approach

• Formal remarks,
• Group discussion,
• Invitation for social gathering after this
  colloquium,
• The future.

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Chorus of Writers

• Critical pedagogy
• Frankfurt School -gt Habermas -gt Marx, Kant,
  Hegel, Weber
• Social Theory power Gramsci, Freire, Apple,
  Giroux, McLaren, Foucault, Horton
• Critical Womens Studies - Lahelma, Brunilla,
• Critical Race Theory, Asante, Jeffries, bell
  hooks
• Postcolonialism
• Challenges to the natural superiority of the
  west Said, Spivak, Asante
• Postmodernism and Intersectionism
• Diaspora, otherness, diversity relativity of
  truth - Phoenix, Quinn

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Forms (Steps, Levels) of Multiculturalism

• An attitude, a set of skills, knowledge that an
  individual may possess?
• An egalitarian state of affairs of a collective--
  a just organization, community, society?
• An ideal of egalitarianism and justice?

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What are the opposite terms?Multiculturalism vs.
what?

• Intolerance
• Apolitical localism
• Corporate democracy
• Nationalism
• Poverty and unemployment
• Injustice (e.g., racism, classism, sexism,
  religious bigotry, ethnic discrimination)
  

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Stakeholders Analysis-- Whose Values are
Served?Multiculturalism is...

• ... a curricular device used in schools.
• ... a threat to nationalists.
• ... a marketing tool for increased profit of
  businesses of various sizes and types.
• ... a political ping-pong greatly misused.
• ... an ontology looking for a context.
• ... a fetish of individual identity and expertise.

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Multiculturalism is... (cont.)

• Knowing another language and being at home in
  more than one culture.
• Reconceptualization of civil society
• A pathway for giving privilege to groups that
  have been victimized.
• Post-colonial discourse.
• The conflation of decolonization.

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Multiculturalism is... (continued)

• ... a new paradigm for education in the 21st
  century.
• ... cosmopolitan idealism and the belief that we
  all belong to the same moral community.
• ... a system of beliefs that values complex human
  situations and human differences, and encourages
  and enables the voices of people from all
  socio-cultural strata, for the betterment of all.

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Another View

• Friends
• Enemies
• Strangers
• The practice and discourse of inclusionary and
  participatory politics, in the strongest possible
  terms.

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Individualistic Approaches

• Cultural Competence
• Intercultural Intelligence
• Culturally Aware
• International Curricula
• Multicultural Programming
• Are these approaches sufficient?
• Sufficient for What?

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Multiculturalism in Education

• Equality in schoolslt---gt Equality in Society?
• Multicultural curricula
• Teaching multiple contexts
• Understanding we vs. they issues
• Instilling a sense of commitment, idealism,
  awareness, multicontextual identity, peace

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Issues in Multiculturalism

• Can the utopian values someday become dominant?
• Is is rooted in laws of conformity?
• Does it promote a sort of colonization of its
  own?
• Even with its utopian principles will it end up
  reproducing the very values it intended to
  transcend?
• Will it ever enjoy the sort of institutionalized
  cultural power its opposite enjoys today?

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Expanding the Educators Role

• Understand concientization, praxis, and the
  social purposes of education.
• Create and live expanded social visions.
• Advocate quality of life issues.
• Expand social forums and tools for world-making.
• Transcend boundaries of different social worlds.
• Bring to the front what it means to be educated,
  in terms of justice, peace, equality and liberty.